Ignorance (as a choice) of course comes with its own price tag, usually measured in surprise and complete nonplussed naivete as to the causes and consequences of thoughts, actions and statements as facts in the world; ironically by this complete (and more often wilful) stupidity, to unwittingly recreate the preconditions for most of this human […]
All meaning is a function of probability, of uncertainty or ambiguity and ignorance. As an adaptive or transient property of words, we can infer that not only is any particular or specific meaning not itself of the words to which we assert it belongs, but that meaning is an inverse property of all those other […]
There are quite a number of critically important things in this world which remain spectacularly and enduringly conspicuous by their absence. Central among these we might place everyday idioms of wishful thinking such as peace, love, freedom and environmental sustainability. What unifies all of these things is that the ways that manifest in this world […]
There is a very special sense in which the ordered complexity our world resembles matryoshka nesting dolls. It is not purely of the overt ubiquity of fractal patterns of self-similarity in spatial or material structure and temporal sequence, although these symmetries are striking and quite deeply beautiful in their own mischievously inter-dimensional ways. The recursion […]
It is something of a mystifying etymological alignment that a word that describes an absence of overarching governance and order has become synonymous with chaos, destruction and rioting. It might even be something of an irony that the periodic cycles and returns of large-scale social collapse as revolution or civil war are themselves inevitable consequences […]
There is an irreducible enigma in this world. To put it more accurately: the world itself is an irreducible enigma. It is an enduring mischief cast upon our understanding that we ever and always clothe ourselves in the contingency and moving frame of reference and endless symbolic metamorphosis that our systems of belief embody. Failing […]
The more I discover about the Universe, the more meaningless this mad parade of anger and human confusion appears to be. This is not to say that this whole chaotic game of charades is without value because anything so rare in all of time and space must have an inestimable worth and far beyond money […]
Thrown into a world for which none of us are or could ever be fully prepared, we are compelled to engage the interface levers, buttons and switches of culture and interpersonal complexity which always, always represent some potentially duplicitious and risky game of snakes and ladders. There are of course more snakes than ladders, though, […]
Everything begins as nothing and eventually returns there again. There is no real loss or sorrow, just the transience and self-inflected emptiness that pervades everything in life and to which we all must eventually return. A hollow, haunting experience of these facts can be overwhelming but it is worth remembering that if you are sensitive, […]
Belief is not anchored on facts any more than communication is grounded in truth. The primary function of any system of belief is the sustainably continuous tenure of that grammatical and idiomatic framework that the belief system embodies. The suggestion here is that systems of belief do not in effect belong to those who hold […]
Global problems require Global solutions but a unified approach to shared problems is nothing if not conspicuous by its absence. Key issues here are that ineffective solutions supporting and cultivating piecemeal or reductive and iterative engagement with such complex, distributed problems are the primary artefacts and policy idioms that tend to percolate to ascendancy through […]
Beauty has two faces. One is the natural symmetry and resonant eloquence of the parts as they are manifest in and as a whole, of unified pattern and unity. The other is the abstraction and symbolic token of value and meaning that we cultivate (and inherit as culture) through language and tradition. The first is […]
