One of the hallmarks of a complex problem is the fact that we are confronted by paradox and polarity everywhere we turn. When a situation has a both/and in it, it is dynamic and unresolvable to one choice or the other. It needs to be managed, lived with, coaxed into a place where the positive aspects of both can coexist. These polarities exist everywhere in human systems. On my home island right now we are going through one of our periodic confrontations of the polarities that define our place. Fundamentally this polarity comes down to an age old struggle between …
The entrance to the Bowen Island Municipal Hall A good and powerful rant by Dave Pollard on what government should do. I agree with all of it, which isn’t usual for me with Dave’s stuff because he challenges me and confounds me often. But I am aligned with this vision. Read his thoughts on housing: I believe the government should authorize and control the construction and maintenance of millions of units of safe, comfortable, ecologically sound housing, and offer them at subsidized prices that enable all citizens to afford decent housing without spending more than 30% of their income on …
In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I — Adrienne Rich, 1992, hat tip to Jim My …
For years Peter Levine, a moral/political philosopher who teaches at Tufts University, has been a must-read for me for his musings on civic engagement, democracy, policy, history and philosophy. Today he celebrates 20 years of blogging with the release of “Cuttings: a book about happiness” that is a collection of his collected blog posts on “Happiness” which is so much more than that title implies. The book is a set of reflections on philosophical texts, religious scriptures, and poetry, Buried in the text is a little observation that I suspect says something about who he is: So we have a …
As the year comes to a close, I think I have struck a nice balance with Mastodon. It really is a platform much better suited to micro-blogging than twitter ever was. It provides enough characters to properly comment on one link, and invites conversation. And so I THINK I will be mostly posting links from my daily reading there and summing them up here. So enjoy these gems I have found over the past few weeks. You can follow me there at @chriscorrigan@mstdn.ca. That is plenty for now. And so I leave you with this blessing which I wrote and …