Words to Ponder

24 May Words to Ponder #51

Posted at 20:06h in Community Organizing, Culture, Politics, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 4 Comments

Today's words to ponder come from David Graeber, American anthropologist and anarchist social and political activist. He died in 2020. “At a moment when the capitalists’ collective refusal to even consider rethinking any of their basic assumption about the world might well mean not just the death of capitalism, but...

04 May Words to Ponder #50

Posted at 02:52h in Culture, Language, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

More words from Raoul Vaneigem Everything that human beings do and undo passes through the mediation of language. The semantic realm is one of the main battlefields in the struggle between the will to live and the spirit of submission. The fight is unfair. Words serve Authority more faithfully than most...

18 Apr Words to Ponder #49

Posted at 19:43h in Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

Today's words are from Belgian radical philosopher Raoul Vaneigem's influential (in the 1960s) book The Revolution of Everyday Life. “People are far too unperturbed, it seems to me, by the way in which the world, in certain periods, assumes the forms of the prevailing metaphysics. No matter how bizarre belief in...

13 Mar Words to Ponder #48

Posted at 17:46h in Community Organizing, Creativity, Culture, Human Development, Performance Movement, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

These Words to Ponder are those of performance activist Hector Aristizabal, taken from a wonderful interview with him at Creative Art Space. To be creative is to participate consciously in the ongoing creation of the world. Creativity is not primarily about producing art. It is about entering into relationship with life...

27 Aug Words to Ponder #47

Posted at 21:31h in Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Words to Ponder 0 Comments

I think about how exhausting the indicative becomes - the constant demand to perform progress, to show we're winning, to prove harm is decreasing. Bayo Akomolafe...

04 Oct Words to Ponder # 45

Posted at 22:58h in Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 0 Comments

A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You...

03 Apr Words to Ponder # 44

Posted at 02:34h in Community Organizing, Creativity, Culture, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

"If the human race is still here in 100 years, it will be because of lots of people doing lots of little things. Bigger things can get co-opted or bought off by the powers that be. But if there are many, many little things going on it will be too...

20 Feb Words to Ponder # 43

Posted at 15:33h in Critical psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 0 Comments

The opening paragraph of "We’re Obsessed with Labelling Suffering, But Our Power to Think about it Matters More," a post on Mad in America by Charlotte Beale The philosopher Ian Hacking described a looping effect, whereby people adjust themselves to become more like the labels foisted upon them. “Sometimes, our sciences create...

02 Dec Words to Ponder #42

Posted at 03:50h in Culture, I Like This, Words to Ponder 3 Comments

From Pablo Neruda's magnificent book of poems, Odes to Common Things, is this beauty (in English thanks to translator Ken Krabbenhoft). “Ode to the Spoon” Spoon, scoop formed by man’s most ancient hand, in your design of metal or wood we still see the shape of the first palm to which water imparted coolness and savage blood, the throb of bonfires and the hunt. Little spoon in an infant’s tiny hand, you raise to his mouth the earth’s most ancient kiss, silent...

01 Feb Words to Ponder # 39

Posted at 02:49h in Psychology of Becoming, Words to Ponder 1 Comment

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. Ursula K. Le Guin...