Reflections on gifts
I’m giving a designer friend of mine a beautiful, perfect gift, and it’s got me thinking about gifts, again. I just looked up my old posts on gifts, and two of them have held up pretty nicely. Designs and gifts Don’t steal gifts
Search Results for: gift
Design as gift (edit for 10ke)
Design is like gift-giving. How? When one person gives another person a perfect gift, the gift is valuable in three ways: The gift itself is intrinsically valuable to the one receiving it. The giftis good to have in one’s life, because it makes life easier, more pleasant or more meaningful. The gift contributes to the … Continue reading Design as gift (edit for 10ke)
Thanksgiving chord: gifts and gratitude
I was looking through the gratitude quotes in my wiki and saw this: Nobility and gratitude. — A noble soul will be happy to feel itself bound in gratitude and will not try anxiously to avoid the occasions when it may be so bound; it will likewise be at ease later in expressing gratitude; while … Continue reading Thanksgiving chord: gifts and gratitude
Listening as gift
A listener who is considers his listening a gift is a shitty listener. Listening is only a gift if it is a genuine acceptance of a valuable gift. But, what if the gift of what is said really is not valuable? When a speaker ignores the listener and just talks about whatever it is that he … Continue reading Listening as gift
Gifts of service
When I offer my service, this necessarily includes my time and my effort. My services, however are not reducible to time and effort. The most important element of service is something beyond time and effort and is the cornerstone of service. Unfortunately the homo faber type — the industrialist temperament — knows only a world … Continue reading Gifts of service
Don’t steal gifts
When given a gift, accept the gift and do not steal it. * To take possession of the object of the gift as if it were merely a transfer of property, is to betray the spirit of gift-giving. A gift is an exchange of humanity. The object is only the medium of exchange. The object … Continue reading Don’t steal gifts
Designs and gifts
In honor of Hanukkah and Christmas, two great gift-giving holidays, this post is about gifts. * Agreement does not (only) mean correspondence of belief. More than that, it means compatibility of belief. It means the possibility of relationship in the medium of understanding, activity and purpose. A truly agreeable gift signals agreement in this expansive … Continue reading Designs and gifts
Ex infinitio
Genesis does not begin with nothingness. Creation is not ex nihilo. Genesis begins with more than everything. Creation is ex infinitio. As with scripture, so it has been in that already-in-progress life inside which you awoke, from the chaos of infancy. Somethingness — toomuchness — is primal. In the beginning is chaos. Nothingness is abstract. … Continue reading Ex infinitio
On Faith
Faith is that by which we experience reality as real and true. Faith takes what is given as given. * We might say we “have faith”, but we should not allow this expression to mislead us: Faith is not a possession; faith possesses. We do not have faith; faith does our having. One of the things … Continue reading On Faith
Design, existentialism, technocracy, etc.
If a philosophy is more a matter of questions than of answers — or to take this beyond mere language, that praxis is more a matter of problems than of responses — and I do see it this way — then the fact that the questions and problems that concern me most are all, without … Continue reading Design, existentialism, technocracy, etc.
Collective autism
(Note: I wrote this back in June of 2022, but abandoned it. It was never properly finished, and it falls apart toward the end. I’m publishing it now, in February 2023, in unfinished rough form because I need to link to it from a post I am writing today.) The first time I saw Brené … Continue reading Collective autism
On the subject of subjects
I have been thinking a lot about “background philosophies”, the ideas we think with, and “foreground philosophies”, the ideas we think about. I have equated background philosophies with subjects. Whether it is a personal subject, or an academic subject, it does not matter. My thought has brought me to an understanding of subjects that on … Continue reading On the subject of subjects
The roots of givenness
My family uses a haggadah from the Jewish Labor Committee. It gets overbearingly, even comically, socialist at many points, but we love it. Before blessing the wine, we read: Consider the cup of wine which we are about to drink. Countless sets of hands played a role in bringing this wine to our seder: the … Continue reading The roots of givenness
‘Wisdom
I love words, and I love concepts. My house is stuffed with books, many of them purchased for the sake of a single perfect sentence. But this love of articulate concept is set against what has not yet been conceived or articulated, and that, in turn, is set against what is forever inconceivable and ineffable. … Continue reading ‘Wisdom
Self-respecting faith
I didn’t want to talk about souls in my book, but I am going to have to. The whole point of all of it is souls. * When we think, we construct logical syntheses, and offer them to the conceptive mind. The conceptive mind may accept an offering as a whole, as second-natural — and … Continue reading Self-respecting faith
Interim report
I am trying to write a post, but it keeps expanding and extending under its own power. It is displacing my reading. I am waking up and just writing. I hope this is my book. If this is the book I end up writing, my old working title, The Ten-Thousand Everythings would be the natural … Continue reading Interim report
Lesser mysteries
From my phenomenological, hermeneutical and pragmatic inclinations and self-education, I cannot help but read Renee Guenon (and to a degree, Frithjof Schuon) critically, as conveying extremely sharp, clear and, above all, grounding insights into the human condition — that is the condition of finitude within and toward infinitude — but proceeding from these to unwarrantedly … Continue reading Lesser mysteries
Co-marveling
Helen and I built our relationship on sharing experiences. It began with cooking together, then mountain biking, and then listening to music — and then marveling to music. This is very different for me; I’ve always seen relationships in terms of conversation, and most importantly, exchange of ideas. But from childhood to late adolescence, Helen … Continue reading Co-marveling
Living designally
Premise: If everyone conducted themselves as designers, not only at work, but all the time, most of our biggest interpersonal and social problems could be resolved. For instance, my advice to designers I know who have been caught in conflicts, especially in political debates that have devolved into fights, is “stop thinking about politics politically, … Continue reading Living designally
As a 5w4…
To me, thought is intensely personal. It is most personal where it is worst-equipped, where I lack symbols to aid my efforts to conceptualize my experiences, where I encounter incomprehensible singularities. If I wish to understand one of these singularities, I am thrown back on my intuitions to conceive new ways to think, new fingers … Continue reading As a 5w4…