Ethnomethodologically speaking, a nonconformist is a human breaching experiment. Breaching experiments violate the tacit rules of the social game. When those rules are violated players no longer know how to move around. Perplexity ensures. Nonconformists inspire perplexity, anxiety and hostility. * If we understand personalities to form and sustain itself through ethnomethods, and if we … Continue reading Nonconformism
From Cooper’s Existentialism: A Reconstruction: ‘In the end,’ writes Marcel, ‘there must be an absolute commitment’, and what ‘matters most’ is the ‘fidelity’ demanded by this commitment. This squares with his earlier rejection of commitment to principles as ‘idolatrous’, since the commitment now in view is to persons — to other people and to God. … Continue reading Freedom system
My theology is one of distributed divinity. Every person is a swarm of divine sparks of intuition seeking pluralistic unity in a self — I. Every self seeks pluralistic unity with other selves — We. And each We seeks ever greater scales of pluralistic unity — We expanding toward and beyond the bounds of universality. … Continue reading Distributed divinity
I hate to borrow techie terminology for philosophical purposes, and I hate it even more when the term has already been heavily appropriated and bastardized by non-techie types, but here it works so well I’m overriding taste. I’ve been playing with the concept of deixis as a way of accounting for differences in metaphysical conception … Continue reading Deictic stack
If someone were designing my ideal Hell (or if you prefer atheistic imagery, Room 101) put me on a team that designs by committee for a committee. You don’t even have to sentence me for eternity. A month is plenty to get my teeth gnashing, and more than a month will reduce me to the … Continue reading Room 101
1) “The personal is political”is a political belief, not a fact. 2) If I believe you hold this belief, you will not be welcome in my personal life. Martin Buber’s distinction between the social and the interhuman remains centrally important to me. Personal friendship is a function of transcending the social and entering interhuman relationship … Continue reading “The personal is political”
Susan keeps asking if there might be an upside to the wokeness convulsion our society is undergoing. She hopes it might inspire people to have conversations they might not have otherwise had and to develop real empathy. I’m pretty sure this hope is an expectation widely shared among progressives. I think the entire project is … Continue reading Susan’s hope, my hope
“I no longer know how from that I came to speak of Jesus and to say that we Jews knew him from within, in the impulses and stirrings of his Jewish being, in a way that remains inaccessible to the peoples submissive to him. ‘In a way that remains inaccessible to you’ — so I … Continue reading Gospel Pharisee
Martin Buber taught me that every person is a potential encounter with God if we are willing to relate to the other as a unique, surprising Thou (what he calls the I-Thou relationship), as opposed to an “it.”
Maybe this is true: Levinas :: Buber ::: Deleuze :: Whitehead If :: is the symbol of an analogy, ::: should be the symbol for an anomalogy. Ideally ::: would be arranged as a little hexagon made of 6 dots, to indicate that the system of analogies can crisscross at strange grid-defying angles. Levinas :: … Continue reading An anomalogy
Yesterday, talking with a friend about the current generation of youth’s terror of being awkward or inappropriate, I realized I’ve somehow managed to never write about the concept of lek on this blog, much less in connection with Buber’s social versus interhuman/interpersonal distinction. I’d imagined this linkage so vividly I assumed I’d written about it … Continue reading Lek and “the social”
Approaches to the composition of hybrid systems (systems made up of both objective and subjective elements) can be classified according to perspective. Actor-Network Theory views hybrid systems from a 3rd-person perspective, in objective terms, without emphasis on either the human or the nonhuman components that make up the system. Postphenomenology views hybrid systems from a … Continue reading Perspectives on hybrid systems
What is it about the marketing mindset that makes it feel so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time to my designer’s view of the world? Why do designers and marketers talk past one another if they aren’t very careful? This is an important question. Marketing is close to design, and addresses many of … Continue reading Design vs marketing mindset
Well, I tried to write about my books and how I want to prune my library, and ended up writing a history of my interests. I know there are loose ends, but I am tired of writing, so blat, here it is: I used to have strict criteria for book purchases. To earn a place … Continue reading An autobibliobiography
A part of my autobiography that I had to compress into two lines was my experience with Jewish thinkers. Judaism only became a serious interest for me following my very strange experience of intensive study of Nietzsche starting in 2002 and extending to around 2006. During this time under Nietzsche’s influence I excavated the assumptions at the foundation of … Continue reading Jewish red thread
As part of my conversion process I’ve been asked to write a 500-word spiritual autobiography, and to pick out a Hebrew name. I thought I would choose Israel or Yisrael, but then I found Nachshon, and it is perfect for me. Reading back over my own autobiography, I feel a need to thank and apologize to everyone who … Continue reading My 500-word spiritual autobiography
Two details from a passage in Martin Buber’s Between Man and Man have stayed with me over the years. My friendship with one now dead arose in an incident that may be described, if you will, as a broken-off conversation. The date is Easter 1914. Some men from different European peoples had met in an undefined presentiment of … Continue reading A Jew trapped in a Gentile’s biography
The following is more of a diary entry than an article. I have put too little effort into editing, and it might make sense only to me. I just wanted to get a snapshot of these ideas as they exist today, before they change or disappear. * The start of an idea: it seems that … Continue reading Idea dump: intimacy, design/engineering/philosophy, social science-technologies
To the degree an individual participates in the life of a group, the behavior tends to be formatted according to conventions of speech, concept and procedure. One uses the vocabulary, ideas and behaviors easily understood and accepted by the majority of group members, in order to gain influence within the pace and formatting of group … Continue reading Group capacity to think
Below is a chord of passages on social versus interhuman interactions, which I believe illuminate a key difference between introverts and extraverts. Extraverts seem to prefer social interactions, where each person plays a role as a participant in some cultural order. Introverts seem to prefer interpersonal dialogue exposing the unique particularity of the individual (which … Continue reading Chord: social versus interhuman