Gary Catona Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 04:22PM ;)
It's fashionable today to think that being happy, really happy, all the time is our natural birthright, and that moments of unhappiness, or even prolonged periods of unhappiness, are either unnatural or signs of mental/emotional/spiritual imbalance. This distinctively New Age view is both philosophically misguided and emotionally and psychologically dangerous.
Gary Catona Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 04:14PM ;)
Whatever the ultimate meaning of life is, it must involve, somehow, the nature of time. Time is not an object or thing "in" the outside world that we can observe or analyze like a tree or a person, but an interpretive "category" by which we observe and experience the world. It's easy to "imagine," for example, a house, car, or the moon not existing - it simply requires an imaginative flight into the possible.
Gary Catona Posted on Monday, October 1, 2012 at 06:20PM ;)
Has today's New Age Metaphysics revealed a truth, offered an insight, or uncovered a dimension that is new, spectacular, or revolutionary? Many new agers think so. For instance, they argue that "quantum physics"—the study of what is smallest in physical reality—has shown that "energy" is the most basic constituent of reality.
Gary Catona Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 at 05:11PM ;)
The exceptional castrati of the 18th century had an extraordinary affect on all those who heard them. Their technical skills were legendary. The greatest castrato, Farinelli (1705-1785) was able to carry out mind-boggling vocal feats of all kinds, such as high-speed runs, cascading trills, and spontaneous jumps and turns of the most difficult kind—all with such dazzling speed and precision, that he almost appeared to have supernatural powers (apparently he could sing 250 notes in a single breath).
Gary Catona Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 05:21PM ;)
The experience of the psycho-emotional state that we call happiness is an emergent property of human consciousness that has become objectified as a sort of timeless archetype toward which thinking and acting typically move. Happiness, as a reason-for-being, emerged with the conscious and unconscious awareness of the essential uncertainty of existence. Pursuing happiness, most of us would say, is the meaning of life. But happiness, as a psycho-emotional state or goal of living, has no relevance to other life forms. Why? Because happiness has validity only if it is pursued, and only human beings have the capacity and interest to pursue it.