Posts

Discovering Paris, Texas

Image
The film opens quest-like with a vast landscape.  A man in a red cap alone in the desert. One of many marvelous shots to come, it is a visual feast. Avery and Carter were visiting us in mid-December. As usual, Carter and I spoke of films for a moment. I mentioned to him that I had recently watched a YouTube video by this guy featuring “ the 100 best shots of all time. ” I can think of several iconic shots from older films like Dr. Strangelove, Casablanca and Citizen Kane that do not appear. The 10-minute video is still worth watching. I recognized maybe 80 out of the 100 shots shown. Of note, the video wins points in my book for beginning and ending with a shot from Barry Lyndon.  D eservedly so, it is the most beautiful movie ever shot . He even chooses the Barry Lyndon soundtrack for the introduction. There is plenty of Kubrick, Malick, Tarkovsky, and lots of shots from this film I had no idea about.  The musical choices are wonderful for this presentation,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eagles: Their Greatest Hits at 50

Other than One of These Nights , I didn’t own any of the earlier Eagles albums when I purchased Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)  fifty years ago. I just knew the radio songs, the Top 40 stuff that floated through the air with plenty of commercial interruption. What I didn’t know was that this record would define a whole internal season of my life. I was driving around in a ’65 Ford Falcon, which felt like freedom simply because it moved and I was inside it alone or visiting friends. This album was on the radio and on my mind constantly. I played it endlessly, easily a hundred times, probably more. Every song worked. At the time, I found it amazing that one band could produce so many terrific hits.  I was sixteen and full of myself.  I loved to laugh.  I was discovering Tolkien and Thoreau and Kurt Vonnegut. My mind could not fully absorb my curiosity of and passion for the world. Eagles were my favorite band to all that fresh freedom. Since they were not Top 40 h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moral Guilt is Worthless

Well, I've published (kind of) three books inside of a year.  Raucous Reckonings is finally published. The entire Harmogenics series is complete. This book is wilder than the previous ones. Recklessly bold in places. One of the most shocking claims I make is that everyone should live a guilt-free life. Moral guilt is worthless. I do live a guilt-free life. WTF? Psychopath! Narcissist! Moral monster! Yeah, I know. That's the reflex. And I understand it. Guilt feels so deeply woven into morality that suggesting we drop it sounds like suggesting we drop morality itself. It sounds dangerous, antisocial, maybe even evil. But that reflex is exactly the problem. And here's why. There's nothing wrong with religion. Religion wasn't a mistake. It wasn't mass delusion. It did real work for human beings living in conditions we can barely imagine now. One of the things it did, very effectively, was bind moral guilt to behavior and, in turn, into the human psyche as an emot...
Post a Comment
Read more

“This is our most important problem”

I watched a short video recently where Sam Harris says something that is, on its face, completely right. The short, entitled “ This is our most important problem ,” states we’re losing our grip on what’s “real.” Conspiracy thinking is “noxious.” (Harris always features the fantastic vocabulary of a bright mind.) Shared reality is fracturing. As a result, technology is driving us a little crazy. All true. If you zoom out and squint, he’s basically nailed the description of the mess we’re in. Where I think Harris is slightly askew is not on what is happening but on what he thinks is doing the happening. Human beings have never had a shared reality.  They have never agreed on what is real.  Every culture on earth differs on the particulars of this at some level. This has never been otherwise.  This is why there are so many different cultures, different “true” stories, different religions.  We have been war-like for millennia because we do not share quite the same reali...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Wild Conversation with ChatGPT

Image
  At the conclusion of our chat I asked the AI to "draw an image representing this chat." What follows is a chat I had this morning with ChatGPT, which I have been using since early 2023 .  I am presently working with the AI on about a half dozen projects, one of which is my work on harmogenics .  This chat pertains to my project on religion.  I have not edited it at all because I want to share the entire interaction. ChatGPT is identified in italics .   Keith: You know I respect Dr. Andrew Huberman. Short answer, yes. Largely the same. And that fact is doing a lot of quiet work in your argument. When you strip prayer down to what it is rather than what it’s about , the brain doesn’t care whether the name on the envelope says Jesus, Krishna, Allah, Yahweh, or no name at all. Focused attention is focused attention. Emotional surrender is emotional surrender. Repetition is repetition. Silence is silence. The nervous system responds to the act , not the theo...
Post a Comment
Read more