Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

It is all too easy to become the star of your movie and to forget that others are the stars of their movies. The same event may look very different in the context of your movie than it does in the movie of another star. We all too easily forget to respect the otherness of…

“The serious problems of life, are never fully solved. If it should once appear that they are [solved], this is the sign that something has been lost. The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves us from stultification and…

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Matthew 7:3 Blind spots are the greatest generator of tragedies in human experience. Violence to self and others almost always occurs in a state of eclipse by one or more blind spots.…

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” Matthew 7:3 Blind spots are the greatest generator of tragedies in human experience. Violence to self and others almost always occurs in a state of eclipse by one or more blind spots.…

“Every man and woman a star.” It is all too easy to become the star of your movie and to forget that others are the stars of their movies. The same event may look very different in the context of your movie than it does in the movie of another star. We all too easily…

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” — C.G. Jung When we fear that we will not get the love we need or want, we tend to strive for power. A classic example is the hunchback future…

“A master first reveals himself in his ability to hold back.” — Goethe Rope-a-dope, the strategy that Muhammed Ali used to beat George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” is a classic Warrior strategy that can be applied to many situations. George Foreman, who was younger, bigger and stronger than Ali, and was the…

There are times when the anguish and disorder of life seems to predominate in our awareness. Life seems messy and unpleasant, there is the chill of a nameless dread, and we feel ourselves an inadequate, neglectful part of the messy unpleasantness, a flimsy plastic shopping bag overstuffed with worry and unlived life, ready to come…

“Chimpanzees are natural politicians driven by a desire for power.” — National Geographic documentary on primate behavior “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty…

A myth, in the proper sense, then, is a story that has emotional resonance at the abyssal depths of the human psyche — for that is its very source, its point of origination in what Campbell called “the mythological zone.” — Joseph M. Felser Live mythically. If an unmythological life were possible, it might not…