Letters to the Editor
Prof. Andmaryann
Published Letters: 59 Editor's Choice: 2
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We want more, but ...
[Read the article: The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]why does more have to be weird? Why can't work and play and home and family and travel and getting high and sex and just breathing in and out be enough? The "more" we seek might be in realizing that THIS is the life we get, the only one. Let's live it.
Enlightenment, such as it is, can liberate. But no one ever said it's supposed to make you feel good about yourself or anybody else.
Many cannot face the prospect of this--a profound, simple truth that philosophers have known for ages: your are born, you awake, you go on, you die. Your life is, in short, a relatively brief dream bordered on each end by vast expanses of subjective nonexistence.
For some, that simple fact is depressing, and they will believe almost anything a charismatic autority figure tells them in order not to face it. Others find that fact liberating.
That said, believing in "more" of a spooky or magical sort is probably usually harmless. Just like the occasional puff or two of the kind.
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Boston?
[Read the article: Rolling Stone hits the big 4-0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why not REO Speedwagon?
Seriously, though: "Runnin' with the Devil," "Sweet Home Alabama," "Master of Puppets," "Changes"?
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Carey's right in definitely implying something
[Read the article: Is it too late to start a band at 45?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a philosophy professor at a small liberal arts college, I have a job that allows me some measure of creativity, yet my passion is for my guitar, which I come home and play every day, and often before I leave in the morning. I even have one in my office, which I might get to once or twice a week for 10 minutes. I play for myself mostly, trying to overcome challenges and "create" sound. I'm 41, have a wife and a baby and a house, but am lower middle class, quasi-bohemian (that is, I don't have a lot of stuff, don't watch a lot of TV, will smoke good weed when possible).
If you want to "create" music, you will, no matter what your age, whether anyone listens, whether anyone pays you.
It seems the LW's longing is for "a life more abundant."
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Religion, Theology, and the Absence Thereof
[Read the article: God grief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I teach philosophy in a theology department at a religious school. I feel I have a pretty decent grasp of the history of world religions, theology, and philosophy. This stuff is very important to people. Smart people can think critically about it.
Some of it might be true. The survival of subjective consciousness (i.e., the immortality of the soul) is false. The resurrection of the flesh when Jesus returns at the end of time is farfetched myth. A virgin giving birth to the savior of the world? A brilliant, albeit derivative, story. False, but so is Lord of the Rings, and it's also a nice story.
For those intellectual theists out there, forgive me, but please explain what it is you believe in without using metaphorical, romanticized language. Tell us exactly what it is. I am willing to listen. I have come to my current state of belief by not being convinced by the evidence in favor of the existence of any gods. The burden of proof is not on me to disprove gods, angels, demons, life after death, intelligent design, cosmic consciousness, et al. You have to prove it, or admit that your beliefs are rationally ungrounded. Take the leap of faith, if you will. I won't because I can't. It's just plain silly.
Vishnu stole my lunch money!
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Ahem ...
[Read the article: My 28-year-old girlfriend wants to do drugs -- just like I used to!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sad to see people expressing such hysteria and misinformation about cannabis. In most states you will get nothing more than a traffic ticket for simple possession. Most elite professions do not subject employees to drug tests. The psychoactive ingredient is less harmful and addictive than most other drugs. This plant should be decriminalized, but with such continued ignorance I doubt it ever will be here, in this, the land of the free.
And free to what? Judge others? Impose our views on what constitutes a good lifestyle on them? Feh! Moral judgment is a form of power. You all want power. You can't see it. Your drunk with it. But you are free to exerecise your will to power.
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Thunder is the sound lightning makes
[Read the article: What you missed while watching "Deal or No Deal"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Salon writes (glibly, in an attempt at humor): "Lightning, of course, doesn't make sounds. Thunder makes sound."
We learned as young children that thunder is the name of the sound caused by lightning. What you say is akin to: "Humans don't make sounds. Vibrating air molecules make sound."
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Booty is in the eye of he who be holdin (it)
[Read the article: Healthy, my ass]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, I'm a caucasian white boy, but I find that kind of behind very erotic, much like a slim woman with very large all-natural breasts. It's not the magazine that made her booty erotic, but her erotic booty that makes the magazine worth looking at!
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A mildly unpleasant experience?
[Read the article: Paris isn't free -- and neither are we]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You write: "While the rest of us are more than passingly familiar with deprivations and things not going our way, Hilton could actually blow a fuse from what would look, to an outsider, like a mildly unpleasant experience."
Even a night in jail is more than a mildly unpleasant experience, even for those of us born lower middle class.
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Hmm?
[Read the article: Paris isn't free -- and neither are we]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]joebuck20, you write: "You think she'll be crying when she drops the soap in the prison shower?"
My question is how she could be anally raped by another woman?
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Excellent piece
[Read the article: Better to be Hamlet than President George]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The shank!
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Entendres ...
[Read the article: Her sexy T-shirt says "Kitty Not Happy" -- is that OK at work?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The fact that he looked at her bosom and remarked that "there was an obvious double-entendre" is itself a double-entendre, unless she has less or more than two bazooms (hooters, lung hammers).
But the thing that got me was this line: "The supervisor normally has reasonable judgment, and as evidence of this I can cite the fact that she named her youngest child after me."
That is just a moronic thing to say, and her so naming it might in fact be evidence of something other.
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"I am not myself a philosopher...."
[Read the article: What is the meaning of life?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]" ... a fact of which I am sure some of my reviewers will point out in any case."
Philosopher = one who seeks the truth, a lover of wisdom. Nuff said.
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The voters of Connecticut ...
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... are the real threat to democracy and freedom. The mob rules!
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Re: Remember The Admonition About Short People
[Read the article: Bloomberg's ambitions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gandhi was also short.