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The Virtue of Silence

Posted on April 20, 2023     Leave a Comment

‘Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world’ explains Paul Goodman in his altogether wonderful but sadly out of print work, Speaking and Language.: A Defence of Poetry But, continues Goodman, ‘there are grades of each’. Just as there is speech to hold a family together, a sophist’s speech to […]

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How Not To Be a Drainer

Posted on September 26, 2021     Leave a Comment

The drainer is a terrorist, holding someone hostage in conversation. It is an unfortunate reality that when you meet new people, there are few perceptible signs before speaking to them that they are a drainer. Maybe you saw people they were talking to eye off the exit, or observed exasperated shrugs of the shoulders, perhaps […]

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A Game

Posted on May 24, 2021     Leave a Comment

In one of his many insightful talks on the nature of consciousness, self and ego, fear and insecurity, Alan Watts plays a game which he would humorously refer to as ‘chasing the heebie-jeebies’. The point of this game was to reveal the ‘below surface’ thoughts operating when we think. Take, for example, death. I am […]

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