Philosophy and Life
Recent writing and occasional thoughts on assorted matters.
- Dante on living in riven times. A thought Dec 1, 2021- Our times are marked by divides that will remain, possibly deepen. Has the Divine Comedy anything meaningful to offer a riven state? An MP3 version of the thought can be found via your podcast feed at my channel, Talks and Thoughts. …
- Angelology with Lorna Byrne. A conversation and inquiry with thoughts from Dante and Blake Nov 29, 2021- An MP3 version of the conversation is on my podcast stream, Dante's Divine Comedy. Dante and Otherworld Journeys was an online conference organised with the Scientific and Medical Network. This is the conversation, with extra thoughts, that I had with Lorna Byrne. I was particularly glad to compare her experience with those of other angel seers, from Socrates to Dante… …
- How to talk about God: on why God is not an object Nov 21, 2021- An audio-only version of the talk can be found on your podcast feed at my channel, Talks and Thoughts. Some talk about God too much. Others are said to be too embarrassed ever to do so. I think much of the pickle around God-talk arises from a fundamental, modern mistake. God is not an object to be proven, evidenced or… …
- Alien Nation – finding the good in UFOs Nov 13, 2021- My Philosophy column just published in the new Idler magazine. This has been a great year if you are into UFOs – or “unidentified aerial phenomena”, UAPs, as we are now asked to call them. The US government released a report in June confessing that it had no way of explaining dozens of reports of flying saucers, renamed so as… …
- Dante’s Inferno and the meaning of descent, with Rupert Sheldrake Nov 12, 2021- Watch on YouTube! Also on your podcast feed. The Divine Comedy by Dante is one of the great spiritual works of the Christian tradition. But how can it be read and what does it mean? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the first part of Dante’s cosmic pilgrimage. It takes Dante through the… …
- Plato, Eros & Beautiful Bodies. A critique of God: An Anatomy Nov 6, 2021- An MP3 version of this talk, and others, is available at my podcast channel, Talks and Thoughts, available on podcast feeds. I much enjoyed the conversation with Hetta Howes, Matthew Sweet and Francesca Stavrakopoulou on God: An Anatomy. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00114py). We had a good conversation over profound differences, which I develop further… …
- Homo Sapiens? Mark Vernon & Charles Foster in conversation Nov 1, 2021- An MP3 version of the talk is at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, available on podcast feeds. Few have explored the nature of being human more directly than Charles Foster. He writes about his experiences in the wild in his books, Being A Beast and, most recently, Being A Human, raising profound questions about our awareness of the natural world… …
- Apocalypse Now: Arnold Toynbee, William Blake and our understanding times Oct 31, 2021- An MP3 version of this talk can be found at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts, that should be available from a podcast feed. The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, is currently out of fashion. The British poet and artist, William Blake, is not, though he is rarely well understood. So what might they have to say to our times? Toynbee strove… …
- Spiritual Intelligence: what it is, why its needed, how it might return Oct 28, 2021- I've a new long form essay up at Perspectiva. The YouTube above is an introduction. This is how it begins... "I recently became a wizard. Unfortunately, my assumption of the role involved neither magical rites nor secret lore. Rather, I became a wizard of a pedestrian type, increasingly common in a technological age. I am involved in a project seeking… …
- The Tragedy of the Spiritual Commons: review of The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow Oct 25, 2021- An MP3 version of the post is at my podcast channel, Talks and Thoughts. A shorter, written article version of my talk follows below. And here's the link to the post I mentioned in the talk, on Homo spiritualis - https://youtu.be/0XUWYn8SyT8. The new book by David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, is… …