Use philosophy
to locate your concepts
and hone your intuitions.

Use poetry
to temper your emotions
and gauge your institutions.

Use language
to civilize
your intuitions,
to humanize
your institutions.

Theme and Craft

from Greek thema "a proposition,
subject, deposit," literally "something set down,"

German Kraft "strength, skill" ...
Sense expanded in Old English to include "skill, dexterity; art, science, talent"
... also "something built or made."

The proximity of a thought.
The duration of a feeling.

Conceptual space,
emotional
time.

Does the cosmos tend towards the soul?
Does the planet tend towards the body?

Or did our bodies just do the best they could here?
Did our souls make do with what they found?

I was wrong about Composure.
This is not my body.

I become the passion I am.
It is the reason to change.

"For a long time I used to get up early." (John Ashbery)

The Lightest Thing

I find it remarkable
that,

centuries before science
discovered

the photon, the language
already

knew that light is
not heavy.

Wisdom is to know you are no one. Love is to acknowledge there are others.

Philosophy is the pursuit of conceptual accuracy.
Poetry is the pursuit of emotional accuracy.

The body is articulated by light and weight.
The world is articulated by lenses and levers.

Our language is articulated by our passions as much as our reasons.

Two Democracies

A democratic government asserts sovereignty over the land on behalf of its people. It obligates landowners to serve the needs of the population. A simple mechanism for ensuring democracy in this sense is for the state to collect rent in the form of a land value tax (apportioned according to rental value) and distribute it to the people as a universal basic income (a citizen stipend delivered to all regardless of wealth or income). The challenge for the individual remains to live creatively.

Most modern "democracies" assert sovereignty over the people on behalf the banks. It obligates the citizens to serve the interests of finance. To this end, they deploy a complex apparatus of differentiated income and sales taxes, ramified by exemptions and deductions, with minimal taxes on land, leaving ample opportunities to profit from speculation and to store wealth in "havens" of various kinds, while granting "welfare" only to those who can demonstrate need. The individual's predicament here is to earn a living.