Search Results for War Charles Jeanes

“Being determines consciousness, not consciousness, being.” “Philosophers have until now merely interpreted the world; the point is to change it.”                                                        - Charles Henry Marx “The crisis is not material, physical, or scientific, the crisis is spiritual.” “No one is transformed...

 “History is just one damn thing after another.” John Masefield. “Life is understood backward, but lived forward.”Soren Kirkegaard This is it, the final column of Arc for the year 2012. This is the week I have often called “dead week” in my mind but not publicly (people would misunderstand!) because of my strange sense of...

“What does not kill us makes us ___”   Nietzsche      Happiness is a warm gun.  Lennon Everybody knows how to complete the epigraph quoted at the top: “Stronger”. Poor Nietzsche, so many profound things to say, and remembered by masses of slightly-educated people for this one slogan alone. What makes us more contented, or...

History does not repeat. People do. --- Voltaire As an historian, I am not supposed to say that people often cannot learn from history. Yet that is what I wrote in my last column. However, I still see much value in studying history for we-the-people who want to have some control over the politicians who have been elected to...

Americans are raised on a peculiar ideology about themselves, their country, and its history. It's called “exceptionalism.” It means they are exempt from learning from history, because nothing they do has ever been paralleled or precedented. They do everything for the first time ever in human history. No one and nothing, bears...

“Who will do the hard thing? ...Those who can.”--- Rabbinic proverb. “You are not promised that you will complete the Work, but you may not refuse it.”                                               --- Rabbi Tarfon, 1st C. BCE What keeps forcing itself on my consciousness lately is really not a new concern; it is new only in...

At Christmas this year we will be treated once again to a film adaptation of a fantasy by Tolkien, this time The Hobbit. I am gratified because this author and his works form one foundation of the kind of person I have become, insofar as a book of fiction is fundamental to how one understands the world. What is it about Tolkien...

“There is more under heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.”     [Shakespeare, Hamlet] What’s on your mind? I have half a mind to say no. I am of two minds about what to do. Mind your manners. It’s a case of mind over matter. I don’t mind. I am minded to do that. Never mind. Put your mind to work. I...

I read three things on the back of a vehicle in Victoria last week: “Free Tibet!”  and the Sanskrit symbol “Om.” Then, on the licence plate, “the Best Place on Earth.” I like how these concepts relate. We live in BC, a long way from China, but it feels good to stand in solidarity with colonized Tibetans ruled by China. Things...

Do you count your blessings? Is being a Canadian one of those? Are you content with your life? Humanity in the most materially-developed societies (such as Canada) is both blessed and cursed, for we have the physical health and leisure to be altruistic and informed, but we’re trapped in materially-dominated lives that make ...