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Martin LeFevre - Meditations - Latest News [Page 10]
The Inter-National Order Is Dead And Gone
Friday, 23 September 2022, 2:10 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
During the pandemic I initiated a series of dialogues with the rector and others at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica. UPeace is the only UN-mandated University in the world, formed by the General Assembly in 1980. The thematic question ... More >>
Heightened Senses In Nature Opens The Door To Meditative States
Tuesday, 20 September 2022, 2:00 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The weather, in fact the season has dramatically changed since my last meditation in the parkland. The temperature is 40 degrees less than it was last week, and though the leaves haven’t begun to turn in California’s Central Valley yet, fall is ... More >>
Collapsing The Distinction Doesn’t Resolve The Contradiction Between Man And Nature
Friday, 16 September 2022, 10:34 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
After 30 years, the Western project of blurring the difference between humans and nature, even to the point of equating the self with nature, is foundering on its own philosophical preposterousness. Perhaps, given the ecological and civilizational ... More >>
Symbolic Thought Broke The Bond Between Humans And Nature
Wednesday, 14 September 2022, 12:07 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Humankind stands at an evolutionary crossroads. Our species cannot continue fragmenting the natural world without inducing a collapse of natural systems, with devastating consequences for humanity. Symbolic thought was a gift of Promethean fire that evolved ... More >>
Intolerable Darkness Is The Singularity
Friday, 9 September 2022, 10:43 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The question of where and how man went wrong has plagued philosophers for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In modern Western philosophy, the basic view of human nature has alternated between the fatalism of the 17th century English philosopher ... More >>
Revolution Is An Explosion Of Insight
Monday, 5 September 2022, 10:17 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The days grow noticeably shorter in the northern hemisphere. Sunlight drains from the emerald stream and streambank, leaving the water and foliage in shadow as the sun descends below the tree line. It’s hot, and there aren’t many birds around. ... More >>
‘Polarization’ Isn’t The Problem
Friday, 2 September 2022, 10:28 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
What can responsible citizens do in a nation heading toward despotism? How much do systems of government, versus social and psychological issues in a given society at a given time, determine whether a nation falls prey to totalitarianism? At what ... More >>
The Present Crisis And The Transmutation Of Man
Wednesday, 31 August 2022, 1:34 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
We drove to the end of the gravel road into the canyon just beyond town, and parked near the locked gate a half-mile from the gorge. Walking in on the rocky path, we stopped frequently to take in the volcanic slabs of the gorge, and look at the fading ... More >>
Death And The Unknown
Friday, 26 August 2022, 11:24 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The known is false security, while the unknown is the source of mystery and bliss. Yet we cling to the known, and fear losing it. Why? Is it because we have no understanding and relationship with the ever-present actuality of death? I don’t mean death as ... More >>
Enlightenment Isn’t Personal
Wednesday, 24 August 2022, 1:48 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It’s noon and the temperature is already near 100 at the northeastern corner of California’s Central Valley. I carry a lawn chair the couple hundred meters from the car to the meditation place on the creek, wade in and place it in the shallow ... More >>
The Future Of Humanity?
Friday, 19 August 2022, 11:56 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
With America moribund and slouching toward dictatorship, and the international order collapsing, awakening human beings need to move to fill the vacuum at the global level, or all manner of authoritarianism will fill it at national levels. Most people ... More >>
Shaping The Human Mind Is Enslavement
Thursday, 11 August 2022, 11:27 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The land is bone dry, and cobwebs cover the bushes along the creek. California normally goes months without rain in the summer, but like many other places on earth now, a deep drought has set in. However a swallowtail butterfly flutters about for the ... More >>
Nagasaki And The Incorrigibility Of Man
Monday, 8 August 2022, 11:02 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
I knew a Marine that fought on Tarawa, which had the highest American casualty rate of any battle in World War II. Who saw dozens of women clutching their babies and children as they jumped from the cliffs of Saipan as US forces approached. And who ... More >>
Thinking Machines And Human Beings
Thursday, 4 August 2022, 12:00 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
What will become of humans when thinking machines outthink us at every turn? That's about to be the new human condition. As a reviewer of the book, "Seven Games" (checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble and bridge) quips: "Every ... More >>
Time Is Thought And Thought Is Time
Friday, 29 July 2022, 1:51 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
A high, thin layer of clouds fills the western sky, blunting the warmth of the sun and giving the land a subtly somber cast. The little stream on the edge of town is full enough to create a cascade over a step of rocks as it wends it way through the ... More >>
Healing The Scars Of Psychological Memory
Tuesday, 26 July 2022, 3:08 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
‘Trauma’ is a word that seems to be on everyone’s lips lately. What are people referring to, and why is there so much of it? Can we heal ourselves of trauma? Colloquially, I think people are referring to the emotional damage from the accumulation of bad ... More >>
A Teachable Moment – For Joe Biden
Friday, 22 July 2022, 2:13 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
As readers of ‘Meditations’ know, I pretty much gave up on America and Americans years ago. But I still care about what happens in the nation of my nascency, especially in the context of the future of humanity. For the sake of humanity, and this country, ... More >>
Human Beings Can Meet This Moment
Thursday, 21 July 2022, 10:45 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
An inquiry with a friend generated remarkable insights into the question: Is this a moment of Olympian magnitude in human evolutionary history? The question is a much deeper version of a shallow and obtuse featured op-ed in the New York Times entitled, ... More >>
What Is Your Theory Of Human Nature?
Tuesday, 19 July 2022, 2:35 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
A telling sentence by a conservative pundit jumped out at me: "They had no illusions about the depravity of human beings." Given what is happening in the world, that worldview seems to be confirmed. But is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? ... More >>
Pouring The Foundation Before The Collapse
Wednesday, 13 July 2022, 10:50 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Many people feel that the old world order has to completely collapse before things will truly change. While that may be so, few realize that the foundation for a true order has to be poured before the collapse occurs, or nothing will essentially change, ... More >>
