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Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Scoop Contributor
Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.
His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.
lefevremartin77@gmail
Martin LeFevre - Meditations - Latest News [Page 22]
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 >>
There Is No Evolution Of Consciousness
Monday, 11 July 2022, 10:50 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It’s become a commonplace in the West to comfortingly believe that “everything is always evolving forwards even when it looks like things are moving backwards.” But each week that conceit becomes harder to sustain. For one thing it’s simply ... More >>
The Proprioception Of Thought
Wednesday, 6 July 2022, 11:25 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Proprioception -- sometimes called the ‘sixth sense’ -- refers to “the body’s ability to sense movement, action and location.” It’s accomplished by proprioceptors, specialized neurons located within muscles, tendons and joints. Can it apply to the ... More >>
Oh Canada, Stop Following America
Monday, 4 July 2022, 9:53 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Though I still feel young (most days anyway), I’m old enough to remember Pierre Trudeau. Not only remember, but respect him as one of the few true political leaders of the 20th century. My feeling about him was confirmed a few years ago when I attended ... More >>
‘Sentient’ AI, and What Differentiates Us As Human Beings
Monday, 27 June 2022, 10:10 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Have you heard the one about the Google engineer who was fired because he declared that the AI program he’d been working with, called LaMDA, has a soul? It’s darkly fitting that as more and more humans lose their souls, AI engineers are seriously ... More >>
Imagining ‘Umwelts’ Is Unnecessary
Wednesday, 22 June 2022, 10:24 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Rows of magnificent cumulus are piled up to the east. It’s an unusually cool afternoon before a protracted heat wave is due in California. I seize the opportunity and drive to Upper Park, parking near the last gate at the end of the gravel road. It’s less ... More >>
Indict The Bastard
Friday, 17 June 2022, 10:26 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Having predicted the election of George Bush (twice), Barack Obama, and most notably, Donald Trump, you would think I ‘d have voice in the United States. You’d be wrong. But since what passes for democracy in America hangs in the balance, I must ... More >>
Is Universality A Western Idea?
Thursday, 16 June 2022, 10:32 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Most people acknowledge that human beings are essentially the same wherever they live on earth. Yet there’s also a strong belief that ethnic and cultural differences are primary, and that universality is a Western construct. It cannot be both – ... More >>
Refusing To Procreate
Friday, 10 June 2022, 10:11 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Many young people, in America, China and around the world, are choosing not to have children. In the West, their reason is a generalized sense of hopelessness about the future of humanity, often expressed in shorthand -- “climate anxiety.” “Climate ... More >>
Intelligent Life, Meditation And Transmutation
Wednesday, 8 June 2022, 9:44 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It was the philosophical obsession that largely defined the first 15 years of my adulthood. After having a life-changing ‘mystical experience’ at 18 of the separative nature of thought as opposed to the seamless wholeness of nature, I began asking: More >>
Expansion Or Negation Of Self?
Thursday, 2 June 2022, 11:50 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
By invitation in the last few days, I attended a zoom reading and discussion of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Considered his masterpiece, the poem fuses the ‘divine I’ with the egocentric I in an originally and quintessentially American ... More >>
I Have Never Felt So Ashamed Of America
Thursday, 26 May 2022, 10:17 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It’s very difficult to write about the kind of evil that erupted again in America yesterday. Nineteen elementary-age children and two teachers were slaughtered by another 18-year-old acting out of bottomless hatred for people and life. America ... More >>
Response To An Optimist’s Worldview
Tuesday, 24 May 2022, 10:59 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Lynn is a life coach for business executives. This email exchange took place this weekend after a stimulating phone conversation on Friday. It reflects the worldviews of two people living on different planets. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide ... More >>
Weep for America, Work for Humanity : Martin LeFevre
Friday, 27 February 2015, 9:10 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Sometimes you read something by a mouthpiece for the status quo that’s so outrageously false, yet so widely and subconsciously accepted, that you want to scream. Here’s such a boner (in the first sense of the word, though Viagra could have inspired it): ... More >>
Martin LeFevre: Melville’s Billy Budd
Sunday, 22 August 2010, 7:43 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
One of the best studies of good and evil by an American writer is Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd.” If you haven’t read the novella, there’s an excellent 1962 film with the same title, which stars, and was directed and produced by, Peter Ustinov. ... More >>
Martin LeFevre: Thought Is a Single Stream
Friday, 13 August 2010, 11:35 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
It’s near dusk, and the parkland seems to be full of Cooper’s hawks. At one point on the path, a large, brown, stipple-winged hawk takes off from the path ahead of me with some small animal in its mouth. More >>
The Unmet Sorrow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Monday, 9 August 2010, 10:50 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Here we are again, 65 years and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons later, commemorating the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps it’s because my first political memory, at ten, is of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that the issue ... More >>
