These days I hear a lot of people talking about whether it’s possible to change the world, and if so, how to go about it. It’s understandable that this should be so, since the world around us is such a steaming mess. Nor, despite the bleatings of true believers in progress, is it getting better. …
Tag: Hermann Hesse
What Evil Lurks
One of the pleasant side effects of the series of vignettes about America’s magical history I’ve been posting here of late has been the chance to look into some of the odder aspects of this nation’s trajectory through time. The magical heritage of the United States has spread into some very strange corners of our…
The Distant Glint of Glass Beads
In July of this year, when I revived the custom of asking my readers what they wanted to hear about on the fifth Wednesday of that month, I got plenty of suggestions, ranging from the future of industrial society to the metaphysics of sex. Still, of all the requested I fielded, I have to admit…
The Babbitt Fallacy, and Other Ways to Lose
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about some of the habits of thought that form, or rather deform, the collective conversation of our time. Partly, of course, that’s because here in the United States, the collective conversation of our time has reached a level of weirdness that would make a surrealist gasp. Has anyone else…