My header is part of the actual caption of this Reuters photo from today.
Actually, the Dalai Lama is already in the interview, doing a visual assertion: that all is seen through a lens.
June 11, 2017
I want to add: That performed trope is Janus-faced: perspectival (en-stancing, on a basis of holistic—largely implicit—being oneself) and situational (en-framing, relative to shared ground or situated time between “us”).
I wouldn't say I have a religious mind—a spiritual mind, yes—but I am committed to appreciating, as best I can, religious perspectives in contemporary political life (as time allows; it's not a high priority), especially relative to Habermas' interest.
Today, I defended Habermas' openness to religious voices in "the public sphere" against a misreading of his intent in the current issue of Philosophy & Social Criticism, beginning with somewhat expressive reaction to the abstract of the essay before writing today in light of a careful reading of the article.
I’ll eventually transpose those two discussions into a single posting here (or perhaps a Webpage).
Oil and coal—hydrocarbon fuel—is waste of the Earth, which of course takes millions of years to accumulate, and it's not in the human interest to learn to fabricate it, due to greenhouse effects. Yet, we have learned to fabricate nuclear energy, but its waste is not practically disposable, unless we abandon a hundred-mile radius around nuclear waste dumps for about 25,000 years, as we've not yet discovered the holy grail of energy: hydrogen-fusion-produced energy that breeder reactors would generate. But that will happen this century (cost-effectiveness of hydrogen-fuel cells is already within sight); so, a dwindling politics of oil will leave the Arab region to whatever alternative resourcefulness that it has been able to develop in the meantime.
A notion of a “secular age” is evinced by Charles Taylor's new, monumental book of that title, A Secular Age. But secularity only makes sense relative to religious life, as non-religious or post-religious. From an anthropological perspective, being human precedes religious life, always accompanied it humanistically (I would argue), and may get along quite well without religiosity—with all due graciousness toward the mass of humanity that needed and needs religious life.
Can religious sensibility grow to love its place in deep time, beyond tangles of theistic vanity?
In one of the postings from a recent Habermas group exchange, “K” briefly renders an argumentation strategy for renewing the integrity of prophetic calling for progressive politics, which I want to dwell with further. None of my comment below was part of the email exchange.
The Party in China today seems forced to evolve into a utilitarian technocracy dependent on global collaboration in figuring out how to avoid imploding, otherwise forcing the world economy into extended recession.
"Hong Kong and the former Portuguese enclave of Macau are the only places in China where people are allowed to commemorate those killed in 1989" (Reuters, May 27).
Sunday, May 6, a record 18,000 people took off their clothes to pose for U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick at Mexico City's Zocalo square, the heart of the ancient Aztec empire.
