Everywhere I look these days, I see an new, integrated awareness emerging from collaborations that transcend just about every conventional boundary there is: national borders, cultural differences, race, religion, gender—you name it. Two weeks ago, my good friend was one of more than 1200 people attending an event at the Pachamama Alliance, an extraordinary group …
I took a short trip to an alternate universe the other night. It started with a 5-minute ride on a party bus equipped with a huge refrigerator and gleaming stainless-steel sink. Tiny twinkling stars were set into the ceiling. From my cushioned seat, I stared at freeform glass panels separating passengers from the driver: they …
Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair added fuel to a red-hot cultural debate ignited by response to Muslim women wearing the niqab, a face-covering veil with no opening other than slits for eyes. “It is a mark of separation,” said Blair of the niqab, “and that is why it makes other people from …
I’m not much of a believer. The notion of belief incorporates a leap of faith: we don’t “believe in” gravity or the beating of our hearts; instead, we know these things through observation. Rather than believing, my interest is in noticing, whether what I notice confounds received beliefs or reinforces them. Here’s something I noticed …
What do Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U. S. president George W. Bush have in common? Thrusting ego, overwhelming confidence in their own rightness (whether they believe themselves to be anointed by God or History) and belligerent readiness to get up in their opponents’ faces and give them what for. Last …
Commemorations bring out my ambivalence. In the public sphere, most holidays and anniversaries make one of two statements: “We won and we’ll never let you forget it”; or “We lost and we’ll never forgive you.” Neither message describes a state of mind that seems worth cultivating: between triumphal belligerence and wounded bellicosity, my choice is …
My friend was speaking of a well-known Israeli peace activist who, at the start of the bombing, had come out publicly in support of the war in Lebanon. “He has trouble maintaining a big view,” she said, “when he’s in fear of his life.” No kidding. So do we all. In fact, it’s hard-wired into …
One of the most interesting things about our times is how much is being discovered about the workings of the human mind. I count myself among the many artsy and intellectual types who reject purely functional or biological explanations for feelings as too mechanistic and inhumane (or too inhospitable to my own sense of specialness). …
I really don’t want to write about this. I’ve been procrastinating all week, waiting for another blog idea to pop onto my mindscreen, but the only topic that comes up is the aching, bleeding, pulsating Middle East. Or more accurately, the shadowy simulacrum of the Middle East that swirls through cyberspace, swamping everything. My thoughts …
Shame seems to be a driving force in American politics these days. The Europeans have managed to shame us into ending many of the secret deals on that continent that established sites for “extraordinary rendition,” defined as the incarceration and interrogation of unindicted, untried suspects in the “War on Terror.” (Unfortunately, CIA “black sites” and …