This was originally written for the March 2023 edition of Philosophy Notes, the newsletter of the Marin Philosophical Society. There’s a continuum that flows like so: data to information to knowledge to wisdom. Age, I believe, is supposed to support that trajectory. And if not age, at least time. In my case, it’s been neither. …
It’s the end of the year, so I’m overdue for an identity crisis (here’s a link to last year’s). What precipitated this particular fit of existential pique is my chronic need for new business cards. I’m low across the board but at least two out of the three entities I represent are mere reorders. It’s…
You’d be forgiven if you thought autofiction was filler for a hot rod mag. The Greek prefix auto- means “self,” think “autobiography”—now, swap in “fiction” and you get the gist. It’s nothing new, references reach back at least as far as the 70s (according to contemporary criticism) and likely beyond. This bastard offspring of memoir and…
The prevalence of unironic mustaches is growing. By “unironic,” I mean mustaches grown in earnest without self-conscious consideration, self-parody, critique or “cool.” By mustaches, I mean hair facial growth above the lip, unaccompanied by a goatee, beard, chinstrap, soul patch or fashion sense. Banished as relics from the ’70s (when only hippies and rock stars…
There are many milestones when it comes to aging. 16 (driving), 18 (adultishness), 25 (first million, right?), 30 (wait, no millions yet?), 40 (nevermind) and onward… Then the big ones—most of which land at the beginnings of decades. Like turning 50. This is my new decade as of yesterday. Am I pleased about it? Well,…
It all began in a community college course circa 1993 when Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf met my contrarian attitude toward required reading. I ached through a few chapters of the slender novel, which proved to be a valentine of sorts to its author’s shrink, Carl Jung (whom we can thank for archetypal psychology and a surname that will…
