by Justin Carmien
I fear that something adult has quietly gone missing from my social experience. I’m not so much worried about a loss of discipline among my friends and colleagues—certainly not authority, nor responsibility—but about something which precludes such virtues and makes them possible.
by Justin Carmien
There is a particular jingle which still hums through grocery stores and banks, a faint residue of another world. “Everybody wants to be closer to free.”
by Justin Carmien
Five Easy Pieces tells the story of a man drifting between the worlds he inhabits. Jack Nicholson’s character, Bobby Dupea, is caught between expectations, family, and his own sense of self—a narrative of dislocation and rootlessness.
by Tom Amarque
My most recent article, “The Art of Willing,” proved interesting largely because of the feedback it generated. In retrospect, it became obvious that I had failed to answer the most fundamental question of all—namely: What is will? I realized that much of the criticism stemmed from this omission. I had committed one of philosophy’s cardinal sins: assuming that everyone uses a given term in the same way I do. So let’s rectify this.
by Tom Amarque
It is an interesting fact that will, one of the most basic features of human psychological existence, plays only a minuscule role in contemporary psychology—if it plays any role at all. This is puzzling, because will—understood as a pattern of behaviors oriented toward particular goals—seems to encompass much of what we do in our everyday lives.
by Tom Amarque
Maybe we don’t enter the world at birth. Maybe our life really begins by brushing against surfaces—leaving the amniotic sac of primordial fusion with the mother-womb behind and becoming surfaces ourselves, exposed to other surfaces. Skin onto skin. Our face and lips search for the breast; so much so that this sack of tissue and fat leaves such a deep imprint that it continues to exert its fascination even in the final stages of our life.
by Justin Carmien
Thirty-five years ago, a conflict raged between religion and science. The public display was especially pronounced in conversations surrounding figures such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.