What does it mean to be human?
Reflecting on my latest read here, by Oliver Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For Hat.” Sacks, a neurologist working in Beth Abraham’s chronic care facility the Bronx, presents brief case studies of...
Read MoreCategory: Significance
Thinking about death at the moment…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Jan 27, 2022 | Admin, Death, Happiness, Human Nature, Mortality, Significance, The self | 0 |
…and also birth, the two truly existential experiences in the life of each of us. Existential, in fact, by definition. Interesting that we obsess about the end of our existence, yet seldom give its beginning a second...
Read MoreI am the only one of me…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Sep 27, 2020 | identity, Notes, Significance, The self | 0 |
…that has ever lived, unique not only among the living but among all the dead. .
Read MoreGone and yes, forgotten…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Nov 11, 2019 | Death, History, Human Nature, Meaning, Mortality, Notes, Significance | 2 |
I read of the recent discovery of a Bronze Age battlefield in northeastern Germany, in a narrow valley of the Tollense River. Meeting at the site of an ancient bridge, hundreds or even thousands of men fought and killed one...
Read MoreA lonely place…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Nov 4, 2019 | Contentment, Human Nature, identity, Meaning, Notes, Other people, Search, Significance, Society | 1 |
Two nights ago I had a dark and lonely dream. Vague now, but it centered on my father’s garden, an anchor of my childhood home. At the beginning of the dream, my family and I worked that garden…turning the soil,...
Read MoreReview of “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on humans and other animals,” by John Gray
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Dec 13, 2017 | Belief, Book Review, Death, Human Nature, Meaning, Notes, Reality, Search, Significance | 4 |
“Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?” (–John Gray, in “Straw Dogs:...
Read MoreMaybe he was just bored…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Oct 7, 2017 | Contentment, Happiness, Human Nature, Meaning, Notes, Search, Significance | 1 |
Authorities are having trouble with motive behind the Las Vegas shooter. None of the usual apply. Here’s a comfortable white guy, no criminal history or history of violence, relatively wealthy, stable, has a...
Read MoreI’m reading “Straw Dogs,” by John Gray…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Sep 11, 2017 | Blog, Human Nature, identity, Meaning, Notes, Reality, Search, Self-image, Significance | 2 |
…and he is describing the fiction of the self, the fictive self. He posits that life is really only a series of discreet but connected perceptions tied together by the capacity for reflection we call consciousness. The...
Read MoreOn significance (or lack thereof)…
Posted by Bob Adamcik | Sep 2, 2017 | Blog, Human Nature, Meaning, Notes, Significance, Society | 1 |
Remember Genesis 1:28? “…God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living...
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Power over the powerless…Jan 22, 2025
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Within and without…Jan 15, 2025
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On the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge…Dec 21, 2022
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Reading Rebecca Solnit…Nov 23, 2022
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Landing…Nov 22, 2022
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