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Nearing 70 but still livin’ in the 60s

The 60s changed my life, or more correctly, the 60s changed my mind. I am a member of the “love generation”, that cohort of baby boomers who discovered that a sacred presence permeates all things, that words can never do it justice and that one of its manifestations is life.

We were not the … Read the rest

Larry Barnett Recollections 2 Comments January 8, 2018March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

The Democracy Experiment

For almost the entirety of human history governmental systems have not been democratic. Though we in America like to think of Ancient Greece as the birthplace of democracy well over 2,500 years ago, even that’s more fiction than fact; the Greek city-state of Athens, with its remarkable stable… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Politics 1 Comment January 4, 2018March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Authoritarianism in America: The view from 2050

“Many consider the elevation of Voice of America (VoA) to the status of the official domestic news organ of the United States as emblematic of when authoritarianism became fully established in America. Quietly, and without much notice, the Trump administration had been actively recruiting… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Politics 1 Comment December 22, 2017March 12, 2020 3 Minutes

Things to Come

A scene from the 1936 film by Alex Korda, “Things to Come”

What-Has-Been opposes Things-to-Come, while at the same time What-Has-Been creates Things-to-Come. Things-to-Come makes What-Has-Been obsolete, yet Things-to-Come mirrors What-Has-Been. The relationship between What-Has-Been… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment December 18, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Welcome to the Dark Side

Women have been putting up with piggish men for a long time; do you recall the cartoon showing a helpless woman being dragged by the hair while a caveman says to his friend, “I love these pre-holiday sales!”? For a very long time, the meme of gender relations has been: man is the boss and woman… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture 3 Comments December 7, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

On ants and massacres

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the fungus that turns ants into zombies

Speculation and conspiracy theories naturally flow from horrific massacres such as occurred in Las Vegas: Steven Paddock was trying to sell guns, was killed to make it look like a suicide; he was a hit man with a specific target among… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment November 23, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Getting a grip on suffering

An unfortunate victim being drawn and quartered

Are we doomed to suffer? There seems to be widespread belief that suffering is the nature of human experience; (a) we are all born sinners afflicted with original sin; (b) we are bound within the circle of Samsara where our attachments breed suffering;… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Philosophy 1 Comment November 8, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Sonoma Valley’s fires and The Black Swan

My wife and I moved to Sonoma in April of 1990 after purchasing a six-room bed and breakfast inn on West Spain Street. It was later in that year, in November, when we first encountered what we used to call “the slow season.” By December, reservations dramatically slowed down, and in January,… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture 1 Comment October 25, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

The fire of compassion

Sunrise during the fires near Sonoma in 2017

The color of Mars, the color of blood, the color of sunlight through a sky filled with smoke, red on the Cal Fire map means the land is burning. Buddhist paintings depicting wrathful deities often show the figures surrounded by red flames. Though deities like… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Philosophy Leave a comment October 16, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

The Dark Side

For all the attempts to cast humanity in the brightest way possible — religious positivism, new-age soul-making, liberal visions of the evolution of virtue, and fairy-tales with happy endings — the dark side keeps casting a shadow across history. Is this simply, as some believe, the … Read the rest

Larry Barnett Philosophy 1 Comment October 4, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

From “Themsies” to “Selfies”

Documenting our lives through photographs went mainstream with the introduction of Kodak’s “Brownie” camera, introduced in 1900 at the price of $1; the “snapshot” was born, and with it arrived a new sense of self.

Prior to that, memories of travel to distant places… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture 1 Comment September 27, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Confessions of a cactus and succulent nerd

I recently returned from a five-day convention of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, held in Tempe, Arizona. That’s right, I’m a cactus and succulent nerd. For the past forty years I’ve been growing and collecting cactus and succulents, and some of the very first plants… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Recollections Leave a comment September 20, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Virtual Reality is dead; long live Augmented Reality

Things move so quickly in digital technology that yesterday’s fad is old hat before it’s even reached maturity. Such is the case with Virtual Reality (VR), the technology that promised us the god-like chance to step into worlds of our own making so exciting that taking off our visors would… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment September 14, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Three-brained beings

G.I. Gurdjieff

The mystic teacher G.I. Gurdjieff wrote of “three-brained beings” and their difficulties. Though his teachings were given during the early part of the 20th Century, the wisdom tradition in which he was steeped – Sufism and Middle Eastern mystic teachings –… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Metaphysics 1 Comment September 6, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Our 21st Century, post-modernist mess

The world has been in trouble before. Every century has had its share of discord, warfare, violence and mayhem, punctuated by periods of creative flowering, knowledge growth and cultural insight. That we find ourselves once again riven by conflict, feelings of instability and worries about the future… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment August 31, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

When Fascism arrives at the ballot box

I once wondered how a modern, 20th century country like Germany morphed into an amoral, industrial-style genocide factory during Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. At the time, conditions in Europe were politically unstable; the aftermath of World War One left economies in shambles, and politics… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Politics 1 Comment August 24, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

Your life as an amoeba

Amoebas, as you likely know, are one-celled animals you can only see with a microscope. Tiny enough to swim freely in a drop of water, amoebas animate themselves using pseudopods, projections of its cell wall into lobes that move. They surround and absorb the living tissue of even tinier life forms, … Read the rest

Larry Barnett Philosophy Leave a comment August 17, 2017March 12, 2020 2 Minutes

It’s so easy being green

a male human hand illuminated by a green light

He looked at his legs, still outstretched and beginning to glisten in the daylight. It had been a cool night, and his body would take a few minutes to warm up enough to get up and walk. Taking a deep breath, he smelled the dew evaporating from the ground and as shadows… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment August 11, 2017 2 Minutes

The responsibility of leadership

As we witness the clown-like leadership circus happening in Washington D.C. it’s worthwhile to reflect on the leadership of our own locally elected officials and how well, or not, they are behaving and serving the public interest.

We have four major publicly elected boards or councils in our… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Politics 1 Comment August 3, 2017 2 Minutes

Men’s war on women

Pandora, the first woman, created by the male gods.

Men’s war on women did not begin with Donald Trump, far from it. Its roots are Biblical and mythological, bound up with creation stories tying women to the introduction of sin and evil into the world; so deeply embedded in our collective psyches… Read the rest

Larry Barnett Culture Leave a comment July 27, 2017 2 Minutes

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