We ignore how our thinking—about feelings, bodily functions, friends, politics, what’s on the television— lets us down. I am not talking about the possibility that someone else—Sontag, say—might be smarter than I am or have more-incisive insights than I do. I am talking about thinking on a much more basic level: that a particular peach…
Read MoreSample from “Zeroing In”
(A personal favorite because of its oddly repetitive, experimental approach.) The list has ten items, plus some variations. Below are a few: 1. How could I have known this is what you wanted—because you never mentioned it? 2. The role of imagination in sensation may be underestimated. The highly sensitive may add imagination to sensation…
Read MoreSample from “Sick”
A parent has a great, if not entirely fulfillable responsibility to prepare his child to survive as well as possible in the social, professional, commercial and psychological jungles in which the child will find herself. And learning must be done step-by-step. Even if a child is ready intellectually to understand a complex moral argument, if…
Read MoreSample from “Warmth’s Truth”
My sensibility is such that I do not feel that killing a stalk of wheat is somehow less bad for the wheat than killing a cow is for the cow. An argument against my position could be that cows, or crustaceans, feel pain not unlike we do, and that stalks of wheat do not. And…
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