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Boredom, Creativity, and Nothingness

The Mind  |  The Scene   |   Jason Tseng  |   August 25, 2011, 4:00 pm

In a recent article (which alternated between funny and cheekily serious, definitely worth a read), Scott Adams (the creator of the comic strip, Dilbert), asserts that boredom is good for us. The moments in our lives when we are not stimulated are ever dwindling–this has a huge detrimental effect on our creativity, and by extension, [...]

Making Time to Make Sense

The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Alexandra Gross  |   April 28, 2011, 6:08 pm

“’Serious’ art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort…. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is [...]

Come Alive Again

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   April 5, 2011, 3:44 pm

So what’s going on? Being moved all the time by sensual overload and emotional upheavals. Hoping to stay amused and diverted enough to avoid being left alone with ourselves. Maybe that’s our greatest fear—to be at home with ourselves and not connected. The curse of the contemporary age: existing virtually, connected to everywhere and everybody [...]
Looking over the wreckage of the discarded ideas that have claimed universality over human history, it is obvious that any such claim is fragile at best. The only exception to this general rule is the continued re-emergence of personal experience as the ultimate ground in which we can put our trust. We are constantly dissuaded [...]