postmodernity

Romantic Utopianism

The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   October 6, 2011, 4:00 pm

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous [...]

Beyond Alienation

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   September 5, 2011, 7:46 am

My last post on Late-Capitalist Youth looked at Nietzsche’s call to control our passions, in order to gain a sense of freedom and new direction for our lives—but the Buddha looked at self-overcoming as well. To move towards a new patterning for our desires, we need to have some space for the conditioned systems of [...]

Got Lack?

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   August 29, 2011, 9:00 am

So what went wrong? As Lacan and Zizek point out, our dissatisfaction begins with a sense of lack. For Lacan this lack is basic to our psyche. Why did each of us get so confused and dissatisfied with such a simple project? We are conscious and aware. If we have enough to eat, a place [...]

Deleuze as Prophet of the Moment

The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   August 14, 2011, 7:35 pm

We visited Taiwan for several weeks and witnessed the marked ascendency of Asian economic dynamism grounded on a functional culture and rational economic policies. There is a good balance between free-market capitalism, functional social values and pragmatic public expenditures. The speed of economic growth and social optimism during the last 20 years is in marked [...]
Youth, without much self-reflection, certainly feels the fluidity and markless flow of emotions, thoughts and overwhelming stimuli, and has reacted with various defensive postures from back-to-the-land movements to in-your-face hedonism. Looking at the contemporary world with all its challenges and possibilities, I am reminded of Nietzsche and his admonishment of modern mankind’s quest for freedom [...]
Last Friday was a full moon, and a lunar observance day in all Buddhist traditions. Thanks to last week’s Monastic Immersion Program at DRBU, I was lucky enough to spend some time at Abhayagiri Monastery, a Thai Forest monastery just a short distance north of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (CTTB). The monastery is [...]

Which Direction Is Up?

The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Alexandra Gross  |   July 15, 2011, 4:31 pm

I recently turned thirty, and to celebrate, I spent a long weekend in a cabin in the woods with a group of my closest friends. Out of the ten of us that were there, none are married: one is engaged, another is in a serious relationship, and the rest are basically single.  In other areas, [...]

Rooted in Confidence and Stillness

The Mind  |  The Scene  |  The Tribe   |   Douglas Powers  |   May 22, 2011, 5:15 pm

There is hope! There is a place of inner confidence from which we can see what’s going on. This isn’t the false bravado of ego that represents an over-compensation for not knowing. Nor is it the misguided sense of certainty through which we set up an external symbol and to which we give up our [...]