The Conceit of the Clock: Aristotle, Time, and the Hunger That Devours Us

Aristotle opens his investigation of time in Book IV of the Physics with a question so destabilizing it threatens to collapse the inquiry before it begins: does time even exist? His reasoning is not coy. The past has ceased to be. The future has not yet arrived. The present, the “now,” is not a duration but a limit, a dimensionless boundary between what was and what will be. If the parts of time do not exist, and the one element that does exist is not itself a part of time, then time appears to be nothing at all. This is not a classroom riddle. It is a genuine ontological crisis, and Aristotle treats it as one.

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2020: The Year of Disremembering and Disassembly

2020 has been a year of contemporaneous contemplation hanged by the bridle of dismay. We have been forced to leap from the cliff, together, Zombie-like, from crisis to crises. We drowned in foolish Tweet after Tweet and now, as a new horizon presents itself to us for celebration, and referral in 2021, we cannot stop but to hope against the losses we served, and the punishments we received, over the last four years.

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Perfecting the Pivot

One of the most valuable assets a person needs to acquire, and then put into purpose, is the ability to pivot. Pivoting is not a preternatural human condition, because we are generally bred and trained to always force forward, no matter the peril, to reach any and all final goals at any and all costs — in both human treasure and in the assumption of precious trinkets.

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2015: The Year of Wonderment and Infection

2015 is not only upon us, but within us, and in the reflexive examination of the year that was, 2014 appears as a sort of bland monument of stasis in the evolution of living. Sure, there were killings and wars and disease and stalemates — and yet it all seemed alarmingly familiar as if we’d already lived all those cultural queues in previous quotations. 2015, so far at least, has a different taste and smell — and there may be some hope of anticipation that some exciting forward movement will be arriving to penetrate the world with some goodness and wonderment.

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Boles Blogs is Six Years Old!

This week, Boles Blogs is six years old — we’ve been around under many different names and edifications for over 15 years or so — but Boles Blogs is now how we currently roll in blog publishing!  That’s a pretty amazing conflation of time and effort and the pressing of days into years!  The slow roll from the “Boles Blogs Network” of 14 blogs into this megasite of just “Boles Blogs” today was a long and hard road to haul, but we made it, and the pathway ahead is bright and well-lighted.

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