Why do the models we use to understand the human mind often seem so shallow, so unsatisfying? Could it be because the great discoveries in this field have not been made yet? Plato wrote of the mind in a cave, groping towards the light. Sigmund Freud broke the mind down into three components, Id and […]| Literary Kicks
The psychologist Carl Jung wrote of the collective unconscious, a source of deep common understanding and knowledge that every person seems to somehow draw from. I’ve always liked this concept, and I’ve often thought we could take this further and consider the concept of the collective self. While Jung’s collective unconscious is present in our […]| Literary Kicks
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I’ve read several reactions to Harold Pinter’s aggressive Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and I get the feeling I’m the only one here who actually knows Pinter’s work. Harold Pinter has spent his career studying the way human beings lie. It is his obsession, his medium. A […]| Literary Kicks
You know those internet quizzes where you find out what kind of Disney character you are, what root vegetable you are, which flag of the world you are? Well, I don’t know if there’s a quiz for which classic existentialist text you are, but if there were, I’m pretty sure I would be No Exit […]| Literary Kicks
I’m always glad when the Nobel Prize winner turns out to be an author I’ve actually read (and this happens less often than I like to admit). I’ve only read one Doris Lessing novel, 1989’s The Fifth Child, but the book has stuck with me all these years. The Fifth Child is a fable about […]| Literary Kicks
Suddenly I realize I have a new favorite writer. It's not like I ever expect to suddenly have a new favorite anything.| Literary Kicks
Genocide is happening again in more than one region of planet earth today. We talk about this on the latest World BEYOND War podcast episode ...| Literary Kicks
How is the peace movement changing? How is our vision of the future changing? Online communities offer a distinctive, robust and appealing model for human coexistence that people intuitively and immediately understand.| Literary Kicks
I threw the I Ching for America the other day. This is a good spiritual practice when you come to a moment in your life when things are changing fast and you want to get a grip on what’s happening.| Literary Kicks
“Out demons out!” I don’t know why it’s feels so cathartic to me every time I listen to the recording on the 1968 Fugs album “Tenderness Junction” of a historic event a year before, the exorcism and attempted levitation of the Pentagon in USA’s capital city by a determined group … Read the rest The post A Levitation With Ed Sanders (on the World Beyond War Podcast) appeared first on Literary Kicks.| Literary Kicks
A new episode of “Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera” just dropped! It’s about Die Zauberflote by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder, and this one was a long time coming. I’ve rarely struggled so hard to produce a single podcast episode, or a single blog post. It was a struggle … Read the rest The post About A Flute: An Enlightenment Opera appeared first on Literary Kicks.| Literary Kicks
When many of us look back on the progress of the last 30 years, we can’t escape the eerie sense that the Internet revolution we lived through only left us stuck more stubbornly than ever in a broken past.| Literary Kicks
I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration's support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn.| Literary Kicks
I spent the final days of 2023 desperately scrambling to complete two episodes for the two podcasts that represent the clashing sides of my brain ...| Literary Kicks
Judih Weinstein Haggai, a huge-hearted haiku poet, teacher, mother, grandmother and longtime friend of Literary Kicks, has been missing since October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz near the border of Gaza where she lived with her husband Gad. We have been waiting since that terrible day in hope that Judih and Gad are still alive. […]| Literary Kicks
A weird thought occurs to me, as the summer of 2023 rolls in: Literary Kicks turns 29 years old this July. Which can only mean we'll be having a 30th birthday next year ...| Literary Kicks
A mysterious book-length poem called The Princess by Alfred Tennyson became a popular craze in England about a century and three-quarters ago. The title of this book barely hints at the complexity of the story inside — a story within a story, a poem inside a poem, featuring a crew of lackadaisical young British layabouts […]| Literary Kicks
