On The Radar are random notes and comments on points of interest that enter the author’s orbit.
Just-so jottings on the curious, serious, perilous, ponderous and ludicrous in literature, art, science, psychology, pop-philosophy, anything new or neuro- in human minds and behaviors, and everything that makes the writer nervous and nips at his heels. They are prompted by observations and readings. Armies of nerve-endings load, aim, fire, - or not. Loose ends, and often they fray. Nerve and never, the anagram is apt, the brain never sleeps.
A jaundiced eye scours the horizon for the great beyond. Except it’s his computer screen, not the horizon - he barely moves from it, the other eye sparkling with anticipation. When he looks up he doesn’t know if the distant levels are rising. Is he moving toward or away, swimming against the stream or swept up in the flood? Back at the screen, the illusion of control. Knowledge is power, but now there’s too much of it to act on. Hesitation? Tension, anyway. Soft- and wetware on a chair (or the palm of the hand with the iPhone).
A writer must try to discombobulate the daily flood of meanings, extract the valuable and useful from the stream of public and private consciousness and make them coherent. His job is to sort out biases between the logical and the spurious. And often the meaning behind fiction is more poignant than a news-blip (if only for not being interrupted by a sales pitch). There are, after all, alternative facts and fake news disguised as facts). “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
The daily deluge is a drumfire of messages that point us in different directions, continually competing for our attention. Avoid or engage? Data points or tweets inform us, of course, but they also deform our attention- and response patterns. And whether political or to sell us something, we are wary of the motives behind them. Yet here we are, aimed at, targeted. And we do not know who or what is orchestrating the barrage. What, if anything, is behind it?
This writer is a nervously enthusiastic man who has convinced himself that writing down his thoughts is therapeutic and clearing. Here he shares interesting confections for the curious mind. Not shy to engage the vexations of our age, he casts a critical eye on the gulf between the humanities and the sciences. Fissures, for example, between the psychoanalytic worldview and that of neuroscience draw his attention. The gaps in our understanding of what is real and what is virtual ignite his passion to find truth in art, literature, language, and empirical research. Bridging these chasms is the purpose of this publication.
The rifts originate in the human mind with all its paradoxes and dilemmas, ironies and contradictions. It understands humor and constructive error, it learns, yet the very fact that it is self-understood makes it a wonder. It can reflect what is a self, what is consciousness (and conscience), or intelligence? What‘s reality? What is a thought? Is time real, or just a method of ordering before and after? What is a mind? Why must we care?
