Essays by Larry Barnett
My neighbor has a canoe on the roof of his extended cab truck. He’s about to go camping at a lake near Truckee. I like canoeing, and his wooden canoe reminds me of summer at Camp Androscoggin in Maine, where at age eleven I earned a birchwood plaque for “Most Improved in Canoeing.”
Sometimes the honors we … Read the rest
People are talking about how polarized public opinion is right now, politically and socially. The widespread assumption is that a narrow slice of undecideds sits in the middle and that everyone else is rigidly fixed in their opinions; hence, all arguments fail.
Ever since the dawn of The Age of Reason,… Read the rest
The Homo line of bipedal humans sequenced through a variety of iterations before settling down, albeit uncomfortably, into the one we are today. Among others, there’s been Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and the now popular Homo neanderthalensis. All these primate species share… Read the rest
People have been speaking and using words for a very long time, but writing and reading is something relatively new.
The bicameral mind, psychologist Julian Jaynes’ idea that for most of humanity’s history internal thoughts were regarded as the voice of gods or spirits, is a way to understand… Read the rest
Being born is choiceless, but fairly soon thereafter we begin to choose. The choices we make follow the branching structure of time, each moment of choosing akin to a bud on a twig that either begins to grow or withers away.
As living beings, we are semi-autonomous vehicles, our sensory apparatus constantly… Read the rest
People are afraid of being killed by all sorts of things: branches falling from big trees, being attacked by vicious dogs, dying in a plane crash, drowning at sea. These are possible ways to go, of course, but for my money getting killed while driving on Hwy. 101 tops the list.
Two-ton hunks of metal hurtling… Read the rest
The role of religion in American society waxes and wanes. I remember back in the 70s when Time Magazine unearthed Friedrich Nietzsche and famously declared “God is Dead” on its cover. Turns out the death of God was greatly exaggerated, as current events demonstrate.
The push and pull of religion is tied… Read the rest
Everyone gets flies in the house from time to time, and we’re no exception. Sure, we’ve got screens on our windows but in one way or another, flies appear inside. Sometimes they find their way in from below, finding a hole or gap in the floor after having bidden goodbye to a dead mouse or other small rodent… Read the rest
Despite an avalanche of laws, political systems, religious doctrine, and just plain ordinary human experience, humanity’s wildness persistently asserts itself. Our hopes and disappointments propel a fusillade of argument and criticism directed at the very institutions and leaders we’ve enabled.… Read the rest
A strong wind
Bamboo deeply bends and sways.
In shifting shadows
A robin sits,
Undisturbed.
The blustery storm of world events – violence in the Middle East, political conflict, cultural change, and so on – often feels like too much. Admittedly, I ain’t no robin. I do, however, try to calm… Read the rest
In contrast to most of human history, present day western culture does not like to think seriously about death. This is not to say we aren’t fascinated by it; the proliferation of films, books and television programs dealing with serial killers, zombies, and the apocalypse attest to that. The… Read the rest
The Pieces: Dirty cups, bowls, plates, platters, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons; an assortment of shapes of varying sizes that need to fill the rack space of the dishwasher. The Goal: Fit as many dirty dishes and utensils as possible in a fixed amount of space; the more you fit the more you win! It’s… Read the rest
Is the self physical or metaphysical? That is the question. The nature of self is hotly debated. Buddhist non-materialists consider the self to be a sustained hallucination, an opinion supported by some current-day neurologists who, despite all their attempts, cannot find a source of the self. Some… Read the rest
Think about how strange yet ordinary are space and time, here and now. Neither can be held, or for that matter seen or heard, and yet both play an undeniably important role in everyday existence. In order to experience and use them, we’ve created tangible substitutes for each.
In order to reckon with time… Read the rest
There are as many ways of dying as there are of living. Often, they are the same. My father Norman, for example, was an anxious man. He wanted to be in control always. We’d go out to eat dinner as a family and he’d make a scene about our table. “I don’t want to be so close to the kitchen,” he’d complain, or “This… Read the rest
Life’s diversity numbers in the many millions, and yet no two living things are exactly alike; all are heterogeneous. This is as true of oak trees and squirrels as it is of people, but the heterogeneous minds of people, particularly, generate many differing opinions. Among these opinions are those … Read the rest
The world is tumultuous by nature, a whirligig of happenings only a tiny portion of which any of us knows about, not including the bubbling froth of thoughts and feelings in individual hearts and minds.
With its endless storms and earthshaking, as if the vicissitudes of nature are not enough, add to it… Read the rest
It’s natural, even comforting, for us to weave a coherent linear narrative about ourselves, events, and histories that appear to explain how things happen from the perspective of cause and effect. The chronology of life feels real, that is to say, memory works by picking and choosing moments from our… Read the rest
The death of Alexei Navalny affected me deeply. To all appearances he was an energetic man of great resilience, having recovered from poisoning and subjected to harsh incarceration. Video of him on his last day of life shows him cheerful, smiling, and engaged; what was going on inside of him I can only… Read the rest
Call it a demiurge, cosmic force, or God; for hundreds of generations humankind has believed in a prime mover of the universe, a cosmic hand upon the wheel. The alternate idea, that the universe and life began accidentally or spontaneously without the intercession of a divine or supernatural force … Read the rest