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Category: personal identity

The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

Taoism strikes me as similar to quantum mechanics in at least one respect: if you claim to grasp it, then you don’t. Nevertheless, that doesn’t preclude approaching an understanding of either. In his What is Taoism? H.G. Creel has an excellent chapter entitled, “The Great Clod”—a chapter that is quite helpful in regard to one aspect of Taoism. In explaining the meaning and role of “the Great Clod” in Taoism, Creel quotes, in order to set up a contrast, a…

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When Death Comes

When Death Comes

The first poem I ever learned by heart was Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.” When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of…

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The Relational Nature of Personal Identity and What it Means for Us and the Death of Those We Love

The Relational Nature of Personal Identity and What it Means for Us and the Death of Those We Love

Life as tapestry: the whole cloth is the great clod, our lives patterns of thread in relation to each other—the patterns, the threads of those dearest to us are interwoven with our own, and in places here and there the interwoven threads merge as our identities flow into each other…. The above is meant to be a poetic expression of the following, hopefully, more philosophically rigorous idea.  Having lost my ex-wife, Jennie, to suicide seven months ago (and “ex-wife” does…

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