Articles – Page 53 – Matthew Remski

December 17, 2013

Ayurveda Is a Political Practice. Part one: Economic justice

What’s the difference between how a person metabolizes food and exchanges carbon with the natural world and how they metabolize work and exchange labour for value within their society? How can we ignore the obvious health connection between how a person works and is valued in the world, and how they feel themselves to be?

December 10, 2013

“His Majesty the Baby”: Notes on Jeff Bezos and His Drones

When you’re the top online retailer in the world, it’s appropriate to be curious as to what kind of world it actually is. In our case, Jeff, it’s a burning world. While Arctic ice disappears, we scorch the earth with fracking and reach for another handful of flamethrower buffalo wings – on track to blow our 3 degree temperature rise budget before hell unleashes. Do you really want to plot out ways to increase the heat and speed of our consumption? Your drones are all sleek and cool, and I’m sure their propellers throw off a refreshing draft, but they will only fan the fire of consumer excess, and the infantile regression at its root.

December 3, 2013

Mindfulness for Fathers: Louis CK is Wrong About Boredom

I have an ambivalence crush on Louis CK. He plays the brave and humiliating role of exposing the swinging sweaty balls of the cultural id. But this doesn’t make him the spiritual teacher so many want him to be.

December 1, 2013

Mindfulness for Fathers: Five Difficult Feelings We Can Learn to Love

Parenting is painted through with great strokes of perfectly natural sorrow. You can only pretend to fight it. Much better to look at it carefully, to see its colours clearly, feel its textures. What else could be at the root of empathy and compassion? What else would give you the gravitas you’ll need to be a person of consequence in later life? What else would you even aspire to? Our strange luck is that there are at least five inevitable sorrows that soften us as fathers, even as they strengthen us. Their lessons extrapolate well to the rest of life.