Fortune and Men's Eyes

The Fortune Society is devoted to helping individuals who have been incarcerated. The name derives from a Shakespeare sonnet that begins "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I beweep..." Fortune and Mens Eyes (1971) was also a play and later movie about homosexuality amongst inmates in a prison which btw influenced the creation of the society. But what is fortune? Soothsayers read your fortune or fate and you can also earn a fortune, a use of the word which connotes the idea that fortune will be good, at least in material terms. Caveat emptor! Anyone who has made a fortune will attest that one fortune is never enough. The fortunate are those whose good fortune transcends any bounty that fortune might provide. 

read "What is Philanthropy?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Everybody is a Star" by Sly and the Family Stone

Secrets and Lies

Everybody maintains a secret they will take with them to the grave--that they are the exception who will live forever. And no matter how modest their talents or achievements, they all maintain the grandiose wish they will attain greatness even if there are only a few seconds left in which to perform the deed. Don’t believe anyone who tells you they have come to terms with their mortality unless they are suicidal and require medication. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus says the only philosophical question that matters is suicide. It’s a nice iteration that hits you right between the eyes. Does that mean deontologists, utilitarians and phenomenologists have been wasting their time? Would suicide in fact be a word that Husserl bracketed the way fact checkers find untruths in political speech? Watch a water bug, ant or fly scampering away as you seek to kill it and you’ll understand that the only philosophical question that matters is life!

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne

Stenosis or Kenosis?

Stenosis, a condition affecting the spine, is something you want to avoid but kenosis, an emptying akin to Buddhism’s “self-forgetting” is a state to which many spiritually inclined people aspire to. “Desire “ Buddhists say, “is the beginning of suffering. In meditation one filters out thought. All fine and good but what about all the acts which require agency? Well stop and listen. You have undoubtedly obsessed over the things you want. Has this changed anything?The people around you are going to do what they please. Absent the willful desire to direct traffic, there’s just you. YOU can change you. It’s the one thing you have control over and, by definition, it's an antidote to the pain of wishing to be someone else.

read "On What Matters" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

and listen to "Deserie"  by The Charts

Groundhog Day

At a certain point the earth will turn without your input and without your perception of it. The notion that nothing would be there unless it were perceived, is known as solipsism. It's the basis of a famousTwilight Zone, "Shadow Play," (5/5/61) where a condemned man played by Dennis Weaver prays for a reprieve on the basis that the world will disappear without him. It’s a theme iterated by Beckett in his only cinematic work,Film, starring Buster Keaton whose opening epigraph is Bishop Berkeley’s famous esse est percipi, "to be is to be perceived." BTW doesn’t radical subjectivism have something in common with religious Apocalypticism? Same result different cause. But let’s get back to you. Everyone freely accepts their fate while also holding to the notion that since the world cannot exist without them they will have to live forever. Spoiler Alert! The famous Twilight Zone ends with a twist that's like Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray wakes to find the same events playing over and over again like a broken record.

read "Notfilm" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" by Jimmy Ruffin

The Odds Against YOU!

Improbability turns out to be be in the realm of possibility. For example take yourself. Out of all swimming sperms cells and eggs, you come into being, though the odds against you. The male ejaculates between 2-5ml and in each ml is approximately 100 million sperm. If someone had bet on you in Las Vegas, they would have walked away with a bundle. It's a real "long shot" in both senses of the word. Of course, it’s a conundrum to the extent it’s hard to put your chips down on an imaginary number which may or may not exist, conception itself defining the cut-off. The earth is another anomaly. After the Big Bang 13.2 million years ago, Bosons, the most elementary particles of matter, accompanied the expansion of the universe aided and abetted by the force of Dark Energy. What were the chances that life as we know it would come into existence? What are the odds it will be found on planets surrounding Kepler stars (where carbon has been detected), 1200 light years from earth?

read "Francis Levy's Divine Comedy," Exquisite Corpse

and listen to "Hitchhike" by Marvin Gaye

A Manichean Conspiracy

The right and the left became allies in the attempt to quash the debt ceiling compromise? They have also become strange bedfellows when it comes to the issue of expression and in particular pornography where feminists have joined forces with fundamentalists. Of course the pendulum can swing both ways conservative women in Kansas where part of a coalition that voted for abortion rights —with the issue going back to property rights--the body being the piece of real estate in question. But is there a hope that Margery Taylor Greene and AOC will become friends and take CrossFit classes together? After all they both use three names. Anything is possible. Remember Darth Vader was once good. Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)

read "Towards a Radical Center" by Francis Levy, TheScreamingPope

and listen to "Tell It Like It Is" by Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt and Gregg Allman

Mustard or Sauerkraut?

Mustard or sauerkraut sounds like Martin Buber’s Ich und Du. I and Thou. But human beings are always inadvertently finding themselves in a world of ethical decisions. Camus said that suicide was the only philosophical question that mattered. What if someone pointed a gun at you asking “to be or not to be?” The case of the hot dog is unique because you can have your cake and eat it too. Usually you have to shit or get off the pot—i.e. decide. Those who think there's a meaning and order to the universe will say that literally everything is a fait accompli. Man plans god laughs. If you have children you know. It’s hard to imagine a world without them though in reality from a scientific point of view chance played a big role in their conception, considering all the eggs and sperm cells on the roulette wheel of human existence. Les jeux sont faits intones the cosmic croupier. 

read "Neither Progress Nor Perfection" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Dance With Me" by Peter Brown and Betty Wright