Fascism and Fear

Fascism Begins in the Heart and Mind Way Before It Gets to Politics. As a person who bears many of the cultural markers of the “dominant group”, or more accurately phrased “privilege class” I need to acknowledge how odd what I write might sound (A white, educated, liberal, straight, male, but more like top 50%,…

Renewal and Loss – The Grief before the Glory

by Stephen Cocconi By now, most of us have heard the phrase “getting back to normal.” For some, the reality hasn’t quite sunk-in that after a year of COVID changes, “normal” will have a new set of parameters. From designer masks, to disinfectant, to “physical distancing”, and realizing that the only social distancing most of…

The Time The World Stood Still

by Stephen J Cocconi© 2020 I happened to be lucky enough to have almost in my backyard, one of the greatest and most beautiful natural cathedrals on earth, Yosemite national park, particularly with you somebody Valley, it’s half dome, cathedral rock and of course the massive and majestic El Capitan. The fact that Earth Day…

Wake Up Call

20 Realizations The Covid-19 Pandemic Reveal to us About Ourselves, Circumstances and Societies. By Stephen Cocconi Nature and her systems of biological evolution are all encompassing, far more enduring, and vastly less predictable than the antics of humans. Human systems are what we participate in and impose upon each other with institutions like: democracy, capitalism,…

A Team of Rivals: A United Democratic Ticket

by Stephen J. Cocconi In an Op-Ed article for the New York Times, famed columnist Thomas Friedman borrowed the title from the prize-winning book by historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin’s “A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”. His assertion is one that I agree with. I actually had begun this article over 2 months…

God is Everything! And NOT Definable.

I wonder how many humans have had the courage to ask themselves the question “what if this idea of GOD is more than anyone could possibly imagine?’ No, not a mystery, but far more than any of the simplistic and often contradictory edicts that religions doctrines convey to assure the sanctity of some social order…

Of Gratitude and Appreciation

“Expressing gratitude to another, whether it be an acquaintance, a loved one, a stranger, or the Universe itself, acknowledges a cycle of energy exchanged. Like a circuit that completes a transaction, it returns to an open position and awaits a new transmission. Indeed, being open is a state of attraction in itself. But receiving energy…

God and Permission

For along time now, my observation about people invoking God was a means of granting themselves permission to carry out whatever act they themselves might deem questionable and do it with perfect impunity.