DANGEROUS THINKING ORBIT
Welcome to The Frontier

Loosen up the synapses and limber up your brain space. We're going to do some thinking!

To begin with, the kind of thinking we're going to do isn't about things we already know. We're not going to use this space for commentary. As useful as that may be, it gets a bit boring after a while, and it's not even close to DANGEROUS. No, here in this orbit, we're going to ponder the imponderable, give voice to the fragments of thought that stay mostly hidden in the crevices.
One of my favorite modern-era thinkers is the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). After World War II, Heidegger focused much of his lecturing and writing on the study of the essence of thinking itself. Says Heidegger, "The most thought-provoking thing about our thought-provoking age is that we are still not thinking." Even in the face of the incredible, mind-numbing advances in the technological world - spawned mostly by the need to win The War - Heidegger relentlessly criticized modern science and global politics as a venture driven by "modern man's conviction that he was prepared to take dominion over the earth," a task for which he believed we were sorely unprepared to fulfill simply because we did not know the nature of thinking.
Martin Heidegger passionately demanded of himself to "let learning occur" rather than teach his students what they should learn. He believed that those who would teach must be the most teachable. He felt that there was an ancient, time-honored relationship between the student and the matter to be learned, similar to the medieval cabinet maker who spent countless hours mastering the art of his craft, in Heidegger's words, "seeking out the shapes slumbering inside the wood."
Inspired in the tradition of Socrates, Heidegger wanted his students to think rather than know the answer. He sought to create an environment that asked for no less than the soul of the seeker, accountable to some modern-era version of the Oracle of Delphi. He believed that thinking was an exalted activity which had nothing to do with reward, recognition or professional stature.
And so, here we are. With no agenda other than to think. You up for it?