When an idea, an object, a substance or an emotion preoccupies consciousness to the near exclusion of anything else, we call it an obsession. And when an obsession becomes a compulsion so powerful as to assume the driving force of consciousness - even when harmful... Continue

When President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the Military-Industrial Complex he added a new metaphor into our cultural frame of reference, namely the emergence of collusion between government and industry systemically embedded within and affecting everyday lives. His prophetic comments fell on deaf ears,... Continue

Our human experience is fundamentally emotional, and emotions are fundamentally confusing. The stuff of imagination and subconscious life, emotions are primordial, which means not subject to the whims of logic or reason. From the standpoint of brain development, logic and reason are newcomers on the... Continue

In 1972 I lived in the foothills of St. Helena in the Napa Valley. It was a modest little house with a swimming pool built in the 1950s by the man who created Meadowood, now a world-famous luxury resort; he and his family lived there... Continue

The earliest Greek myths recount the emergence of the cosmos through a violent act of separation. The unity of all things was broken when at the urging of his mother, Gaea, her son Kronos forever divided his parents by cutting off the generative organs of... Continue

Our experience of the continuity of self, the sense of personal autonomy with which we awaken each day, is very persuasive. "I" is a persistent experience, persistent enough that each of us can treat it as real and thereby treat others as real, too. Indeed,... Continue

At our human scale it's easy believe in straight lines. High School geometry made things worse; Euclid's imaginary geometric forms served to reinforce our illusion that Point A, Point B and Point C can be connected by a straight lines, like when we point a... Continue

One of the dilemmas of modern times is effectively coming to grips with morality. The word itself is derived from Latin, meaning "proper behavior" but has become loaded with other connotations, religious and social. Our humanitarian, modern sensibilities incline us to disfavor moral entanglements in... Continue

Retailing has never been an easy business. Changing tastes, new technologies, capricious landlords and finding loyal employees alone are enough to create conditions of failure. Add in the Internet, and today's retailer faces incredible odds. Here in Sonoma, those of us who've been here for... Continue