Michael Ventura: The Sadness that Stays

One of the many things I like about Michael Ventura’s writing — presumably, about his mind, though we have never met — is that he not only doesn’t stop at the easy answers, he doesn’t even pause. He’s always thinking for himself. Have you ever thought how rare that is, in a media-permeated culture such as ours?

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

THE SADNESS THAT STAYS

Austin Chronicle – April 16, 2014

    “Can Google Solve Death?” Time ran that headline on its cover last September. They call it “radical life extension”: engineering biology so as to live much, much longer. My personal response is “No, thank you,” and my hunch is that the longer you extend longevity, the less you’ll like what you find – but let’s give a cheer of “Good luck!” anyway, because the more successful they are the more they’ll need the luck.

Continue reading Michael Ventura: The Sadness that Stays

Michael Ventura on his friend’s last quest, part two

MICHAEL VENTURA

LETTERS AT 3AM –

HE TOOK THE CAT TO TEXAS: Part 2

Austin Chronicle – Oct. 4, 2013

“It is my very strong feeling that real pacifism, real positive political change, cannot be effectively motivated by guilt, but must come instead from a joyful reverence for life, from a fervent desire to make our own lives more glorious and more ecstatic, and from the very selfish desire to share that joy with all the people and all the living things of the universe.”

Mayer Vishner wrote that when he was young, and, a lifelong activist, he lived those words, or attempted to, for real. Not in an ivory tower or a commune, but on the street.

Continue reading Michael Ventura on his friend’s last quest, part two