Yom Kippur is over and I am left with my thoughts of the day. This day is the culmination of 10 days of reflection on the beyond-the-world, the world, and one’s place in it. It is a trying time for me because of the omnipresence of God, a figure for whom I have little or no belief. I thank Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman for giving me a way to get through this period and other times I spend in my Temple. While he was visiting our Temple a few weeks ago in preparation for the Jewish Holidays, he offered a way… Read More
Continue ReadingBigger Is Not Better
Michael Pollan wrote an [article](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama-administration-big-food-policy.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0), previewed today in the NY Times, about big agriculture and the failure of the Obama administration to act to rein in its excesses. For those interested in the specifics, you should read the article. I am referring to it primarily as an example of a more general problem: the excessive, uneconomic, undemocratic power of the corporate sector. Pollan’s story has a plot that can be found in many cases outside of the food sector: pharmaceuticals, military armaments, commercial banking, retail, drug stores, office supplies, air travel, online retail, online travel accommodations, beer, and more. But… Read More
Continue ReadingCare and Politics
The Jewish New Year is upon me. It is a propitious time to restart writing posts to this blog. I have finished a draft of my book and now have recovered some time to do this. I have thought about what would be the most appropriate subject to begin again with. The main book themes are flourishing, complexity, and care. Care, or, better, the lack of it, in the immediate political campaign strikes me as most relevant at this moment. Care for both worldly and transcendent phenomena is central as part of any movement toward flourishing. Care, as I write,… Read More
Continue ReadingPlus ça change…
I was going through some older blog posts and came upon this on from November 2010. It is uncannily relevant still. I’m as Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take This Anymore! (November 22) This now famous line from “Network” was uttered by Howard Beale, the embittered newscaster. It also seems to have been in the background of people’s explanations for the choices made in this past election. Or perhaps, it was only a variation like, I’m as mad as hell at you, and I’m not going to take you anymore! It’s much, much easier to take out… Read More
Continue ReadingWorking on Book
I have been putting almost all my attention on the book I have been working on for far too long. I am still very much engaged in the subjects I wrote about on this blog. I have a few more chapters to draft. I will return to posting here when I finish them. Don’t give up. I am very pleased with how thing are showing up on “paper.” Most of what I have written has roots somewhere on this blog. The most important findings I am writing about is that both flourishing and care can be grounded in the same… Read More
Continue ReadingLiving in Lalaland
I have to warn you that the document you will see in a moment is not a joke. It is in reality a “joke,” but it is for real. I got notice of a new bill (H. R. 5668) just introduced into the House of Representatives. Here is the preamble: > To prohibit the Secretary of Energy and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from taking the social cost of carbon or the social cost of methane into account when taking any action, and for other purposes. I hesitate to give you the name of the bill for fear… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Quest for Flourishing: Nature or Nurture?
This is another long and complicated blog post, but gets closer to closing the loop in my overall story of the centrality of flourishing to the good life and the reasons why it is so difficult to come by in today’s world. David Brooks, my favorite source of blog topics, wrote a good piece in the NYTimes today (July 8, 2016) contrasting two basic human dispositions: selfishness and empathy/altruism. The final paragraph tells most of the story of the column. > By assuming that people are selfish, by prioritizing arrangements based on selfishness, we have encouraged selfish frames of mind.… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat Brexit Means to Me (and You)
The news following the referendum in the UK was largely about financial uncertainty and other economic consequences. A few stories warned of risks for immigrants now living in the UK without any kind of local documentation. All of a sudden they have been thrown into the same situation as undocumented immigrants in the US. The nationalistic walls that have been so artfully lowered by the Europeanization process have started to rise with all the ominous memories of the history of separate, competitive, warring entities. One thing I have learned from my thinking about the world over the past few decades… Read More
Continue ReadingEmergence or How To Be Something Without Having an Essence
This blog post is inspired, in part, by a comment directed at my opening plenary at a recent event. The commenter challenged my claim that I escape the essentialism of human nature in my claims about care as the existential ground of human behavior. My answer is largely that the nature or essence of something is located inside or possessed by the object. Care is related to emergence. Emergent properties differ by existing only outside the body as the name suggests. They are there only by virtue of the word of some observer of the object. Modern society, since the… Read More
Continue ReadingLost for Words
I begin tonight a little depressed, which is rare for me. The courses I have been taking at the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR) are over and I miss them. One was an examination of the history of liberalism, starting with John Stuart Mill and finishing with the views of contemporary political theorists, like Isaiah Berlin or John Rawls. At the end, we had a wide-ranging discussion of the place of these ideas in current American political conversations. Compared to the extraordinary careful attempts at defining the concept, words like liberal, liberty, and freedom are being thrown around… Read More
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