This post is partly a reminder to me to remember that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and that calls for some loving act. Valentine’s day, like Christmas and Hanukkah, has become little more than a secular commercial excuse to spend money on a lot of stuff. The origins of the celebration are obscure, but most of the [explanations](http://www.islandcrisis.net/2010/02/what-is-valentines-day/) go something like this: > Valentinus was a priest in Rome during the 3rd century and at that time rules by emperor Claudius II. It is said that Valentinus was executed because he disobeyed an order of the emperor. In fact Emperor Claudius… Read More
Continue ReadingFlourishing and Justice
Conversations about sustainability often divide into two streams. One revolves mostly about maintaining the conditions on the Planet to support continued human development. To the extent other creatures are considered, it is usually related to some value directly or indirectly tied to their [economic] utility. Whatever normative content is present is folded into the economic framework reflected in individual (wealth) and collective (GDP) measures of well-being. Flourishing is reduced to a quantitative index. There is little in this conversation about the inherent values of life and the inanimate parts of the Earth. Normative policies are based primarily on mathematical representations… Read More
Continue ReadingGood Hair Day for Geezers
Most of the days I am hard pressed to feel good when I start to plan my blogging entry. (Disclosure: I have very little hair left.) David Brooks, writing his column in the NYTimes, is very reassuring to folks at my stage of life. Contrasting recent findings to the threatening ideas of Freud, Walt Whitman, or Shakespeare, Brooks paints a much rosier picture of the seventh stage of man than Jacques paints in his famous monologue: “Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”… Read More
Continue ReadingA Serious Effect of So Much Screen Time
More consequences of the extensive time spent in front of screens by children keeps showing up in the media. The Boston Globe today ran a column decrying the state of children’s health. The author, Terry Schraeder, a physician, points to data showing increasing signs of disease and poor health in children. Specifically, he picks out very high lipid levels–symptoms that traditionally belong to older people. This condition bodes poorly for these children because, he noters, “We know that untreated cholesterol disorders in children are linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.” The most striking and disturbing piece… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen is Forever Not Forever?
I have defined sustainability as the possibility that all life will flourish on the planet forever. Each word is carefully chosen, but it is the whole definition that is important. The expression is designed to evoke an image of a positive future, but not one where everything is defined and clear. It is designed to contrast starkly with the concepts of sustainable development or greening, both of which dominate the scene and both of which are approaches to reduce unsustainability. These last two concepts are inherently tied to the past and present, but not to the future. The future is… Read More
Continue ReadingIs There an iPad in Your Future?
Jay Leno cracked: > Apple introduced their new product, a tablet, which will revolutionize how families ignore each other. This would be very funny if not so true.
Continue ReadingScreens and Sadness
After I wrote the last post, I read the full text of the Kaiser report on media use by 8 to 18-year old children. The part describing the impact on learning and feelings was especially troubling. I know that there are many who do not buy the arguments I make in my book, based largely on psychology or philosophy, that technology has the potential to submerge one’s sense of worldliness and understanding of what it means to be human. The Kaiser study provides some convincing data that this danger is quire real. Here are the key findings. > **Youth who… Read More
Continue ReadingWho Knows Where the Time Goes?
I saw a couple of reports a few days ago that were quite disturbing. I know that children have been spending more and more time in front of some sort of screen, but I was shocked by the actual numbers involved. Neilsen Company, based on survey data, [reports](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/tv-viewing-among-kids-at-an-eight-year-high/print/) that preschoolers, ages 2 to 5, spend 32.5 hours in front of a television screen. I guess their thumbs are not yet developed enough to allow them to devote additional hours to texting. The next older cohort, from 6 to 11, spend a little less time, 28 hours on the average. Neilsen… Read More
Continue ReadingGreen Guilt
One of the underlying themes of my book is that unsustainability has arisen as an unintended consequences of our current cultural paradigm. For sustainability as flourishing to appear, the beliefs and norms that constitute that paradigm have to change. One of the critical beliefs to change is that of what it means to be human, from a picture of an individual as a consuming machine fulfilling a set of insatiable needs to a human whose existence is manifest by the satisfaction of a set of cares or concerns. One of the categories is care for the world which include most… Read More
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