Renewable energy is much in the news these days. Energy prices from wind machines and solar panels have dropped and now match or are lower than conventional sources of energy. New prospecting for oil and gas, at least in the US, has slowed as a result. Headlines are shouting that we are close to halting global warming. The connection is completely ungrounded. The atmosphere will continue to warm up due to the greenhouse gases that have already been released. Few if any of these stories ever mention the effects of continued economic growth, which creates larger emissions in the aggregate,… Read More
Continue ReadingWithout Prejudices, We Could Not Make Sense of Anything
Today’s blog, like many of mine, comes out of synchronicity. I read a [piece](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/angelo-john-gage-asu-problem-of-whiteness) on the TPM website about an uproar over a course on “The Problem of Whiteness,” to be given at Arizona State University. When I thought about what I read, I could not help but see this through an article I read just last night about how we make sense of the world. The piece was an extract from a Ph.D. thesis on psychotherapy and how it is shaped by a model of the human self. The author was discussing the idea of hermeneutics, that is the… Read More
Continue ReadingTransformational Change Comes In the Cracks
If you know where home is for me, you will know that I have been inundated (if that’s the right word) with snow. I survived the 1978 blizzard in Cambridge years ago. This winter has matched it in amount of snow on the ground with even more coming. Today, I am home again instead of holding the first class of my HILR course on the self and authenticity. In preparing for the class that will be postponed for a week, I have had a chance to reflect again on the place of beliefs in daily social or cultural life. One… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Primacy of Connectedness
I am still getting ready to teach my course on the “self” at my senior learning institute. I got a copy of Kenneth Gergen’s book, *Relational Self*, out of the library and read it last week. Gergen is a psychologist on the Swarthmore faculty. His basic argument is that humans create all meanings through interactions with others. Challenging the Modernist notion of an independent self, he writes: > My hope is to demonstrate that virtually all intelligible action is born, sustained, and/or extinguished within the ongoing process of relationship. From this standpoint there is no isolated self or fully private… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Error of Trying to Measure Good and Bad
It’s another David Brooks day. Today he is riffing on a story by Ursula Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” In a nutshell, the tale is about a peaceful and happy city with an important open secret. Hidden away from the wandering eyes of the inhabitants is a closet containing a misfit. In Le Guin’s words, “It is feebleminded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition and neglect.” On occasions this poor human being is revealed for all who wish to observe. Like many of her stories, this one is… Read More
Continue ReadingI Wish You A Flourishing 2105
It seems appropriate for me to start off the New Year with a post on flourishing. Flourishing is very personal. I came across it entirely by chance. It showed up when I had to finish this sentence, “I am the possibility of…” as part of some personal training I did well over a decade ago. The sentence that showed up became my definition of sustainability as, “the possibility that human and other forms of life will flourish on the planet forever.” I became aware that the word has classic origins, having been discussed at length by Aristotle. It has great… Read More
Continue ReadingShould I Bring My Umbrella Along?
Weather may not be a politically correct conversation in Washington, but it is on the news channels. Most evenings, I watch the national news and noticed, some time ago, that the weather, which occasionally used to show up late in the program, is now often the featured story, night after night. Every night, I watch Ginger Zee explaining why half the country is going to be either inundated or parched. ABC, my usual channel, has a huge techie display that enables them to show extreme events in infinite detail. It’s clear from all this that extreme weather has both entered… Read More
Continue ReadingA Brooksian Christmas Story
I have been away from my blog for several weeks. I claim overwork. I am writing an essay for the Great Transition Initiative, and finishing plans for a course I am delivering at my learning at retirement institute. The subject of the course is “Authenticity” or a look at the notion of self through the ages. It’s a chance to put some of my current thinking on self, being, and authenticity into a historical context. But I have been buried. So when I read David Brooks’ op-ed piece today, as it so often happens, a little voice inside said I… Read More
Continue ReadingKilling Time*
Never waste a moment again. Never let the world come in. Never worry that some one Will look at you enjoying fun. Time is money so they say. Working in our modern way Spare5, the app, finds jobs to fill. No chance for existential thrills. A penny here, a nickel there, You’ll soon not have a cupboard bare. But like the Red Shoes dancer, Life for you will have no answer. Time is never there to kill. Nor to deliver you a bill. It’s all we have to let us be. Free moments are a part of me. I need… Read More
Continue ReadingSustainability Is Growing Warts
I have been harping about the decline of the meaning of sustainability for some time. Today, the Boston Globe carried an [interview](http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/12/07/sustainability-older-than-you-think/qCjnEzwtxmBjxebceg8OzL/story.htmlHip, Hip Hooray. Taking the old one away. Hoping that you may Recover quickly And walk pain-free every day.) with Jeremy L. Caradonna, author of the recently published book, Sustainability: A History. In the interview Caradonna makes many of the same points I so often do. Here are a few extracts. > In recent years, “sustainability” has become an inescapable buzzword. Companies launch sustainability initiatives; virtually every major American university now has an office of sustainability; and the word… Read More
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