Alan Lightman wrote a short piece in the NYTimes, titled, our “Lonely Home in Nature,” in which he argues that “Nature” cares not a whit for us, so why should we care for it. Its actions are the result of natural phenomena, lacking any sense of intention unlike those of human beings. Our feelings toward and musings have absolutely no impact on what Mother Nature has in store for us. In our modern secular, disenchanted world, I think we take this pretty much for granted. Weber noted our coldness towards nature in his famous quote, “The fate of our times… Read More
Continue ReadingCare, Connection, and Consciousness
I met with a class of Dartmouth undergraduates this week to discuss my book, which had been assigned to them in their environmental studies course. As part of the assignment, the Professor asked each to formulate a question for me and say why that question was important. Most of the questions accepted the major premises of Flourishing, but criticized the book for its lack of pathways to get there. Point accepted. I think the direction for action is there but I have been reluctant to spell out out detailed “solutions.” Giving answers is counter to the basic arguments I make… Read More
Continue ReadingHome Again
Sorry for not notifying you that i would be away for a while. I have been traveling in Europe with my wife and a granddaughter during her vacation week. Something I never did. Times have changed. We visited the Netherlands where I spent a year teaching in 2001. That was like coming home. Then a quick trip to F�rth in Germany to show her the house where my wife was born and left in 1939. I have a few days work to get through and I will get back to posting to this website.
Continue ReadingPassover Thoughts
Last night my wife and I celebrated Seder with cousins as we have in the past. I find this occasion a relatively rare opportunity for reflection on my Judaism. What I mean here is that, although age does bring more reflection, my thoughts only rarely rest on my religious upbringing and practices. This Holiday celebrates the liberation of the Jews from slavery under Egyptian rulers and their long journey to find a place to settle that followed. As so often, I am triggered by what David Brooks has written in the NYTimes. His [column](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/opinion/a-long-obedience.html?hp&rref=opinion) today focuses on Passover, and, more… Read More
Continue ReadingStealing or Merely Profiting from One’s Smarts
The news media have been buzzing with stories of the piles of money that some traders have been amassing using the sophisticated method called high frequency trading (HFT). The NYTimes magazine carried a story last Sunday about a small group that discovered the secret behind the success of HFT and set out to defeat it returning sanity and fairness to the financial world. Concurrently, the author Michael Lewis has just published a book on the same subject. I tried to work through the technology involved but got bogged down. In a nutshell, these traders relied on minuscule gaps in the… Read More
Continue ReadingNeither Growth nor Greed Is Good
One of the usual arguments I get after talking about *Flourishing*, is that economic growth is necessary for the health or a nation and of the businesses within it, and that my way to flourishing requiring an alternative to such growth is either flawed or simply impossible. Before attempting to clarify my reasoning, let me say, categorically, that I do not claim that growth is inherently bad. I argue that the state of the world is such that continuing growth is producing unintended consequences that outweigh whatever benefits accompany it. I am not attacking the neoclassical economic models that lead… Read More
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Continue ReadingThe Real Affront to Privacy
The NSA may be snooping on me, but, at least, they do it quietly and without disturbing my conscious privacy. Whatever they may do **is an** affront to my right of privacy, but doesn’t affect my immediate solitude. It’s constant robo-calling that really intrudes. Not a day goes by without at least 3 or 4 calls from Rachel with her offer of lower interest credit or a nameless voice touting a “free” home security system. I have grabbed the calling number on a few occasions and reported them to the FTC “Do Not Call Registry” without any perceptible reaction from… Read More
Continue ReadingAn Uncommon “Commons”
I used to get my inspiration mainly from two sources, my students and my books. These days, I have few if any students, so I increasingly rely on the written word. Sometimes my reading is a source for my ongoing critique of modernity, as my many posts aiming at David Brooks and other opinion writers attest to. Other times it is a light that illuminates my murky thinking and writing about what to do about the situation. Today was one of these latter instances. My work for some time has been largely critical, trying to understand why we have blown… Read More
Continue ReadingA Little Bit of Philosophy Goes a Long Way.
This corruption of the familiar phrase about the power of kindness is, perhaps, even more relevant to coping with unsustainability and the continuing deterioration of both human and natural systems. What I mean by philosophy here is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language (from Wikipedia). This list is not at all inclusive. I would make the definition more general by defining philosophy as the study of any serious, pervasive (in time and space), life-nurturing or the opposite issue, perplexing problem. I am careful in avoiding the… Read More
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