The Right Way to Flourish

The editorial in today’s NYTimes (10/13/2012) takes Candidate Romney to task for his tendency to tell the audience whatever they want to hear, while keeping the same old positions in his body waiting to emerge, if elected. > There isn’t really a Moderate Mitt; what is on display now is better described as Convenient Mitt. Anyone willing to advocate extremism to raise money and win primaries is likely to do the same to stay in office. Politically speaking, I think that epithet is a good one, but I have my own related to sustainability, Inauthentic Mitt. Putting my political opinions… Read More

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I listened to Gus Speth talk about his new book, America the Possible, yesterday afternoon. This is his third book in what might be called a trilogy, with echoes to John Dos Passos’s massive USA trilogy of the 1930’s, The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money. Dos Passos’s novels, written in a highly unconventional style, depicted the lives of a group of families struggling to become rooted in the US society of the early 20th century. It is impossible to capture the work in a few words, but here goes.The theme relevant for this blog is how the social… Read More

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I am teaching a course on Pragmatism this semester at my program for retirees. Right now we are taking up the pragmatism of William James after spending a few sessions on C. S. Pierce, the father of American pragmatism. James took Pierce’s theory of meaning and applied it to the concept of truth and came up with a definition that is both powerful and easily misinterpreted. Pierce gave us the idea, his Pragmatic Maxim, that the meaning of any concept was to be understood by thinking about all the conceivable outcomes of applying it in practical situations. The entire meaning… Read More

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It’s always pleasant to find confirmation of one of my favorite targets for scorn in the “legitimate” media. Joe Nocera’s NYTimes [column](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/opinion/nocera-the-silly-list-everyone-cares-about.html?_r=0) on September 28th took the latest U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings to task, arguing, as I often have, that the methodology doesn’t justify the precision of the numbers. If I didn’t know better, I might guess he was cribbing from one of my earlier posts on the folly of these rankings, whether of colleges, green companies, or sustainable products. Here’s his own words. I couldn’t have said it better. > The U.S. News & World Report’s… Read More

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The October 1 & 8 combined issue of Newsweek included a page near the end headlined, “He’s So Vain.” It was a list of 10 assorted items, each with a comment by Schmidt (played by Max Greenfield) on the returning TV show, New Girl. The comments were pretty silly, but a few of the items were not, being the worst kind of examples of conspicuous, and mindless, consumption. The three that I found quite outrageous were: **1. Forbidden City H. R. H. Fountain Pen by Visconti** $44,950. Visconti Pens FORBBIDEN (sic) CITY HRH is a wonderful handcrafted pen created by… Read More

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Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for me. It is the most serious and spiritual of all the Jewish Holidays, at least, for me. I am not a particularly observant Jew and am relatively poorly versed in Judaism. I even consider myself an atheist, a belief or non-belief that one can get away with in Reform Judaism. But I do find meaning in the teachings and rituals of Judaism, especially on these Holy Days. Atonement means what it says. God (if you believe) forgives you for any transgressions against God, but one must ask forgiveness from all the… Read More

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We have a multiplicity of means to know exactly what we get in a box of cereal or the milk carton from which we add a bit to the cereal. There’s a long list of ingredients, maybe a label listing the ingredients, and more information attesting to the organic or natural quality, the calories and more. Market theory works best when the consumer has perfect information about what is being offered in the market. Of course it takes any number of agencies to make sure that the information is accurate and that the producers do not cheat or lie about… Read More

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This current political campaign has produced more, “I didn’t mean that” or “That’s out of context” apologies or defenses than I recall for some time. The more I come an understanding of language and how we use it, the more I am skeptical about any such apologies or explanations. Speaking is exactly like walking. When the senses become aware (whether we are conscious or not), the cognitive system goes into action. When I become aware that I am some place other than I want to be, my muscles go into action, guided by structures already in my body, and I… Read More

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> There are two reasons why economic driven behavior cannot become the order-generating force for any society to which the socialist** label could be properly attached. The first, often featured in critical literature, is that societies driven by the need to accumulate capital, and subjected to the pressures of the market, suffer from severe deformations, including the alienated consciousness induced by extensive commercialization, the deformation of individual character caused by the over-division of labor, and the socially harmful bias toward self-directed rather than other-directed values. A second, less familiar but no less serious objection is that a general subordination of… Read More

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I am now back home in Lexington and prepared to be more regular with these posts. The summer in Maine was quite extraordinary this year. We got the benefit (?) of global warming and had the sunniest, most pleasant summer in memory. I have been distracted for a few weeks (trying to excuse my absence) getting the final manuscript of a new book to the publisher. Today, I pushed the send button and now have little to do but wait out the many months between my computer click and the production of the book. It is a collaboration between Andy… Read More

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