The Right Way to Flourish

Tried to get this published also. Those who would ban critical thinking in any form are making a huge mistake. If they believe they are protecting the youth of America from some evil force, they are doing just the opposite. Freedom in the fullest sense means that one must be able to act authentically, to create and own one’s actions. Cognitively, it means escaping from stories, based on the past, that run most of our lives. Only then can one call what they are doing their own—the autonomy that underlies freedom. The idea of critical thinking arose when thinkers figured… Read More

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Another rejected oped. I have been trying to get McGilchrist and the divided-brain-model into the press with no success so far. It seems a waste to simply file them away. More to come from the past and, I expect more in the future. What holds the United States together? This question has become very important in the face of the many rifts that have cropped up recently. The answer is not, as many might say, patriotism or nationalism or any other ideology. The glue lies in the many powers, rights, or duties that have been explicitly created through the ratification… Read More

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My wife and I had a conversation a few days ago about wisdom. It’s not an easy question. How can you tell whether or when someone is wise? Is it something about them that hangs in there? My response was very pragmatic. Wisdom shows up after the fact in the assessment of whatever action, often involving some guidance to another, was taken. Did it fit the circumstances, beyond anything routine? Routines are the opposite of wise acts they always fit, by definition of the word routine. Wisdom only shows up when the going gets tough and our routines fail us.… Read More

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Very nice review in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. I have to point out I am an Editor Emeritus of that Journal, but have nothing to do with it these days.

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A bit of synchronicity to report. Right after posting the last entry about the death of the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, my wife said I should look at the NYTimes Book Review section. The front page article on yesterday’s copy carried the title, “Of Two Minds.” It was a review of a new book, The Zen of Therapy, by Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, contrasting two apparently opposing practices: psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation. I have not read the book, so what I write here is based on the second-hand report by the reviewer. Here is a key excerpt from the… Read More

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The Buddhist sage, Thich Nhat Hanh, died this week. Arthur Brooks wrote a moving tribute to him in the Washington Post on January 23, 2022 focused on his contributions to bringing mindfulness to our largely sound asleep Western world. I have excerpted a number of paragraphs from Brooks’s article because they contain extroordinary clear connections to McGilchrist’s divided-brain-model. Mindfulness corresponds to moments when the right hemisphere is connecting us to the real world or, as Hanh writes, to the “present moment.” The opposite situation, where the left hemisphere is in command, is captured in the references to “exist[ing] outside the… Read More

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Here is yet another rejected oped piece, this one by the NYTimes. I wrote this in response to a David Brooks oped, headlined, “America Is Falling Apart at the Seams,” (click here to see it). He pointed to all the asocial events going on in the US, but could not identify any reason. That was the main thrust of his piece. My attempt to provide a good reason didn’t make it into the editorial pages. How can we, who think we have a solid clue to explain and repair our badly damaged social system, crack the wall that prevents the… Read More

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If you are driving to a particular place, but following the wrong map, you won’t get there, except by chance. If your cognitive map does not match reality—the terrain of the world in which your actions inhere—outcomes won’t match intentions. Unintentional consequences, like inequality or global warming may appear. Stated otherwise, reality always wins the game of life, sooner or later. This truth governs collective as well as individual life. This should be obvious, but is being ignored in political life today. Democracy and truth are inextricably woven together. The will of the majority is meaningless unless that will fits… Read More

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I recently heard Harvard-based sociologist, Robert Putnam, discuss his recent co-authored book, The Upswing. He claims that US society has fallen to a level of separateness not seen since the 19th century Gilded Era. His research shows an I-we-I pattern with a “we” peak around 1960. Levels of economic inequality, political differences, frayed social capital, and rampant individualism are higher now than in the 1890’s. The social “we” has virtually disappeared. Putnam and Garrett argue that restoring “communitarian virtues” is critical in reversing this trajectory. In the 1890’s, the Gospel Revival supplied them. In today’s secular world, this source cannot… Read More

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Who is Pete Buttigieg? He is the Secretary of Transportation. He is a gay man. His is married to Chasten Glezman. He is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is the only child of Jennifer Anne Montgomery and Joseph A. Buttigieg. He is a Christian. He is a Rhodes Scholar. He worked as a consultant at McKinsey. He drives some sort of automobile. He lives in a house with so many rooms. All this and more is in the Wikipedia article about him. So why whenever he is being covered in the news does the commentator begin with… Read More

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