Not the Covid-protecting version, but the one covering the Nation’s face. The deep lines and cracks are showing. They have been developing for some years. Amazing how fast a country can age. The big question is how long have we been hiding behind it. Did we have it on, even at the time de Tocqueville told his glowing story? Is our history more than what the winners have written? By the numbers, America is great, or, maybe, was great. Our riches are stunning. We have been the envy of other countries, admiring our freedoms. Our global economic and military forces… Read More
Continue ReadingFinding Something Good in Covid-19
Everyday more bad news. Deaths around the world have reached into the hundreds of thousands. Economies have shut down, leaving millions unemployed. I was born in the middle of the Great Depression, and certainly never expected to see anything like that again. But here it is. One might ask of anything good can come out of this crisis. The best answer to that question that I read about is some return to normalcy. But when and how close to the old status quo is a big unknown. Fewer people are asking a related question, “Why should we return to the… Read More
Continue ReadingFinding McGilchrist in Some of My Favorite Authors
My Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement class is over. When I planned it and choose the primary readings from Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry (pictured), I had not tied it to my own work. I thought how wonderful it would be just to expose my colleague to their work. But as the term progressed, I discovered that both writers offer extraordinary examples of the right-brain at work. That we are interconnected to one another and to the Earth is central to both their essays. Berry is more explicit, as the following examples show. I have excerpted a few paragraphs… Read More
Continue ReadingLife and Liberty in the Balance
The President’s recent approbation of those who would protest against the orders to practice social distancing ignores both common sense and the essence of libertarianism. Whether either of these parties are aware or not, the conservative idea of individual liberty arises from the seminal essay, On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill. He is very clear about its limits in this key section of the essay. This comes at a place in his essay following the enumeration of what constitutes individual liberty. What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the unfavourable judgment of others, are… Read More
Continue ReadingIt’s Time to Rethink Our Two-party System
Although the two-party system may seem like a permanent, built-in feature of our political economy, there is nothing in the Constitution that comes close to mandating it. The extreme politicization of the Covid-19 pandemic and virtually every other consequential issue is evidence that its time has come and gone. Without paying heed to a fundamental tenet of America governance—of the people, by the people, for the people—our great nation is on the road to perishing. Lincoln was surely thinking about all the people. All too real in this pandemic where the deaths due to the virus have already exceeded 20,000… Read More
Continue ReadingAnother Big One Is Coming
COVID-19 has exposed the core of almost every national ethos around the Planet. It is causing untold harm to the health and well-being of virtually everyone. Economies that were chugging along have come to an abrupt halt as people are retreating indoors to avoid exposure to the virus. Medical facilities are beginning to become overloaded, even in highly developed countries. Here in the US, President Trump, worried about the political fallout, is said to be weighing the lifting of the social distancing strategy that, so far, has been the primary public health response to the virus. Congress is about to… Read More
Continue ReadingReality Always Prevails
I had started to use the word “wins” in the title of this post, but recognized the implication of a “contest” that I did not mean to convey. We humans generally claim success when the future turns out to be just what we had intended it to be, but forget to credit reality for its essential part. Nothing we ever do turns out the way it does by itself. The real world is always involved, because every human being is merely a part of a complex system of an untold number of interconnections among us human beings and between humanity… Read More
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