Yet every childIs cast from paradise —Into growth and new community,Into vast, ongoingChange. Octavia Butler Let’s do a quick reminder of where our civilization is heading. Globally, the natural support systems of the planet are faltering (in case you don’t quite believe this, and need a confirmation from online, the source of all wisdom, a quick Google AI return reads, “Earth’s natural support systems are … Continue reading What Kind of Country? CODA
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world…. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability … Continue reading What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be? (Part 3)
We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience. George Washington Last time, we explored how the radical break with the status quo that has been opened up by Donald Trump’s wrecking-ball lunacy might actually provide an opening for liberals to create their own bold project for transcending the … Continue reading What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be? (Part 2)
What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Lewis Lapham I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress … Continue reading What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be? (Part 1)
If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in … Continue reading Are Bad Economic Indicators Actually a Sign of Hope?
Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think? L Frank Baum Last time, we looked at the dreaded C-word, capitalism. For this go-around, we’re going to pivot to en even more shadowy E-word, The Economy. Unlike capitalism, talk of the economy is everywhere, and it has largely been assumed that the primary role of national leadership in the US is … Continue reading It’s Not Always the Economy, Stupid
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes Sorry, faked you out with the C-word teaser. The word I have in mind is capitalism, that thing that we all swim in for our whole lives, but which … Continue reading Why We Can’t Say the C-Word
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. Neil Postman The recent flap over Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a … Continue reading Stories Are Not the Story: Our Primate Brain Problem
Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Karl Polanyi Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out … Continue reading The Omnipotent Consumer & the Neutered Worker
The American Dream keeps you working for a future that never comes built on a past that never happened. It is not so much a dream as a value judgement. A pretense of patriotism at a price few can pay and at a cost few can bear. Sarah Kendzior In the United States, few ideas carry as much weight as the American Dream, that old … Continue reading The American Dream vs. The American Bargain
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