I recently listened to a recording of Stephen King speaking and reading an excerpt from his latest book for a live audience, and was charmed by his rough candor and obvious affection for his doting readership. He seemed like a guy who’d be great to get a beer with (or seven). I’ve never done more […]
“The commoditization of social relationships leaves us with nothing to do together but to consume. Joint consumption does nothing to build community because it requires no gifts. I think the oft-lamented vacuity of most social gatherings arises from the inchoate knowledge, ‘I don’t need you.’ I don’t need you to help me consume food, drink, […]
“Unlike physical goods, the abstraction of money allows us, in principle, to possess unlimited quantities of it. Thus it is easy for economists to believe in the possibility of endless exponential growth, where a mere number represents the size of the economy. The sum total of all goods and services is a number, and what […]
We are living through the most overpopulated, wasteful, and polluted moment in human history. In response to the increasing data and alarm regarding the problem of climate change, many people have begun searching for philosophical and practical frameworks to illuminate how we can reduce our participation in environmental destruction and start healing Earth’s depleted ecosystems. Moral […]
“The problem in economic life is supposedly greed, both outside ourselves in the form of all those greedy people and within ourselves in the form of our own greedy tendencies. We like to imagine that we ourselves are not so greedy––maybe we have greedy impulses, but we keep them under control. Unlike some people! Some […]
“It is time for a new form of motivation. Turning our backs on hope might be the best thing we can do at this moment in time. To be motivated by hope is to be stripped naked, to be vulnerable, to be disempowered. To be motivated by a sense of obligation, a commitment to virtue, […]
“Moral responsibility resides in the continuum between the polar opposites of inevitability and impossibility. There is no moral credit for doing that which is inevitable, and no moral blame for failing to do that which is impossible.” ––Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, “Moral Responsibility is the Price of Progress,” by Ernest […]
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a bewitching but almost unbearably bloated novel. Deftly mimicking the oblique style of Jane Austen, Clarke resurrects the concerns, mannerisms and values of early-19th century England. Into this historical milieu she chucks a fabricated history of “English magic,” a longstanding but recently stagnant tradition waiting to be […]
“‘England is full of magicians. Hundreds! Thousands perhaps! Norrell refused them. Norrell denied them. Norrell silenced them. But they are magicians nonetheless. Tell them this.’ He passed his hand across his forehead and breathed hard for a moment. ‘Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water. It is not so hard as we have supposed. […]
“‘Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!’ ‘Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner,’ said Strange. ‘That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflections upon one’s imperfections.’” ––Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, pg. 756 “It’s uncomfortable, at the least, […]