As far back as we can see in any detail, we find humans creating art. But art is an odd thing, in that people generally create it for internal (and thus hard-to-articulate) reasons, making clear, logical explanations difficult. Making it still harder has been an obsession with incoherent and confusing art over the past century.
We can begin our examination with a passage from Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art?: Continue reading “The Purpose And Value of Art”
We all know that parenthood has been publicly trashed over the past half century. The larger culture portrays Fathers as dolts and full-time moms as second class women. These ideas, hammered endlessly and over decades, have had their effects. Continue reading “Revisiting Parenthood, After A Century of Socialism And Freud”
There’s a lot to say about this little phrase, and it’s an exceptionally potent study, because it gives us a crucial view of our function in the world. It’s a phrase Jesus used far more than any other, and I think you’ll be surprised by what he actually said.
It has become common to speak of Judeo-Christian principles, but that begs the question of precisely what those principles are. And so I searched for a clear set of them, and came up dry. I found statements of religious beliefs and I found lists of good habits that were spawned by Judeo-Christian principles, but I didn’t find the principles themselves. Continue reading “What Are The Judeo-Christian Principles?”
In 1999, my friend Henry Lamb mentioned that he had been attending UN meetings. I thought it sounded intriguing and asked for details. After all, reading about an organization is one thing, actually attending its meetings is another. And because I was so enthused, Henry offered to get me into the Kyoto accord meetings in Bonn, Germany. Continue reading “My Adventures At Climate Change Central”
When law was sovereign
All of us in the modern West grew up believing that we were living under “the rule of law.” The truth, however, is that the rule of law – the sovereignty of law – ended a couple of centuries ago. And by losing it, we lost a primary driver of our civilization. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 5”
It’s late summer in Anytown, USA: A small platform stands at the edge of a cornfield. A very average-looking person steps up to a microphone and speaks:
(Originally published April 8,2021.)
The past year has been a mass confusion of fear, misinformation, cover-ups, tyranny, crazed true-believers and more. Making sense of it has been difficult, and even those of us who try to do so professionally have come up short. But this morning the word we’ve needed rolled through my mind as I was waking up. And that word is scope. Please bear with me as I explain.
There’s a definition of happiness that I love, more or less a paraphrase of Greek philosophy:
Continue reading “The Word We Need To Make Sense of This Moment”
When I say “Ross Ulbricht’s world,” I’m not referring to his present circumstances, of course; he’s presently in a prison cell. What I’m talking about is the better world that Ross was building before the US government came crashing down upon him. That’s the world I want to live in.
The Silk Road web site Ross created was never simply a business, it was a mission… and that mission was to create a better world. Even it’s immediate mission, to break the War on Drugs, was only a first step toward something much more. And so, before I explain the world he was trying to create, I’d like you to see one of Ross’ posts on the Silk Road forum to make this initial point: Continue reading “I Want To Live In Ross Ulbricht’s World”
America, 1776
The development of the American colonies moved in an arc. They began with a lot of oppression (after the old world model), shook it off as the arc rose toward 1776 and the revolution, then headed slowly back down. My job today is to give you some feel of the times, and I’ll begin with some background. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 4”
