Month: June 2016

• June 29, 2016

  Unsettled Time and the Great Muddle (I)

  In this and in subsequent posts, I explore what I call the Great Muddle. I’m not yet clear how to characterize the Great Muddle despite my sense that it is the right poetic description of how we’re actually living. Unsettled Time About five years ago in 2011, it occurred to me that we are living…
• June 22, 2016

  Two Stances Toward Hardship: Gloom & Vainglory

  When it comes to hardships in one’s life, two basic “stances” are often adopted. One is gloom. The other is vainglory. It’s gloom that one frequently hears about these days. In fact, one hears of gloom being not just a mood but a clincher. According to purveyors of doom, difficulties and hardships, being largely in evidence in…
• June 7, 2016

  Rethinking Economics: Husbandry, Commerce, & Gift

  I Yesterday, John Thackara (@johnthackara) tweeted a link to one of the feminist economist Julie Nelson’s recent articles, “Husbandry: A Feminist Reclamation of Men’s Responsibility to Care.” I think Nelson makes a very important contribution to our reconsideration of what an economy is or could be, and I also believe that she makes a mistake. I want to…
• June 6, 2016

  Three Types of Pain in Trungpa’s The Myth of Freedom

  What’s interesting about Buddhism is that it takes pain to be not an exception to human experience, not something accorded a special status, but is, as an existential matter, put front and center. Pain is center stage. In this respect, it doesn’t give rise to the theodician-inspired question, “Why is there or must there be suffering?”…