Category: ethics

• June 23, 2011

  Rules of thumb for starting a way of life business

  This is Part 1 of a 3-part series. Part 1 on ways of life business. Part 2 on why starting a business makes sense. Part 3 on picking out stepping stones. — My prediction is that the Ways of Life business is the next frontier. This is where we’re heading in the 21st C. We’re…
• June 22, 2011

  On the illusions of psychiatry

  In this 2nd piece of a 2-part series on the history and practice of psychiatry, Marcia Angell critically examines the players and forces behind psychiatry’s cozy relationship with big pharma. She argues: After 1950 and especially during the 1980s, psychiatrists made a conscious effort to adopt a biological model. In so doing, psychiatry was able…
• June 20, 2011

  The demise of the lectio divina

  The following is an excerpt from Ivan Illich’s book In the Vineyard of the Text. To give you some context: Hugh of St. Victor is the hero of the book. In this excerpt, Illich is describing the change in reading practice from a fully embodied, transformative experience (the lectio divina up until the 13th C.)…
• June 13, 2011

  Nihilism in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

  On the one hand, Jonathan Franzen does a masterful job of showing how unchecked freedom leads of necessity to nihilism. The ability to choose this or that cannot of itself answer to the more fundamental question, “Why bother choosing in the first place? What makes one item more valuable than the other? And, for that…
• June 10, 2011

  On lectio divina – day 2

  Suppose you were to approach a book the way you do wine. To begin with, you’d be careful in your selection. After all, the thing’s going in your mouth and down your gullet. Once you’ve selected something palatable, you’d let it breathe, take it in, sit with it for a while, give it time. And…