Category: ethics

• December 26, 2012

  Visions of being human: Contemplation and action

  I’ve been trying to understand what makes a certain joke funny. It is: “I’m a person. [pause] I get things done.” The pause between personhood and the completion of actions allows for one to be surprised by the identification of a person with successful action. This joke is not too far afield from Marx’s 11th…
• December 13, 2012

  Of tree climbing and tree-hugging

  In this corner of rural Pennsylvania, there are no rocks to climb. But there are trees to sit near the top of. Beyond prospects and horizons, tree climbing presents feels. A lot of back stepping, open hands, heel hooks, and mantling. Some lines of bark running in north-south pinches. Some textures like dried coral. You go…
• December 6, 2012

  Simplicity, silence, natural eloquence

  Porphyry relates this anecdote about his spiritual guide Plotinus: One day, when Origen came into his class, Plotinus blushed from head to toe, and made as if to stand up and put an end to the class. When Origen urged him to continue, Plotinus said, “One’s desire to talk is reduced when one knows that…
• November 27, 2012

  E.F. Schumacher on the moral and the economic

  I’ve been having some good conversations with people at the New Economics Institute, formerly the Schumacher Society, about alternative economic models and, in my searches, I came upon this remarkable essay by E.F. Schumacher, “Buddhist Economics” (reprinted in his very well-known book, Small is Beautiful). In lieu of summarizing the argument Schumacher makes, I would prefer…
• November 23, 2012

  ‘Success is the easiest thing…’

  Success is the easiest thing, also unaccountably boring, while failure is the hardest one, seeing as it is filled with struggle and doubt and a sense of what is dire. With earnestness, actually. Since moving to New York, I have met many successful people and yawned. They are ‘stressed out’ or not, ‘totally overwhelmed,’ ‘slammed…