Category: philosophical counseling

• December 21, 2011

  On being in debt up to your ears (but in a good way)

  On Philosophy as the Love of Giving “In gratitude,” the note said. Inside the box was a book by Seneca, Epistles 1-65 of the Loeb Harvard Edition. The old man Seneca is writing to his younger philosophical friend and pupil Lucius, a Roman knight and civil servant. The letters were meant both to educate Lucius in…
• December 20, 2011

  Of this ineffable

  My mother covering me, wholly, from the man with the gun. That was the dream. Being at home in the world. Fuck you, Freud. — I spoke to my friend and former lover after she’d returned from South Sudan. This would have been about a week or so ago. Life was hard there, she said.…
• December 19, 2011

  On cat days

  When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; and when I am walking alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are sometimes elsewhere, for most of the time I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me. –Montaigne, Essays 1 Watch the…
• December 15, 2011

  What is civil society and why does this matter?

  I’m currently finishing a personal essay entitled “In Search of a Middle Style for a Convivial Civil Society.” In it, I’m trying to make sense of how civil society is changing and of how I’m able to make a decent living as a result. I’ve included a small part below on the concept of civil…
• December 14, 2011

  Brand naming: Thinking differently

  The inner circle of brand doyens at Lexicon (I almost wrote Lexipro, then almost quipped about Lexi-con) is exploring car names that could become impactful brands in a twenty-first century green economy. In “Famous Names: Does it Matter What a Product is Called?” (The New Yorker, October 3, 2011), the writer John Colapinto listens in:…