essay
I have a motto for this work: To name it is to tame it. I search for terms that enable us to label the common psychological “moves” we make, especially the ignoble ones. If you have a name for the move you’ll be better able to identify it when it flies by in thought and…
Herman Dooyeweerd (1985) argued that among the aspects making up the fabric of reality a specifically economic one is to be found. The aim of the present paper is to discuss the texture of such an aspect and how it both differentiates and intertwines with others. Dooyeweerd’s view entails that the proper object of economics…
Many, perhaps most, political scientists in North America still believe that a “hard science” of political behavior is possible. After all, humans are just complex animals, and if animal behavior will ultimately be explained by the study of physical, chemical, biotic, and psychic laws, then a hard science of politics should be possible. One such…
What do New Agers, religious fundamentalists, libertarians, anti-war activists, and hawks have in common? Recent conversations across a spectrum of political and spiritual beliefs reveal a common yet tangled thread. All the arguments I heard were variations on this form: Our problems would be solved if everybody did X. Therefore do X. The problematic word…
In his book A Christian Europe? Europe and Christianity: Rules of Commitment first published in Italy as Un’Europa Cristiana, professor JHH Weiler, of New York University, who has studied the process of European integration for more than twenty-five years, speaks of a European Christian ghetto. Such a provocative statement is of course a mere metaphor…
Giving advice is risky business. You lose friends. You get accused of being bossy, nosey, a know-it-all, controlling. It can invite reciprocation, and, if like many of us you are better at dishing out advice than taking it in, that’s no fun. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Fortunately, some rhetorical tricks can make…
We do not have even a preliminary draft of a story of “culture,” i.e., human history, that has the degree of consensus that exists about our stories of cosmos and nature.
Stu Jenks will be exhibiting works from his Circle, Hoops & Spirals and Sacred Spaces series at the 2009 Metanexus Conference, July 18-21 in Phoenix, AZ. Counterclockwise from left to right: Holy Ghost Holy Week ©2003 Stu Jenks; The Spiral for Television ©2002 Stu Jenks; My Ghost Likes to Travel ©2003 Stu Jenks; 16th Circle ©2001…
Fire was undoubtedly one of our earliest conquests of Nature. We do have evidence of hearths in caves dating back to almost a hundred thousand years ago among the Sinanthropus (Peking Man, more than 500,000 years old), as also (much later) in the dwellings of the so-called Neanderthal Man (disappearing about 30,000 years ago), although…
I’m getting on in years, so it surprises me when I learn something new regarding a commonplace of human interaction. Saying “please” and “thank you” is as commonplace as it gets. We’re told from early on that we say them to be nice. Only yesterday (and I wasn’t born yesterday) did I recognize why we…