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With everything going on in the world today—economic crises; issues with energy, food, and water; war and terrorism; critical elections—it is easy, I suppose, to lose sight of the “big picture.” Is there some way all of these issues we face, crises we have to confront, and choices we have to make fit together? Why…
I’d like to begin this column with a quote from the June 9, 2004 report in the European Policy Center in Brussels. In such a report Dr. Jocelyne Cesari, a senior research fellow at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in both Paris and Harvard University has this intriguing quote: “Europe is the only…
Already in the early parts of the twentieth century there were currents against modernism, especially in art and architecture and music. But a new mode of thinking began to emerge in philosophy, social sciences, and science in the second half of the twentieth century. Most importantly post-modernist thought came into the international political scene. One…
The God many people imagine is omniscient. He knows everything. It’s handy to have a relationship with someone who knows everything. If you can contact him, it’s like getting a lifeline on the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Whenever you’re unsure what to do in any particular situation you can ask God,…
A man boasts about his successful marriage.“What’s your secret?” a friend asks.“Simple division of labor,” the husband says. “I make all the big decisions; my wife makes all the small ones.”“I don’t understand,” says his friend. “For instance?”“For instance, my wife decides where I work, where we live, where the kids go to school. I…
By the close of the nineteenth century, physics and biology, science more generally, had attained a level of success and societal respect that only the major religions had enjoyed in ages past. Science had not only flung wide open the doors of knowledge about practically everything, if only one would follow the paved path of…
The other day I had a very interesting conversation with a truly engaged and engaging Christian. We were talking about the Bible. He’s a literalist. He believes that the Bible’s meaning is clear and certain, and that it’s only when other people engage in an act he calls “interpreting” that things get muddled. I asked…
At first glance, Vichian paradoxical thinking (the both/and) seems to defy the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction (the either/or). The various rationalists and mysologists of our era often parade as classical thinkers above the fray of the existential vicissitudes of the “unwashed masses” with their common sense, beyond the clouds, on Olympus; they present us with…
Metanexus is not a political organization, but I hope you will indulge me for a brief observation. We’re coming to the end of the presidential election season here in the U.S. As usual, the race is a close one and will very likely be decided by independent voters. In fact, “independent” is the nation’s largest…
In thought and conversation we each take a variety of perspectives, many of which are nested or hierarchical. That is, when you make a statement, it is worth knowing what it represents. A part of you? You overall? Us? Your community? Your country? Everybody? I’ve written a lot in these pages about how hierarchies of…