Jeff Jane Addams’ Hull House Jane Addams advised leaders to temper their idealism so that they could mobilize social support in order actually to make progress. “[The leader] has to discover what people really want, and then ‘provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.’” It is common today for … Read more
Today we turn from truth and beauty to goodness, beautiful goodness, living the truth in love. Today we begin a series on morally active living. Please allow goodness to fill your soul and your mind, to direct your path, to reward your striving. What can you see in this small picture? What calm and … Read more
Irish poet Seamus Heaney in a 1992 poem tells the story of a drive to the ocean, where he found two contrasting and breathtaking scenes. Then, leaving aside religious language, he speaks metaphorically of an awakening of the inner life. Postscript And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along … Read more
Positive psychology has produced a lot of research on an aspect of courage that I connect with artistic living, since it shines in sports, is visible in in the fine arts, and it does not necessarily have moral connotations. This quality is an essential part of that superb attitude in life that is called grit, … Read more
Like jazz, life is a performing art. The liberated performance essential to artistic living is not about being on stage in front of critics; in particular, we do not fashion ourselves into objects for others’ pleasure. Thanks to the order established by the design phase of artistic living, liberated performance is not impulsive. And the … Read more
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” [Sun Tzu, The Art of War, quoted by John Jantsch in Duct Tape Marketing]. I know a person whose ideas on a particular topic I would like to change. I have realized recently how we all have unconscious … Read more
I use the term “aestheticism” to label a tendency of some arts people and philosophers: they despair of any sturdy results in the realms of truth and goodness, and so they look to beauty as the value out of which to build culture. There are many varieties of aestheticism, some of which show a … Read more
C.P.E. Bach and others accompany Frederick the Great “Harmony” is often mentioned as an ideal and sometimes dismissed as outdated and naive. I think Bach understands what makes harmony a mature and worthy aesthetic value for our age. What do you think? The intellectual character of Bach’s music is something that listeners immediately sense. Consider … Read more
Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and Naina Yeltsin after his performance in an opera There is abundant evidence that Bach’s dominant motivation as a composer was religious. In his Bible he wrote, “With devotional music, God is always present in his grace.” In his religious music, he might write abbreviations for “Jesus, help” or “To God alone … Read more