Jeff The good Samaritan stopping to help an injured stranger It’s fascinating how many people don’t think much about morality. Morality is not trending. In popular media the word “morality” has overtones of being repressive, stuffy, outdated, smelling of religious authority, standing in need of sexual liberation. But when we get seriously mistreated, we are not … Read more
Here’s the Rembrandt drawing that editor Cynthia Read thought of for my book cover. Treat others the way you want others to treat you. They may or may not reciprocate. But go ahead: Smile. Risk doing good. Have fun at it. You may inspire them to live better. Sometimes doing good to others … Read more
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