Blog
Secrets of leadership
October 6, 2014
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 leaders to be advised to get to know the people who are actually or potentially on their team, and getting… Read More
Jane Addams: Unforgettable leader and servant of humankind
October 2, 2014
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 dignity? What seasoned character of compassion and leadership? What beauty of goodness? Please take the time needed to discover Jane… Read More
My favorite poem
September 29, 2014
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 the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that… Read More
Three key ingredients in hardiness (grit, toughness, resilience)
September 25, 2014
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, resilience, toughness, or hardiness. Salvatore Maddi spent decades studying and teaching hardiness. At the University of Chicago during the 1970s… Read More
Artistic living in the zone
September 22, 2014
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 heart of liberation is spiritual. Freedom has two sides: freedom from and freedom to. Artistic living at its best is… Read More
Design and artistic living
September 18, 2014
“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 resistance to such change based on various experiences going back years. I estimate that it will take four years for… Read More
Can beauty substitute for truth and goodness?
September 15, 2014
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 great sensitivity to values, e.g., Frederick Turner, Beauty: The Value of Values. There are other varieties that are less mature…. Read More
This side of Paradise, harmony implies dissonance
September 11, 2014
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 his idea of harmony. Some people associate the idea of harmony with a tepid peace that suppresses difference, a static… Read More
Bach’s balance of religion and humor
September 8, 2014
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 be the glory”; and even introducing a secular book of keyboard exercises he wrote, “In the name of Jesus”; and… Read More