Good and Imperfection’s Beauty

Humble people and cultures know intuitively there is no perfect good. Some cultures guard against the very idea of human perfection for spiritual and or mental health reasons.  Truly resilient cultures also tend to cultivate a dry, more often than not, kind sense of humor to absorb the shock of the imperfect societies in which…

Back in the old days of comedy there was a routine that employed the line “remember darling it is more important to look good than to feel good”.  Somehow this parody got laughs then, but no more. Greed thrives on the perception that money and luxury look good and too often the good looking surface…

As my sense of good evolved and matured it came to me that revenge and retribution are great ways to carve away at your future assigning mortgages on the attention and intention of your aspirations. Which is why I can’t trust a leader who would sell his or her future and freedom to these two…

My decision for the top of the ticket for this election is made and it isn’t even a close call. Presumably I should settle back into the easy chair of identity and marinate in a quiet consoling rage as I hear about people who are undecided or voting in the other column. What am I…

Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut was recently highlighted In a New York Times article because he has been warning the right and the left leaning portions of both parties that there may be a deeper component to the current American conflict and malaise. He speaks of a metaphysical/spiritual crisis.  “The challenges America faces aren’t really logistical,”…

The frequent blending of the terms extremist and radical makes no sense to me.  I do not believe an extremist of any persuasion can be radical.  To take an extreme view implies an equally extreme reduction of the scope of human consideration in any morally based decision. The radical will not tolerate such an abbreviation…

Good and charisma should fit together like sock and shoe but somehow it isn’t that simple.  Charisma can mean charming, persuasive and compelling in the purely secular sense, but it is also a very close relative to charisma’s first meaning of one favored by God or grace filled.  This is concerning because all of sudden…

This is a summer of waiting for Godot.  There is amongst the participants of this democracy a certain tension in the air.  We are in an election year where the narrative has set our worlds on edge and as the stakes teeter this way and that we cringe, grind, and groan.  I read the papers,…

I have come to accept that growing old is just that; one’s body is preparing itself. and hopefully you, to dissolve into the future. Possibly I should say ‘into the present’ but either way the question comes up; how can this be good? I suppose in the same way the Fall season can be good.…

In most democracies it is a basic right of individuals to hold differing ideologies. Unfortunately, at present this nation teeters over a rigid ideological divide that has two candidates sparing each other over packed houses. Our modern era defines ideology in Wikipedia as a ‘coherent system of ideas that relies on certain assumptions’. It is…