Not long ago, I posted an essay, Is Power for the Sake of Power the Same as Power Earned by Productive Achievements? where I responded to a study which found: [T]hat individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others. According to the study, “The … [Read more…]
We need some creative solutions to our problems, so long as those solutions are the right kind of creative solutions. You know which solutions I mean, the ones we already know about but we just need to try again and do it better this time. Yeah, we need creative solutions, like the ones we already … [Read more…]
This article, Power Corrupts, Especially When It Lacks Status, explores a very important subject and extends a line of research which is decades old or centuries old if you wish to consider the work of Jeremiah and Plato, Tacitus and Augustine, Dante and Goethe, and so on. That older understanding is substantial but poorly focused … [Read more…]
On a regular basis, commentators of various viewpoints will re-evaluate what we Americans have done in Afghanistan and other occupied countries, wondering whether we could have acted more effectively. Some even express a bit of concern for the impact of our actions on the innocent civilians who have been killed or injured or impoverished in … [Read more…]
I’m speaking of rational ‘conspiracy theorists’ which means those who claim, rightly, that power-elites develop and are quite capable of engaging ruthlessly in focused criminal conspiracies when their interests are threatened. I don’t even know how to make a pitch to those who think there is a tight-knit conspiracy run by Satan or Jesuits or … [Read more…]
I’ve been reading Albert J. Nock’s biography of Thomas Jefferson which is available for free download at Ludwig von Mises Institute. In that book, Nock deals with lines of thought in Jefferson and his colleague, friend of his younger and older years, John Adams. Jefferson (almost) saw the American Constitution as having been engineered to … [Read more…]
In The Liberal Mind, I think Professor Minogue dismisses the query “What is the essence of Liberalism?” for reasons which are proper, but I’ll discuss it anyway because I think it to be one of those ultimately futile lines of inquiry which can lead us to better ways of understanding human nature, especially in its … [Read more…]
Is it surprising to learn there is a Marked Rise in Intensely Sexualized Images of Women, Not Men? It’s funny we live in an age where we’ve learned so much that enriches the traditional understanding that men and women are shaped to their different roles in reproduction and we fail to transfer any of that … [Read more…]
About 20 years ago, a Ph.d. psychologist working for an executive placement firm told me that, out of all the people he’d ever tested or interviewed, I was the one least suited for life in a corporation. Some might say that to be good news in terms of the potential for good moral character, but … [Read more…]
Slowly do I move forward in my efforts to develop words and grammatical structures and concepts adequate to describing the social and moral setting of man as he learns to shape himself, his societies, his technologies, to better reflect and take advantage of the richness and complexity of God’s Creation. This richness and complexity can … [Read more…]