[This is an essay which I though had been posted on 2012/06/02, but I left it in draft status. I don’t think this glitch in publishing date matters much.] In an essay I published in April of 2012, Intelligence vs. Intellect, I quoted Jacques Barzun from The House of Intellect: We [in the United States] … [Read more…]
In my last posted essay, “Leisure, the Basis of Culture”: Ends and Means., I tried to distinguish between ends of shorter- or longer-term. I came to a humbling conclusion that we can’t shape the future but only “intend towards the goals of a good human life and also good communal lives, morally well-ordered lives with … [Read more…]
Josef Pieper makes this qualification to the separation of leisure and culture from the pursuance of (mostly practical) goods: [T]his is not to say that there is no sort of connection between the fulfilment of the `common good’ and the philosophy taught in a country! Only the relationship can never be established or regulated from … [Read more…]
I’m re-reading Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper. As Pieper plausibly, and I think correctly, discusses matters, the loss of leisure and the consequent loss of culture is bound up, at least in this age of men, with the process of proletarianization, that is, the limitation of men to their laboring aspects. Pieper … [Read more…]
Just yesterday, I finished reading a history of the Middle Ages. The book ended with these wise words: In the last century of the medieval era, the peoples of Europe had to cope with an unprecedented combination of plague, war, schism, and economic decline, all occurring simultaneously and all interacting with one another. In the … [Read more…]
A few weeks back, Michael S. Greve published a discussion of one of our fundamental problems in these troubled times, as opposed to the secondary problems discussed by the better technical experts in financing, investment, etc. Greve’s essay, in three parts, can be found at: The Constitution of Affluence, Part I, The Constitution of Affluence, … [Read more…]
I realize there are a multitude of good books out there I’ll never so much as open but sometimes I feel an urge to re-read a particularly good book. So it is that I’ve picked up The House of Intellect copyrighted by Jacques Barzun in 1959. In the first essay, he makes a nice distinction … [Read more…]
The state as we know it in the United States and most countries in this year of 2011 can’t be limited without destroying that state. This is because — in Jeffersonian terms — the state as it currently exists in most countries is an instrument of a vague group of human beings which we could … [Read more…]
I haven’t had any health-care for ten years or more. Haven’t seen a doctor. Have only had special blood-tests when donating blood a few times. I’ve been lucky for sure but it’s also likely that I’ve gotten good advice from non-interventionist doctors who told me to avoid the medical system as much as possible. To … [Read more…]
Here’s a link to a good article about some specific problems which have developed in the Medicare system, resulting in fraud: The Systemic Nature of Medicare Fraud. Some of us are crooks for sure. Why do those crooks all of a sudden have the power to bankrupt our society and destroy our middle-class prosperity? Years … [Read more…]