The following is another quote from The Closing of the American Mind. There will probably be more quotes in the future because it is such a good read. This one is about the disappearance of Family in America. My friend Nate at The Treekiller Press asked me to write a review of the book. So [...]
"America was not for him (Tocqueville) a people with a book." One can think of American writers and writings that should be read and frequently are read; but, to the extent that Americans are readers, the whole world is their bookshelf; there has not been the deep necessity to absorb their own country's writings that [...]
I started reading a book called The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students by Allan Bloom. I bought it in part because I was blown away by the preface. I am still reading the introduction and I find an interesting idea or thought on virtually every page. [...]
Source: Christopher Stollar, The Black Lens An article recently published by the Source entitled Sex, Lies & Snapchat talks about sex trafficking in Central Oregon. The article begins with a brief and unnerving excerpt from a new novel by Christopher Stollar entitled The Black Lens. The book is based on his experience investigating sex [...]
The following is from an essay about Trauma entitled "Childhood, disrupted" written by: Donna Jackson Nakazawa The adversity a child faces doesn’t have to be severe abuse in order to create deep biophysical changes that can lead to chronic health conditions in adulthood. ‘Our findings showed that the 10 different types of adversity we examined were [...]
According to Plotinus in his work On Providence- We are like people ignorant of painting who complain that the colours are not beautiful everywhere in the picture: but the Artist has laid on the appropriate tint in every spot. Or we are censuring a drama because the persons are not all heroes but include a [...]
From these considerations we conclude that most likely those who firmly maintain that god exists will be forced into impiety: for if they say that he takes care of everything, they will be saying that god is the cause of evils, while if they say that he takes care of some things only or even [...]
Erich Fromm in his work The Art of Listening (p.45) repeats the ancient Delphic truth to "Know Thyself". Fromm seems to believe that there is some kind of connection between the internal and external world. I am not clear on the extent to which this is true. Nonetheless exploring this truth has made all the difference. How [...]
Source: Ancient of Days, William Blake "...religious beliefs are illusions... in the sense that they are not pure products of experience or end results of thinking but fulfilments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind. An illusion is not a mistake...An illusion is not necessarily false, that is, incapable of realization [...]
Image Source: The Flight Into Egypt Seneca shares with us in this quote his own perspective of Good and Evil. Seneca shifts how we define good and evil, but his definition doesn't really embrace the experience of pain. "But why," you ask, "does God sometimes allow evil to befall good men?" Assuredly he does not. [...]