There’s an economic theory — The Law of Diminution at the Margin — that has largely been echoing in the hollow. Few of us are attuned to the consequence of the condition, but that doesn’t mean the meme doesn’t exist or factor into the existence of what binds us to the living.
Continue reading → Reaping the Fallow and the Fallen: The Law of Diminution at the Margin
In America, we have been brewing a Cultural Holy War since 1969 and I have mindfully tried to stick myself, not in the middle of the argument between Conservatives and Liberals, but between the two diametrically opposing ends to shadow the mean sun. As a child of the Midwest and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln undergraduate, I comprehend the conservative core. As a graduate of Columbia University in The City of New York, I understand the liberal mentality. As I have written many times, this Boles Blog is dedicated to preserving common ground where everyone has a safe opportunity to be heard and that we do our best to honor a “liberal mindset with a conservative morality.”
I live my life trying to create Art and Beauty in all conditions and I also do my best to recognize and celebrate Art and Beauty in others — even if they do not recognize those gifts in themselves. I know a sandwich maker can be an Artist. It’s all about intention and the cut of the knife and the slice of the bread and, of course, choosing just the right condiments. While an Artist can create a sandwich, a sandwich is never really a piece of Art because Art — in its essence — must have the capacity to endure. Sandwiches, by their very nature, are crafted to be temporary and dissolved. Albert Einstein was an Artist as was Alexander the Great.
Imagine my surprise the other day when a new online friend sent me a gift — something he’d made with tools and machines he’d created in a faraway land — and I wrote him an email to thank him and celebrate his talent and my “You’re an Artist!” compliment was wholly rebuffed. I’d unwittingly insulted The Mechanist by identifying his keen aesthetic.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure and the honor to teach the humanitarian side of Public Health policy at a major, East Coast, medical school. My students were talented, trained, gifted, and unbelievably strong and well-educated.
Andreas Saugstad wrote this article.
Two of the most prolific and famous philosophers in the twentieth century were Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Russell was Wittgenstein’s teacher in Cambridge around 1911. Russell was the leading philosopher in England at that time, and one of the world’s leading thinkers in philosophy of mathematics and logic.
Continue reading → Reflections on Russell and Wittgenstein: Changing Oneself and Changing the World
We must always teach our children universal ideas. The temptation to “corridor” teach them — instead of bending young minds open to other doorways for learning — is a national failing of a teaching philosophy.
We decay the moment we are born in reverberation.
The rest of our lives are spent wasting away from the gift of energy that sparked us into being.
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