One of the qualities that makes ”Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” so engaging a work is involvement. I mean that each of the cast of characters is involved with all the others, in series or in parallel, in accordance with the recognized register of traditional and contemporary relationships. A Suitable Boy: A Novel, by [...]
I like to read other people’s mail. Don’t worry, I only read the mail of dead people. Mainly dead people whose books I’ve read. Let me explain. I like to read published letters of my favorite authors. I’m currently dipping into two volumes of selected letters: Willa Cather’s to virtually everyone with whom she [...]
In many ways, cultivating relationships into a thriving community looks like cultivating a garden. Human beings can tolerate uprooting from one place to another, but every time this happens we disrupt those tiny little fibers of attachment from which we draw life. For a long time now, our culture has faced a crisis of [...]
Alas, we can’t un-invent digital technology. Pandora’s box can’t be closed once it’s opened. The 20th century gave rise to no end of technologies that mankind has come to acknowledge as absolutely evil and yet that we can’t eradicate completely. For those brave and willing few, however, I urge you to join me in [...]
Unprecedented in history is the development of the adolescent—a period of life in which one is isolated from childhood and maturity. Child-rearing practices vary from culture to culture, and many Americans are shocked to discover that the most turbulent period of their lives was a cultural phenomenon. The confusion, rebellion, and search for identity [...]
Timothy Carney’s book "Alienated America" tackles a crucial question that too few policymakers and news commentators even bother asking anymore: What is at the root of America’s contemporary cultural and social malaise? The short answer, according to Mr. Carney, is the deterioration of civil society. Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Other Places Collapse, [...]
The good mentor is virtually inseparable from the phenomenon of initiation that has always been understood as a crucial part of the rite of passage between one condition in life to another, a new and deeper community. In an age where mentors and rites of passage are being neglected, we should not forget the [...]
The good news is that we have to know only one thing, so life is basically simple. The bad news is that one thing is love, and that seems impossible to get right. Love is at the center of human life, for love fulfills our spiritual nature by uniting us to all that is.[1] [...]
It seems as if the cycle of Resentment and Revenge is so fundamental to human nature that it cannot be cured by humanistic solutions—but could it be countered by the theological virtues? What’s wrong with the world? Chesterton famously said, “I am, yours sincerely G.K. Chesterton.” However, two thinkers can help us understand the [...]
There was a time, decades ago when the world was divided between those who were online and offline. Rich people could afford the shiny new gadgets that connected them with everyone. Poor people were left in an analog wasteland on the other side of the digital divide. Social justice warriors of the time demanded [...]
If young people do not have a conscious philosophy, the philosophy of relativism is the default. And if relativism is a noxious gas and our young people are the canaries, then it is only a matter of time until our whole society succumbs to the effects of those fumes. Walker Percy once wrote that [...]
I regretted having children because children fundamentally altered my entire life in a way I never expected they would. For literally the first time in my life I was afraid of the future and unsure of what would happen next. I had willfully, foolishly, unthinkingly, given hostages to fortune. It was just the two [...]
We Americans are taught to maintain an inviolable spatial envelope, or imaginary bubble, around ourselves. But does our desire for individualism allow us to experience the world in all its concrete fullness? Like all Americans, even those with gypsy blood, my experience of space was determined by individualism. In the third grade, my desk, [...]
Studies confirm that traditional families result in less delinquency, criminality, illness, drug use, sexual promiscuity and stress. The best family policy is carried out by the family itself. Those who need the “family” aid offered by liberal policymakers are not truly “families.” As the next national elections loom on the horizon, many liberal candidates [...]