A funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace. The crowd thinned out. Consumption? Been there, done that. Enough. It's a watershed. Minimal consumption equals a minimal economy — which equals what, long-term? The dreadful deprivation of the 1930s and '40s fed a ...
A great weight sits perched on us. It's called a head. It houses our brain and presents our face to the world. It comprises roughly 10 percent of our body weight. Heavy enough at the best of times, it grows heavier as it ...
When Adam and Eve defied God, creator and master of the universe, and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, what did they learn? To say "I." They learned that they were "naked" — they were selves, egos. As such, there was no place ...
In an essay titled "The Future of Mankind," British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) laid out three possibilities: "The end of human life," "a reversion to barbarism" or "unification of the world under a single government." He saw the third as the only alternative to ...
Japan grew up with wa (harmony). Conflict and competition are the creative engines of Western civilization; Japan traveled a different route to the tumultuous present. Wa breathes the sanctity of ancient roots. It is enshrined in a "constitution" dating back to A.D. 604, attributed to ...
Is there any understanding a man like Saigo Takamori? His spirit seems as vast as his bulk, and his bulk was that of a sumo wrestler. He is "the quintessential hero of modern Japanese history," said historian Ivan Morris. "Sincerity" was the quality Saigo valued ...
Populism isn't new. A wave of it generated democracy in ancient Greece, circa 500 B.C. Its modern form, born in America in the early 19th century, was a revolt against the planter aristocracy that had governed since independence in 1776. Andrew Jackson — said ...
What do intellectuals know? Nothing. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proved it. Pre-election, the only intelligent forecast seemed to be that his manifold defects would undo him: his boorishness, prejudice, intellectual vacuity, political inexperience, etc., etc. It's all been replayed so often over the past year, there's ...
There is a kind of moral ugliness that, without being quite evil, may be even more repellant than evil because evil — genuine evil — has, sometimes, a certain romantic appeal. You can admire the villain's strength, or courage, or dash, or reckless defiance ...
If you can call South Sudan "stable," you can call anything stable. You can call anything anything. Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's sunny assessment of this infant African nation in the throes of civil war followed her whirlwind tour last month. What did she see? Stability, ...
