"To engage students in the democratic process and to instill a love of world affairs in them, they must understand that their education will ultimately be related to actual, real-world concerns. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a beautiful, romantic concept, but can only be reached after knowledge for the sake of practicality is set as a baseline. An integrated worldview is an imperative for a meaningful life. We should not allow our students to slip into solipsism and unwarranted self-importance."
Click.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Principles of Conscious Capitalism
1) Business has potential for deeper purpose
- false dichotomy: business = greedy, non-profit = caring
2) Business should be viewed as holistically interdependent
- follows from Adam Smith's "harmony of business" (in order for business to flourish employees, suppliers, and consumers must be satisfied)
3) A different philosophy of leadership
- "paradox of profits" -- profits best achieved by not aiming directly for them
- companies that only focus on short-term profitablity destroy themselves by alienating, exploiting, and angering the stakeholders
"Bureaucracy isn't going to solve our problems, but creative entrepreneurs."
- John Mackey, Reason.tv Interview
- false dichotomy: business = greedy, non-profit = caring
2) Business should be viewed as holistically interdependent
- follows from Adam Smith's "harmony of business" (in order for business to flourish employees, suppliers, and consumers must be satisfied)
3) A different philosophy of leadership
- "paradox of profits" -- profits best achieved by not aiming directly for them
- companies that only focus on short-term profitablity destroy themselves by alienating, exploiting, and angering the stakeholders
"Bureaucracy isn't going to solve our problems, but creative entrepreneurs."
- John Mackey, Reason.tv Interview
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Theology as Contextual
"Theology is contextual language--this is, defined by the human situations that gives bith to it. No one can write theology for all times, places and persons." -- Ibid., xi
"All theology is in some sense a "local theology," that is, a system of thought that emerges from the interplay of the gospel, the church, and culture...The church has a double-lense perspective: one eye in on the foundational traditions of the faith, while the other eye is on the community and its culture, which comprises all the factors that make up the way of life for the people."
--Bruce Fields, Introducing Black Theology: Three Crucial Questions for the Evangelical Church (conservative scholar & professor of Biblical Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
SOURCE: Anthony J. Carver, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience
"All theology is in some sense a "local theology," that is, a system of thought that emerges from the interplay of the gospel, the church, and culture...The church has a double-lense perspective: one eye in on the foundational traditions of the faith, while the other eye is on the community and its culture, which comprises all the factors that make up the way of life for the people."
--Bruce Fields, Introducing Black Theology: Three Crucial Questions for the Evangelical Church (conservative scholar & professor of Biblical Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
SOURCE: Anthony J. Carver, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience
Purpose
I was recently inspired by an interview with John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods) who said that his worldview and personal philosophy were informed by ideas he was exposed to in his early 20s. I don't know of any person in their 20s who has things "all figured out". There maybe a few precocious** individuals out there, but I'm certainly not one of them. This blog is a bank of all the ideas currently informing my value system. When someone has strung together a beautiful sentence that polishes and crowns an idea that resonates with me, its difficult for me not to let the author speak for him/herself. I like to clear a space, put them up on a podium and tell people, here, listen to this person. At the same time it's easier to hide behind other people's works than to risk being lambasted for your own. My own thoughts are still tender, so instead of positing my own ideas for consideration, I post others. Bon appetite!
**NOTE: Precocious was derived from the Latin word "praecox", which meant early ripening. It combines the prefix "prae", or pre, and the suffix "coquere", "to cook." A precocious child is, in the classic sense, precooked.
**LONG FOOTNOTE BEHIND NAME FOR BLOG:
Commonplace book (n.): an edited collection of striking passages noted in a single place for future reference.
“Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it… The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. . . . The era of the commonplace book reached its peak in the late Renaissance, although commonplacing as a practice probably began in the twelfth century and remained widespread among the Victorians. It disappeared long before the advent of the sound bite.”
—Robert Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000
**NOTE: Precocious was derived from the Latin word "praecox", which meant early ripening. It combines the prefix "prae", or pre, and the suffix "coquere", "to cook." A precocious child is, in the classic sense, precooked.
**LONG FOOTNOTE BEHIND NAME FOR BLOG:
Commonplace book (n.): an edited collection of striking passages noted in a single place for future reference.
“Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it… The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. . . . The era of the commonplace book reached its peak in the late Renaissance, although commonplacing as a practice probably began in the twelfth century and remained widespread among the Victorians. It disappeared long before the advent of the sound bite.”
—Robert Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000
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