Tag: limits

It is encouraging to see how some young people have embraced limits on energy consumption. But the underlying disease of rapacious desire has not been cured. No, this tradeoff only exchanges one delusion of grandeur for another. It swaps external limitlessness for internal limitlessness.

Even Rosa the respectable sociologist entertains the possibility that if we relearned how to listen, the mountains might speak. Perhaps they too have their spirits, mute but waiting.

What about Lasch’s analysis of limits? I have in mind two contemporary cultural developments, the rise of technocracy and our extreme aversion to risk, that seem to challenge certain aspects of Lasch’s thinking.

James Howard Kunstler follows the first commandment handed down to all of us at birth: “Thou shalt not be dull.”

Being wealthy doesn’t make Chouinard a better representative of the values that he shares with Berry, but recognizing that Berry is not alone and that these values can be brought into the wider world, if imperfectly, makes their embrace of limits and simplicity more compelling and their approach to life seem more possible for others.

I’m inclined to believe that both the species and individuals, that both mankind in general and you and I in particular, benefit from the occasional reality check..

The Prior of the Upstate New York Abbey where I work often describes his cloistered life by using the phrase “living within a sonnet.”...

This past weekend, I took a group of students up to the annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salina, KS. I...

Paul Schrader, the famed screenwriter and director, does not make subtle films. His latest movie, First Reformed--the story of a depressed, emotionally exhausted, and...