The Joy of Learning

We experience the joy of learning in those moments when a conundrum is resolved, when an unanswered question finds its solution, when we move from ignorance to knowledge or from confusion to clarity. Sometimes the moments are quite simple, like when we learned what 4+2 was as little children or when we learned why leaves [...]

Attention and questions

I’ve become a little bit obsessed with the idea of attentiveness lately because it’s becoming increasingly clear that we learn everything by imitation. But we can only imitate what we perceive and we can only perceive it when we attend to it.
So here’s the first thing about attention: it arises from questions. What you notice [...]

Plato on The Causes of the Economic Decline

What’s happening in the economy? I believe we are seeing the unravelling of an artificial economy that is being filtered down to the real economy that underlies it. Nobody knows where the real economy is, so there is no way to know how much farther the chaos has to go.
What do I mean by the [...]

Politics as usual?

Good citizens are knowledgeable and involved.  Ignorance has never made a great statesman, yet in this particular election season I find myself wishing to hear less and less from the candidates.  Don’t misunderstand me; I am under no illusion that they have said much at all.  I simply wish to hear less of the trite mumblings [...]