Essays
Philosophical and Political
The Pursuit of Happiness & Its Obstacles – Part 4
Signs of Failure Two phenomena of this 21st century American moment stand out as exemplary of what our valueless values have wrought. I consider them the natural effusion of materialistically centered culture aided by the expediency and opportunism that reside so...
The Pursuit of Happiness & Its Obstacles – Part 3
Happiness and Economism Let’s be more specific about the sources of our unhappiness. Since I identify the American economic obsession as the central (but not sole) factor leading to societal unhappiness and pathology, I begin with it. I will make it clear that I...
The Pursuit of Happiness & Its Obstacles – Part 2
Happiness & Plutocracy I used for dramatic example the modernized expression of terrorism, a method which itself is nothing new, because, despite being a relatively minor national security problem even when ugly and tragic, it preoccupies people and has been...
The Pursuit of Happiness & Its Obstacles – Part 1
Introduction: Happiness and Economics If Aristotle was right that the good for humans—our best kind of life—consists in the pursuit and realization of happiness (a virtuous, a flourishing life), we are left to determine what that means. Each person somehow arrives at...
February in Death Valley
Twig and I just returned from a couple mile walk into what I call the foothills of the Valley’s eastside, a landscape of strangely configured, erosionally contoured, multi-earth-toned color. I know too few words to describe what isn’t beautiful in Nature, or rather...
February Travels
Here I am in Death Valley, along with a million others. Covid has driven hordes of people to the outdoors and this weekend includes Valentine’s Day so I imagine that romance plus cabin fever/boredom has made the crowd even denser than it would have been also, of...