We all perform balancing acts between self and family, individual and community, private desire and group expectation. Gay people in particular must break with the groupthink of church and society in order to live their own lives. (It’s why you sti...
I guess we are juste two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl," I say. Her eyes narrow. "I've heard that somewhere before." I smile and point at her briefly. "Pink Floyd. But it's the truth." "You think we're lost?" I tilt my head back a little and loo...
A gentleman of ambition is aware of the people he wishes to be associated with both socially and commercially. He knows that moving through different levels of society is akin to stepping through different rooms in an enormous house, each door leadin...
American literature has, since the time of the Puritans, featured the jeremiad as a prolonged complaint, a prophet's indictment of his society characteristic of work such as the muckrakers' novels or Allan Ginsberg's “Howl.” Doctorow struggles to...
Language is a bountiful gift and its usage, an elaboration of community and society, is a sacred work. Language and usage evolve over time: elements change, are reborn or forgotten, and while there are instances where transgression can become the sou...
The key to a good life is to balance the good and evil rather than trying to get rid of all evils because if you get rid of all your evils, you would also lose all your desire and ability to do good. In other words, you become neutral like neutron an...
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice should create in the discerning male reader a deeply rooted concupiscence for Elizabeth Bennet that springs not from her vivacity or from her wit but from her unerring instinct to follow the deeply moral directives...
The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways--when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about ...
Yesterday, Amelia and Kit came over for supper, and we took a blanket down to the beach afterward to watch the moon rise. Kit loves to do that, but she always falls asleep before it is fully rise, and I carry her home to Amelia's house. She is certai...
I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him...
What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there were better love stories around? Stories not riddled ...
All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new ...
Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. He called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste valuable foodstuffs on ...
In a rule-based society, we often choose efficiency over value, but, while rules-based governance systems may often serve well the values of fairness and representation, their seeming efficiency hides a deep and important flaw: We often rely on rules...
If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have real abso...
no one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For...
Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive eve...
Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’. W...
Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. ...
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor ...
It's basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.' 'And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you're one of the few.' 'That's about the size ...
