Image by Getty Images via Daylife there are some countries that are complaining about the motives that the impute to the US with respect to the military forces engaged in relief operations in Haiti. Most of those countries are not in a position to provide significant humanitarian relief to the area in that they are […]
Tag: psychology
Reflecting on Erich Fromm’s “To Have or To Be”
Erich Fromm is an influential social philosopher and prolific writer, whose life work offers a provocative synthesis of Western capitalism, Marxist humanism and socialist rational planning. He defines two modes of being: “to have” and ” to be”, and examines the characteristics and values of lives led in each mode with respect to materialism, politics, […]
Leadership: Believing in others as a way of life
Leadership as a belief in others there are two models of leadership that I am directly familiar with. The first is the leadership quality model which treats leadership as a quality manifested by the leader, often composed of subordinate virtues like honesty, loyalty, competence, empathy. In this sense leadership could be considered a state of […]
AP trying to do the math
The AP assigns 11 staff writers to immediately fact check Palin’s book. They apparently haven’t yet read Obama’s book, which precludes them from asking him why he won’t admit that it was written by Bill Ayers
Reflecting on the ancient philosophers and their practice
Hadot’s thesis is that the ancient Greek philosophers understood philosophy to be a love of wisdom, He placed philosophers in a state of conscious striving, between the already realized perfect wisdom of the gods and the masses of unconscious humankind, unaware or unconcerned with arête (excellence). He examined how four schools and two refinements answered […]
Ask a Pakistani why Afghanistan matters
If you want to know, ask somebody: (ht: smallwarsjournal) Afghanistan: Seven Fundamental Questions by Major Mehar Omar Khan I know we live in a world that is real and is moved by minds – thinking, manipulating, conniving, conspiring, calculating and masquerading minds. Our world therefore seldom has a place for ‘sentiments’ – pure, sincere, honest […]
A reflection on “intentional living”
Consider Socrates’ choice to join the army and constrain himself to the dicispline and regulations of the army in defense of Athens. he made a choice to submit to those constraints because he made a principled value judgment that it was worth giving up some of his freedom and comfort in support of a […]
Reflecting on criticism and “Silent Philosophy”
Silent Philosophy The world is full of critics – there has never been a shortage of critics! If you ever try to do something new you will definitely attract critics. The words of critics can take away all our inspiration and leave us wondering how to respond. However, if we can respond with silence, we […]
A reflection on action research “storytelling”
What follows is a 1st person, stream of consciousness reflection written to my mentor & committee chair. I describe what it was like to record a 10 min video “telling the story” of some preliminary findings emerging from my action research cycles into curriculum and adult learning. The video is hosted at YouTube. It […]
Reflections on myself as an adult learner
Who am I as an adult learner: I am framing the answer within the context of my “Big 5” (Strelecky, 2007). The “Big 5” focus my thoughts about self, purpose, mission and values. In Strelecky’s work, the Big 5 are 5 things you want to accomplish in your life. My “Big 5” are all states […]