In “No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative,” Edgar S. Cahn, a distinguished legal scholar and social innovator, introduces a transformative approach to social services and community engagement through the concept of “co-production.” This concept challenges traditional service delivery models by positioning recipients as active partners rather than passive beneficiaries,…
Category: Social and Self-Help
Exploring things social, inspirational and motivational
On the Moral Obligation of Critical Thinking
There are few qualities more neglected, and yet more urgently needed, than the habit of critical thinking. Our lives are flooded with information and noise; opinions are as countless as grains of sand, and certainty is more readily sold than truth. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to examine…
How We Do and Should Value a Person
How do we value a person? How should we value a person? The first question concerns what is, the second what ought to be. But to ask them together suggests a hidden third: what is our duty in the face of this question? It is not enough to analyze. The…
“Forgiving Humanity” by Peter Russell – a review
There’s a quiet boldness to Peter Russell’s Forgiving Humanity, the kind that doesn’t shout but rather invites you to sit down, exhale, and consider—for just a moment—the possibility that we’ve been asking the wrong questions all along. In an age bloated with judgment, outrage, and unrelenting cynicism, Russell offers something…
Will We Come Together Again?
The Great Depression taught Americans many things, but one lesson really stands out, not in the numbers or charts, but in the stories that passed from grandparents to grandchildren around dinner tables and porches. It’s the story of people who had very little, and yet gave anyway; of soup kitchens…
Flotsam; the remains of a shipwrecked life
The sea does not care. It takes what it wants and leaves the rest to drift. A man can build something strong, something that holds against the wind and the waves, but one good storm can take it all away. Then he is left with what floats; broken beams, a…
The Weight of Too Much
No one complains about having enough. Enough food, enough money, enough security; these are the markers of a good life. But what happens when “enough” turns into too much? When abundance, instead of liberating us, traps us? We don’t often think of excess as a burden. If anything, modern consumer…
“Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism,” by Yanis Varoufakis – a review
In “Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism,” Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and renowned economist, presents a head-turning thesis: capitalism, as we have known it, is dead, replaced by a more insidious system he terms “techno-feudalism.” In this new order, technological behemoths have assumed the role of feudal lords, wielding…
The Lonely Crowd and White Collar: A Mirror to the American Soul
David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd and C. Wright Mills’ White Collar sit on the shelf like a pair of old photographs—faded, perhaps, but still revealing. They capture America at a moment when the country had stepped into its new postwar prosperity, blinking at the bright lights of mass media, corporate…
Why Economic Collapse Might Be Just What We Need to Survive – Long-Term
Economic collapse is a phrase that brings to mind images of breadlines, shuttered factories, and desperate faces. It is spoken of as a catastrophe, a specter that must be avoided at all costs. But history has shown that collapse, while painful, is often the necessary breaking point before something better…