There exists a responsibility so fundamental to the integrity of our lives together that its absence renders society a mere machine—functioning, perhaps, but devoid of justice or soul. This responsibility is social stewardship. To steward is to care, not as an act of charity or sentimentality, but as the fulfillment…
Category: Social and Self-Help
Exploring things social, inspirational and motivational
The New Dharma Bums: Time, Mind, and the Last American Rebellion
So there they were again—ghosts of Neal and Allen and Jack—beat-eyed and barefoot in the halls of a digital inferno, walking soft along the edge of a Wi-Fi signal, and they were whispering from the stars: “Everything real is hidden in the margins, kid.” We’re living in a time strangled…
The Right Kind of Mistakes
You sit at the bar and watch the man at the other end. He is old. He drinks slowly. He does not look at anyone when he lifts the glass. He just drinks and thinks and waits. There is a way a man looks when he has lived his life…
The Rational Light of Cooperation
There are truths that lie so close to the heart of human experience that we pass them by daily without recognition. We step over them as one steps over a sleeping beggar in the street—not out of cruelty, but because the sight of them touches a nerve we cannot bear…
The World as We Have Always Known it – Ends with a Whimper
The bugs are gone. I noticed it years ago when I drove west through Kansas and never once had to smear a moth from my windshield. It was the kind of thing you don’t think about until it is missing. Then you think about it a lot. When I was…
Mass Society – How Will it Impact Humanity?
For most of human history, society has been an intricate mosaic of distinct communities—villages, towns, religious congregations, and localized cultures—that functioned as semi-autonomous entities. Each possessed its own customs, traditions, and guiding philosophies, shaping individuals through the shared values and collective memory of their particular community. However, with the advent…
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
There is a question we ask almost every child. We pose it lightly, with a smile, often in moments of calm or celebration, as if inviting them to enter the theater of possibility: What do you want to be when you grow up? At first glance, it seems innocent enough,…
The Company Store Never Closed
It’s easy to forget that America once ran on company stores and scrip. Coal miners in Appalachia were paid in vouchers redeemable only at their employer’s shop, and the prices were high enough to keep them permanently in debt. It was a tidy arrangement for the owners: keep your workforce…
Excuse Me, Are You Leaving or Moving In?
I was sitting in my car in a Target parking lot, watching a young woman do everything except leave. She had entered the car a full five minutes ago, and yet, there she sat—head down, thumb scrolling, completely oblivious to the line of hopeful motorists circling her like vultures around…
Mammon in the Modern Age: Who (or What) Do We Really Serve?
In today’s world, Mammon – once the symbol of wealth and material obsession – has taken on new and less obvious forms. It’s no longer just about chasing money. It’s about chasing more: the dream of success, the pull of consumer culture, the ever-present siren’s call of comfort and distraction….