Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
I recently read a fascinating article in the New York Times about a new organization called Nuns and Nones. The goal of this organization is to bring together Catholic nuns (a group whose members are literally dying and not being replaced) and millennials who have no specific religious affiliation (the “nones”) to build relationships in
I recently finished Cal’s latest book, Digital Minimalism, and was thoroughly impressed by his core insight: we are mindlessly ceding our autonomy and personhood to technology. While everyone understands, and agrees that Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram are distractions, most people severely underestimate the damage these tools are doing to the core elements of self-hood. His
My previous post outlined the reasons why most of the modern personal development (PD) advice is generally terrible, which begs the question, how and where can we find good advice? By avoiding sources of advice that have the same weaknesses as the PD genre, we stumble on ancient wisdom. To give some background if you
The Ancient Wisdom Papers (name inspired by the Federalist Papers shortly after seeing the hit Broadway musical Hamilton) is a series of posts I’m writing to make the case that ancient wisdom should be a primary source of advice and counsel as you navigate the tricky, the ambiguous, the painful, and even the happy
This is a special guest post by new wife, Erica. I always bounce my own ideas for posts off of her before I publish them and she always has some valuable piece of insight that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own, so it’s always a treat to read her thoughts directly. As the
On September 2nd in Portland, Oregon, I finally married that girlfriend and later, fiancee, I keep mentioning. I will probably do an ancient wisdom post about marriage in not too long, but for now I wanted to share our program with you. We had a heartfelt Jewish wedding and it was important to us that
At the recommendation of a friend, I recently read the book “The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian World.” The author Rod Dreher argues that in the culture war between orthodox (small o) Christians and modern secular culture, Christians have already lost and that they should exercise “The Benedict Option” in order to faithfully
I finished watching the most recent season of House of Cards this past weekend. For those of you who are not addicted to the Netflix series, it is a show about Congressman Frank Underwood’s brutal climb to the presidency. He and his wife will do literally anything, including murder, to reach the top. Their ambition
David Brooks latest op-ed, titled “How to Leave a Mark on People,” brought up a question that I explored during my Judaism month: what makes a strong institution? An old friend of Brooks’ recently died and Brooks describes Joe as “a community-building guy — serving his town, organizing events like fishing derbies for bevies of kids, radiating
Our brains like to make stories that make our experiences coherent. For example, if you graduate college and get a job at a reputable company, your brain might lump you into the “young professional” bucket and the extent to which you are psychologically content will be determined by how closely your experiences align with that script.