limits 48

It is encouraging to see how some young people have embraced limits on energy consumption. But the underlying disease of rapacious desire has not been cured. No, this tradeoff only…

Even Rosa the respectable sociologist entertains the possibility that if we relearned how to listen, the mountains might speak. Perhaps they too have their spirits, mute but waiting.

In an excerpt from her book The Spacious Life, Ashley Hales redefines limits as an expression of love and a doorway into rest.

What about Lasch’s analysis of limits? I have in mind two contemporary cultural developments, the rise of technocracy and our extreme aversion to risk, that seem to challenge certain aspects…

James Howard Kunstler follows the first commandment handed down to all of us at birth: “Thou shalt not be dull.”

Being wealthy doesn’t make Chouinard a better representative of the values that he shares with Berry, but recognizing that Berry is not alone and that these values can be brought…

I’m inclined to believe that both the species and individuals, that both mankind in general and you and I in particular, benefit from the occasional reality check..

The Prior of the Upstate New York Abbey where I work often describes his cloistered life by using the phrase “living within a sonnet.” A poet himself, he’s naturally attuned…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This past weekend, I took a group of students up to the annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salina, KS. I do this…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Paul Schrader, the famed screenwriter and director, does not make subtle films. His latest movie, First Reformed--the story of a depressed, emotionally exhausted, and ultimately…

By seeking to protect and restore natural beauty, create lovely urban design, bring art into our communities and support local sustainable agriculture and healthy fish and wildlife populations, we can…

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.--Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France On…

We like to flatter ourselves that we live in extraordinary times.  Every four years, for example, we are told that this presidential election is “the most important of our life.”  Those of…

Earlier this year, after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, I reflected on the conversations that may or may not ensue from the changing of a facebook profile picture.  As my facebook…

Efficiency is a false god.

I recently had a chance to watch the film The Giver. Sometimes we get films early, sometimes late, sometimes at the same time as they are released in the United…

Philadelphia, PA The idea and practice of limited government begins with Christianity.  Pagan antiquity could not imagine such a thing, because there was no distinction between religion and governance.  …

“To the famous Archimedean boast:  ‘Give me whereon to stand and I will move the world.’.  Rabelais answers: ‘I move with my ship; and the waves of the world give…

[This post is adapted with permission from “Making Places: The Cosmopolitan Temptation,” an essay in the anthology Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America, edited by…

This is my contribution to ISI’s symposium, Conservatism: What’s Wrong with it and How Can We Make it Right? In one sense, there is nothing wrong with conservatism. The principles…

Hidden Springs, VA. Recently Ross Douthat commented on Rod Dreher’s new book in a column devoted to the rising incidence of suicide and the problem of loneliness. In a follow-up…

Hidden Springs Lane, VA. Sprint is running a new ad pushing the merits of its data plan. While it might be a mistake to make too much of an ad,…

Our dwelling place is the state not of nature but of culture.

The word “culture” readily falls from our lips, but what appears on first glance to be a clear-cut notion becomes much more complex as soon as we attempt to define…