politics
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Walt Whitman would’ve proudly marched in the Women’s March. 150 years ago, he wrote beautifully about why a democratic society is a feminist society.
We can see the future only in imagination, so we must continue to dream of freedom, peace, and justice for everyone. Meanwhile, we live in the present moment, with its tedium and terror, its fears and hopes, its incomprehensible losses and its transcendent joys. It is a moment in which it often feels as if nothing we do will make a difference, and yet so much depends on us.
Healing the Heart of Democracy – spectacular read.
As we face times of national and global, may we heed the timeless wisdom of James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1970 conversation about race and unity.
Fear binds people together. And fear disperses them. Courage inspires communities: the courage of an example — for courage is as contagious as fear.
Susan Sontag, born on this day in 1933, on moral courage and the power of principled resistance to injustice.
In these final days of a difficult year, Rebecca Solnit’s lucid manifesto for hope seems more nourishing than ever.
65 years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote brilliantly about how tyrants use loneliness as a weapon of oppression – insight of astonishing timeliness today.
Remember pioneering astrophysicist Vera Rubin (July 23, 1928–December 25, 2016), who confirmed the existence of dark matter and paved the way for modern women in science, with her electrifying 1996 commencement address, full of urgent wisdom for our time.
65 years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote brilliantly about loneliness as the common ground for terror and how tyrants use isolation as a weapon of oppression – wisdom that reads like commentary on our present situation.
Ann Hamilton on art and uncertainty – fantastic read.
Art is a language which anneals individuals to each other through experiences that are uniquely human, that demand connection at the level of making meaning. If we lose our ability to make meaning — that is, to interpret, to find form in the raw materials of life — then we stand in danger of having meaning made for us, a rupture between what is said and what is done, between false intentions and disastrous consequences.
From poet Ann Lauterbach, an absolutely beautiful, immensely insightful read on why we make art and how it makes us, particularly timely at this moment in culture.
The ever-brilliant and politically wakeful Rebecca Solnit has revised the Declaration of Independence to address our present political, social, and spiritual crisis. (Sent via email by Solnit herself.)
C.S. Lewis, born on this day in 1898, on equality and our core misconception about democracy – remarkably insightful and timely read written during humanity’s darkest period.
Full engagement in the movement called democracy requires no less of us than full engagement in the living of our own lives. We carry the past with us, so we must understand its legacy of deep darkness as well as strong light. We can see the future only in imagination, so we must continue to dream of freedom, peace, and justice for everyone. Meanwhile, we live in the present moment, with its tedium and terror, its fears and hopes, its incomprehensible losses and its transcendent joys. It is a moment in which it often feels as if nothing we do will make a difference, and yet so much depends on us.
Parker Palmer on healing the heart of democracy – remarkable, ennobling read tenfold more relevant and needed today than years ago when it was first written.
“Without power for the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind.”
Young Barack Obama on the search for a coherent self and how polarizing identity politics fragments our wholeness.