Engaging the Culture, Changing the World

Category Archives: Culture

Fretting Again About Splintered Culture

January 17, 2012

I am still fretting about the fact that we don’t read or watch the same things. The same books? Are you kidding? The same TV shows? Not likely.

Are We Less Violent Than Ever?

January 4, 2012

Stephen Pinker, the Harvard professor who a few years ago famously and fiercely opposed anything having to do with “faith” in Harvard’s revision of its core curriculum, has written a new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The book has become much-quoted and much-reviewed and is worth our attention.

Saying Merry Christmas Downtown

December 19, 2011

I have become subversive. I have begun to say Merry Christmas in downtown Seattle, on airplanes, in the grocery store. I have no need whatsoever to be offensive to my Jewish friends, to Muslims, or to the ardent secularists who seek to control our public language.

Call It the Starbucks’ World

November 2, 2011

We live in a very splintered society. Call it the Starbucks’ world where everyone orders up exactly their own pleasure: “I’ll have a tall, no-whip mocha” or “give me a grande, whole-milk, no-foam latte.” It’s very cool, of course, but it is a whole new phenomenon that has sunk into our culture.