Endurance. Perseverance. Persistence. Inner strength. Each of these virtues draws praise in an era that worships the rugged individual who conquers circumstance with dogged will and fortune (but mostly dogged will). Three months after the US presidential inauguration, the shine of “resistance” has dulled. So has the popular hope that we can abbreviate the next four to […]
Normalization is normal after all
Two words I’ve heard plenty of in the last few months: resistance and normalization. Advocates advise the public to resist the agenda of the new administration. Commentators worry that the administration’s unusual tactics (and more overt expressions of the same old tactics) might reset the typical center and become the US’ new normal. But humans […]
A poetic break
My latest literary companion, Umair Muhammad’s Confronting Injustice, features a sentence that was so arresting that I had to look up both the source and its author. (Get Confronting Injustice the way I did, via Haymarket Books.) Eduardo Galeano wrote through the second half of the 20th Century about the political struggles of his native Uruguay. […]
Pluralism and Individualism: Links and Videos
Just in time for your weekend viewing: links and videos on leadership, space negotiation, and consumerism in contemporary plural societies. 1. Nilofer Merchant, in Time and Gawker columns on board-level diversity at social technology companies: Innovation is a direct result of openness to new ideas. The key is to design for differences of perspective and […]
