The first of my two interviews with Duke political scientist and philosopher Ruth Grant occurred on Jan. 12, 2011. There was too much material from even that one interview to squeeze into my magazine article about her work, so here’s a transcript for your reading pleasure.
Showing posts with label Ruth Grant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ruth Grant. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Cramming goodness into a box
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The return on investment of doing the right thing
When you take the big leap to go into business for yourself as I did four years ago, you hear a lot about ROI– return on investment. Wikipedia defines this most capitalist of terms as “the ratio of money gained or lost (whether realized or unrealized) on an investment relative to the amount of money invested.”
That’s all very reasonable and rational, but I seriously wonder if we’ve hurt our culture — and a heck of a lot of people — by only defining ROI in terms of money. I just got a copy of Ruth Grant’s new book In Search of Goodness
There is the general sense that, in the drive for success and personal fulfillment, modern Western culture has paid too little attention to cultivating, educating, or cherishing goodness. Some take the financial crisis as evidence of that failure.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Owning Our Dark Side
Sometimes I think I sound like a wimp in political arguments. I’m forever talking about the mistakes and frailties of my own side, instead of slamming full speed into the weakness of my political opponents. Conducting an all-out assault on conservatives’ ideas and moral character would certainly feel sweet. Such a nasty-laden attack might even be effective, and yet most of the time I can’t bring myself to berserk the opposition. I’m finally beginning to figure out why.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The trajectory of moral progress
The thought for the day is from Duke Professor Ruth Grant: Read More.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Days 184 - 222: The Log
I haven’t fallen off the edge of the Earth, although it might look like it. I’ve been contemplating and working since I posted that I was Taking Time To Think about Tucson. Thus, my time has been made up of one part making money on unrelated assignments and one part mediating on the shooting and its aftermath.
I admit to being rather flummoxed by Tucson, especially by the resulting debate about the responsibility pundits and politicians and their rhetoric may or may not bear for the violence. I’ve already written one complete post, which still doesn’t seem quite right, and thus, hasn’t been published. Everything I produce feels decidedly, well, not good, and I don’t mean the quality of the writing. The impact of saying what I want to say would probably be most decidedly un-good, so I’m staying silent, at least for the moment.
Monday, November 15, 2010
The most fellow of fellow travelers
One of the things that has frustrated the heck out of me has been my inability to find anyone else who’s walking the goodness trail. I can find lots of people slogging through the muddy woods to find happiness or understand evil, but goodness seems to be a topic smeared with skunk. Today I’m pleased to report that I’ve just discovered Dr. Ruth Grant of Duke University who’s also wading knee-deep through the ethical and psychological confusion of goodness. (Hello, Dr. Grant!)
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