Tag Archives: the meaning of life

The argument vs. pleasure

In the war against drug addiction, the strategy that gets the most press is taking the drug itself out of play, mostly through law enforcement. But until we succeed in ridding the world of such potent, life-wrecking pleasures, there should be more emphasis on learning to live in a world that has such temptations in […]

Death’s bad reputation.

Death has a very bad reputation in our culture. That sounds like a black humor joke since its badness seems not a matter of reputation at all but inherent in the phenomenon. But to a significant extent, death, or our experience of it, is indeed a social disease: how it is characterized is a large […]

Sharing the world with temptation

Among everybody’s New Year’s resolutions is surely turning over a new leaf on the opiate epidemic. 40 years into the War on Drugs the drugs are still winning. According to recent alarming coverage in this paper, they are on the offensive here on Cape Cod. In fact the campaign we’ve been waging on this major […]

Over-throwing a debilitating self-image [April 2009 / CCT]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The famous beginning of the Dickens novel about the French revolution applies well enough to our own times. What’s “best” about the current economic mess? For one thing, the refreshing outrage over obscene salaries and bonuses, being reminded that greed is not a […]

[ op-ed ] You can’t legislate a meaningful life

Drugs and alcohol are always in the news. These “substances,” as we call them, holding them at arm’s length, that we use and/or abuse — are ongoingly a troubling part of life. It’s hard to imagine a time when that won’t be true. Right now a big story locally is the Truro police chief’s OUI […]