Uncategorized “Liberal civilizations…are better at sustaining meaningful lives than at commemorating the meaning of deaths” Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 January 2015 Liberal civilizations, which depend on the assertion of the individual face, are better at...
Uncategorized “Positive thinking fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 16 November 2014 Positive thinking fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal, slackening...
Uncategorized “The whole notion of pushing your physical limits…has attained a religiosity that’s as passionate as it is pervasive” Author Drew Kaplan Date 2 November 2014 The whole notion of pushing your physical limits — popularized by early Nike ads,...
Uncategorized “There is no longer a public self, even a rhetorical one. There are only lots of people protecting their privacy…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 24 October 2014 In the twentieth century, the golden age of public relations, publicity, meaning the attention...
Uncategorized “Secret government programs that pry into people’s private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular” Author Drew Kaplan Date 23 October 2014 Secret government programs that pry into people’s private affairs are bound up with ideas...
Uncategorized “All writing used to be, in a very real sense, secret, except to the few who knew how to read” Author Drew Kaplan Date 5 October 2014 E-mail isn’t that different from mail. The real divide, historically, isn’t digital; it’s literary....
Uncategorized “Even in mundane regions of everyday life, endings are more problematic than beginnings” Author Drew Kaplan Date 14 September 2014 Even in mundane regions of everyday life, endings are more problematic than beginnings. The...
Uncategorized “…the fifth generation of American Jews…is so far removed from the world of ‘Fiddler’ as to inhabit a different universe” Author Drew Kaplan Date 10 September 2014 Our society has changed so dramatically in the last century, including in attitudes toward...
Uncategorized Difficulties of being a Funeral Director Author Drew Kaplan Date 9 September 2014 …day after day, a mortuary worker must speak with families whom he or she...
Uncategorized “We were nostalgic for yesterday’s prognostications: You could say that we succumbed to prognostalgia” Author Drew Kaplan Date 23 July 2014 …by the ’70s and ’80s, we were just as interested in gazing longingly behind...