on a simplifying assumption, known as reductionism, which approaches nature as a collection of tiny parts to investigate. This methodology has been resoundingly effective in many fields of inquiry, leading to some of our greatest advances in science and technology. Without it, most of the benefits of our modern world would not exist—no electrical grids, no airplanes, no antibiotics, no internet. However, over the centuries, many scientists and engineers have been so swept up by the success of their enterprise that they have frequently mistaken this assumption for reality—even when advances in scientific research uncover its limitations. When James Watson and Francis Cri... posted on Sep 12 2021 (4,715 reads)

to questioning “Why not me”?  “The only real disability is a closed mind” she now says, and reminds us that we are all impaired at some level.  “I feel that for every tangible I have lost, I've gained a lot of intangibles, but society has no yardstick to judge these, because collectively as a society we don’t yet know much about the value of intangibles.” From feeling that she “deserved” and had earned all her success in her teen years, her vision has shifted to one of unearned grace. “I feel really blessed. *Everything* that comes your way is a blessing. I take it as that,” she now says.  ... posted on Sep 18 2021 (4,536 reads)

it’s a matter of responsibility toward them; who would protect the women once they have participated in dialogue? WOMEN WAGE PEACE SN: What impact has WWP had? What should be its next steps? HAA: There are two contexts to look at when we speak of impact. The first is the Israeli context. These women have changed the discourse about war and peace, and about women’s involvement in peacebuilding. When it comes to rallying huge numbers, they’ve also been much more successful than any other organisation I’ve worked with or studied, and this is because they have not used language that shuts out any groups, and because they are talking a new language that is... posted on Sep 22 2021 (3,375 reads)

from the center. I’m not saying that concentrations of capital and money and corporate power and governments are the center—but they are actually the center and nexus of power right now. But that’s not where change comes from. It always comes from the outside in. What we know is those institutions—basically, they may be getting richer, but they’re failing. They’re failing, failing, failing, failing. We can’t equate the accumulation of capital with success. If we do, then we’re thinking like they do. I may be digressing here, but that’s why you see  Bayer, Monsanto, Cargill, ADM, General Mills, and these companies saying, &ldquo... posted on Sep 29 2021 (2,957 reads)

of all things, even the deepest-cutting and most all-consuming of states: I can hardly believe that relief from the anguish of these past months is here to stay, but so far it does feel like a true change of mood — or rather, a change of being where I can stand alone. Echoing Virginia Woolf’s memorable insight into writing and self-doubt — the same self-doubt with which Steinbeck’s diary is strewn — Sarton considers the measure of success in creative work: So much of my life here is precarious. I cannot always believe even in my work. But I have come in these last days to feel again the validity of my struggle here, that i... posted on Nov 4 2021 (4,963 reads)

Babelian world of difference can a truly radical set of possibilities become alive. This is not to argue that translators who come from similar backgrounds will not be able to engage in the task of translation in ways that wrestle with the creative resistance entailed in such a task. But the field must remain open to whoever is called to the task. Literary translation is often a matter of happy accidents and passionate engagements. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) became a runaway success in the United Kingdom and United States in 2016, when Deborah Smith, who had been learning Korean for only six years, embarked on the task. There have been critiques of her translation, but... posted on Nov 23 2021 (3,436 reads)

control of the garden, anyway, so why not yield to the mystery of transformation? I have seen a sixty-three-year-old woman with pneumonia come back to health dead-heading white cosmos hour after hour to provide fresh flowers for the zendo altar. And I’ve witnessed an unhappy six-year-old hellion become a gallant angel by rescuing and caring for a newt about to be mangled by the garden lawn mower. We live in a nonrepeating universe, a world where we learn as much from failure as from success. Corn-gobbling blue jays and other garden pests serve as fine teachers and so do failed ‘Easter Egg’ radishes, crimson, white, and dark purple, laid out in worm-eaten decrepitude o... posted on Nov 19 2021 (5,204 reads)

the end of Craig Foster’s 2020 documentary film My Octopus Teacher, he shows his son the wonders of nature along the shore and in the sea. He says the most important thing to learn is a gentleness that thousands of hours in nature can teach a child. The word ‘gentleness’ suddenly stood out and could well be the best description of the film. It is a word rarely used today. One is more likely to hear the words ‘success’, ‘ambition’ or ‘being tough’ in an ungiving world. Today, the word gentleness is more likely to be used as a quality to sell face cream, pampers or bed sheets rather than as a spiritual value. Once a quality to be n... posted on Dec 22 2021 (5,052 reads)

2021 dissolves into a new year, KarunaVirus editors reflect on what the past year of witnessing everyday people choose love over fear have taught us. Unsung Heroes Are Right Under Our Noses We are taught to look at the stage to see displays of greatness, but it's resoundingly clear that heroes can often be found among the most ordinary, everyday situations. If you walk into a Walmart late at night, you may just run into a high school principal stocking shelves. In South Carolina, school principal Henry Darby works the night shift after full school days and donates his earnings to his struggling students. Go for an early morning run at the park, and you might meet a ... posted on Jan 4 2022 (14,818 reads)

to create violence. They also carried  banners, but theirs were hung on heavy clubs that could double as weapons.     When I take my life seriously  When I look directly at what’s going on  When I know that the future doesn’t change itself  That I must act    I will be a Ukrainian    “Protest that endures” Wendell Berry said,” is moved by a hope far more modest that that of public  success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed  by acquiescence.”     When I grow up and am known as a Ukra... posted on Mar 4 2022 (11,295 reads)

power, like capacity to manifest, like understanding we have a divine appointment, like accessing the divine feminine, both for men and women. That all of those capacities, those extraordinary, we call them, because we think they’re not available to everyone, except they are, those capacities have as much credibility and clout as strategic planning, as being good at numbers, as being a great athlete, as what we’ve defined, in the patriarchy, as the high bars that are what we call success. That these other qualities—that are often demoted to “lesser than,” or we’re not so sure about them, or they’re too woo-woo—that they get the same clout... posted on Mar 12 2022 (2,991 reads)

what you have to put on that canvas, to complete that small canvas versus a big one. There’s something about that sense of knowing when you love what you do and you’re involved in what it is you are doing, and something is growing through what the work you’re doing, you do really have a sense of losing track of time. So many people have been ambitious and pushed to do something. I remember one person I did quote in something I wrote about: he’d climbed a ladder for success, and then, when he got to the top, he realized he had put the ladder against the wrong wall. That, yes, he reached the top of the ladder, and it was successful, but it didn’t have meanin... posted on May 9 2022 (3,985 reads)

to ‘follow one’s heart’. I was very curious to know what it felt like. I was certain it would be extraordinary, with an air of mystery. Something lofty and noble, a higher purpose. It would be a dramatic turning point after which all the pieces of the puzzle would fall neatly in place. I would no longer feel torn, there would be no guilt or self-doubt, no more bad decisions, and no future-anxiety. I was convinced it would bring clarity and peace, joy, fulfillment and perhaps, success. All the good stuff. I finally found my calling around my forty-second birthday, but it wasn’t quite what I had imagined. Just when I'd begun to feel a sense of security and ... posted on Jul 13 2022 (3,930 reads)

of the four fingers with their thumbs arriving at twelve and its multiple, 60. The quartz-crystal clock, invented in 1928 by WA Marrison, changed yet again how time was measured. Quartz crystals can vibrate at millions of times a second, allowing time to be measured up to a millionth of a second. Races at the Olympics can be won by one millisecond. This ability to manage time gave birth to the desire for speed. Until recently, when Covid slowed things down, speed was the measure of success. Cars are marketed for the speeds they can reach and how quickly. We design faster air travel, bullet trains, speed boats. Employees are stressed with the need to meet deadlines. Multiple Choi... posted on Aug 4 2022 (3,803 reads)

for the stress of a Wall Street job and single decisions that move billions. Humans evolved as collective hunter-gatherers who cohabitate, not hyper–individualized competitors locked away in steel skyscrapers. And the psyche was not designed to handle a single entire life and all its inevitable blemishes compared with billions of people’s photoshopped images cherry-picked to share only their happiest milliseconds. Moreover, all of that roughly describes what many consider “success” and says nothing about poverty, racism, or sexism—three cancers of the modern Western world with serious health impacts that are thoroughly documented but seldom discussed. For ex... posted on Oct 2 2022 (6,154 reads)

the people themselves. In the book, she detailed the singular role of music in Native American culture, teleologically distinct from the spiritual function it served in early Western culture: The radical difference between the musical custom of the Indian and our own race is that, originally, the Indians used song as a means of accomplishing definite results. Singing was not a trivial matter, like the flute-playing of the young men. It was used in treating the sick, in securing success in war and the hunt, and in every undertaking which the Indian felt was beyond his power as an individual. An Indian said, “If a man is to do something more than human he must have more ... posted on Nov 10 2022 (3,560 reads)

do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . . And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves. Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions g... posted on Feb 11 2023 (50,225 reads)

And I don’t have to tell you much about the genocide and the conditions in Eastern Europe during the war and particularly of the Jewish population under the Nazi occupation. But here’s what I will say, and this may seem strange, but I just am compelled to say it. I’m often asked why is it that a person like myself, a Jewish infant growing under really life-threatening, not growing up, but spending my first year under life-threatening, unbearable circumstances can become a successful doctor and do OK, whereas other people—for example, Indigenous Canadians here in Canada—so often the families are mired in addiction and suicidal events and mental illness and v... posted on Feb 26 2023 (7,126 reads)

for their community. We want there to be 1,000 farms like Soul Fire, not replicants of Soul Fire. TNFE: That seems to be a radical model, insofar as it’s more interested in circulating value than in extracting it. Penniman: Exactly, or just the capitalist idea. If I were to tell you that year one, we had 25 CSA members, and then year two, 50, and then 100, and then 75, you would think, ‘What happened? What went wrong?’ But to us that might be a success story. That might be because we found our K value, we found our limit, and so we needed to pull back to something sustainable so that we could be healthy as individuals—as a farm team&md... posted on May 13 2023 (1,763 reads)

a skill that does not require any special talent. Given proper instruction, anyone of sound mind can learn to draw. It’s not as difficult as learning to read, for example, but, as with reading, you must have effective instruction. After all, everything you need to know in order to draw something is right there in front of your eyes. You just have to know how to see it. For lower‐income students, who too often experience failure in school, becoming skillful in drawing can give them a success in school that is meaningful and highly admired among their peers. Even little kids admire drawing skills. I think it would be helpful in that way. Also, I think that in our highly verbal, seq... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,613 reads)