Elected representatives are told, in increasingly unsympathetic terms, to “do better.”  But, do better at what exactly?

Is the ultimate concern of the modern secular state truly no-strings-attached liberty for all?  If so, who is stepping up and when?  The United States has been attempting to reconcile radical individualism with binding notions of the common good for some time now, with very mixed results.  Perhaps Western governments should resign themselves to being perpetual arbiters of this great balancing act, and disregard altogether the brash, self-made freedom project?  Maybe focus instead on economic management, repair a few local roads and leave it at that.  Some, mostly in America, subscribe to the totality of God’s judgment, which the sooner we commune with, the easier things will be.

All the sound and fury, the mighty institutions toiling away at such vast issues, and yet still no knock-down, rational consensus on the purpose of democracy, no sensible explanation for why it deserves our loyalty.

Worse, despite stupendous material achievements, the time and immense energy spent on getting to where we have got – wherever that is – the citizens of late-capitalist Western society remain put upon, stressed out, hapless, jaded, more disillusioned and restless than ever at being simultaneously encouraged and crushed by the urgency and futility of modern existence.  Polarized political partisanship, massive national debt and the dead hand of bureaucracy, personal unprocessed rage and the tyranny of work and crushing daily routine.  Regardless of the organized effort, those at the helm seem incapable of affecting meaningful change or of articulating a larger story to justify the exhausting odyssey, the blood and shrapnel, the hate, the self-pity, the egotism.

Something has got to give.

This site reflects some of my thinking on the extent and nature of this struggle. Philosophy. Religion. Economics. Politics. Newspaper articles and a blog. There is also some stuff on the book I am working on.

I have a consulting business which pays the bills (see the “about us” page). Should you wish to contact in tempore, please send me an email.