Sleepwalking into the Future? II

Is there a European memory creating a sense of belonging and encouraging civic participation?

This is the prepared text of a contribution to a conference of the Europe for Citizens Forum in Brussels on January 28th, 2014.

The title of this discussion employs the metaphors that describe walking into the calamity of WWI, as framing both the ways Europeans remember the 20th century, and even ...

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Sleepwalking into the Future? II

Don’t Worry… Be Happy!

The dark underside of positive psychology

Over the last decade the field of positive psychology has become a burgeoning area of research within academic psychology. Well known figures in positive psychology include Martin Seligman (developer of the well known learned helplessness model of depression and past president of the American Psychological Association), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (creator of ...

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Don’t Worry… Be Happy!

When the Pope “Drops the F-Bomb”

Meditations on media, society, and the philosophy of language

On March 3, 2014, a stream of troubling, breaking news about Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine was interrupted by another event, this time originating in the Vatican, which similarly reached prominence in journalistic organs. This event, however, was not a child abuse scandal, papal resignation, or other such event that ...

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When the Pope “Drops the F-Bomb”

Christine’s Story: Poverty and Paperwork

"I was the youngest of nineteen children, born in a cramped city apartment, with the assistance of an undocumented midwife.” So said Christine, the sixty-year-old woman I met five years ago in my capacity as a social worker. Though Christine is a citizen who has lived in the United States ...
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Rebooting RoboCop

Comparing 2014 with 1987

As someone who grew up with Paul Verhoeven's original 1987 RoboCop, I can't help but feel the dystopic and critical social commentary of the movie was lost in its reboot. What was once a critical and distopic film exploring the dangers of unchecked corporate power has become a soft endorsement ...

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Rebooting RoboCop