Culture

I Love Coffee, and By That Very Fact, The World

Thomas Merton once wrote: “I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.” This statement is at once whimsical and puzzling.  How does a fondness for pale ale stray into a confession of love for the world?  Perhaps Merton suggests a fundamental relationship between the mundane and the sublime, the miniscule and the cosmical.  Ask a brewer […]

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Simplicity: Sanity in Mad Times

I meet clients who come to therapy when they are hanging by a thread.  Their careers are unforgiving, academic pressures unrelenting. Parents are walloped by the rigours of child-rearing; others are worn thin caring for aging parents. Responsibilities multiply, but the hours remain few. Despite a profusion of duties, they are weighed down by expectations that

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The End of Summer: How the Climate Crisis Upends the Cheery Season

On my way to work one morning in late April, I noticed that my surroundings were tinged in amber. The sky was a chalky gray and the sunlight was diffuse and faint, a hue that reminded me of previous summers when smoke blotted out the sun and shrouded Vancouver, where I have lived for over

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The Proximity of Pain: The Role of Pleasure in Suffering

The premise of classic utilitarian philosophy rests on the fundamental status of pleasure and pain, each denoted as the countervailing opposites of experience.  Pain is inherently bad and pleasure inherently good; the course of moral conduct aims to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest number of sentient subjects.  Modern proponents of act utilitarianism

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Is Critical-Mindedness Good for Mental Health?

Is Critical Mindedness Good for Mental Health?               Being a curmudgeon is more than a matter of disposition: it is a practiced art.  Every social gathering bound by pleasantries and blandishments can do with a spicy dose of disruption.  Is this the menacing habit of self-appointed contrarians, who cannot feel their own weight and

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