Please, if it’s not too damn much trouble, can you tell me what’s being done in my name?

Existentialist philosophy isn’t about bringing despair and angst into our lives, it’s about discovering our inner freedom, explains the author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne

In celebration of Ian Fleming’s birthday, espionage tales from David Kamp, Anthony Lane, and others.

America’s national parks are overrun with cars and visitors – what happened to the spirit of wilderness preservation?

The problem isn’t new….

A brilliant American financier and his exotic wife build a lavish mansion in the jungles of Costa Rica, set up a wildlife preserve, and appear to slowly, steadily lose their minds. A spiral of handguns, angry locals, armed guards, uncut diamonds, abduction plots, and a bedroom blazing with 550 Tiffany lamps ends with a body and a compelling mystery: Did John Felix Bender die by his own hand? Or did Ann Bender kill him to escape their crumbling dream?

The comments are also worth reading….

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Imagine that you’re a guest at a dinner party and you’re eating a delicious beef stew. It’s so delicious, in fact, that you ask your host for the recipe. Flattered, she replies, “The secret is in the meat: You need to start out with three pounds of well-marinated golden retriever.” Your reaction to that story—the repulsion—is an example of carnism. Carnism is the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals. It’s a dominant system that’s institutionalized and structural in America and abroad. People tend to assume it’s only vegans and vegetarians who bring their beliefs to the dinner table. But the fact is that most people in America, for example, eat pigs and not dogs exactly because they do have a belief system; it’s just that their belief system has been invisible.

Well…since my Golden Retriever, Aspen, is a loved one of the family, I am not inclined to consider eating her. On the other hand, I am very aware that other cultures do eat dogs and I’ve seen the outdoor food markets in China where just about anything living is sold for food, including cats—nice fat meowing kitties longingly eyeing their potential buyers from their cages. It was like walking through a pet shop—except the frogs, snakes and four legged mammals of all types weren’t being sold for their qualities as family companions. As a consequence, I do not think it is correct to suggest that the belief system in “invisible.” It’s right in front of you if you look. And it’s simply a culturally influenced matter of choice. I have been conditioned to choose to eat fish, cow, chicken, buffalo, and pig and not dog or cat or muskrat. The differences in attitude reflect multiculturalism, something we are constantly being told to revere.

Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none.