a blog by John P. Schuster
Like many a loving grandparent, I bought Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) for my grandson. This was a must-buy for this well-rounded 13 year old. MW3 sold $775 million in five days, you most likely heard, making it a mega event. It is well over a billion in sales now. What can we make of this? How can we put our arms around this amazing commercial success for a war game? For me, my relationship to[…]
Read moreWe live in a world of acquisition. We measure ourselves by our numbers, like they say in the ING television commercial showing people walking around with their net worth under their arms—clever ad, and surely sad. What if they instead walked around with their happiness, spiritual or emotional bank account numbers, the lasting wealth of life, under their arms? With acquisition being our culture’s mega-measure, is it any wonder that letting go is difficult for[…]
Read moreOur congressmen and women today are locked in idealogical warfare that resembles trench warfare in WWI: endless attacks and no movement. One of the transcendentalists who “hung out” with Emerson and Thoreau (I can picture that with these people) was the chaplain of the US Congress. His words need to be heeded for today: To live content with small means; to see elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy, not[…]
Read moreI will never forget this conversation. I was on a tennis court in northern Indiana with a friend of the family, back about 1990, when the arguments for the flawlessness of free markets over the stupidity of government were being won across the globe. Communism was collapsing and we all thought the markets were the best bet going. This friend, racket in hand, looked at me and gave me his basic formulation of the choice[…]
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