The Humanitas Forum

If you don’t carry a smartphone you’re old, odd, or eccentric.  You are hopelessly out of step with the times, according to conventional wisdom.  But is this wisdom?  Or, more precisely, convention without wisdom? 

Technology …

It may be the techies themselves who give us some of our better advice in the debate about the use of communications technology.  Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired magazine, has written that smartphones are the new “sugar and …

A current Wall Street Journal article draws attention to the disturbing and growing problem of cutting among teens.  Researchers indicate that between 5% and 10% of adolescents may participate in self-injury behaviors, cutting being the most prominent.

In …

Traffic jams and overloaded brains are the products of modern life.  And they are similar in significant ways.  Traffic slows when there are too many automobiles on a roadway, producing irritated drivers and causing accidents. Brain overload also …

Boredom is the all-encompassing name we give our discontent in this late modern age.  Boredom gained prominence as a social condition in the 18^th century when the word was invented, according to Patricia Meyer Spacks, author of Boredom: …

Two revolutions have radically altered the way families think about the meaning of the “home.”  The technological revolution currently extends and broadens the impact of the industrial revolution.  As a result, prevailing family practices create tension with a …

“Your mama don’t dance, And your daddy don’t rock and roll,” a line from the 1972 hit by Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina, offers insight into generational tensions at a critical time in American culture.  The rock ’n roll …

In popular culture we live and move and have our being.  This observation by theologian Robert Banks is hard to argue with since American society has very little of what has historically been called high culture.  In agreement, …

“‘They grow up so fast’ used to be a wistful sigh; now it’s a panicked cry for help from parents watching their 10-year-old daughters critique Miley Cyrus’s twerking and discuss oral sex with their friends.”

Thus runs the caption …

To the worm in horse radish, the whole world is horse radish, runs the old Yiddish proverb.  The same might be said of Americans and popular culture.  Since it’s all we know, it’s quite often invisible.

Unfortunately, …