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 …

“What culture has ever attempted to see to it that no ego is hurt?” was written in 1966 by the sociologist Philip Rieff. 

But it is a line fitting for “The Coddling of the American Mind,” recently published …

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 …

Everyone wants a good, meaningful, and productive life.  Many people think that is just what we have in contemporary American culture.  “Not so,” according to psychologist Barry Schwartz.  If it were true, we would not be experiencing …

As the media and much of the American public celebrate the transition of Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner, there is an unreported down side to the realities of “gender fluidity.”  Only a few journals, blogs and websites have discussed …

David Brooks has been described as a “cultural Jew.”  But it would be a mistake to think that this New York Times columnist is just another secular journalist.  In articles, speeches, interviews and a recent book, Brooks describes …

“Dorm Brothel” was published in Christianity Today in 2005.  In this article, Vigen Guroian provided a small window into the sexual chaos on American campuses that Tom Wolfe’s novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, had chronicled in greater detail …

Humpty Dumpty is alive and well in contemporary culture.  His view of language has escaped the pages of Alice in Wonderland and shapes the most important debates of our day.  “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, …

G.K. Chesterton wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”  This pithy observation can serve as a helpful starting point for examining how well contemporary Christianity fares …