Tag: becoming
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Becoming a Professional
Previously, in “Becoming a Person,” I wrote, with no great originality: Incidentally, coherent personhood has been the assumption behind rational government (all but Louis XIV’s Le etat, c’est moi), especially republican democracy. Voting, opinion polls, representation, and constitutions all depend on the assumption that citizens are coherent persons. The same goes, of course, for all…
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Becoming a Person
The New York Times week in review, blessedly (and quoting the fabulous journal The New Atlantis), quotes William James on attention this week. The point, naturally, is yet another condemnation of our relentlessly multitasking, over-busy mental society. But there is so much more in this pregnant piece: To James, steady attention was thus the default…
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Becoming a Generation
My generation continues to … flounder. Our biggest news lately was the Iowa caucus, when Barack Obama made a surprising showing, which the exit polls attributed to the youth vote—students had come back early to their campuses to caucus. The next day, as the whole show moved to New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton started making her…