Give It Time (Podcast)

We begin with a few recommendations on books and resources to use in understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy. Then we switch gears, and get into the meat of the podcast. It seems we become substantially different people every seven to ten years, more or less. We may feel self-conscious or uncomfortable about the things we said, wrote, or believed when we were younger. Is it normal to feel this way? And is it better to preserve a record of one’s thought, or to renounce beliefs one no longer holds? We discuss both sides of the question.

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Benjamin Franklin’s Levee: A Warning Against Concentrations Of Power

Readers may not be aware that one of the meanings of the word levee is an assemblage of visitors before a sovereign.  It was in this sense of the word that Benjamin Franklin composed a short but pointed commentary on an Old Testament parable from the Book of Job, which he entitled “The Levee.” 

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Flee From Those Who Drain You, And Seek Those Who Sustain You

There is a certain truculence that must figure in the disposition of an independent spirit.  He who strays from the approved paths through the forest must be prepared to swing his machete with vigor and persistence at the tangles of vegetation that obstruct his forward movement.  He will seek to test the boundaries of the enclosures that surround him, and will always be probing for opportunities to detect fractures and imperfections in their constructions.

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