(with apologies to Mr. Lawrence “Yogi” Berra) “I didn’t really say everything I said,” Yogi famously retorted, upon being asked if the many koan-like dictums with which his name has become associated were his own invention. Among the more familiar: “When you get to the fork in the road, take it” and “Baseball is ninety percent mental; the other half is […]

Quick, don’t overthink this: Make a list of your current projects, large and small. These could be anything from planning your daughter’s birthday party to making that trek to Big Bend you’ve long promised yourself. From organizing the next book club meeting to cleaning out the storage shed. Designing a spiritual “place of creative incubation,”

Are we getting better? Are we becoming less violent, more empathic, more caring? Is humankind evolving into humankinder? Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker thinks we are, and he’s stated the case convincingly in his panoramic 696-page tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). His argument is not new. Jeremy Rifken, in Empathic Civilization (2009),