Apparently I’m not very good at self-promotion. I said before that I would provide monthly recaps of my personal blog The Slow Hunch, but I’ve failed to do so the last…5 months.
So here I am again to provide all three readers of my blog with a lengthy list of posts you probably missed:
- The Magical World of Miyazaki – Talks about my favorite insight from Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki in the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness on seeing the world in a magical way. Also features a nice video tribute to his work.
- Finding Meaning Within Chinese Factories – Journalist Leslie Chang’s TED talk on Chinese factory workers and the need to listen to their voices in the debates around globalization.
- Being Co-Creators With God – Features some excerpts from and comments on the slim AEI-published book Entrepreneurship for Human Flourishing regarding our participation in the divine activity of creation and its potential for helping the poor.
- “I Don’t Want to Go”: Or, Having an Existential Crisis in Barnes & Nobles – A brief personal story about my anxieties over uncertainty, self-worth, and mortality.
- 2015 Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference – The abstract for my paper presented at the 2015 Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference this April, entitled, “”A Friend Shall Lose His Friend’s Hammer”: An Eschatological View of Work.”
- “Masonry Stands Up For the Nobility of Labor”: Masonry and Mormonism – A rather long excerpt from Albert Pike’s 1871 Masonic book Morals and Dogmas in which he lays out a view of labor very similar (and likely influential) to Mormonism.
- Groundhog Day: Salvation in the Mundane – A mixture of thoughts from social scientist Charles Murray and philosopher Adam Miller on the mundane, grace, the good life, and Groundhog Day.
- Mowing the Lawn of Eden – Brief commentary on an excerpt from a wonderful NYT article on the happiness lurking in the mundane and repetition of everyday life.
- “Labor Is Worship”: Building the Material and Spiritual Temple – Draws on Albert Mackey’s 1882 The Symbolism of Freemasonry to discuss Masonry’s view of labor and how it relates to early Mormonism’s temple building.
- Work’s Covenantal Relation to the Sabbath – A brief insight from Abraham Heschel’s classic The Sabbath on work and the Sabbath.
- Markets in a Zion Society – A portion of an unpublished paper that explores the cooperative nature of markets and its tendency to produce moral results, including fairness, generosity, and peace.
Enjoy.
These are some really excellent posts, Walker. I’ve read the first four and so far I’m really, really impressed. Thanks for posting this to remind me to go read them. (I’m gonna watch the TED talk about factory workers in China during lunch.)
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for posting these. Is there a link to your academic paper? I am particularly interested in the topic of work/toil in our post-agricultural workplace. I have a personal interest: outside of my white collar job I spend practically all free time with my family working on our hobby farm, raising food, reskilling, etc. The new perspective has been life-altering.
Nathaniel,
Awww, shucks.
vpfarming,
It was originally on my Academia.edu page, but I’ve taken it down for the time being because I’ve submitted a revised version to BYU Studies Quarterly that is currently under review. However, I’ll send the conference version of the paper to the email on your site. Thanks for your interest!