It was months after 9/11 when Rory Stewart decided to walk across Afghanistan. The country was in disarray, but despite warnings from the Afghan government, villagers and anyone with a lick of common sense, Stewart insisted on going. One foreign journalist, after hearing his plan, asked Stewart if he’d ever read Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer’s story of an American dumbass who tried to make it in the Alaskan wilderness without any supplies (I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but […]
in search of the celestial drug
In my mind exists a temple; a museum of the works of art that helped shape my inner world. Some works are on loan and some are part of the permanent collection. The permanent works that name and sustain me are existentialist: Solomon’s Ecclesiastes, Aurelius’ Meditations, Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Hendrix’ Axis: Bold as Love, Dylan’s electric Manchester performance, Rippel-Ronai’s Park at Night, the Bhagavad Gita. These are useful for determining how to live authentically and courageously in an unknowable universe. A less obvious […]
The Cost of Unintended Consequences
The premise of Blowback is very interesting. It aims to examine the role of shortsighted policy decisions made by the U.S. and the long-term, unintended consequences they created. This is another book I chose to read, rather listen to, after discovering it on the Army Chief of Staff’s recommended reading list for 2013. The book was listed of the CoS’ list under the section for broadening leaders. The list is intended to “complement materials currently used in the Army educational system and can help bridge […]