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Love in Truth

Tuesday Jul 14 2009

The Pope's Love in Truth, his third letter to the bishops of the world, is written in the context of the current global economic crisis. The Pope views the current crisis as an opportunity for us to discern and to create a new vision for our future. In his latest encyclical, he doesn't focus on specific systems of economics or reconstructing the global economy. Instead, he reminds us that our markets are shaped by our culture, and that it is up to us to focus on the common good and reconstruct our societies and cultures based on 'love of truth', rather than 'crude materialism'.

"Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility."

Read the encyclical here. Read Father Sirico's opinion here.

[Read More]

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: culture economic_crisis love pope truth

First Impressions: Kiev

Wednesday Jun 03 2009

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I am in Kiev, Ukraine this week. This is my first time here. In fact, it is the first time I have been in this part of the world or to a country using the Cyrillic alphabet. I am not prepared to write a travelogue since I just arrived a day ago, but sometimes first impressions are fleeting but useful. In this case, my first impressions are reflections on an ‘old’ country that (from what I can tell) has yet to be discovered by the tourism industry. Even at one of Ukraine’s annual festivals, I see few foreigners and most that I do see are reportedly from neighboring Russia.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: aging culture eldering history internet isolation kiev

Fear II

Friday Mar 13 2009

By Jim Selman | Bio
I just finished reading a piece in the Jan/Feb issue of the Utne Reader called Overcoming Fear Culture and Fear Itself by Julie Hanus. It is a great commentary on how our society has become wracked with all sorts of fears. She points to the fact that fear is a major fuel for lots of politicians and businesses, but that we pay a very large price to create an illusion of safety. The price is not just the billions we spend on physical security. It is also the isolation we create for ourselves when we don’t trust each other, the spiritual angst we encounter when we lack confidence in ourselves and our ‘reality’, and the kind of withdrawal/denial (and even paralysis) that comes after long periods of stress and worry.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
Join discussion COMMENTS [1]

Tagged with: 12_step culture fear illusion transform

Culture and Intergenerational Support

Thursday Aug 07 2008

The Science Daily reports that cultural expectations impact the benefits of intergenerational support.

Intergenerational Support and Depression Among Elders in Rural China: Do Daughters-In-Law Matter?, a study published in the July 2008 Journal of Marriage and Family, stated that in the province of Anhui in rural China, assistance from daughters-in-law with household chores and personal care created fewer depressive symptoms in elders than that offered by sons and daughters. The report's authors, Dr. Zhen Cong and Professor Merrill Silverstein of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, found this was most evident in situations where daughters-in-law co-resided with their husband's parents.

In traditional rural Chinese society, the efforts of a son's wife are seen and accepted as meaningful contributions. Almost two-thirds of China's older population lives in rural areas, making it the largest concentration of elders in the world. Considering that Chinese society is changing, elders will be disadvantaged if they don't adjust their expectations about the appropriateness of support from their children.

[Read More]

Written by eldering at News

Tagged with: culture elders intergenerational_support

Serene Ambition

Thursday Mar 27 2008

I was talking with a fellow recently who was asking why this blog is called Serene Ambition™. He thought that the two words didn't seem to go together. He could get 'serenity' and also understand 'ambition', but together they made no sense to him. In our normal way of relating to the world, you can have serenity (meaning inner peace, calmness, maybe even joy) or you can be ambitious (meaning committed to creating or accomplishing something in the future)—but not both together. In some ways, we might say these two terms label the best of East and West.

[Read More]

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: acceptance aging ambition culture serenity

How can we talk it through?

Wednesday Mar 12 2008

By Shae Hadden | Bio
The premise being that we CAN talk it through…

This is the question that epitomizes the possibility that the World Café represents. It is the question that informs Anne Dosher, the 80-something ‘Elder’ of the World Café and Board member of the World Café Community Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and disseminating this and other innovative dialogue approaches. I recently had the privilege of interviewing this gracious, generous and engaging lady—the human embodiment of what I imagined the World Café phenomena itself to be—with a few inquiries of my own.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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Tagged with: culture dialogue multigenerational respect world_cafe

The Art of Conversation

Friday Dec 21 2007

I was watching the CBS show “Sunday Morning” on the weekend and it had a segment on the dying art of conversation. The point was that with all our technology and almost real-time connections available with email, handhelds and social networking sites, people seem to have lost the ability to have conversations. It was a thought-provoking and, I think, mostly true observation about what is happening to us. The show also showcased a new book by Stephen Miller called Conversation: A History of a Declining Art. The program drove home the fact that we may be communicating more than ever, but we’re conversing less and less. Various people were interviewed and all agreed that we’re losing (perhaps have already lost) what may be one of the most basic and pleasurable aspects of life.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
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Tagged with: community context conversation creativity culture self-expression

Does Getting Older Mean Getting Wiser?

Tuesday Dec 11 2007

  By Lauren Selman | Bio


I recently watched one of my favorite shows, "Sex in the City." This show features four protagonists that constantly prove that 30 is the new 20 and uncovers their relationships in the city of New York. In this particular episode, the older women were poignantly juxtaposed against young starlettes to emphasis they're "getting older". The plot circulated around the question about aging that Carrie posed at the top of the episode: "Does getting older mean getting wiser?" I feel that, in the discussion of aging, the concepts of "getting older" are synonymous with "getting wiser." But is this really the case?

[Read More]

Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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Tagged with: culture eldering older wisdom wiser

Elder Employees

Friday Nov 09 2007

I am perplexed by the fact that companies have been laying off older workers for years as part of various downsizing projects. I understand the drive to cut costs. Under normal demographic conditions, laying off older workers would even make some sense from a strictly financial point of view, since they generally command higher salaries than younger workers. The fact is, however, that those same companies are moaning about shortages of qualified people and the difficulties they’re having in recruiting really good people. They often resort to paying more for younger workers or having to hire older workers back as “consultants” at even higher rates of pay than they would receive had they stayed on the payroll. Moreover, aside from this financial shell game, corporations are often blind to their real costs in terms of what they lose when they lose their mature workforce.[Read More]

Written by eldering at Retirement
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Tagged with: culture discrimination joy values wisdom work workforce

Resignation

Friday Jul 13 2007

For a long time, I have had the point of view that one of the biggest problems of aging in our contemporary culture is that it leads most people towards a ‘state of resignation’. Resignation is the mood we can get caught in when we ‘give up’, when we stop living into the future as possibility. It is the mood of succumbing to the belief that circumstances are bigger than we are. It is a mood of defeat that generates comments like: “Why bother since we can’t do anything about it anyway?” It should not be confused with conscious acceptance of ‘the things I cannot change’. Acceptance (surrender) is voluntary; resignation is not.
[Read More]

Written by Jim Selman at News
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Tagged with: aging boomer culture difference resignation

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