A Historic Moment

Written on 08/29 at 02:32 PM by Andy Posner 2 comments

Filed under: philosophy News

An Electric Moment
Last night a football stadium was packed to the gills, not with football fans cheering on their home team, but rather with people from all walks of life who endured long lines and heat in order to listen to a politician deliver a speech.  It was a speech given 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech that, symbolically and literally, opened the way for a black man to accept the nomination for president of the United States.  It was a speech given to cheering crowds and extraordinarily high expectations.  It was given to a nation that has gone decades without an inspirational leader.  It was a speech given during an inflexion point in history, when the world is facing new global challenges and new global opportunities, and the very strength of America’s place in the world depends on the direction we choose to take; will we once again be a nation that does not torture, that does not invade sovereign nations, that leads by example?  Will we be innovators? Will we rebuild our infrastructure, provide health care to all, protect social security and educate our children?

Something Amazing is Stirring
So it was that Obama stood up before the crowd and, looking calm, confident and collected, gave a speech that at times soared into the clouds and at times swept along the earth. He gave a speech that moved to poetry and then, in a smooth change in tone and cadence, became an explanation of policy positions.  He gave a speech that attacked his opponent without disrespecting his opponent.  He gave a speech that moved commentators--myself included--to soaring commentary. And finally, he gave a speech that will resonate in history not because of any one line or phrase, but because of the context and the moment.  We will look back on this night when we are older and proudly say, “I remember that.” We will think back on where our country was headed and realize that something amazing was stirring all along. 

permanent link continue reading »


Movie Review: ‘The Dark Knight’

Written on 08/17 at 02:41 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy movie reviews

Before entering the movie theatre to see ‘The Dark Knight,’ I didn’t know that the name for what I have always longed to be is a superhero.  Sure, my favorite movie growing up was Superman (I would watch the VHS over and over and over), and my grandiose proclivities are as obvious in my diction as they are in my actions.  What’s more, I have long felt attracted to mythology, poetry, archetypes and science--the broad, over-arching themes that elevate life from the mundane to the theatrical.  I need to feel things deeply or, it seems, I don’t feel them at all.  This is, of course, a double-edged sword: my joys and sorrows are extremely poignant and crisp, yet I often feel like alien, isolated from the day-to-day world that unfolds around me.

Despite my obvious predilection for all the pieces that make up a superhero story--good triumphs over evil in a lonely battle--they have never quite captivated my attention, because no matter how hard I try to see the world as black and white, my heart feels things in a beautiful, technicolor gradation.  So as I sat through The Dark Knight I was delighted to see a Batman that was unsure of himself, whose actions were not clearly good, and who inspired ambivalent feelings in the people he tried to save.  I was mesmerized, not only by the dark, beautiful cinematography, but also by the morality play unfolding before me.

permanent link continue reading »


Data Acquisition vs. Data Overload

Written on 03/25 at 12:52 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy

It used to be that the greatest obstacle to doing research, be it scientific, literary, or any other kind, for that matter, was actually acquiring the requisite data. Many public libraries were underfunded, or closed when the data was needed, or otherwise inaccessible to those that sought the information contained within their walls. Academic research was-and often still is-published in exclusive academic journals, whose high cost prevented the wider dissemination of the research. The list of barriers is nearly endless.

A New Paradigm Now, with the tremendous proliferation of low-cost bandwidth and cheap data storage and computing power, many of those barriers have come down. Any time, day or night, anyone in the world can access much of the knowledge previously stored in libraries in journals, simply by doing a Google search. Even scholarly magazines are beginning to offer their findings in an "open-source format" online. Harvard has its Open-Collections Program, which provides "online access to historical resources from Harvard's renowned libraries, archives, and museums," and MIT offers Open Courseware, which enables anyone with a computer and internet access to 'take' a course at MIT. The list goes on, but this time it is a far more extensive list, one that comprises millions of blogs and wikis, corporate web sites, universities, encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical web sites, and so on.

permanent link continue reading »


The Two-Way Street of Development

Written on 12/01 at 10:06 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy

Viewing sustainable development as a two-way street is an important way to foster a true global village, one in which people are able to maintain their cultural identities while partaking in global flows of information, trade, finance and ideas. The problem, however, is how to get people onto this two-way street. In other words, what are the on-ramps, especially for those that are currently poor?I think an important on-ramp to the two way street is green job creation. This is something that Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland has pointed out numerous times. Things Must Get Better Before They Get Better? America certainly has its poor, and they can't care about polar ice caps, deforestation and slums in Cairo until they have met their lower-order needs of job/fiscal security, safety and so on. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenback, in their provocative book "From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," point out that the traditional environmentalist view is that things will have to get a lot worse before they get better-in other words, once environmental problems become so visible as to be impossible to ignore, the rational response will be for people to take action. They argue, however, that things with have to get a lot better before they get better. Why? Because only then can people contemplate the larger picture of how their actions correspond to global issues such as poverty and climate change.

permanent link continue reading »


Page 3 of 3 pages « First  <  1 2 3


Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

continue reading »

A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

continue reading »

Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

continue reading »