It is no secret: Culture in the West has become progressively more practical, materially oriented, and skeptical. When I look out at my students, I see people who are in the process of choosing a way to make money and succeed, a strategy for getting on in life. (Or they are, in a few instances, rejecting the materially based life, though often with no cogent alternative to pursue in its stead.) It’s no news: we’re more and more a worldly culture, a money-based culture geared to the life of getting and spending, trying and succeeding, and reaching for more and more. We are a pragmatic people. We do not seek … Continue reading Mark Edmundson