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Different Cultures, Different Kinds of Happiness
In Christian languages, happiness gets a less honorable reputation than joy and well-being. But life would hardly be worth living if there weren’t moments of happiness along the way. A universal framework for well-being is far from universal. Here are four models to help clarify your own understanding of happiness and a bit of the Continue reading
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Value of Leisure
. We yearn to “make the most of” our free time, so we are constantly giving our evenings, weekends, and vacations over to our self-advancement. Labor-market precarity and the growth of the gig economy have sharpened these incentives. Pure leisure now feels like pure indulgence – as if we are gluttons. Continue reading
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6 Leadership Tips for Effective Business Writing.
I have particularly noted the number of people who use English as an additional language (EAL) with whom I interact for almost all my business outside the house. In the last month, I dealt with people from Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, China, Nigeria, Hungary, and many more. They helped me deal with essential services Continue reading
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The Nitty-Gritty on Compare-and-Contrast Essays
The first in a series on essay writing and types! Continue reading
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Thank you!
I would like to say a big THANK YOU! Thank you to all the supporters of me and of Ideals an Identities. I am moved to share this since it seems that my blog is now taking off after 4 years of working on it. I am so happy that thousands of people are now Continue reading
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Carried by a White Cloud: Being Christian this Canada Day
Cathy Whitecloud carried me when I was a baby. Continue reading
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A Corporate Agenda Part 4: 1958
Technocratic rationality, then, needs to be recognized as a feature of mass society and as a systemic threat to our freedom, and its oligarchic substitution of a human artifice for a real-world with unmarked graves; the original sin of assuming that man is the measure of all things, makes its appearance there. It makes its… Continue reading
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The Corporate Agenda Part 3: The Failure of Technocratic Rationality in Peacebuilding
…quietly observing what the conflict is doing to you before you can ponder the opposite, what you might do to it. Rather than be active, you have to slow down and see what moves in and around you. ‘A lot of it is about listening,’ says Herbert, ‘listening to people, but also listening to yourself… Continue reading
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The Corporate NBA Blowing Up At The Knees
As much as players get injured in one of the most physically demanding major US sports, what we have here is a canary in a coal mine. Continue reading
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Ordered to be Free: a Meditation Learning
“The self exists in the same way as a border between countries, i.e. as a social institution. Both are imaginary boundaries that have a certain pragmatic convenience to them.” Continue reading
About me: I am a career educator and traveler at heart. My written work includes academic writing in philosophy and linguistics, English acquisition, and most intently in the areas of spiritual engagement with reality and what that means for our public lives.
My education is a mixture of formal study in philosophy, political theory, Biblical studies, and history, along with professional teaching certification in TESOL and in cognitive testing, and international teaching.
My travel experiences include a range of countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. I have lived in Canada, the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Thailand. From those places I have traveled to many others besides.
I am a child of the 70’s and a “family man.” That means I have two wonderful kids who have been round the world with me.
Lastly, I am married to a wonderful woman since 2004. She is my partner, my friend, and my muse.
Thanks again for stopping by,
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 