Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

December 29, 2009 5

Pluralism and Self-subversion

By Robert Minto in Politics, Self-subversion, Strategy

Pluralism is generally acknowledged to be a desirable condition for contemporary societies. Yet pluralism’s strongest advocates tend to be the oppressed, those who recognize it as an ideal not yet achieved. For them, advocating pluralism is a sort of survival tactic. The unoppressed, on the other hand, tend to advocate it (to a limited extent [...]

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December 17, 2009 8

Why We Should Ask “What Is Theology?”

By Robert Minto in Prospects, Strategy, Theology

One of the tasks of every theologian must be to determine the answer to this question. He or she knows the tradition in which they long to work—but the temptation will always be to regurgitate what previous theologians have written. The value of such regurgitations is purely rhetorical or commemorative, a maintaining of inherited knowledge. [...]

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December 13, 2009 3

The Electronic Side of Note-taking

By Robert Minto in Organization, Scholarship, Strategy

Given certain off-line comments I received in response to my recent post about note-taking, I thought that in order to be as useful as possible to interested readers I ought to write briefly about reference management systems.
So you take lots of notes—you write summaries and compile indices, focusing on your most important topics of interest, [...]

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December 3, 2009 3

Christmas Break Reading Plans

By Robert Minto in Books, Plans, Strategy

That delicious three week holiday is almost upon us. What will you be reading? These are my plans:

Dan Simmons’s Hyperion trilogy (aloud, with my fiancee)—it is, in my opinion, the greatest science fiction trilogy of all time.
Charles Taylor’s Hegel.
William James’s Collected Works.
Walter Bruegemann’s Old Testament Theology.
Aristotle’s Physics.

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November 17, 2009 1

Notes on Note-taking

By Robert Minto in Organization, Scholarship, Strategy

Ann Blair’s article “Note-taking As an Art of Transmission”, has finally kicked me in the direction of explicitly formulating my own method. My method has been developing over the past two years; now, I have finally achieved a level of technical proficiency such that I no longer look back on books and lectures with regret [...]

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September 26, 2009 4

Some Prospects

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Plans, Retrospects, Scholarship, Strategy

Two (related) things I will likely be posting about soon:

God in the Gallery, by Daniel Siedell. Because Dan himself was coming to visit Dordt College, to speak to art students and anyone else apt to listen, I took the opportunity to read his book. Good thing I did! It has prompted a lot of thought [...]

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September 4, 2009 0

Busyness & Human Nature

By Robert Minto in Man, Organization, Strategy

Pannenberg has been teaching me the past few days about human nature, via his remarkable book Anthropology in Theological Perspective. In the first section of the book, in which he surveys some recent developments in the notion of humanities’ uniqueness in nature, he introduced me for the first time to “human openness to the world.” [...]

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July 29, 2009 2

A Digression On Desks

By Robert Minto in Organization, Places, Strategy

I long ago discovered that a well-planned workspace is nearly as important as a well-organized mind. Someday, my plan is to build/buy a set of desk, bookshelves, and working tables that will perfectly conform to the ideal plan I have in my head. But until then I am limited to functioning within the workspaces I’ve [...]

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July 27, 2009 1

Self-help from the 2nd Century A.D.

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Books, Man, Strategy, Virtue

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote a fabulous book that we simply call Meditations.
Authorities tend to denigrate this book. Some have called it contradictory. The best that can often be managed in its favor is this: it’s the best representation we have of the basic tenets of Stoicism. And as everybody knows, “Stoicism” functions mainly [...]

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July 11, 2009 0

Patience: A Moral Strategy*

By Robert Minto in Man, Strategy, Virtue

Things that improve with practice: concentration, geniality, memory, humility, confidence in public, steadiness in self-discipline, getting up with the alarm, putting in a full day’s work, loving, thinking, noticing, and every mental, physical, and emotional skill. The vital characteristic that sustains steady practice is patience.
What is patience? Patience is the firm place in the center, [...]

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