Top 5: Spiritual Subscription boxes and a 4-day work week
Plus: how history is being written
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Have a great rest of your weekend, and enjoy the Top 5!
Michael and Melissa
Top 5 articles for your week:
“History As End” (Harper’s Magazine)
Because this long essay explores how the Left and the Right currently interpret history.
If one key function of the old liberal history was to fortify belief in the course of incremental progress, what is the political work of the new dispensation, with its metaphors of birth, genetics, and essential nature? How can a history grounded in continuity relate to a politics that demands transformational change? In so many ways, it seems to lead in the opposite direction.
“The Subscription Box That Teaches Kids to Do Good” (NY Times)
Because it’s an interesting question — can we instill volunteerism without religion? There are some sub-plots here (can exvangelicals find a source of meaning as powerful as what they’ve left? ) and some surprise characters (Reza Aslan!). I (Michael) am also very interested in the narrative framing of this article. The “success” is not that people are being served by this activity. It’s not even, if you read closely, that the family has grown as a result of this experience. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek (I think?), but here’s the closing graf:
Which was Ms. Jackley’s goal. “At the end of this, your kid would say, ‘We volunteer.’ They’d use that verb tense. Not ‘We once did this one thing.’”
We are now a family that says we volunteer. In fact, we’ve got a volunteer streak of one month, total volunteer time of two hours and total days of not bragging about it very publicly zero.
I don’t want to get too meta here (OK, I do), but the op-ed is really asking a bigger question: “can we learn to be good people without religion?” Perhaps even more to the point: “how can we meaningfully think of ourselves as good people without religion?” Even more (and this is the last question, I promise): “how can I meaningfully show other people I am a good person without religion?” The answer to all of these questions (rhetorical questions don’t count)? A subscription box, obvs.
“Lost children” (CBC)
Because the mass grave of 215 children at a former residential school in Canada should cause us to think about history, dignity, and reconciliation in the US as well.
“My Father Vanished When I Was 7. The Mystery Made Me Who I Am.” (NY Times Magazine)
Because this is one of those exceptional essays that perhaps some of you will connect with on a personal level.
“Kill the 5-Day Workweek” (The Atlantic)
Because we are thinking about the future of work: what practices and ideas inspired by the pandemic and new generations will stick? What new workplace norms will emerge?
People who work a four-day week generally report that they’re healthier, happier, and less crunched for time; their employers report that they’re more efficient and more focused. These companies’ success points to a tantalizing possibility: that the conventional approach to work and productivity is fundamentally misguided.