One of the most remarkable contributions of humans to the world is our capacity for ideas.

Most intellectual training focuses on analytical skills. Whether in literary criticism or scientific investigation, the academic mind is best at taking things apart. The complementary arts of integration are far less well developed. This problem...

Unlike the clonal longevity of asexual organisms, sexually reproduced plants and animals usually have briefer, individual life cycles. In short, the enormous diversity afforded by the evolutionary invention of sexual reproduction came with a price—death...

This world by itself is a wonder.

Ecological awareness expands the context of life; it also enlarges who we are as a person.

How our attitudes are shaped and defended may be more changeable than we realize.

Sometimes, when we are far from clocks and schedules, we can still recapture a lost sense of place-based time. On a relaxing camping trip or a long day outdoors, perhaps, we can slip back into...

death play” of popular video games is accelerating these numbers to ever-higher levels.

My passion for human ecology was not a drive for closure—but rather the joy of endless openings and newfound connections. There is no final goal or perfect completion, only the expanding experience of being alive.

Death is universal. The rituals associated with it, however, vary substantially—and are greatly influenced by their religious and cultural context.

It may be said, in broad-brush terms, that the primary purpose of life is the continuation of life. A deep program for survival and reproduction underwrites the complex cycles of life, in which death is...

social” space, communal territories, or even national identities.