Word: america
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...great-grandchildren who created the U.S. were amateur politicians. "I see democracy," the late historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, as "government by amateurs, as a way of confessing the limits of our knowledge." In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville approvingly noted the absence of "public careers" in America - that is, the scarcity of professional politicians. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...though I'm not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or "beginner's mind." The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance," Boorstin wrote, "but the illusion of knowledge...
...periods of my life." I happen to know what Jobs means: my sacking as editor of New York magazine 13 years ago freed me to reinvent myself as a novelist and public-radio host. Getting fired was traumatic. Finding my way since has been thrilling and immensely gratifying. May America and Americans have such good luck figuring out how to climb out of the holes we find ourselves...
Andersen is the author of Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America, which originated as a TIME cover story...
...call a diverse place. I've spent nearly two months here in the past year and have seen exactly three Asian people, all of whom worked in the single decent Chinese restaurant in town (a strangely upscale establishment compared to the ones I'm used to frequenting in America). So when I chose Chinese as the theme of the menu, I knew I was putting myself at a distinct disadvantage...