By: Elmarie Parker on November 10, 2022
Reading Saifedean Ammous’ book, “The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking,”[1] added another layer to my global perspectives’ leadership map. Part history of money and economics, part societal-political analysis through this history lens, and part technology guide to the newly developing arena of cybercurrency—specifically Bitcoin, Ammous sheds light on “…the problems money attempts…
By: Troy Rappold on November 10, 2022
Saifedean Ammous wrote, “The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking” in 2018, ten years after the Bitcoin phenomenon began in November, 2008. An individual, or perhaps a group of individuals, used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto to announce that they have produced a “new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third…
By: Jonathan Lee on November 9, 2022
Dr. Saifedean Ammous is an economist who holds his Ph.D. in Sustainable Development from Columbia University. In this book, The Bitcoin Standard: The decentralized alternative to central banking, Dr. Ammous presents the economics and history of bitcoin to introduce the workings of the new digital currency for the new digital economy of the future. Bitcoin…
By: Michael Simmons on November 9, 2022
In the book The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, Saifedean Ammous lays out a fabulous history and sociology of money. He dives deeply into this discussion, while dropping one-liners and understandable definitions that summarize and synthesize his main points. As someone who is frankly averse to economic concepts, Ammous makes this conversation…
By: Roy Gruber on November 9, 2022
In The Bitcoin Standard, author Saifedean Ammous states a bold premise. “Bitcoin represents the first truly digital solution to the problem of money, and in it we find a potential solution to the problems of salability, soundness, and sovereignty.”[1] Ammous argues for bitcoin as the world’s first government-free, unchangeable, and sound currency. He refers to…
By: Andy Hale on November 9, 2022
“I’ll trade you this for that,” words spoken in many languages across every continent and reaching back before written history. Bartering and currency exchange are the bedrock of civilizations’ financial systems, no matter the context. The idea of coin currency came about in 770 B.C.E., all thanks to the ancient Chinese. [1] It came in the…
By: Eric Basye on November 9, 2022
As a college student studying social work and psychology, I was required to take two economics classes as part of my core classwork. I am pretty sure that in another life, I would have gone on to study business and economics in pursuit of a life of entrepreneurship. Well, maybe that, or I would have…
By: Elmarie Parker on November 5, 2022
I found myself thinking again of a constellation of readings from our spring 2022 term as I read “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution” by Carl R. Trueman:[1] “Evangelicalism in Modern Britain” by David W. Bebbington,[2] “The Protestant Work Ethic and the ‘Spirit’…
By: Denise Johnson on November 4, 2022
Throughout my years of working with children, teens, young adults, and people in various countries, they all want to know the answers to the following questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my purpose?[1] The culture, in which we live today, embraces expressive individualism and sexual identity politics [2] to the extent…
By: Jonathan Lee on November 3, 2022
Carl R. Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In his recent book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Truman extensively analyzes the modern and ongoing cultural transformation of sexual behaviors and self-identification that Christians face…
By: Nicole Richardson on November 3, 2022
Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution offers his thesis that the western culture/society has collapsed as seen by humans’ acceptance and normalization of diversity in sexual identity. Trueman’s argument is tethered to his outline of the journey of history that…
By: Troy Rappold on November 3, 2022
In the 2020 book, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” by Carl Trueman, a comprehensive explanation of humanity’s need for self-identity, and its various manifestations, is thoughtfully explained to the Church. Trueman interprets these self-identity revolutions as “a much deeper and wider revolution in the understanding of what it means to be a…
By: Roy Gruber on November 3, 2022
In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman delves into a historical and philosophical study of identity. The premise comes early in chapter one, “the underlying argument of this book is that the sexual revolution, and its various manifestations in modern society, cannot be treated in isolation but must rather be interpreted…
By: Henry Gwani on November 3, 2022
Christianity and Christian values are under attack. Seeking to address this disturbing development, Carl Trueman begins his landmark book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by asking how has the current highly individualistic, iconoclastic, sexually obsessed, and materialistic mindset come to triumph in the West? Or, to put the question in a more…
By: Andy Hale on November 2, 2022
“What I offer here is essentially a prolegomenon to many discussions that Christians and others need to have about the most pressing issues of our day, particularly as they manifest themselves in the variety of ways in which the sexual revolution affects us,” argues Carl R. Trueman. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern…
By: Eric Basye on November 1, 2022
“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Author Rod Dreher introduces The Rise of Triumph of the Modern Self by connecting to the famous words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He then says, Ordinary Christians need – desperately need – a more profound and holistic grasp of the modern and postmodern condition… The Rise…
By: Michael Simmons on November 1, 2022
“Indeed, if we strive to be too good we only engender the opposite reaction in the unconscious. If we try to live too much in the light, a corresponding amount of darkness accumulates within.”[1] – John A. Sanford Shadow work is the process of integrating the individual or collective parts that have been largely hidden,…
By: Denise Johnson on October 29, 2022
In my reading of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,[1]by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I found myself reflecting of Christ’s call to individuals to follow him. Those invitations were huge steps into the unknown. Steps out of stability and comfort into a lifestyle of risk, and process of transformative, or refined resilience. I cannot help but wonder…
By: Elmarie Parker on October 28, 2022
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in “Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder,” offers the reader a literary and philosophical discourse arguing for how best to utilize uncertainty and even chaos to move beyond resilience or robustness to becoming antifragile.[1] In this way, Taleb, who is American-Lebanese, takes the leader-reader beyond Todd Bolsinger’s forge metaphor of developing tempered…
By: Jonathan Lee on October 28, 2022
Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder was written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He also authored a NY Times best-selling book called The Black Swan in 2007. The Black Swan discusses the reality of our incomprehensible world impacted by the Black Swans – “large-scale unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequences.”[1] The Black Swan highlights the…
