Paulson Post

I believe most of us are very practical in our thinking. Practical thinking is assessing if something that we plan to do is doable. For example, Bungee jumping. The observation that so many people have done it, and they are doing it makes me think that I can do it also. So, I do it. That is practical thinking. However, though we often confuse practical thinking with pragmatic thinking they are different. In simpler terms the pragmatic decision also asks another question—though it is achievable, will it lead to some useful results? Bungee jumping is again the example. I can plunge into the ravine with one end a rope tied to my ankle and the other end firmly tied to a post, with all life-saving systems on stand-by. But what am I going to get out of it? In real terms, nothing useful is going to come out of it. So, though it is practical it is not pragmatic. But if I am descending to the ravine to save a person fallen into it, that Bungee jumping is not useless; the decision ...

  Naomi was a passive victim of a wrong decision that heaped tragedies upon tragedies upon her family. They decided to migrate to Moab when famine struck their town, Bethlehem, which rather ironically means "house of bread." There in Moab they had food in plenty, I suppose, but she lost all the male members of the family. Her husband first, her sons next, in that order. All that was left was two young widows and she. It was indeed a wrong decision. They should not have left the Bethlehem. The Book of Ruth tells us that all the residents of that town did not leave their homes and fields for Moab during the famine. They stayed back and fought the famine.  However, Naomi was not probably responsible for that wrong decision. In a patriarchal society like hers, the husband and the adult male members took the decisions on behalf of the rest of the family. The women just followed since they didn't have a say in what was decided. Probably, the decision to go to Moab was her husba...