Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer

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Hi, I’m Jim. This Substack is where I share my thoughts on post-religion spirituality. After a crisis of faith and walking away from my former life as a megachurch superstar pastor, I rebuilt my life and cultivated an authentic and liberating non-religious spirituality. This publication is named, “Deconstructionology”. Yes, it’s a word I made up. The term deconstruction means to disassemble something into its separate parts in order to understand it more deeply and meaningfully. The lived human experience is filled with all kinds of tensions, contradictions, nuances, lessons and complexities, which may not be apparent on the surface or through the lens through which we most familiarly see the world. Source

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Existential Health: The Emergence of a New Field of Human Flourishing

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Jim Palmer Founder and Director, Institute for Existential Health Throughout human history, every civilization has sought to understand what it means to live well. Some questions concern physical health. Others explore thought, emotion, and consciousness. Still others arise within the social, cultural, and moral worlds human beings inhabit. Over time, these questions have given rise to distinct disciplines, each illuminating an essential dimension of human flourishing.
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Ordinary Mysteries: Stories from an Unfinished Town (Part Five)

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Ordinary Mysteries: Stories from an Unfinished Town These are stories about ordinary people in an ordinary town. No one is the hero. No one possesses the answers. They gather in diners, churches, waiting rooms, living rooms, and funeral homes. They fall in love, disappoint one another, bury parents, worry about their children, question old beliefs, laugh unexpectedly, and continue with the difficult work of being human. Their lives overlap. Their stories do not proceed in straight lines.
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Week in Review (July 6 - 10)

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Every so often there comes a week that feels less like another chapter in an ongoing project and more like the beginning of a new phase. Looking back over the past several days, I have the distinct sense that something has shifted. The individual essays, conversations, and projects certainly matter in their own right, but what has stayed with me most is the growing realization that they are no longer unfolding as separate streams of work.
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The Existential Health White Papers

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
About the Existential Health White Papers The Existential Health White Papers are a series of foundational publications devoted to the development of existential health as an emerging discipline. Each paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship by clarifying its concepts, defining its object of inquiry, and exploring the implications of understanding human flourishing through the enduring conditions of being human. White Paper No. 1 was previously published.
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The Existential Health White Papers

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Over the past several years I have been writing about existential health as an emerging way of understanding what it means to flourish as a human being. Along the way, it has become increasingly clear to me that existential health is more than a compelling idea or a useful framework. I believe it will become a distinct interdisciplinary field devoted to one of the most neglected dimensions of human life: our relationship with the fundamental realities of being human.
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The Creature Civilization Forgot

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
One of the most remarkable achievements of modern civilization is how thoroughly we have learned to think about ourselves while gradually forgetting what we are. Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We possess an astonishing vocabulary for describing human beings.
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Ordinary Mysteries: Stories from an Unfinished Town (Part Four)

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Ordinary Mysteries: Stories from an Unfinished Town These are stories about ordinary people in an ordinary town. No one is the hero. No one possesses the answers. They gather in diners, churches, waiting rooms, living rooms, and funeral homes. They fall in love, disappoint one another, bury parents, worry about their children, question old beliefs, laugh unexpectedly, and continue with the difficult work of being human. Their lives overlap. Their stories do not proceed in straight lines.
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Help Shape the Final Manuscript of The Practice of Being Alive

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Over the past year, many of you have watched The Practice of Being Alive slowly come into existence. If you happened to miss it, I recently shared the story behind this project in an essay titled The Book I Had to Write: The Story Behind The Practice of Being Alive. That piece explains why this book became so important to me and why I believe these conversations matter. If you haven't read it yet, I'd encourage you to begin there before continuing with this invitation.
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Beyond Systems Thinking

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a problem that belongs to only one discipline. Climate change is no longer simply an environmental issue. Rising anxiety is not merely psychological. Political polarization is not merely political. Artificial intelligence is not merely technological. Each emerges from the interaction of economic, cultural, psychological, technological, ethical, and existential forces that no single discipline can adequately explain.
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Freedom Is Harder Than Independence

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By Jim Palmer
| Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer
Every July 4, Americans celebrate one of history’s most remarkable political achievements. A people declared that they would no longer live under the authority of another empire and accepted the uncertainty, sacrifice, and responsibility that such a decision would require. Whatever our politics, that remains an extraordinary chapter in the human story because it reminds us that freedom has never been handed to us without cost.
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Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer Journalists

Palmer, Jim