In the past, whenever I read news about any conservative leader, party or government — small-c conservative, including the Canadian federal and provincial Conservative parties, the American Repugnicans, and the British Tories — I always have to ask myself, “Can they get any more corrupt than this?” Then I ask,
Continue readingTag: Arendt
A Puff of Absurdity: On Normal and Nihilism
We like to think we’ve returned to normal, but Covid and climate change will become more and more of a challenge to ignore. Biorisk consultant Conor Browne responded to a post about “this universally adopted phenomenon of people never mentioning the Covid word is really mind-blowing,” with this comment: “And
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Let ‘er Rip Means Let THEM R.I.P.
A few people have been commenting on the current “death by semantics”, or what Orwell called “doublespeak.” I used that image just in October, but it’s too on-the-nose not to use it again here. T. Ryan Gregory wrote, “Death by semantics. It’s spread in the air, but it’s not airborne. It’s
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Can a Slingshot Down this Goliath?
I read Andreas Malm‘s book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline a few months ago, then watched the movie, and then was reminded of it all again by Abigail Thorn’s latest Philosophy Tube video about being plagiarized by a man. Thorn explains how subtle sexism led to free labour in the home. Even
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: McKinsey’s Effect on Public Health
Almost two years ago, the Canadian government published a Covid response plan that they appear to be largely ignoring. The 3rd edition of the guide was published in March 2022, and it appears to be the most recent edition. They outline the “worst case scenario,” and it’s pretty much what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Conformity Experiments
This image comes from a century ago, of course. It’s still very hard to be different, but sometimes it’s vital. When I taught a course called the Challenge of Change, I offered up a number of challenges along the way. Students who were uncomfortable participating in any of them
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Gertz’s Nihilism
A year after coming out with Nihilism and Technology, Dr. Nolen Gertz wrote just plain Nihilism, an “examination of the meaning of meaninglessness: why it matters that nothing matters.” It’s a really short book, but it took a while to wade through it all. Here it all is even more briefly
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Hannah Arendt in Lego
@EthicsInBricks posted this lovely tribute to Hannah Arendt on Twitter last October, in honour of her date of birth, October 14, 1906, and I want to save it in the month of her death 45 years ago, so here’s the thread all nicely cited: (Read more…)“The ideal subject of totalitarian
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Imagine If Teachers Made the Decisions that Affect Teachers
So now the government has overruled regulation 274. I wrote about it ages ago, again firmly planted on the government side!! I’m really very, very pro-union, honestly, but some things just don’t make sense to me. At the time, I was watching several LTO teachers in my building who knew
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Putting Your Own Mask on First
Teachers are a hardy bunch. We have self-trained ourselves to remain polite and calm in the face of abuse. On my first day of teaching, ever, I wrote Miss Snyder on the board, and a faceless voice from the back of the room said, “Oh good, she’s not married. No
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Oh–What’s a Teacher to Do?
Starting next Friday, secondary students in my board will be forced to be in a room with about 15 other students they might not know, many of whom will take off their masks for a 45 minute mid-morning snack deemed necessary to get them through to lunchtime dismissal. They’re not
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Risk Assessment for September
I have two weeks left before going back to school in person. I’ve been writing on social media and sending emails and signing petitions because this plan in Ontario doesn’t feel remotely safe. I’ve even jumped queue and wrote to the upper echelon of my school board in an attempt
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gun Control
I’ve been observing many gun control arguments online and in the classroom (also online) recently. I’ve written about this before, once after Sandy Hook and then after a Stoneman Douglas shooting surviver put the onus on school staff to keep kids safe. This one’s closer to home, so I finally
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What are the Chances We’ll Learn Anything from This?
It’s fascinating to watch behaviours now that we’re stuck together in limbo. In my little house, we are all perfectly healthy; we’re just more together. This should be a piece of cake! My kids shopped last Friday night, very late, and, since the stores were packed with everyone else who
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Hannah Arendt’s On Violence
Unfortunately, this is really timely. Arendt wrote this short book in 1970, but there’s nothing in it that needs to be updated today. Absolutely nothing significant has changed; it’s just more. She was responding to the violence of WWII, Vietnam, the student riots in Paris, and, most specifically, the People’s
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Or maybe we’d recognize Nietzsche’s last man as ourselves: “Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth! .
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Culture Wars
I just finally got around to Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies. It’s a comprehensive book outlining the history and categorization of various groups online that have seeped into real life, but, although she mentions numerous scholars in her analysis, with zero endnotes and nary a reference section, it didn’t surprise
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Crackpot Posing as a Genius
I’ve been noticing many articles, recently, about the plight of loneliness. It’s now linked to anxiety and depression, and addiction, and a former US Surgeon General calls it the most common threat to public health. We blame the internet and social media for a loss of connection between people, but this
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
I finally got to this pocket-sized book, which is full of lessons passed down from my folks that I’ve been saying for decades, and many others that I’m hearing over and over in the past year. It’s nothing new, but it is good to be reminded. From a thorough understanding of history,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Arendt on Revolution and the Necessity of Eradicating Poverty
Hannah Arendt’s essay, “Thoughts on Poverty, Misery, and the Great Revolutions of History,” written in the 1960s, was apparently just recently published for the first time. It continues to be relevant in our increasingly weird times with a tyrant who would rather dominate than excel in case after case: “For
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