Maybe there are seeds of potential deep within ourselves, but maybe there’s nothing there but a collection of signals. Regardless the outcome, we need to dig in to see what we can find. In several classes I took last term, the idea of a core self that’s fluid came through
Continue readingTag: Taylor
A Puff of Absurdity: Where is My Mind? On Freud and Neuropsychology
Freud got some things right, and this isn’t a post to slam him. But he understood the whole concept of the unconscious mind upside-down. It’s a lot like Aristotle’s science, with the cause and effect going in the wrong direction. It’s still pretty impressive how far they got as they
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Politics of Hopelessness
I started posting other people’s twitter threads in part because twitter was (is) threatening to self-destruct, but also because there are some incredible gems that could disappear into the ether even if twitter remains. It’s not set up to easily find that one post you read weeks ago – ever
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On a Radical Vision of Future Earth
I grabbed this book, by meteorologist Eric Holthaus, as soon as it went on sale, excited to check out the new vision of how we can all better live together. There’s lots of information for the uninitiated, and then it becomes sort of a fictional narrative. There are no characters
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: Monbiot’s Out of the Wreckage
The book cover says the book “provides the hope and clarity required to change the world.” Well, he certainly tries. He’s got a plan of action that’s possible, but I didn’t get the requisite hope necessary to be spurred to action. It’s a bit of an overview of many ideas
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Community, Again
I just read local author Paul Born’s Deepening Community. In places, it’s very close to what I’ve written about in terms of ensuring that we’re kind to one another at the very end. He doesn’t skirt around the issue that we’re in dire straights and that we can choose how
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What Happens in the Arctic, Doesn’t Stay in the Arctic
There are more and more signs of climate change about to pull a number on us, but we still won’t listen. We’ve got ammonia in our atmosphere and a spike in methane concentrations: “CO2 is still the dominant target for mitigation, for good reason. But we run the risk if we
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What Happens in the Arctic, Doesn’t Stay in the Arctic
There are more and more signs of climate change about to pull a number on us, but we still won’t listen. We’ve got ammonia in our atmosphere and a spike in methane concentrations: “CO2 is still the dominant target for mitigation, for good reason. But we run the risk if we
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Charles Taylor on the Crises of Democracy
Charles Taylor gave a lecture on the “Crises of Democracy” two years ago, as part of a “Civic Freedom in an Age of Diversity” program where he explores the very complex situation we’re in. He says we’re not in a period of democratic stagnation, but in a downward spiral that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Being Useful: a Necessary Shift in Radicalism
“Oh, what can we do in a case like that? Nothing to do but sit on your hat, or your toothbrush, or your grandmother, or anything else that’s useless.“ Those are the butchered words of a Burl Ives song I sang as a kid until my sister corrected me. The last
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