Author: Mr Nobody
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Surviving the past and present through sex
One not well-understood way that men and women differ from one another is in their strategies for filling and defining roles. It is often noted that women occupy the great stable middle of social and personal distributions, while men occupy a larger portion of the extremes, both at the top and at the bottom. So…
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Doing something
One thing that often gets forgetten in the rush to take action and the moral pressure to “do something” is the historical reality of how much of what we think of as the terrible crimes of the past were committed out of a similar desire to take action and do the right thing. It’s very…
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The market for art
I know from experience I would get accused of being a philistine, but I think it’s at least worth considering that there’s a kind of intelligence to the enduring popularity of certain art in the world market. Some works of art, like the great cathedrals of Europe, will live forever. You don’t have to convince…
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Caused or conveyed?
Conveyance is one of the most concepts in human life and psychology. The phrase “don’t shoot the messenger” is a trope simply because of the universal human tendency to do exactly that, to attach causal responsibility to the mechanism that conveys an effect. People also make this mistake positively, chasing the phenomenon that conveys an…
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Sports and competition
Competition is fundamental to sports. Even at less conventional displays of athleticism such as the X Games there is still a competitive hierarchy. You just didn’t see the actual competition that eliminated everyone except those four people performing. So it’s more like an exhibition of winners than a competition for winning. People like me who…
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Diversity and estrangement
Diversity is real because differences between people are real. We aren’t all just some generic, interchangeable things. We have actual differences. And those differences are consequential. This is such an obvious fact that virtually everyone will defend it in their private lives, yet people often act publicly as if they can treat other humans as…
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Progress and moral relativism
The idea of progress is indefinable and incoherent if there is no fixed value (even in a merely numerical sense) toward which you are progressing. A series of random numbers does not progress toward anything. It merely changes. And there is no essential difference in position between any particular number in the series and any…
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Morality without religion?
One statement I often hear from humanistic atheists like Stephen Fry that I think is obviously false is the claim that you can have morality without religion. I think that claim is not only untrue, but definitively untrue. And recent events should prove that. Sam Harris and Stephen Fry themselves would have to admit that…
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Ideological pressures in institutions
From a letter to a pastor I’ve written several letters this year to my state reps, to the local paper, to a local TV station, to our school superintendent, and others. They all featured fairly similar content. Concerns about the politicization of the news and schools. Concerns about partisanship and antagonism and ideological pharisaism. Mostly…
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Camille Paglia’s advice to Christians
There is quite a growing list of “friendly” atheists that Christians have been finding common ground with in the fight against postmodernism. James Lindsay, Jonathan Haidt, John McWhorter. I think you could also add Bret Weinstein and Heather Haying to that list. And maybe Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Summers (if you want a feminist…
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