Category: Uncategorized
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Immigration
From an unsent letter The thing that is interesting about immigration and group conflict and prejudice isn’t that it was so especially unique or terrible in America, it’s that it’s a universal problem everywhere, for all humans, and continues to be at all levels of socieity and, in all places, among all people, including those…
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The mixed benefits of losing organized religion
Some people seem to have misapprehended the message of Christianity. It isn’t that some people are good and some are bad (that’s our unsophisticated emotional instinct), it’s that some behaviors are good and some behaviors are bad, and all people are capable of participating in either one. There’s a world of difference there. But people…
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Can you fix inequality?
The classic question that seems to be being debated in society today at all levels is essentially this: “Why shouldn’t this person or endeavkr be distributed the same goods or status as this other person or endeavor?” Why are things not the same? Why are they not fair, meaning equal, meaning possessed of the same…
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Sacredness
What does it mean that something is sacred? That it has some special importance and significance to someone, that it has a special power or meaning. It is easy to see, then, why sacredness persists as a quality even today. It may inhabit different idols, but sacredness is part of the furniture of human meaning,…
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Comfort or courage?
You don’t tell someone that “It’s normal to be afraid” in the hope that they will continue to be afraid. When we comfort a child and explain to them that what they’re going through is normal, what we mean is that being afaird is a normal part of the progression from not realizing there is…
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Optimistic modernism
In response to the optimistic modernism of Greg Lukianov and James Lindsay I listened to a great discussion between a couple of my favorite thinkers. But I can’t help but wonder if there are some things that are being assumed or ignored. The current historical and philosophical moment is the direct child of science and…
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Looser clothes or tighter living?
My wife pointed out that maybe she should wear less flexible and stretchy clothing so she can feel where she is going and feel those limits. Maybe stretchy clothes aren’t the solution if you don’t want to keep getting more unhealthy. Maybe she should wear more unforgiving clothes. She also speculated about how big you…
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Political parties that can’t lose…or win
People have forgotten how to strategically lose. There is so much pressure to always succeed, especially for politicians because you need to be seen to be doing something and to be a winner. Our whole society is too afraid to fail because we think that if we do it contradicts our entire value and existence,…
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The danger of agreeable people
In an extreme situation, one with high and terrible stakes, it’s highly probable that the most likely people to have caused it will be quite disagreeable, and the people most likely to resist and halt that situation will also be disagreeable. The agreeable people occupy a middle space. They are less obviously dangerous, because they…
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Rehabilitating racism
Anti-racism is a problem because it represents a rehabilitation of racialized thinking. Rather than seeking to reduce the degree to which we assign value and make judgments and sort people according two race, it moves those judgments to the forefront. We’ve seen from history where that goes. The most likely result of such mental sorting…
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