Blog
‘Hate’ isn’t an element in H2O
Hate isn’t part of the water. We can see it. Transphobia and racism are harmful and wrong, even if they’re technically legal where we are. We can recognize them and know why they are wrong.
Jesse Singal detransitions
He’s packed up his comments, hooray. If your main gig is scaremongering about the idea that somewhere a hypothetical child is changing their sex, please detransition away from that activity.
Wanting to see and know: Positives and negatives of trans visibility
A tiny Chanukah reflection. Our terms, the formal definitions we’d give if asked, the way we informally use words: these are the detectors with which we make our way through the world.
The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.
Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.
We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”
‘Do I want it? Life, that is.’
‘On Not Knowing‘ by Emily Ogden. What is there to hope for? Should we hope? We can work in the field, making bales of hay, but the work of the soul “never will be cut and dried.”
‘Agnotology’: The study of ignorance
Our ways of knowing can be corrupted. “We’re going to have to rethink our metaphors,” Proctor said, on persuading people away from science-denial. “We’ve got to think much more creatively.”
We knew it before we were quizzed
That truth remains valuable. We existed. We went to school and forgot ourselves for a while. Then we remembered who we are. We had this knowledge with us the whole time.