Blog
Read this chapter in the January 6 Committee’s report
Everyone should read the final report of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack. The committee interviewed a thousand witnesses and crunched a million documents to reach its conclusions, so this is valuable information.
What we fear from the ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’
In Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers, alien seed pods fall to earth and sprout plants that quickly mature. While a human is asleep, the plant produces an emotionless clone of the human body and then destroys the original body.
Transforming into ourselves: Identity and climate
Discovering who we’ve always been and who we must become, collectively. We don’t have to live according to a prescribed model of sexuality or gender. We don’t have to burn fossil fuels either. Everything could be different.
We are the book we’re talking about
And we are what’s at stake in truth-telling. If the interlocutor opposes me because of who I am, will they be impressed that I read a book? No. Even if it is a book they have heard of? No.
Humility: A needed balance
On early modern philosophers and online trolls. In Lewis Carroll’s ‘You Are Old, Father William,’ a young person asks: ‘You balanced an eel on the end of your nose - / What made you so awfully clever?’
What is human dignity?
Where does it come from? How do we know it exists? Does dignity need to be pinned to God, or can it have secular grounding? Is it about humility, pride, or both? What does interdependence have to do with it?
When we disagree on politics and I lose a friend
I have to be a good person, and even then, it’s up to someone else if they want to be my friend. They don’t owe me what I gave as a gift, and certainly they don’t owe me what I never gave at all.
Does ‘woke’ mean saying — or not saying — certain words?
In any case, careful speech—including refraining from speaking — can build trust. When the right wing refers to “woke,” they may want to prevent others from saying certain words—or to reserve certain words for themselves.
It’s not ‘free speech,’ it’s bigotry
If they really believe in free speech, this is how we’ll know. There are many reasons why people have prejudices and why they devote their speech to expressing bigotry. Not high on the list: commitment to free speech.