Blog
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?
Why we’re so bad at solving long-term problems
‘The Optimist’s Telescope’ by Bina Venkataraman. It’s hard to ditch our loyalties and biases. It’s hard to stop focusing on past and present and to ponder what legacy we’re leaving for the distant future.
Life on Earth: What has been, what will be
Climate change forces us to find life beyond our assumptions. We can’t stop all the major tipping points that are coming. We may be able to adapt to some. We have to try. We won’t be what we thought we were.
I’m trans, and I did not consent for this to be done to my body
Why is it happening? How can we make it stop? Pirates ate most of the Galapagos tortoises, and some of those species went extinct, and of one called “Fantastic,” there’s only one tortoise left.
‘This is the team’: Collective change on climate
‘Under The Sky We Make’ by Kimberly Nicholas. The ecological tipping points are upon us, and all is lost, unless we have a mindset change. “Look around you,” she writes. “This is the team. We are it.”
Animals want to live. Will they save us?
We are part of the world, but we don’t take it seriously. The Prophecy: They’ll renew time and heal the planet. The forest creatures find a way to show them the light. The oppressors can’t do it for themselves.
Everything around us? It’s ‘the surround.’
The word ‘environment’ puts the world in a cognitive box. ‘The environment,’ the entirety of Planet Earth, the world and its nature — so large, yet we manage to trap it in the box of our own minds.