Diary

Adopting The Values of The Market Prison

“It is arguably the single most important concept in the entire logic of capitalism: commodification, more specifically the commodification of labour. A commodified world is one in which the vast majority of the population is dependent for their economic survival on the sale of their labour power as a commodity in the form of wage…

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Ever Increasing Fluidity: Gender, Race, Identity and Identity Politics

“I agree there are differences between race and gender. The differences have to do precisely with the unique forms of oppression that have been constellated in relation to each historically. I’m less convinced by attempts to draw lines separating “culture” from “nature.” It’s misleading to simply say that gender is learned (and so contingent) and…

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Poor White People and Racism. WTF?

“The links between capitalism and racism have also been well documented. It is a little recognized fact that the breakdown of union power in the late 1960s was facilitated, in part, by the racial tensions that spread through heavily unionized industries (especially steel and automotive) in the wake of pushes to desegregate the unions. Working…

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When Life Succeeds Our Ability to Respond Adaptively: Challenging Behavior, Kim Davis, and Neuroscience

“But the culture is changing at a rate faster than their education and values have trained them to accept. That in itself is a form of oppression—to neglect some people from educational and economic opportunity, then judge them when they can’t get on board with the agenda of the more progressive element of society.” Richard…

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Political Correctness: Plague or Progress?

“A plague is upon us, he warns. Harmless jokesters and joy-bringers are literally being figuratively strangled by the long, thin goblin-fingers of “political correctness” (which is a fancy term for “not treating people who are already treated like garbage like garbage”), even though all they were trying to do was just say anything they want…

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The Process is the Goal: Crispin Sartwell in the NYT and Thoughts on Progress in Evolution

“One reason that a profound moral improvement of humankind is hard to envision is that it seems difficult to pull ourselves up morally by our own bootstraps; our attempts at improvement are going to be made by the unimproved. The people who implement the singularity, mess about with the genome, prescribe the medication, preach the…

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Those Places Were Nearly Magical

“Whether at a young age marveling alongside my sister at the swath of a clear cut forest for a power line in the forest, or remembering walking deep, deep into the state forest simply to make a decision regarding where I ultimately should go to college…the woods, the mountains, the trees, the animals, the plants,…

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Process-Relational Panentheism Diagram

Recently I was attempting to discern the differences between a generic panentheism and a Whiteheadian, process-relational panentheism (as I understand it). I kept coming across little diagrams online and I quickly realized that the panentheism diagram I kept seeing did not come close to the process-relational type I was familiar with. So, I created my…

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Individuality vs. Individualism and Three Generations of Human Rights

“We follow Aryeh Neier in describing the three types as “blue,” “red,” and “green” rights. Roughly, on his model “blue” rights are civil and political rights: the rights to individual liberties…“Red” rights are economic and social rights, rights that focus more on the quality of life. “Green” rights are collective rights such as the right…

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Our Universe is Primarily Organic: Segall, Whitehead, & Ontology of Organism

“There is nothing “outside” the natural order. In this sense, I am opposed to the transcendentalist’s move to remove Reason or the reflective understanding from physical reality. There is indeed a supernaturalist residue in much transcendental and phenomenological philosophy. This is why my project has always been to theorize “the natural order” as itself always…

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