Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“Cruelty plays a fundamental role in the vegetarian’s argument inasmuch as the principal reason the vegetarian does not want to eat meat is that she does not want to kill animals or cause them to suffer. The vegetarian sees cruelty in purely negative terms; she believes that its complete eradication is a realistic goal that…
“In discussions about plastic use it is common to blame mass consumerism and a throwaway culture for the environmental problem of plastic. However, rather than being demand led, the throwaway culture was created and driven by the corporations who profit from it. The amazing materials created from the waste products of the oil and gas…
““Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are effectively developing rich countries — and they have been since the late 15th century,” argues Hickel…In the book it is laid bare for all to see that underdevelopment in the Global South is not a natural condition, but a consequence of the way Western powers have…
“Thus [in Keynesian economics] there is no need for any change in the mode of production for profit; just take control of the money machine to ensure an infinite flow of money and all will be well […] Well, capitalism is a monetary economy but it is not a money economy (alone). Money cannot make…
Dorothy Wordsworth by Jennifer Chang The daffodils can go fuck themselves. I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings about the spastic sun that shines and shines and shines. How are they any different from me? I, too, have a big messy head on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. I flower and don’t…
“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” – Salvador Dali I know lots of people who have made relatively honest and minor mistakes at their workplace and have then been disciplined for it. These sort of scenarios always get me thinking about human nature and how, when we talk about mistakes, excellence,…
“Evil is not eliminated by a destructive retributive judgment, but by an aesthetic synthesis of intensity, order, and harmony. Whitehead’s God is not a cosmic judge; rather, God is a cosmic artist. The many poor paintings of individual lives and events are transformed in a continuous aesthetic process of harmonizing the parts with an ideal…
“Moral and religious authority will always tip toward the blood of the martyrs, and military service is the only martyrological option available to Americans…In America, the weight of blood tips the scales of sacred authority toward the state and away from the church. The nation state is elevated above the church by the sacred authority…
“It is certainly the case that many cultural traditions with their varying modes of reasoning are already embedded within Christianity. The Bible alone contains texts that celebrate different and sometimes conflicting accounts of the world, exposing a range of rationalities that are expressed in a variety of genres. But even more important for theology’s work…
“I would say that selfhood as we humans normally conceive of it emerges as we master language. As Whitehead says in “Adventures of Ideas” (I summarize), the account of the 6th day should be written, “He gave them language, and they became souls.” I think we can make distinctions between degrees of nonconscious experience (particles,…