Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“The normalization of hierarchy starts right away in our lives, with adults ruling over children (or minors as the state defines them). In the patriarchal bourgeois family, imposed as the norm over the last couple of hundred years of colonial conquest and industrial development, the father reins over the mother and the children. This model…
“If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him” – Donald Trump The above statement was one of the first gut responses from Donald Trump when he was asked about the horrific, terroristic hate crime that occurred Saturday, October 27th, which resulted in the death of eleven…
“That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump’s racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out…
A call to confession and repentance: 1: Trump contributed heavily to normalizing the Alt-Right and, specifically, White Nationalism; i.e. because Trump actively sought out this faction of voters and pandered to them, these groups were legitimized and empowered. We have just witnessed this reality in Charlottesville. The unashamed massive turnout, along with the explicit violent…
“The result is a society based on the premise of looting. We are all “cashing out,” taking whatever we can hold onto — because fuck you, I’ve earned it. The CEOs are the most visible offenders, rigging companies to give themselves insane bonuses worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but isn’t that the…
“Leaders in business have a single overriding goal which must be proven to a well-defined audience of investors: making a profit, measured every quarter. By contrast political leaders have multiple goals, few of which are clearly stated or predominate over the others. They have multiple constituencies and a plethora of responsibilities measured primarily by the…
“Corporations don’t have values; they have an image…Their main objective is to make money.” —Merry Mahaffey It’s not uncommon for corporations to espouse “corporate values.” We’ve all heard this phrase before. But it should be obvious to anyone that these “values” are little more than meaningless slogans or tag-lines; they’re not meant to be taken…
“By introducing possibilities of such action that go beyond what the situation would otherwise allow, God expands our freedom. Violence as we ordinarily understand it restricts the freedom of its object.” –John B. Cobb, Jr., process-relational theologian Most of us have a decent understanding of what freedom is, or at least we think we do….
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” —John Dewey I haven’t really written much about the 2016 U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump because it’s been an overall hugely depressing nightmare for me. I have had a lot of in-person chats, Facebook discussions, and have also read a TON of articles, essays,…
“Conspiracy theory is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.” ― Roger Cohen This presidential election has generated TONS of fun (philosophical) things to think and talk about. Among them is this notion of “rigging” that keeps coming up….