Here’s a super relevant topic, Mulan’s straight to video sequel! Seriously, this movie isn’t really worth talking about a lot. It was fine. Not terrible, not great. Fine. The one thing I wanted to talk about is what a perfect example it is of the conflict between Chinese and American values. As a sequel withContinue reading “Mulan 2 and duty”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Diagnosis White Privilege: a skin condition or a heart condition?
I’ve never felt the need to respond to or say anything about Robin DiAngelo and her little book. It never seemed like there was anything there worth responding to, it’s so obviously vacuous. But I suppose you can’t really argue with millions of copies sold and hundreds of mandatory trainings in workplaces. In my ownContinue reading “Diagnosis White Privilege: a skin condition or a heart condition? “
Why I write the way I do
One big factor that determines how I write is that I don’t know what I’m going to say before I start writing. I’m not sure what I think, often. I get a little seed and I just water it and follow it and let it grow and see where it goes. Often I end upContinue reading “Why I write the way I do”
The source of a culture’s lifeblood
The power of the creative divine belongs to those who have a vision of the future and are willing to bear or assign the responsibility for it. Either to carry it or to remove those who stand in its way. The power of the vision and the assignment of responsibility allows human to rise aboveContinue reading “The source of a culture’s lifeblood”
Heroes and villains
Do people need enemies? Do they instinctively seek them out? The thing that is preventing the future we envision from coming to pass. How we conceive of those enemies seems to matter a lot. Certain ideologies, such as Christianity, actively encourage us not to view actual other people as our enemies, but rather, impersonal forcesContinue reading “Heroes and villains”
Cuties, part 2
An afterword about sexual taboos. Please skip if you’re easily offended. The topic of discussion is taboos we have already dropped and what ones we may still drop. So no matter where you are in the timeline of taboo holding or taboo rejecting, you’ll probably find something to be offended about. On a side note,Continue reading “Cuties, part 2”
Cuties
The film Cuties has raised some ethical problems about popular art. One particular problem is, where do you draw the line between exposure of an issue and exploitation of an issue? It may have been the intent of the filmmaker to criticize the sexualization of children. On the other hand, she did it by showingContinue reading “Cuties”
Lessons I’ve learned from business
I’ve been in business for a while now, I’ve had over a hundred employees (I lost count eventually), and although I’m not the best boss ever, I have learned a few things about being a manager. First, most of the actual work that makes an organization productive is done by a small minority of theContinue reading “Lessons I’ve learned from business”
On individualism
It is the instinct of our time to “make something ours”, to make it your own, to particularize things to yourself. We do not seek to belong to something greater than ourselves. Our love of the individual means there is nothing greater, and we make them worthwhile by bringing them into us, not us intoContinue reading “On individualism”
The blind spots of all societies
It is in the nature of every civilization to be blinded by two things. First the “things that everybody knows”, the basic, fairly unchallenged assumptions that drive people’s view of the world. The “first principles” of the science of life that are themselves axiomatic (as Aristotle pointed out). The second is the confidence and selfContinue reading “The blind spots of all societies “
Why the Bible uses stories instead of lectures
One challenge the writers of the Bible faced was the fact that there were no books. Written records were rare and took a lot of effort to produce, and there were a lot of different people in different places and situations the message needed to be able to reach. So the question is, how doContinue reading “Why the Bible uses stories instead of lectures”
Random Tangent on History
(excerpted from an older entry) It’s an interesting fact that our political parties seem to have organized themselves broadly based on personality. I have a theory for why this may have happened. Partly it may just be an inevitable consequence of having enough people, and, since personality variation is a huge natural element of humanContinue reading “Random Tangent on History”
The manifesto of the new age
Speech is violence Outcomes are causes Denial is guilt Censorship is inclusion Power is truth Violence is peaceful Vulnerability is power Strength is safety Freedom is uniformity of results Property is theft Dialogue is supression Knowledge is slavery Everyone is the same But differences are supreme Who you love is innate to who you areContinue reading “The manifesto of the new age”
Why Systemic Racism?
I get now why they were calling it institution racism and systemic racism. They had to call it that to develop the argument that would allow them to enact their own institutional and systemic racism as a coubter-balance. Ironically, their accomplished this by shifting the meaning of institutional and systemic (formalized), for situations where thisContinue reading “Why Systemic Racism?”
The New Oscar Standards
I just read the new diversity and inclusion standards for Oscar eligibility, and it was one of the most shocking things I’ve ever read. Obviously the Oscar’s were always heavily prejudiced toward certain things, but formalizing it is a whole other step. Making prejudice institutional is a new level. Artistic merit should never be heldContinue reading “The New Oscar Standards”
Reflections on my thesis
If I didn’t already say this somewhere, it wasn’t my intention to argue in my these that we should have state sponsored censorship. I mean, to a degree we already do. We gave censorship of behavior, you can’t do anything anywhere, and especially when it comes to kids we engage in some censorship. It’s notContinue reading “Reflections on my thesis”
The modernist confusion about postmodernism
One refrain that seems to come up often lately among the remaining modernists in academia is, how could this have happened? Viewing (accurately) the collapse of the ideas of truth and evidence and the descent into a postmodern ecosystem of manipulation and tribalism, they wonder where it all went wrong. Having previously spent their daysContinue reading “The modernist confusion about postmodernism”
The importance of sight to humans, and the need for a vision.
Sight is the defining sense of humanity. Our entire approach to life is oriented around it. Even when we lack sight we will use those brain structures to approximate it. Our great metaphors of understanding revolve around sight. Light, darkness, vision, clarity, fogginess, haze, illumination, insight. The most compelling structure for inhabitation by human thoughtContinue reading “The importance of sight to humans, and the need for a vision. “
Problems with atheistic Christianity
If it works, why does it work? Is it because it’s true? If it is true, why is is true? It seems like with these specific stories, people actually thought they were writing history. History as we conceive it, in fact, seems to have emerged out of the kind of unvarnished honesty of presentation thatContinue reading “Problems with atheistic Christianity “
Gender and cooperation
Although tyranny was often an outcome, as it is of any structured political or economic system, specialization into certain roles was also, in the main, a byproduct of local historical conditions and assumptions (both of which had a grounding in empirical personal and cultural experience, experimentation, consequences, and adaptation). Local systems didn’t just arise fromContinue reading “Gender and cooperation”
Making Nobody Happy 