Category Archives: Uncategorized

The narrative of (modern) colonialism radically overstates the benefits for the colonizers and radically underestimates the benefits for the colonized. Which is a reverse of the older narrative. If you set aside feelings, which admittedly run extremely high on this subject for many reasons, a far more ambiguous picture emerges of the net cost andContinue reading “Colonialism and historical perspective”

The hardest thing to conceive about death is the fact that the world goes one afterward. Whether it’s your own death or the death of someone close, death is the end of your personal existential world, or at least a part of it. The sudden end of what it was, forever. Because our world isContinue reading “Conceptualizing death”

I’ve been learning about “neopronouns” and the “neodivergent” from the world’s greatest resource: TikTok. I’ve also read some guides from popular media websites about how to embrace this hot phenomenon. And here’s my reaction: All of this is just people screaming “Indulge my fantasy!” We all would prefer to live in a world of our ownContinue reading “TikTok guides to neopronouns”

We are as chronocentric today as people were ethnocentric in the past. If the past was another culture, we would be considered the worst of bigots. Life, as Edmund Burke said, is a contract between the generations of the present, the generations past, and the unborn. And we’ve broken our contracts with both. 

https://youtu.be/-OQL1Jja3p4 Jump to 1:05:28 OK, this post requires some background. You have to watch at least part of the video, and I’m not going to explain it. There is something very important coming to light in this discussion. The bit about refusing development into some conception of maturity is a key point, and I wantContinue reading “Peter Pan and the tyranny of sexual maturity”

The whole argument of queer theory basically boils down to, if we can eradicate the idea of the “good” or “healthy” or “normal” as a distinctive category, then none of us will have to suffer under the burden of being bad or unhealthy or abnormal. And that will free us from the psychological burden ofContinue reading “On “Queer Theory””

I never had much sympathy for the alarm-raisers of the 80s and 90s, who claimed that the advertised evolution in attitudes around sexual behaviors represented an attempt to deliberately educate children into sexual deviancy (as it was then construed), and that various efforts to normatize a wide variety of sexual behaviors would result in aContinue reading “Reflecting on moral alarmism”

What is the moral status of adaptive, evolved systems? It’s not easy to say. They’re emergent, unplanned. Morality is about choice, alternatives, consequences, and adherence to guiding principles. But evolved systems just are. You can’t ask what the morality is of predation, of the fact that an enormous number of animals survive by devouring otherContinue reading “Are emergent systems moral?”

There is an infinite well of anger go be drawn from. There is so much to be angry about. Not just in one situation, but for everyone, about so many things. The whole world, other people, ourselves, history, chance, life. Anger can be useful. And it can destroy us. We’re all always holding our angerContinue reading “The dangers of group identification”

https://youtu.be/fFFSKedy9f4 Commentary As much as Stephen advocates for empiricism, I think Jordan’s advantage in this discussion, despite appearances, is that he’s more grounded in ordinary empirical reality. As smart as he is, as successful as he is, Jordan hasn’t lived as one of the elite, the powerful, or the great of Canadian society. He grewContinue reading “Stephen Fry and empiricism”

Perhaps one of my more unique qaulities is that I actually know what I’m capable of. And I mean that in the worst way. I don’t lie to myself. I don’t have pleasant illusions. Most people lie to themselves about themselves all the time. It makes it easier to lie to other people. I believeContinue reading “Moral honesty”

   Why there are two sexes and why the two sexes seek partnership is intimately tied up with their innate differences. Those differences are the basis for the partnership. If they didn’t exist you wouldn’t need it. If men and women actually were the same we wouldn’t need each other, and we wouldn’t need toContinue reading “Embracing sex differences”

   I feel like this is the definitive statement of Kendi’s philosophy. Childish, self-referential, simplistic, reductive, belligerent, prejudiced, akd contradictory. His thought is more of an attitude, than a thesis. And this explanation of it captures it perfectly.     An intelligent person would realize, at this point, that they’re talking to a child, orContinue reading “Kendi tries to define racism”

A lot of what men and women provide for each other is intangible. It might be a feeling, a general assessment of our psychological position in the universe. Provision and security, identity, and status are all a big part of this feeling. For men, sexual insecurity is a very big concern. In order to beContinue reading “What do men get from marriage?”

I couldn’t catch the tails of all the love songs that drift through the summer air. I couldn’t fit them in a jar or distill them and give them to you. I couldn’t find that catch, that thrill, that slow throb, and make it real between you and me. I couldn’t fit all those storiesContinue reading “You will not forget”

We are told that you can’t have a racially divergent outcome, because that doesn’t allow for human diversity. I say, you cannot have a racially loaded process, because that does not allow for human diversity. For it is the right of people, and in fact all races, to be different. To be what they are.Continue reading “What does diversity entail?”

   The problem with this movie wasn’t that “people disliked it because the actors were women;” it was that people said that if you disliked it it was because they were women. And that created some fundamental tension. The actors chosen were marketed on the basis of being women. So when people weren’t impressed, thatContinue reading “Commercial moralism and Ghostbusters 2016”

    I think I might be radically individualistic. I don’t care what other people think about me, I don’t have any interest in listening to anyone unless I’m convinced I should. I don’t really want to do anything for anyone else. Or maybe that’s just a part of me.     In practice I’mContinue reading “Do I care about others?”

There’s an enormous unaddressed hypocrisy in the attitudes of existing gays and liberal activists toward the trans movement. Everyone wants to say that the thing we knocked down and the thing we changed about the world, that was a good thing. But what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to change is crazy,Continue reading “Gay hypocrisy”

There are three men I’ve heard speak together a few times: Stephen Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, and Jordan Peterson. And they often strike me as iconic, representing different schools of thought approaching a similar subject. Pinker always strikes me as a very brilliant but very limited person with a more abstracted and scholastic view of theContinue reading “Three Figures”