If kind, other-centred behaviour isn’t entirely natural to us, then should it be legislated (more than it already is)? Many old timey philosophers agree that happiness is predicated on an increase in pleasure and decrease in pain, and that just seem like common sense. Yet all too often the choices
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A Puff of Absurdity: Endgame Vision
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” ~ Proverbs 29:18 In many versions of that passage it says with prophetic vision people cast off restraint, but I think vision works as well on its own and is more inclusive, and perish gives a clearer image of the end result. It doesn’t mean
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Menakem’s Somatic Therapy Approach to Anti-Racism Work
Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands came highly recommended. The title refers to the effect that being enslaved had on his grandmother, and Menakem traces the violence of racism through the specific perspectives of people on either end of racial conflicts. Beyond just explaining how racism affects all of us in
Continue readingScripturient: Travels with Epicurus
I’m sure it’s not just me who feels this way, but these days I find increasing wisdom and solace in the words of the classical authors: Seneca, Cicero, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Horace, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Epictetus, Diogenes, Plato. The writers of classical Greece and Rome mostly attract my attention right now,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Community, Again
I just read local author Paul Born’s Deepening Community. In places, it’s very close to what I’ve written about in terms of ensuring that we’re kind to one another at the very end. He doesn’t skirt around the issue that we’re in dire straights and that we can choose how
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Philosophy of Mr. Money Moustache
A friend pointed me towards this podcast in which Tim Ferriss interviews Mr. Money Moustache (MMM), a man who retired from work in his 30s to live on the interest from his investments and then got a significant following as a blogger. The podcast describes the kind of life I’ve
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Justified Worry
I’m going to be writing more personally for a bit. I have a lot to get off my chest. Literally. I’m getting a double mastectomy today and an oophorectomy for good measure (which sounds to me like something Willy Wonka might do), because I have all the fancy genes that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Feelings
I was thinking about the fact discussed here that we only started acknowledging feelings as something to be concerned with or a measure of well-being when soldiers returned from WWII, a good half of them with shell shock. Freud had us actually as…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Feelings
I was thinking about the fact discussed here that we only started acknowledging feelings as something to be concerned with or a measure of well-being when soldiers returned from WWII, a good half of them with shell shock. Freud had us actually as…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Achievement and Death and Stuff
First, a bit about boredom: “Boredom may lead you to anything. After all, boredom even sets one to sticking gold pins into people…one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interest…one’s own fancy, however wild it may be…desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid –
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
I prefer Hedges’ subtitle to his title, Wages of Rebellion, but this post isn’t about him per se. Morally, we have to revolt against this corrupt system – like when the workers in Rome all walked out in a series of secessions (it doesn’t always take the first time), or
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Epicurus – The 3 Secrets to a Happy Life?
I knew there was a reason to give Philosophy another go. 🙂 Filed under: Philosophy Tagged: Epicurus, Happiness, Philosophy
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On John Stuart Mill, Free Speech, and Climate Change
I got caught up in a few arguments about climate change recently that just reinforced to me, that there’s still such a strong bashlash against the entire idea that we’re unlikely to move forward quickly enough to be effective. Paper is trees! My school board is fundraising for the Philippines,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Faith that the End is Near
In today’s G&M, Jared Bland writes from a perspective I’ve been taking lately as well. “Despite seeming reasonable in other areas of my life, I believe that we are quite likely living in or near the fabled end times….[I]t’s becoming easier and easier to feel that the shadow hanging over
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Humans: Too Invasive or Too Compassionate to Survive
In my last post, and elsewhere over the years, I went all Agent Smith and suggested that humans are a virus that can’t be contained. All other animals work within their environment to regulate their population. As long as people don’t mess things up by moving animals around (like bringing rabbits
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