curiosity | autonomy | discernment | humanity
Other humans are fucking annoying. They crowd my space, they test my patience, they disrupt my comfort, they have bad opinions. But why then do I believe in justice? Fairness? Equity? The progressive capital gains tax or Medicare For All? Why is it so easy to fight for and aspire
I want to begin by acknowledging the biases of my authorship. I am a cisgender man with Eastern European, Jewish, and British heritage; I grew up in the middle class. I have had it easy, and that has undoubtedly skewed my belief in humanity towards goodness and decency. Misanthropy, the
Asked whether he was an optimist or a pessimist, James Baldwin said: "I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am
One of the most read novels in high school classrooms is William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It begins with a plane crash that maroons a group of British schoolboys on a deserted island during a war. The young lads attempt self-governance before descending into violence and
The two certainties of life are birth and death. Is our fundamental essence one of beginnings or of ends, or both? Let's first consider a mortality-facing politics. Figures like Heidegger cast humans as "beings-toward-death," whose inevitable demise frames existence. Death is as individual
