Funny way to start, but there’s method to my madness. “Mommy, why is it raining?” Because God’s crying. “Why is God crying?” Because He’s sad. “Why is God sad?” It must be something you did. Well that, at any rate,… Read More ›
colonialism
THE LIBERAL CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM
There’s a pattern to public misperception. Arrangements that are very local are often taken to be universal, and those that are quite recent are taken to have always been. A case in point – I won’t say an obvious case… Read More ›
BACKSTORIES
When looking up the etymology of a word, sometimes you need a backstory. For example, kleenex and hoover were once brand names. Or, how did we get ‘sincere’ from ‘without wax’? These are hardly grounds for complaint. But other disconnects… Read More ›
GIVING NEW MEANING TO SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT
The Bible isn’t a book. It’s a collection of several books. Wokeism isn’t one view. It’s a collection of several views. What unites them is what unites the collection of people who hold them. Something like a religion. First you… Read More ›
INTRODUCTION TO MY INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
When we had to spend 24/7 defending the mouth of our cave, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to wonder about anything, save where the next predator, be it man or beast, might be readying to pounce. And… Read More ›
“YES, BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably the most insightful philosopher of the 20th Century, made the following seemingly paradoxical (but now considered banal) observation. Pretty much everything makes sense until we try to make sense of it. So we’d have been just fine… Read More ›
THE WORLD SINCE 1363
Whenever you’re in the moment – as distinct from what? outside of it? – it’s often difficult – no, make that impossible – to see it for what, if anything, it really means. But a moment takes its meaning from… Read More ›
“YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD. I DON’T THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS”
From the Most-Memorable-One-Liners-in-Cinema file, this one’s from The Princess Bride. And here are just some of my favourite words or phrases that don’t mean what either the speaker or the listener thinks they mean: BLACK LIVES MATTER: No one thinks all… Read More ›
IN PRAISE OF COLONIALISM
There’s a German film called Run Lola Run, which explores the radically different ways things would have gone if some seemingly inconsequential happenstance had been nigh-indiscernibly different. And there’s an American Christmas classic called It’s a Wonderful Life, in which… Read More ›
THE ONTOLOGY OF PEOPLES AND THEIR DECOLONISATION
Once upon a time there were peoples living in North America who were as different from one another as were the peoples living in Europe from one another at the same time. As in Europe, these peoples spoke different languages,… Read More ›
