Yesterday in our class, the discussion led me to talk for a little bit about a distinction originally made by Marcuse, I believe, regarding soft versus hard totalitarianism. I extended this description out to all manner of group structures that lead to implicit or explicit domination.

Thinking about it last night, I formulated what I presented to the class as a FB post (see below). I would add now, with a few  more hours of thinkering, that the liberty to transcend such hegemonic conditions lies in CO-ORDINATION, ordering the world together through open communication. This mirrors both my commitments to Jaspers’ notion of philosophical faith and to Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. I want to thank my colleagues in the Introduction to Great Religions for pushing me to express these ideas. Let’s see if I can keep circumscribing and developing them.