Category: Philosophy as a Way of Life
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Open Virtue, Closed Propriety: Considerations on Daoism and Bergsonism
No consideration of parallels between Daoism and Bergsonism has been accomplished. Yet there is a profitable comparison to be made between the ancient Chinese philosophy of the Dào Dé Jing and the more contemporary work of French philosopher Henri Bergson. Each philosophy concerns a creative force that flows through the…
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Fallen — Forlorn — Forsaken
As I approach my 55th birthday this weekend, I really cannot tell if I am getting depressed or just bored in my situation. So much feels like “going through the motions.” After 25 years wandering along the margins of academia, how have I ended up so submerged in its tributaries…
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Spiders fly hundreads of miles on earth’s electric field
Every day, around 40,000 thunderstorms crackle around the world, collectively turning Earth’s atmosphere into a giant electrical circuit. The upper reaches of the atmosphere have a positive charge, and the planet’s surface has a negative one… Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies,…
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Relentlessly and randomly curious
When you’re curious about something, you’re pulled off in multiple directions. Your eye can be snagged by some seemingly inconsequential dimension. ~ Tyson Lewis
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Arriving by assistance of the Whole
Most who brag of being self-made—to the point of believing their own rhetoric—sooner or later will find themselves self-unmade. Yet even in this, they will become an unmaking alongside all those of whom they took advantage in Violent Struggle.
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Finding a Way: Faith in Times of Crisis
“Philosophy is the faith which unifies man.” —Richard M. Owsley[1] For the entirety of my life in Bible Belt Texas, I have encountered both religionists and atheists who interpret “faith” as an irrational action: a totally emotive, rationally groundless hope in impossibilities.[2] This also has been a regular definition given to…
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KEY 0: Fool’s dissertate where angels fear to leap
I am never without a tarot pack wherever I go. I do not read them for others much anymore, but I take them out to just play with them and see what can be seen. When I need to clear my mind, I take out diverse decks to do a…
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Dearest Molly
In 18th and early-19th-century Britain, a “molly” was a commonly used term for men who today might identify as gay, bisexual or queer. Sometimes, this was a slur; sometimes, a more generally used noun, likely coming from mollis, the Latin for soft or effeminate. A whole molly underworld found its home…
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The Emperor and Wyrding freedom: Surging beyond heteronormative tradition
My dissertating, to be authentic queer philosophizing, must be a Wyrd insurrection against the Emperor—the Pater Familias, the Patriarchy, the Toxic Masculine. My experiences over the last two years with a few older colleagues in professional philosophy informs me of how very much the “problem” of toxic patriarchy permeates our…
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Travis Wright reviews Latour’s Down to Earth
Bruno Latour’s Down to Earth is, functionally, a call to rethink and re-describe our political reality in accordance with the changing forces that shape it. Latour lays out his argument in 20 brief sections, each deceptively quick to read. Section 14, for example, consists of 37 paragraphs, 16 of which…
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New Patreon Podcast
I finally created my Patreon page, Call Me Maggie, and I look forward to working with whomever decides to join up.
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Unchained Mind-walking
My visit to Abilene this last week has been quiet and refreshing after teaching two courses during the second part of Summer school. Humble thanks to my colleagues Doug and Loni who co-taught one course with me at UNT. First online course to prepare me to teach online in the…
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Silent road, cloudless mind
Saturday, I went to visit my mother at the nursing home in Abilene, TX. Almost 91, she has become much less active, sometimes sleeping most of the day. I brought with me Bashō-Sensei’s beautiful haibun, The Narrow road to the deep north and other travel sketches, given me on my…
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Wonder of dawn
The shared reason of the day says, “See, the sun comes up in the east as the earth stands still.” Or maybe, “See, the earth turns on its axis as it swings around the sun.” Yet neither truly responds to the wonder of dawn… “Look! How this marvelous daybreak?” —…
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On Bullshit Jobs – RSA
According to a 2015 YouGov poll, 37% of the UK population believe their job makes no meaningful contribution to the world. And despite the time-saving advances promised by technology, we’re now working longer hours than ever. How has this situation come to pass, and what is the future of work…
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Team Human – RSA
Influential thinker Douglas Rushkoff argues that there is an anti-human agenda embedded in our markets and technologies, which has turned them from means of human connection into ones of isolation and repression. Our corporations and the culture they create glorify individualism at the expense of cooperation, threatening the sustainability not…
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