Category: Whatever
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Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy
The concept of “showing-up” emphasizes active existence over passive presence. It involves intentional engagement with the world, others, and oneself. By exploring the balance between appetite, emotion, and intellect through the lens of askēsis, individuals can cultivate a deeper, responsive participation in life, fostering transformation and liberation.
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Decluttering Awareness: Nagarjuna and Emptiness
Nāgārjuna’s thinkering dives into emptiness to abandon how we cling to rigid views, which just messes with our understanding of reality. He shows that everything arises through dependence and encourages us to let go of fixed beliefs, which can lead to true freedom and serenity in life.
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A Fourfold for the Current Empire
I explore the concept of “transistance,” a practice of navigating life’s complexities without adhering to rigid frameworks. It emphasizes the importance of embracing ambiguity and interdependence, while rejecting traditional revolutionary approaches. I propose it is a first step of a fourfold practice to cultivate authentic responses, ultimately advocating for a…
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Whispering New Directions
The text explores the concept of the practical spirit, emphasizing three modes: contemplative, scientific, and operative. It critiques the dominance of operationalism in modern society, linking it to systemic dehumanization. I advocatesfor “transistance” to navigate beyond established orientations and connect with deeper uncertainties through mindful practices and the exploration of…
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where eternity’s shadow slinks
walking about myneighborhood listeningas Debussy fillsthe day with nocturnes scurrying squirrelsleap toward safetyfrom the old thinkerplodding on along is there more bird song?do feathered cousinswhistling and chirpingapprove these preludes? a bee knocks my handon way to freshlyplanted flowerbedgathering pollenalong the path home at hilltop, none playsoutside orphanageI have never seenkids…
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The Limits of Jaspersian Patience
Philosophical faith and dialogue might seem hopelessly inadequate. “Playing the long game” can also feel inadequate when people are being threatened, disappeared, or killed. Here I attempt to outline why Jaspers was no fool about this.
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Haibun 06Jul25: Reading, Authority, and Reason
When I was young, I thought books were keys to the vault of answers. If I read enough, deeply enough, I’d know what to think. I mistook tradition for commandment. Decades later, I sit among these same volumes—dog-eared, underlined, marked with my old urgency—and realize they never wanted to be…
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Seeing Through the Force
I. Introduction: The Aesthetic Judgment Within* “The soul is not a unity. It is a field of tensions — of seeing, feeling, and wanting. The work of judgment is not to conquer these parts, but to bring them into resonance.”— Jedi Go’Abi, Teachings from the Outer Rim Good siblings on…
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Heresy in the Guise of Tradition: A Queer Prodigal Son Reflects on MAGA Traditionalism
Pope Leo XIV’s election signifies a pivotal moment in the Church, yet reactionary American Catholics criticize him as insufficiently traditional. They embody a heresy that distorts Gospel values, prioritizing power over compassion. This discourse urges a return to true Catholic principles of justice and love, challenging misguided nationalism.
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Philosophical Faith in the World: Neither Sinner nor Consumer
Karl Jaspers small text provides us in 2025 with a manual of quiet defiance. For queer and other marginalized thinkers, educators, counselors, and all who remain exposed in the neoliberal storm winds, Jaspers offers us Way to reassert the soft power of dialogical courage.
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Neoliberalism: The Operating System of the Society of Control
Neoliberalism, emerging as a reaction against Keynesian policies, transforms social life through market logic, individual responsibility, and state facilitation of capital. It prioritizes deregulation, privatization, and austerity, reframing citizens as entrepreneurial actors. In Texas, neoliberal policies since the 1990s have led to educational restructuring, higher education reframed as job training,…
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The Current Empire
Unlike classical empires, the Current Empire no longer needs grand narratives of conquest. Instead, it extends its reach through bureaucratic normalization, algorithmic feedback loops, religious-nationalist fervor, and the hollowing of democratic discourse.
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Christian Nationalism and the Threats of Anti-Reason
READ MY NOTICE TO EXPRESS MYSELF AS A FREE ADULT CITIZEN OF THE STATE OF TEXAS On this ideology Christian Nationalism is a socio-political ideology that seeks to merge a particular interpretation of Christianity with national identity, law, and governance. At its core, it asserts that a nation’s legitimacy—and often its…
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Reversion, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Toward Tranquility in the Current Empire
Looking Back Almost twenty years ago, I began troubling the word peace. Like many of us, I had long imagined peace as the cessation of violence, the arrival of stillness, the mutual exhale after the fire. But something in the word felt false—a bait-and-switch coded in its history. Upon investigation,…
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From Republic to Serfdom: Misreading Rome in America’s Rural Imagination
Introduction The recent interview with Ammon Bundy in The Salt Lake Tribune highlights a recurring theme among certain rural conservatives: the belief that the expansion of government welfare signals the decline of a once-great republic. Bundy’s assertion that the U.S. risks becoming “a centralized dictatorial power” akin to “what Rome…
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Love’s Generative Nothingness: A Philosophical Reflection
Original Spontaneous Insight Love is making something out of nothing. Creatio ex nihilo. Love makes, builds, creates connections where none are and a life together that has not yet been lived. Upon no thing can anyone discover such a possibility. Only through nothing—where no differences stand between—does encompassing love make…
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Interpreting thru Maize meanings written in light
I get to work alongside amazing youth. Here are a couple of YouTubes from two of my siblings who have shared with me their most current projects. I wanted to share it with my friends and colleagues who sometimes stumble back into my thinkering safe-space. PS: The featured image was…
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NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION… WELL, MAYBE SOME OF US DO.
GETTING BACK INTO PUBLIC THINKERING† Since finishing my dissertation, I have not written nearly as much even in my journals as I used to do. I think the break is over now, however. The last few weeks have gotten me in a new mode of doing phenomenology. I started a…
CALL ME MAGGIE 