CALL ME MAGGIE

The Ones-at-Large

  • 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… Continue reading

    Showing-Up for Emptiness: Excellence Between Obsession and Apathy

  • 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… Continue reading

    A Fourfold for the Current Empire

  • 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… Continue reading

    Whispering New Directions

  • 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. Continue reading

    The Limits of Jaspersian Patience

  • Anti-Reason in Our Times: The Renaissance of White Supremacy

    Karl Jaspers warns in “Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time” (1952) of the unphilosophical spirit that favors comforting myths over uncomfortable truths. Contemporary white supremacist movements exemplify this “anti-reason,” exhibiting ideological rigidity and rejecting dialogue. Through the Browning’s work, “The… Continue reading

    Anti-Reason in Our Times: The Renaissance of White Supremacy

  • 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… Continue reading

    Philosophical Faith in the World: Neither Sinner nor Consumer

  • 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… Continue reading

    Neoliberalism: The Operating System of the Society of Control

  • 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… Continue reading

    Reversion, Reconciliation, and Restoration: Toward Tranquility in the Current Empire

  • Siren Song Society: Profound Boredom – Authentic Leisure – Existential Liberation

    offer these connections to encourage people to be okay with boredom–to not see every break in labor or in study or in whatever as requiring us to find something to amuse ourselves into utter alienated distraction. Continue reading

    Siren Song Society: Profound Boredom – Authentic Leisure – Existential Liberation

  • The things to work out in family history

    There is a great deal that every person must do to struggle against the holdovers of diverse bigotry’s in our social structures. However, we must also grapple with the familial history that each of us has, which contains sometimes egregious… Continue reading

  • Ready… set… leap!

    Obviously, folks make leaps all the time: they leap for real joy, they leap to invalid conclusions, they leap into bad deals, etc. So a distinction must be drawn between springing-forth from the solid ground of critical experience (the dance… Continue reading

    Ready… set… leap!

  • I asked Google Bard to explain…

    Google Bard helps folks understand how all social media and tech companies get SO VERY MUCH free labor from all those who use it. Continue reading

    I asked Google Bard to explain…

  • Back to beginnings

    Sometimes, it is better to junk some efforts with which you have been engaged than to continue their upkeep while simultaneously wasting your time. Social media was this for me. I was big proponent way back in 2008-2010. I saw… Continue reading

    Back to beginnings

  • Loving as heeding the vocation of humanization

    Lecture from PHIL 2306, Intro to Ethics, 07March2023: Finding the ground for ethical theory and moral action. I propose that most “vicious” / vice-ridden reactivity to our circumstances arises from dehumanization. Therefore, if there is a place where we can… Continue reading

  • Professors indoctrinating students? In reality, it’s the other way around

    Rather than radicalizing them, I am more radicalized by all these millenials and zoomers who long to comprehend the world they are inheriting from people like me. Continue reading

    Professors indoctrinating students? In reality, it’s the other way around

  • Reversion, Reconciliation, and the loving struggle

    A bit of knowledge-gathering for making restorative justice a part of my way of life. Continue reading

    Reversion, Reconciliation, and the loving struggle

  • Apostle & Epistle

    The term apostle derives from L.L. apostolus, from Gk. apostolos “person sent forth,” from apostellein “to send away, to send forth,” from apo– “from” + stellein “to send.” One sent-forth is a messenger. To have a message is to be an apostle. Who sends forth the… Continue reading

  • Expulsion of the White Working Class

    This exemplifies how the superstructure dominates every aspect of our lives. The neoliberal policies of the two plutocratic parties, Democrat and Republican, keep folks separated along racial lines so that the bottom 50% of citizens will not communicate with each other.… Continue reading

    Expulsion of the White Working Class