Does Suffering Provide Meaning and Purpose in Life?—A Reply to Freya India
Integral to this is the issue of how much personal responsibility one should assume for a given outcome and why.
Paul Sturdee
· 7 min read
Culture Wars
A collection of 175 posts
Towards Practical Empowerment
In A Critique of Anti-Racism, I offer empowerment theory as a framework for anti-racist work, whether it is activism or pedagogy.
Erec Smith
· 10 min read
Struggling with Pixar’s 'Soul'
If heaven needs to be segregated, what hope does Earth have?
Colm O'Shea
· 12 min read
Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America
We have to make ourselves equal. No one can do it for us.
Glenn C. Loury
· 20 min read
A (Failed) Campaign to Smear a University of Toronto Scholarship Student as a Bigot
The problem, he notes is that there is always going to be a required balance between our trusting inclination of accusations from an apparent victim, and everyone’s inviolable right of due process.
Michael Humeniuk
· 12 min read
Sexual Assault and the Taboo of Sound Advice
Yes, your car might be stolen even if you lock it and take the keys, but does that mean that no one should remind us to lock our cars and take our keys?
Steve Salerno
· 6 min read
‘More Weight’: An Academic’s Guide to Surviving Campus Witch Hunts
When you are being targeted by aggression, hostility, and hatred, a natural impulse is to want to fight back as hard as possible, and exact revenge.
Dorian S. Abbot
· 8 min read
Scottish Nationalists in Turmoil
The trans argument shows how easily it may be rocked back on its heels. Neither of the two women at loggerheads are transphobic on any but an extreme definition; they merely differ about how easy it should be to register a sex change.
John Lloyd
· 10 min read
First, Do No Harm: A New Model for Treating Trans-Identified Children
Individuals with a fragile ego structure also tend to be prone toward black-and-white thinking, which leads them to concrete rather than symbolic solutions.
Susan Evans and Marcus Evans
· 16 min read
China and the Question of Taiwan
In modern-day China, nationalism is at its strongest when dealing with the idea—almost an article of religious faith—that the independent island nation of Taiwan is in fact a Chinese state and must be unified with the mainland as soon as possible.
Aaron Sarin
· 13 min read
Why Is Biden Trying to Punish Charter Schools for Their Success?
Charter schools are publicly funded institutions that charge no fees and have more flexibility than regular government schools in how they manage their affairs and run their programs.
Greg Ashman
· 7 min read
Stop Sensationalizing the Threat of Right-Wing Political Violence
Terrorism is ultimately a weapon of the weak. By engaging in threat inflation, we expand the power and prestige of terrorists by allowing them to be more influential than they otherwise might be.
Zaid Jilani
· 7 min read
Visions Are Sublime; Social Reform Is Messy
The Democratic party’s radical wing, which mostly set aside its many differences with Biden during his contest with Trump, wants a more rapid pace of change than the 78-year old centrist would wish.
John Lloyd
· 10 min read
Wikipedia Turns Twenty
An expansive free encyclopedia is impossible without an army of volunteer writers.
Adam Wakeling
· 9 min read
Politics vs. Mental Health: How the Culture War Blocked My Healing Process
No matter what a person’s skin color or ideology, encouraging them to feel ashamed about who they are is never conducive to good mental health.
Ian Dempsey
· 7 min read