Beware Cultural Drift
Thoughts on modernity’s monoculture mistake.
Philosophy
A collection of 238 posts
The Metamodern Shift in the Culture Wars
Metamodernism conveys the experience of living in a world in which we feel comfortable oscillating between different perspectives.
Not Everyone Who Disagrees with You Is An ‘Uncle Tom’
No one has an obligation to express, or refrain from expressing, a particular view, merely because they are part of a minority group.
Motorpsycho Nightmare
Robert Pirsig’s insufferable cult novel about philosophy and bike maintenance turns 50.
Beware the Little Lambs
Nietzsche warned us about the dangers of defining our values in opposition to something else.
Meritocracy and Its Discontents
Meritocratic reformers claimed that they wanted equality. But instead they sought to replace the aristocracy of birth with an aristocracy of ability.
Reviewing Bronze Age Pervert's New Book: Quillette Cetera Episode 27
A conversation with Quillette writer Oliver Traldi.
The Heckler’s Veto and the Right to Free Association
It's not just a matter of weighing up one group’s free speech against another group’s counter-speech. It’s also about one group’s freedom of association being impeded.
Humanism and Its Discontents
Humanism aspires to ethical universalism but in practice it is defined by what it opposes and excludes.
Trans Identity and the Right to Exist
This is substance metaphysics for the twenty-first century.
The Insidious Lie That We Can’t Understand Each Other
And a guide for how to productively push back against the identity trap.
The Cancellation of Bertrand Russell
Eight decades later, the issues raised by the Russell case—the rights to free speech and academic freedom—have still not been settled.
On Political Hatred
On everything from Syrian refugees through Brexit and climate change to so-called gender-affirmative medicine, people take a totalizing approach to disagreement: either you agree with me, or you are despicable.
Left is Not Woke: An Interview with Susan Neiman
In undermining universalism and moral progress, "wokeism" is inherently reactionary.
The Sanctification of the Self
The focus on the self to the exclusion of everything else is undermining the rule of law.