Does Mindfulness Meditation Have Any Benefits?
A recent blog post summarizing the science behind mindfulness meditation (MM) based stress reduction technique has released a tsunami of contrarian schadenfreude. The critique—that MM-based stress reduction techniques don’t appear…
Bureaucracy as Secular Spirituality
The Origins of Bureaucratic Spirituality: Administration, Religion and Writing Bureaucracy evokes and depends on secular spirituality, as it gives us a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. It…
The Weaponization of Words
The relationship between a word and what it signifies is not arbitrary. That misconception, the chief legacy of that poster boy of postmodernism, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, is largely…
Teaching to Transgress: Rage and Entitlement at Evergreen College
What happened just under two years ago at Evergreen State College needs to be seen to be believed. It also needs to be made sense of because, without an understanding…
Listen to Immigrants Who Have Lived Under Socialism
Proud self-described socialist Bernie Sanders is running for president again and has already raised over $10 million for his campaign. Rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a proud self-described socialist,…
Stephen Harper’s Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption. Book Review.
The emergence of right wing populism—which I call postmodern conservatism—as a global political force has provoked a flurry of explanatory books (including two forthcoming by yours truly). These have ranged…
International Women’s Day, and Its Discontents
Womanhood has been weaponized. Some will argue that feminism has always been aggressive and short-sighted, but I disagree. In 1914, the concerns at the forefront of the women’s movement included…
Why I Write About Medical Circumcision
As a nineteenth century surgical innovation, medical circumcision was less about fighting disease than controlling male sexuality. Contrary to the formula that opens so many articles in medical journals and…
Don’t Decolonize the History Curriculum—Globalize it
Debates about decolonizing the curriculum—once confined to academic conferences and student common rooms—are becoming increasingly hard to avoid. Campaigners are out to change what is studied at university. Some have…
The Evolution Of Heterodox Black Thought
The Racial Impasse Over the past few years, the conversation around race in America has hit a brick wall. While racial disparities have persisted between black Americans and other groups,…
Are We All Populists? Diversity’s Challenge to Our Comfort-Loving Selves
Dismissing populism as the work of xenophobes, racists, nationalists or simply those who can’t handle diversity is too easy. Anti-immigrant populism in both Europe and the US involves concerns over…
Transhumanism and the Death of Human Exceptionalism
Every few decades, a new ism comes along that many people see as a threat to the bedrock principles of Western civilization. Communism was one of the big ones, and…
Lovecraft’s Otherworldly Xenophobia
H.P. Lovecraft is known for his baroque descriptions of creatures that are not merely horrifying but actually beyond comprehension. Take for example this description of a city overrun by aliens:…
You Are Big Brother
Unfortunately our weakness is such that we are much more ready to believe and speak evil of others than good … [Y]ou should not believe any chance thing that is…
Resisting the Transcendental Temptation
Throughout history, suffering and death have always followed when people have succumbed to the transcendental temptation. Today, it may be luring us to the brink of disaster yet again.
Five Lessons from the Trial of Socrates
In 399 BCE, Socrates was on trial on two charges—impiety and corrupting youth. With nearly 2,500 years of hindsight, his self-defense serves as a goldmine of lessons to be learned.…
Living with the Grim Reaper Can Make You Happier
Death is everywhere. Trees die. Cows die. We die. Even inanimate objects like batteries and projects die. Abstract concepts like dreams and aspirations can die, too. But these latter deaths…
Post-Truth in an Age of Authenticity
Something really weird is happening in our culture. Two seemingly contradictory trends are taking place side by side, and no one seems to have noticed. We live in an age…
