Stares at the World

Category: Philosophy

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Philosophy

A Jungian Analysis of Superhero Movies

As long-time readers of mine will doubtless know, I have a vexatious relationship with the Superhero genre. On the one hand, I find the whole phenomenon fascinating; each individual character represents something archetypal, not just visually (their spandex outfits a throwback to nude sculptures of the ideal human form, as well as evocative of powerful emotions through the bright primary colours with which they are painted), but also emotionally. Each represents a certain aspect of the moral question: Spiderman must balance great power with great responsibility, in Superman we have the ideal immigrant who exemplifies the ideals of his new,...

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Philosophy / Society

The Nature of Post Nationalism and Rootless Power

I once heard that if a shark stops swimming it dies. The story goes that sharks have no ability to force water over their gills, aside from moving forward; so they are condemned to a life of endless swimming, never stopping to rest. This is striking and odd at first, but the lesson is obvious: any organism, institution, or family which stops moving forward inevitably stalls out and dies. We might not need to literally walk forward to keep our lungs flush with air, but a failure to provide for the morrow means a failure to survive into tomorrow. Only...

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Philosophy / Society

Book Review: “Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World”

This book was the first time I’d heard of Tom Holland – in fact, it was a request from a reader who offered to purchase it for me, and toss a few coins in the hat to boot (thanks, brother). He didn’t pay me for a glowing review, however, which is what you’re about to read. To put it simply, if you want to understand European history – or religion – or modern politics – or the nature of the existential question which we’re still dealing with today – I recommend that you pick yourself up a copy. Holland starts...

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Philosophy / Society

The Cultural Event Horizon: The Auto-Reflexive Story of the Silver Screen

This is the first part in a series I am working on about what is happening during the current inflection. Numerous social trends and technologies have reached a point where reality as we knew it has shifted. Just as the cannon destroyed the city-state, and the rifle destroyed the medieval knight, we’re reaching a point where the assumptions of the past no longer apply. In this first article I’ll be looking at how our new forms of storytelling are altering our perception of reality. I am going to start with a premise which is so self-evident that it’s easy to...

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Philosophy / Society

The Purpose of Power

“A King, a priest, a rich man and a sellsword are in a room. Those three man tell the sellsword to kill the other two.Who lives and who dies?”~Varys, A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin “You seem to have an interest in power, so let me educate you a little while I search for you. It’s sort of this thing I like to do sometimes, especially for learned wizards such as yourself. Power, it isn’t something that you put on or take off like a jacket. It’s something you just ARE.  If you can lose it by...

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Philosophy / Society

2020 Year in Review: Wandering Above the Abyssal Fog

Now I’m going to warn you right off the bat, this is going to be a “silver lining on a dark cloud” kind of post. Normally I make a concerted effort to focus on the positive, because my innate disposition is to do the opposite: to identify all the problems that are likely to come up if we don’t do something about them. Past experience has taught me that focusing on the negative is unwise because a) it upsets most people, and b) the bulk of people whom it doesn’t upset are the sort of Negative Nellies who like to...

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Philosophy

Calvinism, Materialism, and Determinism are Demonstrably False

John Calvin wasn’t a terrible man. In fact, as far as men go, he was one of the better ones, which is really saying something given that he was French. He was, however, a terrible philosopher; and while his religious work did much to amend the excesses of early Protestantism during his own era, the legacy he left behind was the noxious theology of Calvinism. What Calvinism attempts to accomplish – like all religion – is to resolve the impossibility of finite man encountering an infinite of God. Unfortunately, it does this poorly. It starts by noting an apparent contradiction...

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Philosophy

Family is Something You Earn

With American Thanksgiving upon us, I can’t help reflecting on my own family – my parents, my siblings, nephews and nieces. It hasn’t always been easy for us. My parents divorced in the early nineties – I understand why it happened, but I can’t help feeling that things might have gone differently if we’d been living in a society that supported marriage, and if we hadn’t been hit so hard financially during those years. Between me and my siblings we’ve had some pretty major disagreements – even stopped speaking for extended periods of time. But last month, on Canadian Thanksgiving,...

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Philosophy

The New Direction of my Work

Like many of you I’ve spent a lot of the past year reflecting upon my life, looking back on my failures and successes. Re-evaluating them from different perspectives, to see if any of it made sense. Questioning what I was doing with my online presence – even whether I should keep doing it at all. After years of dealing with Internet “personalities”, quitting sounded like a fantastic idea. Ultimately I decided to stay – but I can no longer behave haphazardly as I did in the past. My writing and content needs a direction, one which is beginning to crystallize...