What beliefs do you have that you would die for? Would kill for? Not that you say you would, but that you actually would? For most of us, the honest answer is probably “nothing.” This is our fundamental belief in tolerance. At its core, liberal democracy is an ideology of tolerance. The fundamental concept is… Read more

Civilization is effectively synonymous with humanity. Beyond our physiological traits, it is our defining feature: the ability to organize, cooperate, and adhere to rules and norms and behave in a (mostly) predictable manner. It is this cooperation that enables our technological progress and continues to make our lives safer and more stable. The more predictable… Read more

Now that we have established that existence is objectively meaningless, we must determine whether life must be so as well. To clarify this distinction, let us consider existence as the experiential condition of all other living organisms, and life as our own, subjective condition… in solipsistic terms, existence is what happens to everyone and life… Read more

Life is meaningless and death is terrifying. These are the simple truths that we humans have spent all of recorded history trying to come to terms with. On a purely experiential level, it is not difficult to connect the dots between biological death, the fundamental absence of the deceased from our realm of experience, and… Read more

Our species is nothing without technology. From the first pointed sticks to Voyager I now transmitting from interstellar space, humans stand (mostly) alone in using abstract ideas to overcome our biological limitations and to craft the world around us to satisfy our needs and desires. We have come to regard future technological advancement as an… Read more

Buddhist teaching is built on the concept of samsara, the perpetual cycle of birth, suffering, and death that we must struggle to overcome by attaining nirvana, or freedom from desire and ignorance. Buddhist or not, we all are trapped in samsara. Our lives are a figurative cycle of death and rebirth, with endless suffering in… Read more

It is easy– almost obvious– to dismiss far-left ideology as unrealistic and unattainable. Whether you have only a perfunctory understanding of the modern world or you’re a serious historical scholar, you are likely to reach the same honest conclusions about human nature and social constructs: humans are selfish, submissive, hierarchical, and generally stupid, and society… Read more

We see it every day. More and more reports of climate catastrophes and broken records, political unrest and riots, random acts of violence as people become more unhinged. We see these things politicized to promote agendas, or dismissed as noise in an increasingly-connected world. The world has always been burning. We have always been at… Read more

In recent years, “late-stage capitalism” has become the go-to term for describing the conditions and contradictions of modern society. As a phrase, it has been in use for well over a hundred years but has gained popularity in American academia as a shorthand for the second half of the 20th century, starting with the postwar… Read more

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, we have seen the full spectrum of human response: obedience, indifference, and resistance. The reasons for each response are varied, of course; nothing is a monolith. However, the dominant theme in resistance has been a rejection of tyranny, some patriotic duty to uphold the neoliberal ideal of doing… Read more