OK, so someone harms another – steals their property or harms their person. That’s not OK, and cannot go unaddressed. But it’s the next series of steps that gets us into trouble. We go through all this falderal to prove these people are guilty and then throw them into prison, as though that were a solution to theRead more
Societal Issues
When Did God Become A Fundamentalist? Part I
(Note: This article was written before the emergence of the religious right during the Trump years.) The emergence of conservative religious fundamentalism into the political arena is a subject that has brought everything from joy to concern and consternation to many people. Having stood in the background for years while the political and scientific establishments turned a deafRead more
When Did God Become A Fundamentalist? Part II
(Note: This article was written before the emergence of the religious right during the Trump era.) What is somewhat shocking is that the arguments against gays put forward by the Religious Right today come almost word-for-word from Hitler’s successful and immensely disparaging propaganda program that opened the door for the killing of millions of Jews, gays, minorities, gypsiesRead more
Domination
Whether conquering the unexplored, beating the competition, subduing nature, overpowering bad guys, conquering disease, converting “backward” peoples, having a war on drugs or winning at football, Western man makes war on everything. Competition is the Western way. The military modality of powerful leaders marshaling their forces into campaigns with battle plans and strategies, foot soldiers and heroes, andRead more
The Rise of Rational Thought
Begun by men of compassion and gentility like Erasmus, Manetti and Mirandola, Humanism was to suffer the fate of all movements as its initial inroads were corrupted and perverted by more radical elements. The intellectual discourse of the Humanists was replaced by empirical science. Men like Descartes, Malebranche, Bacon and Newton carried the flag of emerging scientific rationalityRead more