Category: politics
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On nomads and settlers (but mostly on nomads)
Honest to God, I’m not cherry picking my examples, at least I don’t think so. I’m looking at the profiles of my conversation partners, past and present, of the individuals I’ve spoken with during the past year over Skype, of the exchanges I’ve had over email, and some common characteristics almost immediately jump out at…
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On education as ‘going along with the flow’; on choice as the offspring of distrust
1 One of my fondest college memories is of proving Euclidean theorems all the way up to the precipice: the Parallel Postulate. Until one arrives at the Parallel Postulate, one can derive Euclidean geometry from 5 scintillatingly simple axioms. Each theorem can be clearly formulated, each proof can be neatly arranged according to the steps…
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A picture of a philosophical way of life followed by a medium-length rant
An anecdote: Yesterday, while strolling through the grocery store, I heard a young mother say the following to her young son: “Honey, you just have to be happy with the music they play for you. Bon Jovi’s OK.” — Human Anthropology 1. Human beings are thoroughgoing social animals. I.e., social life is ‘metaphysically prior’ to…
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Against the fantasy of something for nothing
(Beyond my bedroom window: the snow comes down, the pigeons sit askant, at odd angles, one here, another there as if playing with me.) — (The birds, unseen, are singing amid the gently falling snow. Pure sprightly delight.) — We have inherited a misguided public philosophy concerning the desirability of “free things.” The fantasy that,…
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To be a modern woman: A social tragedy
Were the fate of the modern woman to be written today, doubtless it would be cast in the genre of a social tragedy. Where once she was held in bondage, now she is free to choose: free to choose her own poison. The endings of many nineteenth and twentieth century novels bespeak a sense that the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 