Thoughtlets

June 15, 2024

Thoughtlets. LII. Malthusian Trivia: Not an Enemy of Population Growth

About 10 years ago I spent what I call The Summer of Malthus. By which I mean that one of the tasks I was set to as a research assistant was to read Robert Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population, searching for what Malthus takes to be ‘vice’. I read a copy Continue reading

Thoughtlets

abstinence, AOUM, discipline and trial, economic, health, Malthus, misery, moral, Philosophy, political, poor, restraint, social, vice
February 2, 2024

Thoughtlets. LI.

Observing an echo chamber developing at his university, my husband posted the following notice on his office door. Strangely enough, the notice raised not even a titter among his colleagues. Continue reading

Thoughtlets

bandwagon, cancel, cancellation, chamber, chambre, devil's advocate, dissent, dissenter, echo, echo-chamber, group think, humor, humour, notice, satire, university, yodel, yodelling
January 7, 2024

Tacitus Quote. Guilt by association.

“Which is the more pitiful I cannot decide — being accused because of a friendship, or accusing a friend.” Tacitus. The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. Oxford World’s Classics. Translated by J.C. Yardley. Introduction and notes by Anthony A. Barrett. Oxford University Press Inc.: New York. 2008. (Book Six, Chapter 6, p 182) Continue reading

Thoughtlets
January 28, 2023

Thoughtlets. L.

Resistance is not raising up an army and trading fire, by that time too many have needlessly suffered — as will many more. Resistance is inviting someone you’ve been taught (and are expected) to hate to your table and treating her as a friend. The people you need to resist, to this end, are your Continue reading

Thoughtlets

academic freedom, civil disobedience, freedom of expression, friends, mobs, peer pressure, resistance
January 28, 2023

Thoughtlets. XLIX.

CIVIL RIGHTS HAVE NEVER BEEN BORN IN INTELLECTUALLY SAFE SPACES Continue reading

Thoughtlets

academic, academic freedom, civil, civil disobedience, civil rights, civility, conformity, mobs, occupational health, psychological safety, safe spaces, scholarship
November 24, 2021

Thoughtlets. xxxvi. (Repost; January 27,2021)

Tacitus, an Roman historian, writes these words in the Annals sometime around 117 CE: “I wanted to dispel the fictions of hearsay, and to ask people into whose hands my book may come not to prefer widely circulated and eagerly accepted fantasies over truth uncorrupted by sensationalism.” Tacitus. The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Continue reading

Thoughtlets

ancient, behaviour, CNN, criticism, fact, fiction, Fox, gossip, hearsay, history, media, MSNBC, news, patterns, Philosophy, rhetoric, sensationalization, tabloid, truth, wisdom
September 18, 2021

Thoughtlets.XLVII.

Just when news anchors’ hemorrhoid-inducing overuse of mindless phrases such as walk it back and double down starts to wane, another wave of brain-deadening soundbites inevitably waxes. And at its crest is the phrase bad actors. This phrase doesn’t refer to thespian hacks. Rather bad actors refers to those people the anchor doesn’t like and Continue reading

Political Rhetoric, Thoughtlets

cliche, CNN, criticism, Fox, media, media mainstream, MSNBC, news, overuse, pseudo-intellectual, rhetoric, sound bites, stereotype
July 16, 2021

Thoughtlets. XLVI. Observing patterns of human behaviour.

Some find Tacitus’ Annals tedious. Some of it is. But his work keeps me riveted. I’m not so interested in history, per se. Rather I’m interested in identifying patterns of human behaviour, events that repeat over millennia, and asking why they repeat themselves. But then, so was Tacitus, “Perhaps there is a sort of cycle Continue reading

Thoughtlets

ambiguity, ambiguous, Annals, behaviour, control, Darwin, hard sciences, hisotry, meme, memes, memic slection, occurences, patterns, Philosophy, political, prediction, social, social and political, Tactitus
July 3, 2021

Thoughtlets. XLV. Theodicy revisited.

News media characteristically brings us one story after another about the kinds of things humans to do each other which are broadly characterized as ‘evil.’ And these stories tend to generate accusations of ‘evil-doers’ which are then dispatched with the speed and clamour of emergency vehicles headed to a five alarm fire. I’m not here Continue reading

Thoughtlets

discourse, emotion, evil, Mackie, media, Philosophy, politics, problem of evil, rhetoric, theodicy
April 30, 2021

Thought experiment: the last humans. (Thoughtlets. XL.)

Thought experiment. Imagine some cosmic event renders all humans sterile. After a number of decades pass, humankind literally enters a Golden Age, with an exclusively senior population. Although, ‘senior’ might lose its current meaning when the youngest among us is 64. I wonder if those in good health will resent the burden of care imposed Continue reading

Philosophy, Thoughtlets

ageing, childhood, death, end of world, end times, environment, existential, human, meaning, population, rhetoric, senior, survival, sustainable, thought experiment