Hail and welcome. I mentioned in a prior episode that my theory of ecumenical phenomenology, which I’ve been exploring over the last few episodes, is rooted in two separate theories—platonism and phenomenology—along with a third which, given a small tweak, translates between them, allowing the phenomenological ideas to answer the questions posed by the platonist ideas and vice versa. Today we’ll be exploring that third theory, the connectionist theory of mind.
Hypoptosis and the Phenomenology of Grief
This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm, Spotify, and other platforms Hail and welcome. This episode marks a bit of a departure from where I was planning to go with the ecumenical phenomenology series. Unfortunately my partner and I have been faced with a major loss and this episode is one of my ways…
Heidegger’s Question of Technology and the Disenchantment of the World
Heidegger wants to redirect us from our normal ways of thinking about things and he does this by using language in ways both novel and tied to ancient Greek, ways that focus in particular on processes, and he focuses on processes because he had come to see the world as something active and dynamic but found the rest of his society looking at the world as something static and dead.
Introduction to the Phenomenology of Abstract Reality
Back in January of this year I released an episode, “Pema Chödrön and the Sublation of Mental Illness,” and mentioned that it marked a significant but nevertheless largely invisible shift of the trajectory of the show: instead of just collating the ideas of others, as I had mostly been doing since 2018 when I started this whole thing, I would start using episodes to develop and present my own theories. The reaction I got from that and the next eleven episodes, up through the last episode on Judas, was very positive. This episode is going to mark a similar shift: rather than using each episode to develop a different idea, I am now going to be directing this project towards the development and presentation of a single philosophical and sociological theory: ecumenical phenomenology.
Judas
The story of Judas may have been the first thing I noticed about Christianity that didn’t quite add up.
The Differential Morality of Abortion
I’ll be arguing that the current opposition to the basic rights of the fertile is not fundamentally about the rights of the alleged fetus people but rather a significant component of a broader campaign, fundamentally patriarchal and ongoing since the Neolithic Revolution, to enslave and exploit human labor, and that the desired status quo of those opposed to these rights itself constitutes the enslavement of the fertile so as to control the reproduction of labor.
The Evangelical Campaign for Queer Genocide
In March of 2022 Senator and former Florida Governor Rick Scott released his new 11 point plan to reshape the Republican Party. It’s clear from this that Scott has aspirations beyond his current senate seat; with this plan, he has set out a vision not just for his home state of Florida but for the entire party of which he is a member. His plan, as outlined on his website rescueamerica.com, is not mere political strategy but rather a comprehensive vision for the future of America. Given all of this, we are led to ask from what lens he is viewing this country in the first place, and one need only look at his words in order to understand that perspective.
Mass Shootings and the Dialectic of Patriarchy
Mass shootings are the latent and intrinsic violence of the patriarchy spilling over the boundaries in which the patriarchs work to contain it.
The Lessons of Ancient Egypt
What can Ancient Egypt tell us about the development of religion and civilization? The answer is: a great deal, more than I could possibly fit into a single episode. As part of a broader research project into economics, I’ve been studying various histories, and the history of Ancient Egypt has been particularly fascinating and informative. One of the world’s earliest civilizations, it extends over 3000 years of history, from the Bronze Age and through the Iron Age into classical antiquity. As I mentioned in a recent episode, the Great Pyramid was more ancient to Cleopatra, the last pharaoh, than Cleopatra is to us.
Amnesia
The situation is this: our lifespans create a partial social amnesia, in that, while we have other documentation of the past, living memories of events are limited to the generation of humans presently alive on this planet. This prevents us from getting a clear picture of how the human condition has changed over the course of our history and in particular in the very recent past (i.e. the modern era and beyond).