63. THE VALUE OF PATIENCE - Responses to Waiting
Read More“It has been a week of waiting.“
61. WEAR A MASK - Why Exercising Personal Freedom Should Not Come at the Expense of Others
Read More“Unfortunately there is a school of though around masks that equates personal liberty with the freedom not to wear one, regardless of the potential consequences. A selfish conception of what it means to be free that ignores our social connections with, and the needs of, others for personal desire and gain.”
60. THE TONE OF OUR OPPRESSION - Truth and Authority Under Trump
Read More“The Trump virus found the ultimate weaknesses in organised human life: 1) we have such shaky foundations at the best of times for what constitutes as real “knowledge” that if you repeat an untruth enough times, from enough “sources”, it can seem just as “true” as any legitimate truth; and 2) that the notion of external authority on which our political systems are based is entirely illusory. As any criminal can tell you: that there are laws against doing certain things impose no actual limitation on doing that which is against the law. Criminals, by definition, break laws all the time. And the only differences between those who break laws who we call “criminals” and those who break laws that we don’t, are either that they have been caught or that we don’t really enforce the law.“
59. IS THIS BLOG DANGEROUS? - On Indoctrination, Ideology and the DfE
Read More“unlike the politician, doomed to blind allegiance to whatever colour team they are playing for, on whatever side of the aisle, the philosopher has loyalty only to the truth. If you can show me my argument is wrong, I am not only willing to change my mind, logic dictates that I have to.”
57. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC ON COVID 19 - Though It's A Little Easier If You Follow The Money
Read More“As a philosopher it’s hard to follow the logic around Covid policy because in many cases there simply isn’t any. There is only the illusion of logic. A symbolic nod to a vague sense of health and safety which doesn’t dare follow its own argument to a conclusion for fear of what that conclusion might say.“
55. THE WORLD (NOT JUST AMERICA) NEEDS BIDEN TO WIN THE 2020 ELECTION: A Student in the UK Weighs in on the Ethics of American Voting
Read More“since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the US has gone from perceived leader of the free world and centre of cooperation to a nation which continues to pull out of global organisations which ensure global security, health and sustainability, hence damaging the capability of all nations to respond to aggressive nations, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic“
53. WHEN IS A BUBBLE NOT A BUBBLE? - Educating The Department for Education
Read More“It doesn’t take a logician to see the problems with the Department for Education’s plan for secondary schools this September, but it can help to crystallise the specific flaws by laying out the argument carefully.”
51. SNAPSHOTS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE - Why It Is Not Enough To Just Not Be Racist
Read More“it is not enough to just not be racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic) in a world which has racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia built in to its very fabric. We have to do more.”
49. AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY & COVID 19: a Postscript on a Pandemic
Read More“Unfortunately for the world, though helpful to my book, far from illustrating the necessity of government, Covid-19 has served only to support the thesis defended within the pages of Authentic Democracy, proving even further how our current, flawed, political arrangements continue to fail us.“
48. WHY THIS UPRISING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS A MATTER OF WHEN, NOT IF - A Student Questions The Limits of Peaceful Protest
Read More“The reason we are seeing such outrage, and even riots, in the U.S.A today is due to the level of systematic oppression that black people have faced across the world for much of the last millennium”
47. A LIFE WITHOUT SANCTIONS - Thinking About Consequences And Their Lack In An Age Without Punishment
Read More“Sanctions, punishments, threats…these may bring some short term sense of comfort that justice is being done, but true justice comes when we no longer need such threats to ensure good behaviour. When the logic of the genuine consequences of an action is enough to make people make better choices. When police aren’t racists and politicians aren’t liars because the obvious wrongness of being a racist or a liar, and its logical consequence in the death and suffering of innocent people, is sufficient to not want to be racist or lie. “
45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement
Read More“To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before. With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools? “
45a. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR RE-OPENING UK SCHOOLS YET - To Warrant Change, Something Significant Needs To Have Changed
Read More“When the stakes are this high (life and death) we need to be able to separate nostalgia and sentiment for what is sensible and what is necessary. “
43. CAPITALISM IS NOT BETTER, JUST EASIER - A Student Considers The Lazy Appeal of a Flawed Economic System
Read More“This is the fundamental foundation of capitalism. It is not the ‘freedom’ of the (not so free) free market or the liberality you get from a government or the ethical right to keep what is yours – it is the simplicity in caring for oneself. “
42. LIFE DURING LOCKE-DOWN - Do We Remain Free While Trapped Inside?
Read More“I feel strangely trapped in my own home, and yet my life this last month looks little different to the life I lived before lockdown.”
41. TO CLAP OR TO CRY FOR CARERS? - On The Importance of Being Able To Hold Two Ideas In Our Heads At Once
Read More“By clapping, was I supporting the myth, the propaganda, and the lies which have put so many unnecessarily in harm’s way during this crisis? From the unprotected nurse to their dying patient, infected because they couldn’t stay home for fear of losing their job - each a victim not of Covid-19, but of our political system?”
39. ANARCHISM AND COVID-19 - Does the need for government intervention undermine the anarchist argument?
Read More“Supporting the lockdown does not, therefore, undermine the anarchist argument, but, to the contrary, makes it even clearer how dangerous, infantilising, and corrupting such state-systems can be. “
38. QUESTIONS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD - Some Concerns and Queries As COVID-19 Continues To Spread
Read More“the world has changed. And here are the questions arising to me as it does…”
37. ELEMENTARY LOGIC - Why UK Schools Must Close Now
Read More“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”
36. COVID-19 AND PHILOSOPHY: Thinking Clearly In Times of Uncertainty
Read More“Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.”