75. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOINED UP THINKING? - My Continuing Despair at Incoherent Propaganda
Read More“I find it increasingly difficult to cast a philosophical eye on the world when that world so constantly ignores logic and reason.“
74. COOPERATION IS GREATER THAN COMPETITION: Lessons in Anarchism and Mutual Aid from Professional Wrestling
Read More“By working together instead of against each other, as anarchists since Kropotkin have argued, everybody wins and the seemingly zero sum game is exposed for the capitalist con it always has been.“
- FEBRUARY HALF TERM 2021 -
A week away from excess screen-time! Half term has arrived and it’s time for you to look at the sky instead of a computer. If you insist on looking at a computer then scroll down and take a look at our archives - and if you fancy looking a bit longer write us something (submissions HERE). We’ll be back again with a new post every Monday morning at 8am from February 22nd or March 1st (depends if I can be bothered to write anything during the holiday on top of other writing commitments I have, or if someone sends in something good this week!)
73. OF NESTS AND PALIMPSEST - Am I Really Making An Aesthetic Choice?
Read More“I have always loved chaotic collage and my childhood bedroom walls quickly became an ever-evolving palimpsest of posters, pictures, postcards, photos, and things I’d cut out of newspapers or magazines, their content adapting over the years alongside my tastes but generally maintaining the same ragged aesthetic; an aesthetic initially limited to a single cork noticeboard on a nicely painted wall but eventually sprawling out and taking over everything until, at one mad point, I was even hanging posters upside down on my ceiling, occasionally waking startled in the night as they lost their battle with gravity and came crashing down on my face.“
72. THE 2021 EXAMS ARE NOT CANCELLED - But They Should Be
Read More“I don’t believe in examinations, but I do believe in moral tests, and I worry that when we do eventually hear back from the consultation about the alternative to 2021 GCSEs and A-levels we will have failed yet another one.“
71. RETHINKING HOW WE LISTEN TO MUSIC - Towards A Meaningful Ethics of Streaming
Read More“…what is actually missing from the current business model of the music industry is not more pennies per stream, but a meaningful ethics instead of mere talk of ethics with very little substance. So here is my first attempt at drafting some…“
70. TRUMP, UNFORTUNATELY, HAS NOT BEEN SILENCED - Thoughts on Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age
Read More“Good ideas grow, bad ideas shrink. As a consequence, good speech gets louder and bad speech soon gets drowned out. Not censorship, but developed understanding and evolution towards better ideas that, at a certain point, recognise certain voices as no longer worthy of being listened to. The fascists, the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, the conspiracy theorists - they have little to offer once we look beyond mere transgression and take the ideas seriously as speech. And so, rightly, they are discarded.“
69. WHAT, IF ANYTHING, HAVE I LEARNT FROM HAVING COVID 19? - Reflections on Getting the Plague
Read More“now it is three weeks since the day I got my positive COVID test, and I cautiously think I may have survived it, I have decided to look back at the experience to see what, if any, philosophical lessons it taught me.“
- CHRISTMAS BREAK 2020 -
Well, it’s been a hell of a year and it’s finally coming to an end! At the stroke of midnight January 1st 2021 there will be a magic cure to all the ills of 2020: COVID-19 will be no more, Trump will be resolved and Brexit will be easy. I joke, of course. The loosening of safety precautions for COVID around Christmas is going to be an unnecessary death sentence for many and we are in for a bleak winter ahead. But for now, take a rest and enjoy the two week break (or latest 14 days of self-isolation, depending on how your year has been!). We’ll be back with new posts again from Monday January 11th. See you then!
68. ABUSIVE THEOLOGY - Why LGBTQ+ Students Deserve Better From RE
Read More“As a teacher of RE, and head of RE at my school, that we RE teachers are supposed to give oxygen to such ignorant and discriminatory views in our classrooms – and treat their prejudice and hurt as something that is to be respected – is something I find an outrage.“
67. DISPATCHES FROM THE CAVE - Why Being "Realistic" Demands The Impossible
Read More“The pandemic has shown just how flimsy “the way things are” actually are. From basic norms of social interaction to entire economic systems, COVID-19 has unwittingly acted as the liberating hand breaking the chains of Plato’s epistemological prisoner and dragging them out of the cave and into the light…This isn’t, however, a post about the coronavirus…“
66. IF A POST FALLS IN THE WOODS - When Is A Post Not A Post?
Read More“And yet this post exists…”
65. IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE COVID-CHRISTMAS - Re-Thinking The 2020 Festive Season
Read More“The Grinch who steals Christmas this year isn’t COVID 19, it’s the mindset that is so rigid about what Christmas has to be it can’t conceive of doing things differently.“
64. THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS WORTH LIVING - Why An Emphasis on Exams Misses The Point of Education
Read More“As I tell my students, the absolute worst way to judge how good a philosopher you are would be to take away all of your books and resources, isolate you so you cannot speak to anybody else, and set you an arbitrary chunk of time in which to answer a really big question.“
63. THE VALUE OF PATIENCE - Responses to Waiting
Read More“It has been a week of waiting.“
62. THE HORROR - Is It Rational To Enjoy Scaring Ourselves?
Read More“as I curl up with another scary story and find myself predictably sleepless later on, trembling at familiar creaks made new, and far more sinister, by the unsettling images now in my head, I wonder: with horror so real and ever-possible why do we indulge in the self-harm of scaring ourselves intentionally, at Halloween or any other time?“
- OCTOBER HALF TERM 2020 -
As always, we’re on break during the school holiday. Take a look at our archives and if you want to write a post for us, click HERE
We’ll be back next Monday (NOV 2ND) with our latest post
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.”