234. WHAT IF THEY WERE RIGHT? - On Kids These Days
Read More“What if what our parents warned us about did cause us harm but we were too harmed to see?“
233. BANGING THE DRUM FOR PHILOSOPHY - How Music Can Reveal What Is Hidden
Read More“It is one of the oldest questions in philosophy — to ask if the world we perceive is the world as it really is. If what we think we know about the world from our experiences is the truth about the world. In many ways the drums are a perfect instrument for showing us this. After all, their job in a song is to make explicit hidden time signature(s) the music is following. Reveal the ticking of an internal clock that has always been pulsing just beneath the perceptual surface.”
232. WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER - On Not Wanting To Win
Read More“Winning is important to people only because capitalism has made it so. Winning is a means, in our rigged and unfair system, for some of our intentionally limited resources or opportunities to be granted to the victor(s). Winning means access to prizes previously forbidden or inaccessible. But it’s important to acknowledge that prizes are a social construct made meaningful only because of their manufactured scarceness or the inequalities we’ve chosen to allow in the distribution of the resources from which the prize comes.“
231. ABNORMAL NORMS - On Philosophy’s Futility In Our Continuing Decline
Read More“To say there are things of philosophical interest about Donald Trump’s unilateral kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and takeover of the country’s economic resources by force, is to, perhaps, show the failings of philosophy.”
- Christmas Break 2025 -
See you all in 2026. Until the New Year, there’s always the ARCHIVE.
230. CHRISTMAS SHOPPING - In Defence of Chainstores
Read More“This is not a defence of capitalism, nor a defence of the current order, but it is a defence of the notion that perhaps the proliferation of corporate chain-stores everywhere, which once made me mourn the quirky individuality of the independent high street, is not necessarily a bad thing.“
229. WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING? - My Social Media Avoidance Project
Read More“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Because the desire to make something can make us redefine the original “nothing” and see new potential in it we were previously blind to.
228. MAKING A COMPLAINT - What Complaining Tells Us About Those We Complain To
Read More“Complaints are important in any honest endeavour. A willingness to openness to being told that the thing you’re trying to do is not working and needs to be improved. An honest endeavour wants to hear its complaints because it wants to meet its objectives. It wants to fix those things being complained about.“
227. WHEN SOMEONE SHOWS YOU WHO THEY ARE - Believe Them
Read More“This week all I have for you is a poem I wrote about Nigel Farage…“
226 - TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER - Or How To Burst A Bubble
Read More“It’s always worth paying attention when you get your insular little bubbles popped. “
225. NIGHT TERRORS - On the Possibility of Impossible Hauntings
Read More“But seeing no good evidence is not a total dismissal of the possibility. Perhaps “paranormal” occurrences have a natural explanation, but that explanation still goes beyond our current understanding of the nature of reality? “
- October Half Term 2025 -
As always, we’re off for half term. If you want some PU though, to see out the end of October, may I suggest our excellent piece from 2024 on The Traitors and Epistemology (for those of you currently watching Celebrity Traitors): https://www.philosophyunleashed.com/theblog/174-the-traitors-and-epistemology-why-were-all-floundering-in-the-dark-about-knowledge
We’ll be back in November!
224. LIP SERVICE - On the Difficulty of Transforming What is Entrenched
Read More“As Audre Lorde so famously put it: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Yet schools, as reproducers of the dominant culture of any given society by design, are the very definition of “the master’s house” and it is they which are giving students their useless tools. “
IRONY
After last week’s post asking if continuing this project was worthwhile, I appreciate today’s lack of a new post looks like a definitive answer in the negative. It isn’t. It merely symbolises the incompetence of my internet service provider, who have left me offline for nearly a week. There will be a new post when normal service resumes at home. And if you’re thinking about using EE for your broadband — don’t!
223. WORTHWHILE - A Query Into How I Use my Time
A question in need of your answers…
Read More222. JUSTIFYING FREEDOM - On Assuming Rights We Might Not Have
Read More"Freedom is not as self-evident as these young people seem to think it is, and an appeal to individual freedom is not the knock-down killer argument they seem to think that it is. In a world where are freedoms are routinely curtailed, often for very good collective reasons, the argument that X can’t be allowed because it will take away some freedom or another is simply insufficient."
221. FROM DESPAIR TO WHERE? - Has Philosophy Failed Us?
Read More“The comfort of thinking it can’t happen here is the surest sign that it is already near. Right on your doorstep, right on your street. Amazing how well we can walk in our sleep”
220. HELLO HUMANS - A Teacher Writes on Their Inclusive Classroom
Read More“the bell rang and I could not think of a response in the thirty seconds I had to dismiss the class so left the question unanswered. I have been thinking about a response ever since so I have decided to write this.“
219. CULTURAL COLLAPSE - What Happens When We Lose All Context?
Read More“We are adrift and discombobulated. Deeply so. “
218. FLAGS - Against Lamppost Patriotism
“Once we did have a symbol of the country that used to make me proud:
hotels welcoming those seeking asylum from persecution with open arms.
Now the hotels are being shut down by angry mobs
and all we have in their place are cheap flags tied from lampposts
wilting damply in the rain. “
Read More