PU #255 — DIGGING DIGGER — Offering Some Much Needed Love for This Misunderstood Movie
“Digger is a great movie. Not a popular opinion but, I think, the right one.”
Read More231. 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.”
216. HAS WORLD WAR III STARTED? - On Defining Conflict
Read More“My students, raised on Remembrance Sundays and Lest We Forgets, are therefore asking me “do you think there’s going to be another world war?”
And I want to assure them that there won’t be, but my initial gut response is to ask instead how sure they are that we’re not already having one?“
113. SIMULATED HORROR - Is It OK To Spend Your Free Time Plotting Imaginary Violence?
Read More“A student asked me my thoughts on children playing violent video games. My first response was to ask him why he thought it mattered that the players were children. Why not adults playing violent video games too?“
111. THE FOG OF WAR - Student Questions Arising From The Situation In Ukraine
Read More“This week, understandably, I have been asked a lot of questions about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.“
110. THERE IS NO JUST WAR - There Is Just...War
Read More“It is the concept of nations that lies at the root of the problem of war. It is the global economic systems of manipulated scarcity, inequality and hoarding that motivates taking by violence what can’t be gained legitimately. When we ignore the underlying motivations of invasion and speak only of the good and the bad, we sweep under the rug the tricky truth that we are all culpable for maintaining a global political system that nurtures the conditions for war far more than it inculcates the conditions for peace.“
99. DUNE BUGGED ME - On Being Bored of War
Read More“We have been primed to be ready for war. We have been conditioned to expect it imminently. We have been told that a time will come when we have to pick a side and that we may not even be able to trust our closest friends. We have been fed the ideological norms of conflict escalation and had massacre and genocide normalised. All in the name of entertainment. To assume such repeated and sustained messaging will have no impact is to ignore the evidence of all other successful marketing strategies.“
94. TWENTY YEARS LATER: What Is The Purpose of Remembering 9/11?
Read More“It is not said enough that on September 11th, 2001, a significant number of people around the world witnessed on live television the death of nearly three thousand people. Seeing one person die would be considered a trauma. Something requiring years of therapy. Something from which we might never recover. Who knows how many of the terrible events of the last twenty years are the result of a traumatised humanity who never got the professional help they needed to come to terms with what they saw when those towers fell?“
58. WHAT DOES JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE? - When Both Black Lives And Abolition Matters
Read More“Breonna deserves justice. She should not be dead right now and the police killed her. But if I advocate the imprisonment of the police that killed her I am not advocating justice. I am advocating more barbarism. I am advocating the continuation of the prison industrial complex. I am advocating justice only when it suits me and injustice where it doesn't.“
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“
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”
29. THE VALUE AND LIMITS OF DEMANDING SILENCE - On Remembering Power’s Roots and Reasons in the Classroom
Read More“often neither students or teachers remember the justificatory roots for the powers, privileges and obligations which interplay within the classroom, and that this lack of awareness may well be the source of much student/teacher conflict at school.”
21. WHAT MUST WE REMEMBER? - On The Worth of Remembrance Day
Read More“as long as we have had Remembrance Day and worn our red poppies, we have continued to have wars. If we truly want to honour those whose lives were lost saving the lives of others we ought to put every effort we can into ensuring the sorts of wars which cost them their lives are never fought again.”