159. TAKING STUDENT SILLINESS SERIOUSLY - Lightning McQueen and the Importance of Battling Deepities

June 24, 2023 by DaN McKee in Culture, Economics, Education, Logic, Movies, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Pop Culture, School

“Like garbage washing up on the shore of a polluted sea, the Philosophy classroom is often where a lot of these deepities come to rest as students, impressed by their apparent wisdom, share them with the one person they think will be equally impressed: their Philosophy teacher. Often those students are soon disappointed, even angry, when that teacher is not impressed at all and, instead, pops the bubble of the illusion and exposes its emptiness.“

129. STRANGER THINGS - Leave the Battles to the Children

September 19, 2022 by DaN McKee in Culture, Meaning, Movies, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Pop Culture, Television

“I love the Netflix series Stranger Things. I’m supposed to. It is literally targeted directly to me: a weirdo child of the 80s…“

113. SIMULATED HORROR - Is It OK To Spend Your Free Time Plotting Imaginary Violence?

March 21, 2022 by DaN McKee in Culture, Death, Ethics, Free, Mental Health, Militarisation, Music, Movies, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Technology, War

“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?“

105. MY SPIDEY-SENSE WAS TINGLING - Have We Forgotten How To Deal With Conflict in Civil Society?

January 10, 2022 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Movies, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Pop Culture

“sometimes living together means compromise and not doing exactly what you want.“

62. THE HORROR - Is It Rational To Enjoy Scaring Ourselves?

November 02, 2020 by DaN McKee in Culture, Death, Epistemology, Meaning, Movies, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Pop Culture

“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?“

42. LIFE DURING LOCKE-DOWN - Do We Remain Free While Trapped Inside?

April 27, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Free, Meaning, Movies, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Work

“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.”

14. WHEN BAD MOVIES GO GOOD - Mind vs Celluloid.

September 16, 2019 by DaN McKee in Epistemology, Mind, Philosophy Unleashed, Pop Culture, Movies

“although we did watch the same movie on the screen, in our heads, we perceived two very different things. The cause of these alternative experiences being the mental environment into which the sense-data was ultimately processed, our mental experiences of the movie being more than merely passive acceptance of the sights and sounds projected inside the cinema.”