263. BANGING THE DRUM FOR PHILOSOPHY - How Music Can Reveal What Is Hidden

in , , , , , , ,

“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.”

Read More

262. WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER - On Not Wanting To Win

in , , , ,

“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.“

Read More

261. ABNORMAL NORMS - On Philosophy’s Futility In Our Continuing Decline

in , , , , , , , ,

“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.”

Read More

260. CHRISTMAS SHOPPING - In Defence of Chainstores

in , , , , , , , , , ,

“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.“

Read More

259. WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING? - My Social Media Avoidance Project

in , , , , , , , , ,

“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.

Read More

258. MAKING A COMPLAINT - What Complaining Tells Us About Those We Complain To

in , , , , , , , ,

“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.“

Read More

225. NIGHT TERRORS - On the Possibility of Impossible Hauntings

in , , , , ,

“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? “

Read More

224. LIP SERVICE - On the Difficulty of Transforming What is Entrenched

in , , , , , , , , ,

“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. “

Read More

222. JUSTIFYING FREEDOM - On Assuming Rights We Might Not Have

in , , , , , , , , , ,

"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."

Read More

221. FROM DESPAIR TO WHERE? - Has Philosophy Failed Us?

in , , , , , ,

“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”


Read More

220. HELLO HUMANS - A Teacher Writes on Their Inclusive Classroom

in , , , , , , ,

“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.“

Read More

218. FLAGS - Against Lamppost Patriotism

in , , , , , , , , , ,

“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

217. I WAS WRONG: Rejecting Settling For a Better Tone of Oppression

in , , , , , , ,

“Watching the Starmer government continue the same performative cruelty as their Tory predecessors for the last twelve months, I have to admit that all my anarchist and other radical critics were right and I was wrong: the tone of our oppression has not changed under Labour. “

Read More

Association of Philosophy Teachers Annual Conference 2025: REPORT

in , , ,

“The third annual conference of the Association of Philosophy Teachers (APT) took place on a beautiful June day at the equally beautiful St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow last Friday…“

Read More

216. HAS WORLD WAR III STARTED? - On Defining Conflict

in , , , , ,

“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?“

Read More

215. IT’S OK TO END THINGS - On Saying No Under Capitalism

in , , , , , , , , ,

““I’d prefer not to” - the catchphrase of Melville’s scrivener, Bartleby, is a slogan of privilege. And yet it shouldn’t be. “It’s ok to end things”. And yet for many under capitalism, ending some things are impossible.”

Read More

214. I'M GOING FOR A WALK - Connecting and Disconnecting from Nature

in , , , , ,

“We take these walks through nature, I think, on some deep level, to remind ourselves that the majority of our lives are illusions. That nothing is permanent and eventually the march of nature will stomp right through our assured lies that we are someone separate from it; somehow protected. We check in with the world as it really is, to both maintain the illusion for little while longer once we get home, and to ready ourselves for what is inevitable: when the illusion necessarily ends.“

Read More