192. BAND PRAXIS - Punk and the Anarchist Squint
Band Praxis - Punk and the Anarchist Squint by DaN McKee (taken from The Anarchism and Punk Book Project’s Book 2 - DIY or Die: Do it Yourself, Do it Together & Punk Anarchism)
Read More184. NOT CONVINCED BY POLITICAL ARGUMENT - On the UK General Election 2024
Read More“We are changed in our political views when new ideas or arguments confront us in our every-day, non-political, life. Often these ‘arguments’ are experiential rather than logical: something seen, heard, witnessed or experienced first hand which have no formal logical structure but imprint some deep shift in values nevertheless. We change our minds because we are changed. Not because we are convinced by arguments.“
178. FREE PALESTINE - On Anti-Semitism
Read More“As a Jew, I want to live in a world without anti-Semitism. I also want to live in a world with a free Palestine. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, or in tension with each other. And we need to ask questions of motivation from those repeatedly peddling the myth that they are.”
177. REACHING ROCK BOTTOM - Why England Needs to Sober Up
Read More“I guess what I am really doing is posing the following thought experiment: do you think a sober society would have sat by and done nothing for twenty-four years as their country failed to meet even the most basic standards of functioning anymore? And does the fact that England is not a sober society give us some explanation as to why the English have seemingly done exactly that?“
167. THERE CAN BE NO JUSTICE THROUGH BLOODSHED - Israel, Gaza, Palestine, and the need for some different thinking.
Read More“Politics should not be a team sport. When it is, we’re doing it wrong. Usually because we’ve been manipulated by those who benefit from the division. It should never be Israel versus Palestine. My team versus yours. It should be ensuring our collectively assured mutual existence, always. Finding new ways to live together. Mutual aid. Walls and borders torn down. Sharing instead of seizing. Acknowledging wrongdoing and finding a way forward.”
166. WHAT'S IN A NAME? - What The Trivial Can Tell Us About The Significant
Read More“if my utterly inconsequential change of capitalisation could not be easily noted and assimilated into the understanding of work colleagues, friends or family, then I could barely imagine what it would be for a far more important identity marker to be so similarly ignored“
164. CHALLENGING UNIFORM - The Unwarranted Assumption Behind What Children Wear at School
Read More“We realised that there was a big, and unjustifiable, leap that has been made to get from the starting assumption of needing a uniform to the end conclusion that children need to be dressing up everyday like businesspeople from a bygone age. That even if you wanted to justify the idea of enforcing a uniform, you needed to go a long way further from that to justify the bizarre uniforms most schools actually make their poor students wear.“
157. I WON'T MISS SIR - On Naming Our Teachers
Read More“Any time we approach an area of education with an attitude of it being too difficult or even impossible for someone to do something, we make it so through a process of self-fulfilling-prophecy.“
153. PHILOSOPHY AND THE CORONATION - Questions Raised By The Crowning Of A New King
Read More“The coronation of a new King is an undoubtedly historic moment, but it raises a lot of philosophical questions…“
147. NOT ALL GOBSTOPPERS ARE EVERLASTING - Why I'm OK With Changing The Words of Roald Dahl
Read More“Don’t let the illusion of sole authorship fool you. Published writing has always been edited by many and influenced by audiences. If you want to read the unblemished, pure and unfiltered draft straight from the author’s mind and onto the page, read something self-published (like this blog…although I do tend to do a few drafts). Anything else you read, assume there have been drafts, edits, alterations, corrections, and the input of many. The author, often, is a group of authors. Dahl is no different.“
146. THEY/THEM - Why We Need To Be Gender-Neutral About God
Read More“of course God - a being defined in terms of transcendence - would not be confined to one single point on a spectrum or one limited half of a binary. The very terms of transcendence that makes God God would necessitate God being beyond either a gender binary or the limits of a single gender. The omnipotent God responsible for creating both men and women in their own image, logic would suggest, must possess an image inclusive of both male and female (and everything in between).“
144. CHALLENGING PERCEPTIONS - Why Top Tier Football Clubs Continue To Do Women's Football A Disservice
Read More“Why complain about this in a philosophy blog? Because a perpetual area of philosophical inquiry concerns perception versus reality, and sometimes this coming apart of perception from reality (or reality from perception) often leads to questions in ethics too. I believe this problem - of the women’s teams of football clubs not sharing the same home ground as their male counterparts - touches on both.“
136. NO GODS NO MASTER-DONS - Decolonising Twitter Migration
Read More“The site of struggle here being the realm of social media might seem trivial to some, and online colonisation lacks the bloodshed and brutality of historical imperialisms, but as a living model it has been instructive of the sorts of behaviours we see offline too.“
135. UNLOCKING CAGES - Language, Asylum, Immigration and Abolition
Read More“When one takes a step back and realises that amidst all the language of ‘asylum seekers’, ‘detainees’, and ‘illegal immigrants’ what we are really talking about is human beings, it is hard not to hang your head in shame at the way our country routinely treats certain human beings.“
134. LIVING WITH GHOSTS - Haunted by Football
Read More‘I don’t believe in ghosts, yet I am living with one…‘
133. THE HARD PROBLEM OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS - On The Difficulty and Need For Waking From Dogmatic Slumbers
Read More“I’ve been thinking a lot about consciousness this week. Not the traditional philosophical questions about mind and body, but political consciousness. Specifically Black Consciousness.“
132. BLACK HISTORY WITHOUT TEETH - On The Potential Epistemic Deficit of Black History Month
Read More“we need to first address with students core concepts like structural racism, white supremacy and white supremacist thinking, historical constructivism, critical race theory, colonialism, ideology, education policy and curriculum design. Without that, it will be very hard for the students we teach to place any of what they learn during Black History Month into a meaningful, long-term schema of knowledge.“
128. THE QUEEN IS DEAD - Long Live The King
Read More“As Britain comes to terms with the loss of its longest reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday, I was struck by the immediacy of transition from Queen to King. In an instance the previous settled gender of certain phrases - our national anthem, ‘God save the Queen’, prayers within the Church of England asking to ‘replenish her with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that she may always incline to thy will’, the pledges taken by members of parliament to ‘be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors’ - had to update and adapt.“
112. KILLING THE AUTHENTIC SELF - Why Is It So Hard To Be Yourself At Work?
Read More“It’s time that schools became more diverse, and their staff, at least in the short-term, a little less comfortable.“
102. NICK FLETCHER IS A ROLE MODEL OF STUPIDITY - Using Philosophy To Show Exactly Why This MP Is An Idiot
Read More“Fletcher was certainly sexist. But his sexism extends to the logic of his argument too. It’s easy to show how…“