Got Me Drove

Like many women I know, today I experienced the dilemma of whether I would post "Me, too" on Facebook or Twitter . As I mentioned in my very first blog post , I harbour a constant feeling of ambiguity regarding my participation in these social media spheres. The "Me, too" movement reaffirmed in a single blast how social media content can send a simultaneous feeling of beautiful solidarity and fearful anxiety surging through my whole body.  The more details I read in the stories of sexual assault, harassment and abuse shared by the incredibly strong women I know, the more I feared for their safety and well-being. After admiring their courage and sending them some virtual love  ❤︎ , I found myself nervous that, as a consequence of sharing their stories, they may now face further abuse by perpetrators  who still do not believe themselves to be abusers . I was filled with anxiety imagining the forms of possible "counter-strikes" from self-righteous abuse...

The F.B.I., Las Vegas Police and journalists are all scrambling to find a motivation which sent Stephen Paddock on a killing spree, leaving 59 dead and over 500 wounded. The search for an answer to  why  he did it is so dire that billboards have been set up around Las Vegas, reading " If you know something, say something ." The message is clear: it is simply impossible that Stephen Paddock was sane and without any particular motivation. The agent in charge of the Las Vegas F.B.I. office went so far as to say " we will not stop, until we have the truth " For philosophers, such statements pertaining to the possible existence of immutable truth hammers at the core of our discipline. Here we have a representative of a state institution proclaiming that there is an indisputable truth about Paddock out there somewhere in the universe to be discovered; if we just work hard enough and piece together all of the clues,  we will find it. Leaving post-modernist a...

Starting a blog has been on my mind for a very long time, but I have refrained for numerous reasons. The mental list of pros and cons is so multitudinous that I think it is best left for another (hopefully future) blog post. One major consideration that in itself presents immediate negatives and positives is that, as a PhD candidate in Philosophy whose research brings together the political, the theological and the ecological, blogging would make my slant on these domains public. A part of me feels that that publicly expressing my views in accessible language is a moral obligation given my education and area of work, and yet another part of immediately sees that as career suicide (sorry for the trigger). But after Sunday night's mass shooting in Las Vegas, in which at least 59 people lost their lives and at least 527 were left wounded, I don't want to be silent anymore. The facebook and twitter worlds -- which I both reluctantly and freely remain a part of -- have seemingly m...