Got Me Drove

Climate change is a global issue whose major actors --  and factors --  seem impersonal and impenetrable. Corporations, government bodies and industry influencers make our personal attempts to reduce our own individual daily burning of fossil fuels -- e.g. taking Metrobus, walking to school or work when possible, etc. -- appear insignificant. Our individual efforts (or equally, our personal ignorance) thus look to be inconsequential in the face of the problem of climate change, which in turn drives many into a state of apathy. But presumably not everyone has met the issue of climate change with complete resignation. Not everyone has covered their eyes and ears to mute the mumble jumble of convoluted, self-interested political-speak, overly technical scientific data and proliferation of semi-truths and FAKE NEWS! in the media. If that was the case, I doubt you would be reading these words. But how much of the question "Do we care about climate change?" is entangled with th...

This blog post has been a 'long time coming.' But I'm not sure it's worth the wait. For the past two weeks, I've been trying to put my feelings about Gord, the Hip and the End into words. The amount of words required for that endeavour is growing, and yet they still remain inadequate. But before they grow into untimely irrelevance, I want to send them out into the world. Most of us have a few formative bands that are a permanent fixture in our library through life's transitions. Considering the monumental career of The Tragically Hip in Canada, I am sure they are one of those groups for many. But beyond that, Gord Downie (henceforth simply "Gord") was a  unique and critical poet , which meant we could continually reinterpret his lyrics (and famous on-stage monologues) at various points in along our own existential journeys. And now that Gord is gone, people are once again turning to his words to find an answer to how to process his death. This s...

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...