Philosophy

The Enemy we Need?
Starring: Corporations (or rather any constellation that has so much capital at its disposal as to develop the emergent quality of being able to ignore the disastrous "externalities" they cause - of not giving a shit about reality) We are entering a new phase of schizophrenia. In today's globalized world the military powers might still ...
Oath of Hypocrisy
In medicine, doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath, promising that they'll use their abilities in the best interest of their patients. Whether or not that includes euthanasia doesn't matter here. The Oath is close to sacred and medical commissions can respond to its violation with severe punishment. When it comes to affairs of the mind, a ...
Countdown from Peak Child
I watched an entertaining and instructive talk by Swedish professor Hans Rosling the other day, because YouTube recommended this video. Mr. Rosling introduced himself as a dry statistics professor but did everything humanly possible to maximize the probability of laughter he induced among his mixed audience. Watch the first few minutes of his presentation and ...
The Aura of Money
A little anecdote that showed me recently what is wrong with our money: We were eating out in an Indian restaurant, where they serve excellent vegetarian dishes, fresh naan-bread and aromatic rice. The portions were quite large, and we were enjoying the many flavours, while feeding some of the salat cucumbers to our one-year old. ...
The Virtue of Giving Up
In our culture people who "give up" anything but drugs, are considered losers. Why is that? The logic is as follows: [1] You conscientiously choose a task, and because we consider you a rational being, the task is to achieve a certain purpose; [2] You work hard on the task, and it goes more or ...
“But you need money”
Money. I've always had enough of it because of my natural thriftiness. So I can't really speak for those who have experienced real poverty (the UN's $1.25 a day kind of poverty), and for whom an empty wallet means an empty stomach. I know the predicament of all too many people: They simply need money ...
Think like a network [draft]
It is nice to focus on our own social group. The search for more community spirit seems to be a common denominator of many people who have fallen, for various reasons, out of love with the individual consumerist worldview and its promise of satisfaction through material saturation. So we head for the exit, we dream ...
The Aura of Stuff
In Sacred Economics, the invaluable free e-book by Charles Eisenstein, the author calls for a new materialism, and I agree with him. It seems paradoxical that strong opponents of consumerism see something positive in stuff. We all know where our stuff comes from, we know about the morally indefensible sweatshops and the physically unsustainable processes ...
Sharing
Let me come on with an attitude and say I'll debunk a myth today. Inspired once again by our baby daughter Miru, I started questioning the common belief that babies don't share. A quick look-up on the BrinPage machine (i.e. Google) confirmed that this is indeed what our experts think. Why? Because "So basically what ...