On Medium: The Conservative Misunderstanding of Liberty

Read on to explore the hypocrisy of American conservatives and why libertarians should be democratic socialists.

On Medium: What is the Nature of Ultimate Knowledge?

This article is on pragmatism, pure science, and the what ultimate knowledge would have to be. 

On Medium: What is Godlessness?

An article on how godlessness is much more than atheism, namely the enlightenment that sees through not just theistic religions but secular idols, civil religions, and noble lies.

On Medium: The Firing of a Sex Fiend Philosophy Professor

A satirical article based on a true story of so-called depravity and justice.

On Medium: Cycles, Progress, and the Clash of Civilizations

Here's an article about seeing through the superficial differences between religions, to a more decisive classification that addresses the carbon cycle and the calamity of Western individualism.

On Medium: Trumpism as a Revelation Of Evil

Explore the mythic dimension of Trump’s evil. What exactly is that deplorable condition, and what does it mean for a US president to have been openly inhuman?

On Medium: Progress and American Infantilism

This one's on how American mass culture became so infantile, and on the existential standard of maturity that makes that judgment so vital in view of the self-destructive consequences of our flights into childish fantasies.

On Medium: Modernity and the Anguish of Artists

An article on how science, capitalism, democracy and digital tech trivialize art, and how art instead is supposed to critique society and guide us towards deeper meaning.

On Medium: Is Success Ever Earned?

An article on how our commonsense congratulations about our successes in life are empty if talent, hard work, and luck don't add up to unambiguous merit.

On Medium: The Guilty Pleasure of Hating Trump

President Trump's malignance is due to his severe mental disorder, so is it contemptible to hate him for his incapacity to be a normal, full-blown person? 

An open letter to my fellow Trump-loathers.

On Medium: A Critique of the Argument from Evil

Here's an article about the absent God and the existential problem of suffering.

On Medium: A Plea for Gas-Powered Leaf-Blowers

My triumphant return to satire! Here's one on those oh so loud, gas-powered leaf-blowers I love so much.

On Medium: An Omen of Joe Biden’s Timidity

Let's puzzle over the mystery of why Biden can’t even bring himself to say what Donald Trump is.

On Medium: Does Neuroscience Show that Mind is an Illusion?

This article is about eliminativism, Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory," and whether neuroscience show that the commonsense conception of the minds is based on an illusion.

On Medium: Why Democrats are as Nihilistic as President Trump

Read on about how Trump's nihilistic "transactions" act as unwanted reflections of the liberal's trust in science-centered progress which threatens to undermine the liberal's humanistic values.

On Medium: Hubris and Alienation: The Roots of the Environmental Crisis

This article is about David Attenborough's case against Promethean faith in our transhuman destiny.

On Medium: The Ruse of Joe Biden’s Technocratic Centrism

Read on about the existential conflict between liberals and conservatives, and the dubiousness of Joe Biden's promotion of Democratic centrism.

On Medium: Should Writers Want Huge Audiences?

Following my satirical advice on how to be a very popular writer on Medium, here's an article about the upside and downside of popularity for writers.

On Medium: Saturated in Fiction: Consensus Reality as a Web of Stories

Read on to explore how we're more saturated with fiction than we realize, even in our concepts, scientific models, and the techniques we use, as well as our inner narratives.

On Medium: American Malady and the Closeness of Biden’s Victory Over Trump

This article explores how Republican radicalism, the cult of Trump, and Democratic femininity explain the narrowness of Biden's defeat of Trump.

On Medium: How to be Popular and Fake on Medium

Here's some satirical advice on how to be a very popular writer on Medium.

On Medium: Why President Biden Would Pardon Trump

In the last days before the election, consider whether Biden would or should pardon Trump if Biden were elected. If Biden wins and does pardon him, what would this mean? What would be the root causes? 

This article considers the trifecta of neoliberalism, hyperfemininity, and infantilization to help us understand a possible Biden pardon of Trump.

On Medium: Atheism and the Endlessness of Explanation

This article is about science's promethean ethos and the question of what the world must be like, ontologically speaking, to make atheism coherent.

On Medium: Trump, Trolling, and the Re-Wilding of the American Failed State

This article looks at the phenomenon of American trolling as a cover for home-grown barbarism.

On Medium: From Prehistoric Naivety to Hypermodern Alienation

Read on for an exploration of the secret meaning of history, based on a  comparison between the collective development of our species and the stages of our growth as individuals.

On Medium: President Trump: Master of Political Entertainment

This article is about how actors fill the governmental power vacuum in the emerging American plutocracy, increasingly playing the roles of "heel" or "face," familiar from professional wrestling. The problem, then, is that the Democrats are neglecting to supply the "face" or hero to counter the Republican villains, for the sake of boosting the resonance of American political theater.

On Medium: The Top Four Criticisms of Conservatism

Check out why there's no such thing as conservative philosophy or "conservative thought," with these top four criticisms of conservatism.

On Medium: Overwhelm with Malignancy: The Trump Technique

Read on to learn what's at the heart of the Trump technique and of our revulsion towards him. We confront here a supervillain with the powers to overwhelm us with superhuman malignancy and to threaten us with the revelation of evil, that goodness may all along have been for suckers. 

On Medium: Aleksandr Dugin’s Critique of Liberalism

This article assesses and explores this influential Russian philosopher's postmodern, traditionalist criticism of liberalism. Is his critique just cynical and incoherent or should we be searching for an alternative to liberalism?

On Medium: From On Psychedelic High: The Divine Terror of Entheogens

Read on for the psychedelic basis of religious beliefs and practices and for why organized religions have suppressed the source of spiritual and moral revelations.

On Medium: There Was No Pence-Harris Debate

Following the Trump-Biden train wreck of a debate, in this article I explore the difference between a debate and an interview, using the Pence-Harris "debate" as a case study, and I contrast American political debates with real ones.

On Medium: Georges Bataille on Free-Market Utopianism

This article is about the fallacy of Say's law, and the conflict between what we might call Jewish prudence (from Ecclesiastes), which is presupposed by the "rationality" of free-market economics, and French extravagance which Bataille argues is entailed by our wildness as natural creatures.

On Medium: Childhood Innocence and Godless Morality

Read on for a way of redeeming morality despite the failure of conventional religious and secular reasons for thinking there really is a right way to behave. The key is to develop an existential perspective that encompasses, for example, the recognition of our original innocence and helplessness as infants and children.

On Medium: Hypermodern Religion from the Ashes

Consider the prospects of a viable form of secular spirituality, of a late-modern religion that can withstand our burden of hyperskepticism.

On Medium: The Trump-Biden Debate and the Travesty of American Politics

This article covers the deeper reasons why the Trump-Biden "debate" wasn't really a debate. In fact, most of the televised American political debates aren't what they seem. We need to understand what a debate really is to be able to laugh at these hollow spectacles for the right reasons.

On Medium: The Most Telling Fear of Death

This article is about our fear that death undermines our self-image as persons, by demonstrating that we're really somehow just finite things.

On Medium: Why Jesus's Death Wasn't a Triumph

Here's my take on the penal substitution theory of Jesus's supposed sacrificial death, and my diagnosis of the Christian God's inner conflict between his love and justice.

On Medium: The Dark Secret of Spirituality

This article is about going beyond the platitudes of spirituality, especially the one about the need for unconditional love. What would really be involved in spiritual love? Should spiritually enlightened people be expected to love everything?

On Medium: Who Deserves to be Happy?

This article is about the paradoxes found when we reflect not on how to be happy but on the prior questions of whether anyone deserves to be happy, and if so, whom.

On Medium: Top Three Criticisms of Liberalism

Continuing my Top Three Criticism series, here's one on liberalism. 

On Medium: Why Hasn’t Trump Started a War?

The mystery of why monstrous President Trump hasn't started a war and is apparently averse to carnage. Just what kind of monster is he?

On Medium: Grim Theater: the Greater Rationality of Reelecting Donald Trump

Here's an article about a condition under which it might be more rational to reelect Donald Trump than to vote for Biden, the condition being that the country is beset by structural defects that aren't likely to be reformed in the foreseeable future, in which case the most the American population can hope for from its government is entertainment (specifically, gallows humour), not problem-solving. That's where Trump and the shenanigans of the Republican sociopaths and guardians of plutocracy and Christian theocracy come in: they're the superior entertainers.  

On Medium: The Pythagorean Illuminati and their Mathematical Reality

Examine the outer reaches of mathematical mysticism and whether the Pythagorean Illuminati can deduce that reality is made of math.

On Medium: Woke Culture and Toxic Femininity

This article is about the less familiar type of personal toxicity, the feminine kind: how it evolved, the values that emerge from it, and how both male psychopathy and toxic femininity might be surpassed by hyperrational existentialism.

On Medium: Craving Authenticity in a Flood of Lies

Read on if you're looking for hints of the sublime in the torrent of lies on social media and in popular culture.

On Medium: Consciousness and Rankings in the Labyrinth

This article expands on my naturalistic explanation of consciousness, using an existential perspective to assess the social hierarchies of spirituality and secular materialism.

On Medium: Godless Honour and the Free Fall of Liberty

Here's perhaps the last article in the Godless Honour series, on the downside and paradox of liberty. 

The article revisits questions I addressed a couple years ago in "Do we Really Want to be Free?" 

On Medium: The Limbo from the Labyrinth: Consciousness and the Brain

Read on for an explanation of how subjectivity or consciousness (qualia) arises from the objective, physical world.

On Medium: Secular versus Religious Enlightenment

Here's a lengthy dialogue I had with a monistic mystic on the nature of enlightenment and God. Should enlightenment be secular or religious? Should we be traditional mystics or cosmicist pantheists? Should the sage show compassion or transhuman amorality? Why would God create anything?

On Medium: Godless Honour and the Tragedy of Art

Continuing a series on secular values, this article is on whether art can redeem an existentially absurd life, despite art's trivialization due to its proliferation in digital form on the internet and social media.