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Doubt Beyond Certainty
My hunch that our religious instinct is best realized when we are exploring, and when we occupy places that permit exploration. Continue reading
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Secularism and Pluralism: Divergent Social Imaginaries
My faith as a Christian cannot be privatized. My relationship with God is personal, but it isn’t private. Continue reading
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A Deteriorating Internet
Advertising becomes more aggressive. User data is harvested more thoroughly. Algorithms are introduced not to foster understanding, but to prolong engagement. What was once delightful becomes tedious. Continue reading
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The Gift of Knowledge: Absorbed by Truth
Why do I say ex-philosopher? Because, since Descartes and perhaps before, modern Western thought has turned knowledge into a problem to be solved. Rationalism, empiricism, idealism, phenomenology, utilitarianism: all these systems tend to make knowledge into a mechanism of control, a means of prediction, a form of power. Descartes and Locke both used the word… Continue reading
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The Aura of Thought: McLuhan and Benjamin on AI
“Without presence, there is no memory. Without struggle, no ethics. Can a civilization survive on imitation alone?” Continue reading
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What A.I. Really Threatens: Yuval Harari and the Red Flag of Intimacy
It isn’t our sovereignty that AI threatens (since we never have been sovereign); it is our authenticity. Continue reading
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Rethinking Inclusion Part 3: Case Studies in a Revolution in Education
When we dug into it, we found that human agency, while widely assumed as a human right, is, in fact hotly contested and often inarticulate. It turns out this so-called human right to agency is something that isn’t assumed; it must be achieved. These institutional barriers have become systemic, and as such, we may begin… Continue reading
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Re-thinking Inclusion Part 2: Neurodiversity and Expectations of Agency
This is a snippet of an upcoming publication – in a slightly modified form. It is a section of a chapter entitled, “A Social Model of Learning” Continue reading
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Re-thinking Inclusion: Introduction
on the one hand, we could accept the knocker’s argument that nominally inclusive post-secondary institutions potentially produce a lot of harm. There is just too much scaffolding required for an institution through a department of accessibility to provide customized, individual agency at scale. On the other hand, we can accept the booster’s argument that if… Continue reading
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Social Imaginaries
“the social imaginary… are the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.” Continue reading
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If it Walks Like a Duck
Let’s not mince words: this is a duck; it is totalitarianism. This is no authoritarian swan or oligarchic goose; it is a totalitarian duck.. Continue reading
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Canada’s Mindful Approach to Managing Trump’s Influence
“Canada’s long-term relationship with the United States is more significant than any one leader’s policies, and recognizing the impermanence of Trump’s influence helps in moving forward without dwelling on past conflicts.” Continue reading
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The Good Life: Differing Visions for a Thriving Society
“…if we are to offer resistance to the coup attempt on both the administrative state and on the imaginary that agency is core to a meaningful life, we might consider pushing back on over-reach technological rationality.” Continue reading
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Social Learning Models: A Path for Neuro-Diverse Success
(This is the third in a series of posts generated from the experience of teaching neuro-diverse newcomers to Canada in a workplace training program. The first: “The Neurodivergent Advantage“; the second: “The Evolution of Ability“) In the ever-evolving landscape of education, creating learning environments that cater to neuro-diverse adults has become increasingly vital. Traditional models Continue reading
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Evil Never Wins… or Dies
Fortunately, I haven’t been much moved by an idea of America, or been swept-up in anti-American sentiment. I’ve never really understood what America even is. Continue reading
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A Review of David Beck’s Fragments: Reflections on Life and Faith throughout the Years
If you are going through a midlife change, or reflect on life at all, you have to read this book. Book reviews are supposed to be brief, but exercising restraint in reviewing David Beck’s “Fragments: Reflections on Life and Faith through the Years” ($15 softcover, $9.99 Kindle US, on Amazon.com), would be inauthentic. Moreover, it Continue reading
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Living by Faith – Moral Considerations in a Holy Land
I pray that all people in this situation starts seeing God in the other, and the best way to live in future peace is to be peaceful now. Continue reading
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For Mom, not a mom
I stand and look out, at the dark lake,With the moon rising.And the horse and buggy are coming back in,From the past, in silenceWhere things they don’t existAnd we’re all in this together, till the endWhere the pearly gates remain openAnd welcome me homeBy the time I came to Manitoba, I diedAt the hands of Continue reading
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Authenticity in an Age of Totality
In an age when the fifth type of totalitarianism, Mass Society, has systemically devalued and degraded the human person, I hope it is proper to demand a hearing of any and all authentic reactions in favor of a person’s inalienable solitude and for her effective freedom. The murderous cacophony of materialism cannot be allowed to Continue reading
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Technological Society Deprives
While it’s easy to appreciate the benefits of technology, we often struggle to identify what it has taken from us. Technology is part of us. Continue reading
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It’s Hard to be Embarrassed; is that a problem?
This may be one time when we all know that we exist between the past and future. Continue reading
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Liberal Democracies buttressed by Illiberal Forces: a Social Imaginary
“what is meant by individual freedom is hotly contested and not just a brute fact. It must be nurtured and grown. This is how I experience my moment of bliss over bacon and eggs. This emerging freedom is a profoundly different social imaginary than the one on offer by liberal democracy.” Continue reading
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Constitutive Work, Recognition, and Why Hannah Arendt Matters
Going through a layoff can be devastating. When I got laid off from a Christian University that had been struggling financially (typical of such post-secondary institutions in the 2000s), I needed to come to the deep logic which eliminated me from the equation. After all, I was in my early 50’s, and I had thought Continue reading
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Charles Taylor: New Dimensions of Experience
Taylor not only provides a language and framework that can articulate the deep senses of meaning we long for, but he also identifies many of the forces that are at work in our lives. Continue reading
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The Neurodivergent Advantage… and Challenge
Neurodiversity is not a challenge to overcome; it’s a strength to harness. When organizations consciously create and support diverse climates, everyone benefits. Continue reading
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The Commitments of Authentic People
Commitments are important because they stretch over a long time and act as types of buffers and infrastructure that protect us from the equivocations of the human heart. Continue reading
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Work, Democracy and Inequality: A Message for the Center-Left, Part 3
Jesus famously said as he was being crucified, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” The human artifice has essentially crucified the human condition. And, like the calamitous natural disasters that characterize a planet in revolt against the industrialization that is characterized by exploitation of the Earth, so too, a populist… Continue reading
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Work, Democracy and Inequality: A Message for the Center-Left, Part 2
The Industrial Revolution has pushed the limits of a sustainably livable planet; the technocratic logic of social mobility grafted onto the very structures of the human condition has distorted our very human condition. Continue reading
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Work, Democracy and Inequality: A Message for the Center-Left, Part 1
“Progressive parties and movements used to be the parties of working people…. but in recent decades, that’s changed in a way that also parallels education.” Continue reading
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The Corporate Leviathan: How Corporations Became the True Artificial Intelligence of Our Time
In response to AI: Are you on a journey to reclaim authenticity and defy corporate dominance in a world teetering on the brink of mass conformity? Continue reading
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Bring Your Whole Self to the World
I recently shut off the flow of the news, and became intentional about what “events” I looked at. I got on to this strategy recently because I had realized I spent too much time on LinkedIn. I knew that I was suffering from information overload, because I was feeling burnt out by the constant stream Continue reading
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Bell Media: The Corporate Gutting of Democracy
We may feel sorry for the journalists – mostly local – who lost their jobs… and there is much to grieve in this respect. But, what happens to the services they provided? And what happens to the people whose services have now been cut by their corporate “restructuring”? Continue reading
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Inadequate Political and Moral Categories in Palestine and Israel – Part 1
We need to bring the entire Palestinian population back into the state of legality – not into a family of nations nor with pointless and virtue-signalling categories of human rights, but with a reconsideration again of what it means to be human. Continue reading
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Inadequate Political and Moral Categories in Palestine and Israel – Part 2
For it is quite conceivable, and even within the realm of practical political possibilities, that one fine day, a highly organized and mechanized humanity will conclude quite democratically – namely, by majority decision – that for humanity as a whole, it would be better to liquidate certain parts thereof. Continue reading
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In Good Faith: A Palestinian-American’s Story
She described her hometown as a place where people slept with their doors unlocked, where theft was unheard of, and where there were no random acts of violence. Everyone knew each other by name, and assistance to other members of the community was a matter of course, and nothing exceptional. Continue reading
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Organized Lying About Palestine
If we are paying attention, we should have noticed the practice of organized lying. Continue reading
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My Prayer for Actions in Israel / Palestine
Dearest Lord, Thou has told us that if we confess our sins that Thou art faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Dearest Lord, I dare to name the sins of my people, and especially the ones of which I am also responsible. I have been an imperialist expander, Continue reading
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The Avatar, Authenticity and Why Palestinians are Returning to Northern Gaza
Authenticity, as the Palestinians are manifesting, invests in home, in land, and in community instead of ideological notions of a “Zionist” state, Continue reading
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The Evil in Claiming, “Terrorist” – and the Al Ahli Hospital
The “terrorist” label is often an unwarranted shortcut to the imaginary moral high road. Continue reading
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Al Aqsa Flood, Day 3 continued: Israel is Telling us that it’s a Genocide!
We should understand that they have placed the entirety of Gaza (not just Hamas) under siege: no food, no water, no electricity, no safe shelter. It is now a concentration camp. Continue reading
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Al Aqsa Flood, Day 3: the Siege and the Danger of Innocence
Claiming innocence to justify any action will make us morally culpable because it is an abdication of our responsibility to think. Innocence is our greatest danger. Continue reading
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Al Aqsa Flood – Day 2
If you haven’t been following, Hamas, the military arm / guerrilla fighters of Gaza launched an invasion into southern Israel. You can read about my take on it here. After Lebanon exchanged fire with Israel on the northern border, and with exchanges of violence in Ramallah, Hebron, and Jericho today, it will be a misnomer to Continue reading
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The Al Aqsa Flood, a.k.a the Israeli-Gaza War
I don’t condone Hamas’s behavior – but I certainly understand it. Continue reading
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Authenticity, Scapegoating, and Peace
To practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their mimetic desires for comfort and pleasure. Continue reading
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A Cold Winter Day
“…while you may isolate at home for a while, Thou belongs to Me, and I to Thou. And this is no longer a trial.” Continue reading
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A Meaning of Otherness: Colossians 3
Whether it is Bible reading or living in a home, we metaphorically translate what is foreign into familiarity and move what is to what ought to be. That is, overcoming otherness is bringing our uniqueness to a situation not originally intended to accept it, and then translating and transforming the situation so the uniqueness can… Continue reading
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Relationship
You (Thou) and I belong to the Kingdom of God. Thou and I are very different. Thou and I share much that is the same, Thou and I may be friends, acquaintances, or even enemies. I submit myself to you, especially Thou within you. I vow to live with Thou in peace, as Christ crucified. Continue reading
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Anabaptism and the Post Secular Condition: Witness, Pluralism, and the Limits of Secular Reason
I had gone out into the world as if it was completely unknown; I came back with the world in tow. Continue reading
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The Structure of Resilience: Part 1, A Lesson from the Steel Industry
You deserve an economy where resilience and fairness coexist, not one where one is used as an excuse to ignore the other. And as we think about fairness, it’s worth examining how power has operated in this sector for years. Large corporations have often held the upper hand, able to relocate production, shift supply chains,… Continue reading
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For Alan and Jolly
“Welcome, Foon ying, Swagaat! I especially welcome those people who have come from far away to be here today, from abroad and from places outside Edmonton. My name is Ray Klassen, and I am so honoured that Alan and Jolly have asked me to help them celebrate their wedding today. As I have come to… Continue reading
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Alberta Can’t Follow Through
“You call for freedom, yet chain yourself fast, A restless spirit, but bound to your past.” Continue reading
About me: I am a career educator and traveler at heart. My written work includes academic writing in philosophy and linguistics, English acquisition, and most intently in the areas of spiritual engagement with reality and what that means for our public lives.
My education is a mixture of formal study in philosophy, political theory, Biblical studies, and history, along with professional teaching certification in TESOL and in cognitive testing, and international teaching.
My travel experiences include a range of countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. I have lived in Canada, the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Thailand. From those places I have traveled to many others besides.
I am a child of the 70’s and a “family man.” That means I have two wonderful kids who have been round the world with me.
Lastly, I am married to a wonderful woman since 2004. She is my partner, my friend, and my muse.
Thanks again for stopping by,
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 