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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Parenting for Protesters and Counter-Protesters
I vow to remember: I am not creating myself; Instead, I am offering space for you to co-create yourself. Continue reading
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Mimetic Desire and the Battle for Authenticity
“Our desires make us imitate and compete with others, but what we ultimately seek is recognition and approval from them.” Rene Girard I used to teach a course called The Architecture of Human Identity. I was very interested in the fact that by knowing who we are, we take some authorship in who we become. Certain people believe… Continue reading
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The Burning Breath
But deep within the breath is burning; my breathing is burning. And that which I watch in meditation, part voluntary and part involuntary, burns in the smoky air. And alone in universal greed and desire, I breathe. Continue reading
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Late Comedians Invite us to the Human Condition
Late Comedians Invite us to the Human Condition “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh; otherwise, they’ll kill you.” (Oscar Wilde) I like making other people laugh. Sometimes it is with a question; sometimes it is with a play on words; sometimes it is in highlighting the presence of irreconcilable absurdity.… Continue reading
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Solitude, Separation, and Holiness
“To live in communion, in genuine dialogue with others is essential if one is to remain human. But to live amidst others, sharing nothing with them but the common noise and the general distraction, isolates a person in the worst way.” Continue reading
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Sower, Seeds, Sown
Every moment of life on earth plants something in your soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of seeds, so too, each moment brings germs of spiritual vitality that unnoticeably come to rest in the spirits of individuals. Continue reading
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Renunciation
“the best way to be a contemplative is for one to love poverty.” Continue reading
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Authenticity: Being Yourself in a World Designed to Make You Someone Else
Can we know ourselves from moment to moment, every day, not with words or descriptions, but with an actual perception of our inner selves being intact and authentically ours? In other words, we do not have to live out a story, but instead, we experience a reality. Continue reading
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Dimensions
They said what the four of us knew in our bones: together, every obstacle could be resolved. Continue reading
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Becoming Unbusy
Unravel and let go of this advertised version of luxury. When we begin to see our own role in our busyness and become intentional, then life slows down… Continue reading
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Human Time Can Mean Anything
“Effective altruists, … say the threat of artificial intelligence is that it may someday become conscious…. The Right to Be Lazy suggests that machines have already been used to that end for nearly 250 years.” Yet a machine cannot enjoy its time off. Continue reading
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Work: The Technocratic Perversion of Human Life
Technocratic capitalism can either overrun humanity or it needs to be forced back into its lane. Continue reading
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Alberta Election 2023: the Elephants in the Room
The UCP will keep ignoring the elephants in the room. The smoke is out of sight because it rained, but we better understand that it is going to come back worse. Continue reading
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The 2023 Thai Election: Agency… for Agency
The Move Forward’s political agenda of demilitarization, de-monopolization, and decentralization (3D) is thus key to an understanding of what is different in Thai politics. Continue reading
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Elections and a Pragmatic Swing
I am a political pragmatist and for good reason. There is a perfect storm of historical factors that presses a pragmatic political orientation upon us. 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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Better Capitalism and the Constitutive Value of Work
The production of capital is perhaps a necessary condition of work, but a hyper-focus on capital production will miss its sufficient conditions. Continue reading
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The Only Guilty Man in Shawshank
The people who have most belonged and identified with Christian institutions have done everything to avoid their guilt. Continue reading
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Stories, Experience, and Why David Letterman Held Our Attention
There is a sudden realization that our narrative understanding of ourselves, perhaps wrongly occupies a central place in our attention. Continue reading
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New Life In Christ: An Easter Message
Respectable Christians is not content with faith in the Risen Christ, not content with the grace and love of Christ: he wants the comfort and justification of being on the side of power and convention. Continue reading
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On the Bridge of Khaza-dum: A.I. and April Fool’s Day
A.I. is the awakening of the Balrog and our greed for control has put our fate in the balance. Continue reading
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My Departed Gift
… every “good morning!” needed a response. Every action engendered an obligation… Continue reading
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Covenant and the Freedom to Act – Public Talk with podcast links
The irony in my giving this talk in that place, under these circumstances… reaches my heart with a deep and absurd smile. I grieve it, yes. But God’s plans are always better than mine. Continue reading
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The Friendship Recession: Part 3 – Resilient Practice
You’re also not a friend if you refuse to let people come and say, “I just think you’re absolutely wrong.” You have to listen. You have to share decisions. Continue reading
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The Friendship Recession: Part 2 – Friendship as Both Needed and Discovered
is transformed into something much more important, something vital to the life of the world, when the people who share the table are engaging in the practices of love and of thinking. 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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The Friendship Recession: Part 1 – Learned Loneliness
We have learned ourselves out of covenant relationships, and this is the core of learned loneliness. Covenants seem archaic because so many are not willing to say: I will do my part, even if, for a time, you aren’t doing your part. Continue reading
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Arendt and the Public World Under Threat
We are now at the beginning of the end of the modern university. The same disease that polarizes us makes the University less and less relevant. This is not an economic argument; it is an existential one. (With updated links) Continue reading
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Authenticity and Humility in the Noise of Greatness
It does not take courage to be authentically yourself; it takes humility. 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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The Human Person and History in the Age of Mass Reproduction
That which withers in the age of mass reproduction is the authenticity of the individual. Continue reading
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Post-Easter: Resurrection
The most valid intuition of the “religionless religion” is their awareness that the vast majority of people today, i.e., those who “cannot believe”, are encountering Christ, even though they cannot adjust to the idea that life acquires meaning only when one “joins the Church”. 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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Bring Your Who 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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Social Mobility and Liberal Education
*image credit: https://www.davidklassenfineart.com/about In 2020 and 2021, the cross-pressures on undergraduate education were phenomenal, and they raised so many fears and anxieties that it seemed that we couldn’t be anything but in a CONSTANT state of fear. Individually, we have worn masks and washed hands because we have been afraid to catch and spread disease. … 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,