Politics and Society
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Writing Without a Guarantee: The Risk of Work That Matters

I still do not know whether writing this book is professionally prudent. Perhaps it will strengthen future work; perhaps it will remain largely separate from my employment. It may find a modest readership, or its public life may take a form I cannot presently imagine. Continue reading
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Three Threats of AI to Human Agency

A letter can have presence. A phone call can have presence. A Zoom conversation can have presence. Even AI-assisted writing may preserve presence if the person remains genuinely involved, accountable, and responsive. Mediation is not the enemy. Substitution is. AI threatens presence when my words arrive but I have remained safely elsewhere. Continue reading
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A Sovereign Alberta Within a United Canada? When Political Language Conceals More Than It Says.

Political language does more than decorate policy. It helps citizens understand what kind of world they are being asked to inhabit. When language clarifies, citizens can judge. When language blurs, citizens may still feel oriented, but the orientation is emotional before it is truthful. They know where they are supposed to stand before they know… Continue reading
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Known Enough to Become Yourself

The self that comes back is never simply the self that left. Continue reading
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The Political Stakes of Authenticity

Quebec sovereignty in the 1990s drew much of its force from language, culture, historical memory, and the desire for collective recognition. Even at the point of possible rupture, the language still carried the question of relationship. Alberta separatism, by contrast, often speaks in the register of release. Continue reading
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Consumerism, or Consumption, of Self

I still think about an encounter I once had with Rosie, a young woman who appeared at my door in the middle of the night. What stayed with me was not merely the strangeness of the situation, but the unmediated quality of it. There was no audience, no profile, no performance, no curated identity. There… Continue reading
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Desire: Curated Before Noticed

A person begins forgetting what it feels like to encounter reality without immediately filtering it through visibility, aspiration, anxiety, or comparison. Silence becomes difficult. Boredom becomes intolerable. Ordinary life begins to feel insufficient unless it can be translated into something shareable, admirable, or meaningful to others. Continue reading



