Authenticity
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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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Well-formed Small Groups Form Their Members
New one out today: “A well-formed group asks students to practise attention. They must listen closely enough to understand what another person means, not merely wait for their turn to speak. It asks them to practise articulation. They must put a thought into words that others can hear, question, and use. It asks them to… 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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Authenticity isn’t Legibility
Many performances of authenticity are protective. They arise not from vanity, but from fear. People learn to reveal enough to appear honest, but not enough to risk being known. Performed vulnerability then becomes a shelter. It looks like openness while preserving control over exposure. Continue reading
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The Human Being Is Not the Source of Meaning: Heidegger and Sartre
For Sartre, authenticity is bound up with self-creation. The authentic person accepts the burden of freedom and refuses bad faith. They do not pretend that their choices are dictated by some fixed essence or external authority. They own their freedom and act. But for Heidegger, authenticity is not primarily self-creation. It is a more truthful… 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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The Most Important Educational Technology: The Small Group
What if the most powerful educational technology available to us right now is not artificial intelligence, adaptive software, predictive analytics, or the next digital learning platform? What if the most powerful educational technology is still the human small group? 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
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 