The existence of effective, ineffective and incorrect communication implies the existence of effective, ineffective and incorrect listening. The existence of effective, ineffective and incorrect leadership implies the existence of effective, ineffective and incorrect following. The latter sets are the foundational skillsets for “communication skills”. Teaching this in the wrong order leads to many of the …
Philosophy
Agroecology
I love my day job. When I speak with very close friends about it, it’s when i’m down. With others, it’s usually details and economics. but the core of it that I want to bring out more– I love my job. I wonder if I can communicate why. The thing I love most about it …
Deus ex Natura
When someone uses nature, their own or in the abstract or a dispassionate concept of evolution as the reason for something drastic, my first question, with real curiosity, is “whose death or suffering are you willing to accept on their behalf, whose death and suffering do you support?” If you want to make Nature your …
Self Esteem
A foundational obstacle to self-esteem which undermines any amount of internal work or external achievement: Asking for permission to exist, thinking that any interaction with another’s existence is an intrusion on you or them until proven otherwise. There are a couple of ways this expresses itself: Treating yourself as unwelcome by default in every space …
The Virgin Evolved Ape vs The Chad Cosmic
Sharp Dichotomies for Thee, But Not For Me? ☸ I’m going to start by making a seemingly disconnected point: Humans are not “built” for physical fights. All fighting features/instincts are tacked on to a *comically* fragile body, and it remains that way no matter what you do. Learn to fight because you need it or …
Toughness and Empathy
If you were able to mind-over-matter something, to push your body’s limits, perform some feat of resilience or training, overcome great pain, then your body was always capable of it. You were gifted with it, it’s not something you should take full credit for. If you are disabled, and you managed to overcome that by …
The Humble Axiom
What do religion, truth and lies, philosophy, fiction and math, intellectuals, journalism, propaganda, cults, politics and mental health have in common? The humble axiom. And its errant son, the profound insight. All rationality, all reasoning, all the things that a human mind can think– are bounded. That means that they work only within the boundaries …
Intersectionality as a Method, Not a Madness
A quick piece on how it can meet its potential, instead of its end. EDIT: I should add links and examples I’ve collected. Once I’ve stopped procrastinating. When its most well-known associations are discarded, intersectionality is simply a method for identifying and understanding what happens in the intersection points of distinct categories, attributes or domains. It’s …