Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike.
The problem is that the Enlightenment dream may make too many demands on poor African apes like us. We may just not be up to it.
[This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [. . . ] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.
I grew up as an only child of two parents who had dropped out of high school. They had enormous respect for education and encouraged me as a child when I had strong interests in both math and science, but we really didn't have much by way of educational role modeling in our family.
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.
Aristotle thought that humans are rational animals and Hobbes thought that we act on the basis of rational self-interest. If only! It's not that we never do these things, it's that they are hardly constituative of who and what we are.
The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
Change creates fear, and technology creates change. Sadly, most people don't behave very well when they are afraid.
The future is in the hands of those who can give tomorrow's generations valid reasons to live and hope.
I either run or try to play basketball every day.
A digging fork is a stout, short-handled tool with four flat tines about a foot long. . . . for weeding I use it delicately to nudge the soil loose from roots without breaking them.