Precolonial African tribalism and the luxury of grand unifying myths — If you were to read that Africa has suffered from an unusual number of civil wars, you’d probably chalk up that observation to a vestige of European colonial racism. According to the racist imperialists, Africans were racially inferior to Europeans and thus more prone to primitive violence. And you’d be…

Meeting the challenge of deep ecology with an existential perspective — Deep ecologists say that civilization, the drive to expand human societies at nature’s expense is evil and that our presence on the planet needs to be drastically downscaled to respect the inherent value of all other life. Where we’ve gone badly wrong, these ecologists say, is in valuing people more…

How Roman imperialism disrupted the Hindu logic of Christianity’s latent polytheism — “Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness, O Arjun, at that time I manifest Myself on earth. To protect the righteous, to annihilate the wicked, and to reestablish the principles of dharma I appear on this earth, age after age.” …

Transhumanism’s existential status in the history of religions — The overall trend in the history of religions is ironic since it’s one in which we eventually ignore or downplay the supreme creative power that hides in plain sight, which is nature, and reify our inclination to aggrandize ourselves, worshipping “gods” and “goddesses” until that vanity was unleashed in the…

Contrary to maudlin assurances about those three “transcendentals,” they’re not united — “The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth…

Authoritarian populism, Jordan Peterson’s scorn, and the prophetic tradition — Pity the conservative rabble-rouser! Just imagine having all that indignation and no righteous way to express it because your policies are always on the wrong side of history. Think of the scorn you see spewing from the talking heads on Fox News, or from Jordan Peterson or Donald Trump and…

Libertarian hotheads and the cooler heads of Nordic compromisers — Excessive heat is bad for the brain, according to lots of research and to common experience. As Discover Magazine says, “If you’ve ever felt like you can’t think straight or concentrate on a task when it’s hot and humid, you’re not alone. …

Reality is the alien hiding in plain sight — When we’re young and well cared for, everything’s new and surprising and therefore relatively magical. As we get older it’s harder to surprise us, so we’re liable to become jaded and alienated, unless we take care to question our assumptions, shift our perspective once in awhile, and appreciate the cosmic…

And the irrelevance of our feelings about Bradley Cooper’s fake nose in “Maestro” — Decades ago, “wokeness” used to mean that we should be on the lookout for signs of racism or other injustices. Now, though, the word has been coopted to license displays of shallow, reactionary moralizing. You can see this kind of sanctimony in the silly row over Bradley Cooper’s choice to…