Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Like most people during the pandemic, I avoided doctors like the plague. In the first year, when I was already overdue my annual physical, my family doctor sent me a preemptive email saying she was only seeing patients by Zoom and, even then, only for important issues. Respiratory distress was an important issue; an annual…
Left Is Not Woke, by the philosopher, Susan Neiman, and published in March of this year, is unusual in that it offers a critique of wokeness from the left. We are more accustomed to hear critiques from the right, although most of what we hear from the right doesn’t qualify as formal critique, more like…
Although the passage from one year to the next is an arbitrary line in the sand (or snow, since this is winter in Canada), it does provide us with a pivotal moment when we can reflect on what has gone before and look forward to what is yet to come. The obvious topics—pandemic, Ukraine—have already…
[T]he function of a statue is only marginally tied to history; its primary function is to serve as an object of reverence. Statuary (of historical figures) is an expression of idolatry that serves the universal religion of our age: the dominance of capital over everything.
The requirement that you conform to white expectations as a prerequisite to conversation about racial injustice is itself an enactment of racial injustice.
So what is all this kerfuffle around the Toronto Public Library (TPL) renting space to Meghan Murphy? And why should it matter to someone like me, a cisgendered, middle-aged white male i.e. the ideal symbolic stand-in for privilege in all its manifestations?
This morning, while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, I had a thought about narcissism. I wanted to take a selfie to capture the moment but was concerned about what people (in this instance, my wife) would think of me. The last thing I want is for people to think I’m narcissistic.
On Christmas day, I intend to commit an act of love by deleting my Facebook account. My reasons aren’t terribly mysterious. They relate to concerns that have been widely discussed by all sorts of people. You may not find all my reasons relevant to your own Facebook situation, but I’m sure you’ll identify with at least of few of them.
I feel like a Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know, one of those aliens who can only measure value in terms of profit.
Increasingly, I find myself drawn to the observation that the motivating force of contemporary mainstream culture (as evidenced by its art, entertainment, politics, literature, religion, economics) is a species of literalism.
Fifty years ago, Mircea Eliade published Myth and Reality in which he explored the function of myth in a wide-ranging sample of cultures and religious contexts. His writing cut across the traditionally established boundaries that divide a number of disciplines: anthropology, history, religious studies, cultural studies.
While wandering through the purgatory that is suburbia, I noticed a sign for a contracting company with the name: Actual Plumbing Ltd. I neither endorse nor disapprove of the contractor, and I assume they don’t mind free advertising on my blog. I think it’s an interesting name. What makes plumbing actual plumbing?
Today I heard someone refer to Remembrance Day as an expression of civic religion. If so, it’s a religion without the benefit of theologians. In our more conventional expressions of religion, theologians help in the task of interpreting religious expression, of giving it meaning and depth and context. Remembrance Day has none of that.
I first encountered the name, Pico Iyer, last year while reading Geoff Dyer’s latest book, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. Dyer refers to him while writing about the nowhereness of hotels and airports, locales that have become emblematic of the global era.
As the Occupy movement creeps ever closer to Toronto, we who support it brace ourselves for the inevitable backlash, not only from voices of power, but also from an eerily complacent middle class.