Category Archives: Existentialism

Interrogation

State your name, please. OK. I can do that. I mean, I can give you some names. But these are misleading. You intend to give us false names? I did not say this. But a name suggests a finitude entirely … Continue reading

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Lichtung, Midsummer, No Fairies

Where have you gone, fairies of my childhood?Have I grown too blustering and blundering,Too puffed up with knowledge and opinions? I seek you in the clearing of the woodAnd there find only the luminescenceYou have left behind, hanging in the … Continue reading

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A Brief Explanation of Everything. You’re Welcome.

NB: The following is a story. It is not fact. It is based in facts, yes, but it is entirely speculative. This was an exercise I set myself to create a myth that is completely consistent with current scientific understandings. … Continue reading

Posted in Epistemology, Existentialism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Religion, Short Stories | 3 Comments

Robert’s Rule

ROBERT’S RULE: If you are wondering whether a new policy, procedure, technology, law, regulation, or system is a good idea, just think of the worst person at the worst time in the future wielding its power. –Robert D. Shepherd Bob’s … Continue reading

Posted in Ed Reform, Existentialism, Technology, Trump (Don the Con) | 2 Comments

A Solution to the Fermi Paradox

The current NASA estimate is that there are 19,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe that are Class G stars like ours AND that have at least one planet similar to Earth. That’s at least 19 SEXTILLION Earthlike planets, folks. No, … Continue reading

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Existentialism in Five Minutes | Bob Shepherd

“This was back in the days Of the folk music craze. . . . [and] parties to pay for the rent. We all wanted to be existentialists, but none of us knew what that meant.” –Michael Smith, “The Ballad of … Continue reading

Posted in Existentialism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind | 6 Comments

Wise Abandon

Look at anything. Really, really look at it. And it will become quite strange. Here you are, for example. And all the past is gone. And all the future is not yet. You probably believe, in fact, in the instant … Continue reading

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Three Meanings of “Meaning”

I just saw a dumb article in Quartz claiming that as science has revealed to us a mechanistic universe (and a view of the human brain as mechanism), we’ve come to face a new kind of “existential crisis” as we … Continue reading

Posted in Epistemology, Existentialism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Teaching Literature and Writing | 3 Comments

The Look, Social Media, and the Prolongation of Adolescence

Older people are supposed to complain about the kids these days. Northrop Frye, the great literary critic, wrote in The Educated Imagination that one of the earliest written texts produced by humans said that children no longer obey their parents … Continue reading

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Aidan Reading on the Way to Preschool

So, Aidan was asking whether I thought that the being of self-consciousness is such that in its being its being is in question, and I said, “Come on, Aidan, you’re old enough to figure that out for yourself,” which he … Continue reading

Posted in Existentialism, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Short Stories | 3 Comments