Metarationalist Ephemera

Foreshadowed by my musings on adulthood, what I’m presenting here is the temporary result of my efforts pondering the core of the concept of “freedom”. I have come to the conclusion that what we call “freedom” relies on two great assumptions: 1) humans have free will; 2) free will ultimately depends on the ability of [...]

I recently got to read this post that attempts to speak against the concept of consensus politics which I’ve been promoting. Although I find myself agreeing with some of the criticisms made against “democracy” as we currently know it, the claim that a constitution would somehow be better than consensus politics disregards the fact that [...]

This was written as an explanation of my standpoint on this divisive issue in the wake of the recent events in San Francisco. Circumcision has been performed on children, male and female, in many cultures throughout history. The elementary aspects of circumcision are most often that of an initiative ritual where one gender, or both, [...]

An aspect often overlooked in normative theory is the intricacy of irrational feelings and personal reality. The boundary between “feelings/intuition” and “objective perception” is a murky one that most ideologues like to conveniently ignore. Politicians are unlikely to become politicians under the assumption that they’re not objectively right as to what is best for everyone. [...]

This is a critical synthesis of my main thoughts on education of the past 2-3 years. I find it a fertile idea to assume that schooling exists to transmit to youths a body of knowledge that cannot be transmitted by the parents, for two reasons: 1. The knowledge that must be passed on to the [...]

At the deepest core of politics lie what some call principles, attitudes, beliefs, values, axioms and all sorts of words that, for the purpose of this post, are conceptually identical. As none of those words even comes close to having the breadth and depth of what they are supposed to represent, this concept will hereby [...]

I have created the following diagram of possible ideologies (inside the square) and utopias (outside the square) in the 21st Century as part of the first appendix to my mid-term essay in Idéologie et société (SOC 4709) with Diane Pacom – a course that is highly relevant to my interests, and to this blog. [Click [...]

The following series of joint blog posts by Azarius and Reikoku is the result of long, at times painful, debates on the nature of political ideals, utopias, and ethics. Indeed, politics, in the end, amount to ethics applied to a community of “responsible adults” – the Greek polis. Accordingly, the common axiom that sparked our [...]

I just had to write that post some day… oddly enough it was mostly written while sober. As were temporarily shattered memories and feelings long deemed useless, there resulted a distinctive euphoria, a state of consciousness immersed in the Now. I remembered vaguely the after-taste of the herb, still present in my mouth.

Do you understand this sentence? Just what do we understand? What is understanding? Just what do we know in the end? Without questions, implicit or explicit, comprehension holds no meaning. Even questioning – and rejecting – knowledge yields knowledge and not semantic void. There is simply no semantic void: everything within the human mind holds [...]