Reading Time: 7 minutes Many myths carry the modern world, and high on that list is the myth of international relationships. One country cannot “be” friends or enemies with another country, but its representatives can play out an illusion of fraternity or animosity for economic or ideological ends. Alternately, when the game no longer serves, world representatives can take […]
Community
Posted inCulture
The struggle for a more global response to climate change
Reading Time: 10 minutes On September 9, scientists and other protesters involved in the Extinction Rebellion (XR) launched their latest direct action by marching daily on the Utrechtsebaan, which is part of the A12 highway around the Hague, in the Netherlands. 2,400 protesters out of around 10,000 were detained by police on Saturday, and a further 500 were detained […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Don’t be yourself
Reading Time: 6 minutes A growing movement of Christian evangelicals decries “expressive individualism,” or in other words, the freedom to make your own choices and decide what to do with your own life.A growing movement of Christian evangelicals decries “expressive individualism,” or in other words, the freedom to make your own choices and decide what to do with your own life.
Posted inCommunity
No, it’s not ‘workism’ that’s killing the church
Reading Time: 6 minutes Americans are overworked and overly devoted to the hustle, but that’s not why organized religion is declining. Church apologists trying to explain their decline always look outward, never inward at themselves.
Posted inTechnology
The ongoing ethical erosion of popular online platforms
Reading Time: 4 minutes Anti-corporate-monopoly and digital rights advocate Cory Doctorow calls it the “enshittification” lifecycle. First, a company caters to a demographic, offering free services to build a user base worth selling to investors. Then it caters to business clients at cost to the original users (maybe by scraping their data, or maybe by clawing back free features […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
Eco-human crisis roundup: A dam, the wildfires, and Cop City
Reading Time: 7 minutes One of the most challenging parts of politics is the extent to which we still talk about many of our most pressing issues in discrete topical units. But as three key crises in the news this week suggest, our problems with respect to the environment and human welfare are such that we need to cultivate […]
Posted inLGBTQ News
Florida’s latest Gish Gallop of legislative cruelty
Reading Time: 5 minutes May 17 was the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. It was also the day when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed five new bills into law, under a so-called “Let Kids Be Kids” package that would better fit the title if certain childhood traumas, like lockdown drills, weren’t considered part of doing business in […]
Posted inBooks
When philosophy is mistaken for field research
Reading Time: 12 minutes Well, folks, we’re diving into The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. If you missed our book club opener last Friday, you can always double back to see why we’re thinking about this 2021 work of imaginative anthropology, which explores the history of how we created our […]
Posted inCommunity
Goodbye, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Reading Time: < 1 minute OnlySky authors are going on a little holiday as the site refreshes and reassembles. In the short time I was on staff, I wrote over 90 articles for OnlySky. The ideas just kept coming. Fellow writers and editors were a constant inspiration. My thanks to readers who stumbled upon my articles or sought them out. […]
Posted inCommunity
What can the secular community learn from Black-majority churches?
Reading Time: 4 minutes As church attendance continues to plummet in the UK, Black churches buck the trend. Is there something seculars can learn from their success?