Reading Time: 5 minutes It hasn’t been a great week for signs of species-wide maturity. In response to criticism for hosting disingenuous anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr. on his podcast, Joe Rogan called for vaccine scientist Peter Hotez to debate RFK Jr on air (because of course the court of public opinion is where science is properly reviewed and […]
Sociology
Posted inBooks
The diverse human ecologies that shaped our earliest cities
Reading Time: 11 minutes Welcome back to Humanist Book Club. I’m a huge fan of deep-diving into history to grapple better with the present, whether in fiction or humanist essays, but last week we were dealing with a lot of living history, especially in the US, so this series on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity […]
Posted inResearch
Why doesn’t the US census ask about religious identity?
Reading Time: 2 minutes As analysis of the data from the 2020 UK census filters into the public domain, a question arises: Why does the US census not ask questions pertaining to religion? Only about a quarter of Americans know the answer. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the Census Bureau asked a question on religious affiliation ahead of the 1960 […]
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 inMyth & Folklore
What the world can teach us about religiosity at home
Reading Time: 8 minutes The man who sells newspapers in my barrio is an Evangelical Christian, and also a deeply angry person living in a lot of pain. He lost his wife to COVID-19, he spent the vast majority of his life barely making ends meet, and he attributes not killing himself to the knowledge that his god will […]
Posted inDeep Dive
How we create truth
Reading Time: 10 minutes White women have a storied history of fabricating assault at the hands of BIPOC men. On March 14, 22-year-old Eleanor Williams became part of a small subset of people to face legal consequences for false claims of abuse, which here sparked a season of hate crimes and drove three men to attempt suicide. Her elaborate […]
Posted inPsychology
Are you intelligent?
Reading Time: 4 minutes How do you know how intelligent you are? Is intelligence about amassing information or knowing what to do with the information you have? Is intelligence genetic, or can you learn it? How would you measure intelligence? Would you frame a series of questions you know you’ll smash because you have the necessary life experience to win? […]
Posted inCulture
Refugee camp blaze highlights world’s increasing precarity
Reading Time: 3 minutes Imagine losing everything again, and again, and again. In Kutupalong, a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, some 12,000 human beings didn’t have to imagine a thing this Sunday, when a fire razed 2,000 shelters in what is considered the world’s largest refugee camp. Also wiped out were 35 mosques, 21 learning centers, and an array […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Shamelessness is not a superpower
Reading Time: 4 minutes You refrain from making prohibited right-on-red turns, even when the way is clear and there are no police around. You follow the laws and pay your taxes, on time and without exaggerating deductible expenses. You tell the truth, even when it’s hard and you could probably get away with lying. You behave this way not […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
What makes a ‘bad’ human being?
Reading Time: 7 minutes On Wednesday night, I was robbed at gunpoint—an efficient affair, and my second time since moving to Colombia in 2018. Both times, I’d made the mistake of relaxing my guard because there were others around me; this time, I was on my home turf, a block from my building, with neighbours strolling ahead of and […]