From Morality-Tale Science Fiction to Fantasy-Infused Settler Colonialism
In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “Strange New World,” (2001) T’Pol attempts to caution Captain Archer and his crew about visiting the uninhabited planet they discover. She wants to take a number of days, just over a week, to complete scans from orbit and with probes. The lone Vulcan on the ship, T’Pol, will later …
From Morality-Tale Science Fiction to Fantasy-Infused Settler ColonialismRead More
Kamala Harris Denied Reparations for Forced Sterilization Victims in California
When I was in grad school at Johns Hopkins I took a class on families in the United States from a cross-cultural perspective. Kamala Harris’s name came up during our studies on California’s history of state-sanctioned forced sterilization. There is a great deal written on the subject, which you can find with little effort. California’s …
Kamala Harris Denied Reparations for Forced Sterilization Victims in CaliforniaRead More
Reposting short note: Critical Thinking as Liberation Tool, Not Capitalist Maneuvering
From what I have been reading the last few months, here and there, capitalists are trying to modify critical thinking as a “soft skill” to navigate the global economy. Not to prioritize critical thinking as a primary skill to see through capitalism and understand the world as it really is. They will probably win in …
Reposting short note: Critical Thinking as Liberation Tool, Not Capitalist ManeuveringRead More
A Vision for a Culture of Emancipatory Human Rights
Ken Booth’s essay, “Three Tyrannies,” from the text, Human Rights in Global Politics (eds. Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler), posits a highly instructive foundation stone, a guide map, for societal change that considers our differences, argumentative positions, and then reifies human worth through a simple matter of direct application, though in reality, confrontation to …
A Vision for a Culture of Emancipatory Human RightsRead More
Excerpt from Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom
On the correlating rise of capitalism and individualism: “All human relationships were poisoned by the fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one’s fellow men – or at least with the members of one’s own class – was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as …
God is Coming for Me Soon: My Ongoing, Complex, Relationship with Progressive Theology
Recently I wrote the poem, “A Vision of Sands,” about seeing my God with Her clinched hand, either about to rescue her people or already in the process of already doing so. This was not poetic extravagance, but an actual minor vision I experienced. This was far from the first time over the years, the …
God is Coming for Me Soon: My Ongoing, Complex, Relationship with Progressive TheologyRead More
Capitalism and Violence-Customs
There is the potential movement today for even the brightest types of democracies to normalize into a hybrid totalitarian, democracy-lite, formational violence. Of course, whether these institutions were ever true democracies to begin with should, must be questioned, but that historical mapping is beyond the scope of this present section, though not out of mind. …
Rights and Responsibilities: Addressing Love and Violence in a Post-Capitalist World
Love is always wise: So I heard a voice, perhaps it was a bird, telling me. At first, this is offensively incorrect. It means rejecting all means of self-protection, all methods of self-preservation. This is not the world we live in. We live in a fraught world of assorted love where real psychological, financial, emotional, …
Rights and Responsibilities: Addressing Love and Violence in a Post-Capitalist WorldRead More
Memo: Desensitization to Violence in Fiction May Be a (Contemporary) “Evolutionary” Trait
“Evolution is blind and drink. It stumbles along through trial and error and emerges with a barely adequate excuse of a being.” – Dinal, from The Orville episode, “Mortality Paradox” I realize violence has always existed in fictional tales. This is nothing new. However, I would argue that physical violence of our current era in …
Memo: Desensitization to Violence in Fiction May Be a (Contemporary) “Evolutionary” TraitRead More
Notes and rough drafts: When de Saints: African American Historicity and the Pursuit of Justice
I. Mishnah Qiddushin 3 outlines that a mamzer may achieve his freedom if his parents are sold into slavery and are then freed, freeing him into normalized relations with Jewish society with all the rights and privileges thereto. Here, through ancient subjugation one finds a pathway into privileged society. Emily A. Owens, in her article, …