Black History Month 2023
On what it means to be a “good” person, grappling with our place in society, and ancestor work through the lens of Black History Month.
philosophy
The Good Friendship Compass
I took a class last semester called “The Good Life” and for my final assignment I created a “Good Friendship Compass” which was supposed to create a path toward being a good friend according to the four spheres of activity, Dharma, Moksha, Artha, and Kama. Classical Indian philosophy might be a bit of a niche topic, but this has always been an unconventional blog. Enjoy.
Feeling Good
Birds flying high, you know how I feel
I have a very intense fear of heights. But the thing about having a fear of heights, is that having a fear of heights is not about the fear of being up high, it is about the fear of falling. It is the fear of having nothing to catch you. I have dreams of being in the body of a bird, of flying, and in those dreams I have no fear of falling because I will catch myself on my wings. It is the plummeting crash that I fear. The view from up high is amazing, the fear is the potential to fall.
Hope
It’s funny how life can surprise you. There are so many things that have happened in my life that I regret. Alongside them are things that I do not regret, though some people might think I should. And as I think about where I am going, what paths I am taking forward, I sometimes wonder […]
Recentering
I have decided that I am going to take the time to recenter, refocus, and clarify my life. I am taking the steps I need to focus on the things that are most important for me and my mental health going forward. The first step I decided on was that I lowered my reading goal […]
On Values
“Values don’t matter unless they describe behaviors and people are held accountable for them.” @PaulSchmitz1 Those words have been echoing in my brain ever since I attended the AADO-CASE Conference on Diverse Philanthropy and Leadership last week. What do I value? Where do I spend my time? Who do I spend my time with? Thinking […]
Moving Beyond that Aesthetic: Getting to the Roots of Nostalgia and Thoughts About the Future
The aesthetic of the young writer sitting in a windowsill, looking down at the ever-busy city of New York and dreaming of the stories they’ll pen someday is well established. Right now I’m trying to be that writer, but the unfortunate reality is that I forgot to open the blinds, this angle hurts my back, […]
Book Review: The Municipalists by Seth Fried
I have mixed feelings about The Municipalists by Seth Fried. On the one hand, the book was a brilliant balance of comedy and philosophy. On the other hand, it fell into some very problematic tropes that caused me to not think the comedy so funny and tainted the nuance of the philosophy. The main premise […]
What Does it Mean to Be Well-Read?
The issue with being in higher education is that there are so many people here who seem absolutely desperate to prove how smart and cutting-edge their thinking is. Even I’m not always immune to this, but I like to think that I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong or when I’ve said something foolish. That […]
A Brief, Non-Comprehensive, Somewhat Inconclusive, and Yet Still Intriguing, Analysis of Themes Concerning Audience and Translatability within “The Task of the Translator” by Walter Benjamin (With Guest Appearances by Jacques Derrida and the Tower of Babel)
This blog post is a little different in that it’s a little more of what I originally wanted to use this blog for, namely an investigation of ways to think about translation. What follows is an adaptation and amalgamation of some presentation notes, a paper, and class notes, all for my Translation & Ethics course, […]
On Belief and Reality
Two quotes came to me, from wildly different sources, within a fortnight of one another. The first occurred a few weeks back, when I went to the Boston show of the An Absolutely Remarkable Thing tour. Much to my chagrin, I can’t remember which Vlogbrother said this, but I wrote down in my notebook that […]
Book Review: Stalking God by Anjali Kumar
Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search for Something to Believe In chronicles the spiritual journey of Anjali Kumar, a mother in search of a spiritual awakening for herself and for her young daughter. Kumar started her search upon the birth of her daughter, Zia, in order that when Zia started to ask the big questions such […]
On Writing About Harry Potter
It is with regret that I tell you all that I do not have a book review for this week. The book that I was so excited to write about is lost in the chaos that is my half-unpacked bedroom and I didn’t have time to finish it by my Thursday night deadline, a combination […]
The Ghost in the Machine in the Chinese Room
[This is a guest post by Talia’s friend Annie, who is maintaining this blog while Talia is away at Middlebury Language School. Also, I’m sorry this post is a couple days late; I’ve been really busy this week.] The “Chinese room” is a famous thought experiment in philosophy of mind that argues that, no matter […]