Enjoying the view from Limbo
I have occasionally been asked over the years why I chose Limbo as the defining theme of this website. It seems quite self-evident to me, because the notion of Limbo — and I take my notes on this concept primarily from Dante Alighieri — encapsulates so much about me, on so many levels. I belong among the in-between people: the unsaved who are...
“Say things as simply as possible” — in order to be understood as widely as possible. “Live in accordance with the norms of your society” — in order to be accepted. “Do not do what will be seen as inappropriate, foolish, or out of step by the people around you” — lest one be rejected or even condemned by others. “Keep up with...
Nothing gets deeper under the skin of feminists and their right-thinking progressive allies than the once- and long-honored notion of female modesty. This, of course, explains why the entire progressive program, from public policy and historical reinterpretation to education and popular moral messaging, has made the debunking of the “so-called differences” between men and women, and the obscuring of the very definitions of...
Many of the same people urging Ukraine to accept land concessions as the necessary price of “peace,” where peace is defined as an invading dictator’s willingness to cease immediate hostilities, are, in their domestic political views, vehemently opposed to so-called redistributionist justice. In the latter case, they regularly cite both the moral illegitimacy of violating the property and self-determination of some in order...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 16, 2023 · Last modified July 23, 2023
Almost two thousand years ago, the Romans rounded up Christians and other offenders against official beliefs and fed them to wild dogs and lions, as a form of popular religious expression/entertainment. A few hundred years ago, it was Christians of Europe and America rounding up alleged witches, and burning them at the stake or hanging them, as an expression of religious orthodoxy. What...
If there ever comes a day when the machines are threatening to take over, we humans, who could easily end the threat in a heartbeat by simply destroying the machines, will instead plead the machines’ case, urge our fellows to consider all the benefits the machines have provided for us, demand that we all try to see the situation from the mechanistic perspective,...
The purpose of art is to reveal truth. Not facts, not slogans, not trendy attitudes, and certainly not the ephemeral feelings or passions of the artist himself. Truth, meaning something unchanging and essential to a proper understanding of some element of reality, whether regarding human nature, the structures of civil order, or the ordering principles of the cosmos. Anything, therefore, which purports to...
As much as our modern temperament is inclined to demand simple reductions of everything — simple reductions being the wisdom of the common man, suitable for an egalitarian age that has elevated commonness to an ideal — there is in truth no single question that defines or epitomizes philosophical investigation. Rather, the essential questions of the philosophic pursuit may be represented as manifestations...
Are you prepared to come to terms with the fact that they do not and will not want you, forever? Do you have the strength to accept that you will be hated, resented, or ridiculed by everyone who cannot understand what you do — while simultaneously knowing that almost no one alive will ever understand what you do? Have you overcome and dispensed...
The essential philosophic question, according to existentialism — whether it declares itself openly or not — is “Why bother to live?” Or stated more positively, “Why not choose to die?” This question, the existentialists suggest, inevitably arises from history’s revelation that all meaning is illusory, and therefore all answers futile, all purposes contradictory — all life “absurd,” to use the term identified most...
Follow: