Dec 13 2021
Disproportionately who is more often the target of the firearms globally as well as domestically? Who do we think of when we think of the “armed citizen” that the NRA has been celebrating for approximately a century? Who are those heroic armed citizens that we picture when we imagine the good citizenship of self-care that involves firearms? We are literally killing ourselves in this nation because of our love affair with these firearms and the mythology that they're going to make us safer.
Caroline Light joins us to discuss her book, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense. A 10th anniversary edition with a new introduction and a preface by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is now available from Beacon Press.
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Whitney Bauck
Feb 11
Overcoming America's Long History of Criminalizing Dissent and Protest / Whiteney Bauck
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Dec 2 2021
Posted by Matthew Boedy
12-2-21 The Durian Witches
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
There are a lot of unsturdy judgments laymen have come to about science and medicine. It seems the more we probe and discover about the universe the more fodder amateurs have to build mistaken beliefs on. And the more we probe mistaken beliefs, the more certain we become that what we call the nature of reality reflects not aspects of the universe so much as our prejudices. Prejudices about social stratification and the way society ought to be. Being a layman myself, and an especially dilettantish layman to boot, I exhibit these prejudices as much as, if not more than, anyone.
There’s an efficiency model of evolution, where a Darwinist mechanism weeds out losers within a generation or two, rapidly leaving a species better adapted to be its best self, without being weighed down by feeble kin. This model pairs nicely with an über-capitalist view of winner-takes-all, losers weepers. It also feeds the neo-Nazis’ and other eugenics enthusiasts’ Nietzschean argument that the weak masses of humanity have polluted our species. They have manipulated collective morality, fooling the strong into wasting time and resources taking care of them, whereas in some putative state of “nature” they would have been left to die for the good of posterity.
That state of nature exists in some parallel universe where humans are not communal animals with an innate impulse to care for each other. It’s a fantasy where humans are lonely gatherers competing in an austere landscape for limited resources.
Research lately indicates that beings caring for less self-sufficient members of their own species is a rule rather than an exception. Trees in a forest sense each other’s needs through a mycological nerve network and respond to the distress of others by redirecting nutrient resources and water their way. Lizards form bonds of affection. Vampire bats have been observed sharing blood with needy vampire bats nearby, even those outside their kinship circles. Nature as the realm of the rugged individualist is a pathological rationalization for maladaptive, greedy, cruel treatment of others. It is not somehow more real than the instinct for compassion and mutual aid.
On an only slightly related topic, I recently... read more
Nov 23 2021