In the wake of the divisive political hatred exhibited in increasingly-shrill tones since 2008, I have some news that many might consider bad: namely, things are not going to go back to normal. Undoubtedly, there will be an ebbing away from the public focus on this hatred seen in response to the Kavanaugh hearings, which …
Human Smallness and the Magnanimous
The word "small" is a relative word: that is, something is small only in comparison to something larger. If everywhere were precisely the same size, nothing would be small, just as nothing would be large. Without variation in size, nothing would even be average. Consequently, when we think of things being small, we tend …
Unreason in the Digital Age
The past three years have seen a considerable amount of angst over the changes digital technology--ubiquituous socialized participation in all forms of media, in particular (with social media platforms becoming increasingly expansive in their reach and integration with the rest of the media)--has been rendering in not only our political and social but also psychological …
Modernism, Ultramodernism, and Postmodernism
The terms "modernism" and "postmodernism" are very frequently abused. As all terms of culture, they admit a wide variety of predications: were you to compare two things called "modern" or "postmodern" side-by-side, the connection may not be immediately evident, except that very probably they would both be ugly: regardless of whether they are architecture, sculpture, …
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Language and Thinking
We take our instruments, our technologies--those artefactual extensions of our practically-oriented capacities--for granted. This is true most of all of our particular languages--those delimited, structured, historically-developed systems of verbal articulation recorded and regulated by dictionaries and grammar textbooks--which we seldom think of as technology at all. No technology receives as much use; though, like all …
Semiotics and Science
Although not yet a widely understood field, semiotics--defined briefly as the study of the action of signs--has begun to make a name for itself; in Europe, at least. Heretofore in the United States, most people outside of a limited circle who believe themselves to know something of "semiotics" know what is in fact semiology, merely …