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No More Fathers, Only the Child

 I’m intrigued by the archetypal image found in the story of the prodigal son — as deserving love but, in some modern minds, absent the father image (absent the oppressive patriarchal authority and, at a popular level, embracing a reductionist jettisoning of essential predication regarding the masculine or something like that).  The community, loosely defined as: domestic arrangements, receives the child displaying something akin to nurturing acumen (I’m not thinking of Peter Singer styled, animal kingdom only, reductionism at this point).The authority for such an action is derived from a variety of paradoxical premises. Common amidst such premises — youth are not liable in the same way a mature adult is and kinship bonds of various types commit the community to act in ways that contribute to the wellbeing of children. Putting aside both ideas around a child is not liable and is an independent agent paradox together with nurturing acumen as is. What sort of thing warrants unconditional
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The Civil Liberties Question is Pressing

PSYCHOLOGY HAS BECOME THAT NEW-TIME RELIGION  “Psychology began life this century as a reasonable study of the human mind to see if we could find out what makes us tick upstairs. It is now, of course, a religion. Even religionists who worship at traditional altars still make their bows to psychology.” - Bill Granger  And from Aldous Huxley, Brave New World with regard to Civil Liberties (for those of you who have not read the book, it speaks of a world controlled by genetic and behavioral manipulation): All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." “Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. “I claim them all," said the Savage
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Response to Jorden Peterson style arguments form proportionality (women plumbers)

In response to Jorden Peterson style arguments from proportionality (women plumbers). I was trying to think it through. The Modal assumption connected with (P5) seems to be the departure point.  Definition: Employment equity is defined as the use of hiring policies that encourage fair representation of members of minority groups, women, or other people who suffer discrimination. 1. Observation: Plumbing is typically a male profession.   P1. If human dignity then equity (as in before the law & no discrimination). P2. Their is at least one thing that is a women and a plumber. P3. Women have human dignity. Therefore the women plumber should not be unfairly discriminated against.  2. Observation: 10% Female vs 90% male is an unequal distribution (women are the minority in this group). Hypothetical Thesis: If women desire to be plumbers then they can be plumbers.  P4. All plumbing business should encourage fair representation. P5. 10% is not a fair representation. Therefore, women are b
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Weapons of Freedom?

Weapons of Freedom? The Jacob Zuma Coup d'état, was ultimately thwarted, some believe, on grounds that: 1. Private security in South Africa, outnumbered the military, (many private people also bare arms). 2. The taxi industry, it seems, also has no taste for state capturing dictatorship. So what seemed impossible, happened when Zuma stepped down. To be ‘...free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources;’ is something we need to all stand for. Yet, today it seems no more than a useful fiction in the mouths of government officials hell bent on the boiling of all sorts of frogs. ‘Boiling frogs’ for those that don’t know, notoriously the words of President Cyril Ramaphosa in reference to those excluded from the category ‘our people’. This category seems to shrink daily in those it now excludes, Michael Cassidy reminded us. It is a cruel irony when Bheki Cele implied (beneath rhetorical concern for our people) that South Africans have no right to arms. That is, in
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Loving (a very wobbly approximation) Part Two

Loving (a very wobbly approximation) Part 2 I am very slowly working through the book, Determined to Believe, by John Lennox. It is a remarkable book and for my part hugely challenging. Below are some thoughts relevant to what I wrote previously in part one of this meditation. Quote: “Cambridge neuroscientist Harvey McMahon writes: Free-will also underpins ethics, where choices are made in the light of moral principles. In fact free-will underpins all choices. Furthermore, free-will underpins the role of intentionality and guilt in the judicial system… The very idea of rules or laws implies that we have a choice or ability to obey. How can the law command us to do certain things if we do not have the ability to do them? Thus, even the concept of obedience implies we have a choice.” Excerpt From, Determined to Believe, Lennox, John C. Our desire for fairness which I discussed in part one points to human concern about suffering. Law in this light is not a cold scientific utilitarianism,
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Loving (a very wobbly approximation) Part One

Loving (a very wobbly approximation) Part One Professor Simon May at King's College London has written two deeply thoughtful books on love, — Love: A History. Yale University Press, 2011 and Love. A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion, Yale University Press, 02 May 2019. I am currently reading the latter. The book is tremendously challenging on so many levels. For today's thought for the day, I will write on some of my thoughts from this brave work and some of the possible implications. For the sake of context, Simon May's project looks at the nature of love as a category. Quote: “This updated Christian God—a God that took decisive shape only in the nineteenth century, with such thinkers as Kierkegaard, who insists (especially in his Works of Love) on the purely unconditional, disinterested, eternal, and benevolent nature of divine love—is one palatable to an era that, as Nietzsche rightly diagnosed, craves comfort and safety above all else: a one-sided God, forcibly st
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Hope & Love

Thought for the day.  Love and Hope I saw someone I admire, musing on social media a little while ago. He was reflecting on the beautiful flowers in bloom, part of the current northern hemisphere spring. The idea which captured my attention was from the poets he quoted. In the comments he remarked that he had been struck by the changing of his perspective this particular spring, seeing the transient beauty of the flowers. The existential wait of death seemed to press the moment's intensity on his mind. So death and love, as a theme filled my mind again as I flipped through the pages of Love: Toward a New Understanding by Simon May, “...the eventuality of our own death is that horizon of certain finality that turns us back decisively toward life; because to look unflinchingly at death’s certainty is to open up paths to our own most grounded and genuine relation to life... the degree to which we achieve such anticipation we are strengthened in our capacity to love; and, to the degree
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