This (and a lot of other reasons) is why I carry a handkerchief.

I wouldn’t hate this system, TBH.

Ted misses a lot in Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society, which is where I’d start off f your looking for philosophers critical of modern technology.

If you’re curious on that particular subject, I’d also recommend Lewis Mumford’s Myth of the Machine or The City in History.

Or, for something that’s less of a tome (both Ellul and Mumford can be overly wordy), Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality is incredibly critical of the modern world, but also offers hope that isn’t based on mailing bombs to universities.

It’s probably better to read the philosophers Uncle Ted was pulling from (and ultimately failed to understand).

Ellul especially.

Maybe it’s my anarchism showing, but I’m not sure there’s ever really been a society full of justice and equality, or at least not for long.

When they’re curious and quick to acknowledge the limits of their own knowledge.

Someone who’s truly intelligent knows there’s always more they could learn, especially when it comes to their area of expertise.

As a little preface here, I teach philosophy and world religions at community colleges for a living, and so I spend a good bit of time reading texts from ancient cultures.

The relevant thing here being that it’s pretty common to find writings from just about every point in human history that talk about their own time as one of terrible injustice, iniquity, etc. often in ways that sound like they could have written today.

So, I’d wager it’s always been this way, and not just in the last century.

In the immediate, who knows? A ton of infighting among Republicans would by my guess.

In the long term, my big swing is that MAGA becomes a religion unto itself.

My local animal shelter. They brought me my best friend.

If there’s one thing the people of Chicago hate, it’s the Packers.

If there are two things all the people of Chicago hate, it’s pretense.

We have The Bean here in Chicago, and the artist hates that we don’t call it “Cloud Gate.”

But, like, look at this thing. It’s a bean.

Yeah, but those war crimes were cool.

He moved out of the family home to go to grad school across the country.

When I went to go visit him (at the behest of my mom), he was incredibly careful about who I met and where we would go. It felt like there people he really didn’t want me to meet. During that trip I also overheard some bits of conversation while he was on the phone with… probably the mother of my secret half brother.

When he finished his degree, he didn’t come home and never really gave a coherent explanation as to why. He’s always been a bastard though, so I didn’t much care to inquire as long as he stayed gone.

Eventually I got a little older and got my first job. Suddenly he always needed money from me. I didn’t know it then, but I was paying part of his child support payments.

As to how I found out, I ended up going to grad school at the same institution where the mother of my half brother was employed, and so he confessed to things before I found out by running into this person.

I started to suspect my Dad might have a secret second family when I was in high school.

Maybe 10 years later, I learned that suspicion was correct.

What I mean is that most of these people are self interested fools who are nowhere near as knowledgeable as they believe themselves to be.

Most in that category are also not very good at their jobs, which leads to administrative bloat, torturously ineffective bureaucracy, and teaching positions going to whoever is best at politicking rather than the person who is better at teaching.

I don’t care at all about economic usefulness.

Somewhere around the majority of people employed in academia are absolutely useless.

I say this as an academic.

Pacifism.

The overwhelming majority of people, no matter where they sit in terms of culture, religion, and politics, see total nonviolence as a naive position.

But it’s among my most deeply held beliefs.