“Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Jordan Peterson, Peter Thiel, Yuval Noah Harari, Steven Pinker, Tyler Cowen, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, Slavoj Žižek, Andrew Sullivan, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Peter Singer, Samantha Power.” This was A rather disappointing (and US-centric) list, and this was his point. Who among these figures had any chance of being recognised, centuries on, as a world-historical thinker on par with a Dostoevsky or a Marx? According to Douthat, today’s intellectuals are nearly all journalists, either professionally or spiritually. True, many great writers throughout history wrote works of journalism. But Karl Marx s Eighteenth Brumaire (1852) for example, an essay on Napoleon III’s coup d’etat in 1851, is the work of the intellectual as a journalist: what the current scene has to offer is so many journalists playing the part of the intellectual. Things have gone so far that it is no longer even common to hear talk about “the in
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Towards the end of a conversation about some of the deepest puzzles of human existence, the philosopher Galen Strawson paused, then asked me: “Have you spoken to anyone else yet who’s received weird emails?” He began reading from messages he and several other scholars had received in recent years. Some were plaintive, others abusive, but all were fiercely accusatory. “Last year you all played a part in destroying my life,” one person wrote. “I lost everything because of you – my son, my partner, my job, my home, my mental health. All because of you, you told me I had no control, how I was not responsible for anything I do, how my beautiful six-year-old son was not responsible for what he did… Goodbye, and good luck with the rest of your cancerous, evil, pathetic existence.” “Rot in your own shit Galen,” read another note, sent in early 2015. And then, days later: “I’m coming for you.” “This was one where we had to involve the
Dazzle presents High Noon Twenties – four Thursdays in May and the first Thursday in June. This is a celebration of our passage through the Covid era and into a period of cultural and artistic exuberance. Every set of this series will be filled with “feel good” music to lift our spirits and celebrate our community reunion.
Shane Endsley, co-founder of the supergroup Kneebody, will convene a dynamic modern jazz quartet to render a mix of original music and covers. This group features two of NY’s finest jazz musicians, Sam Harris (from Ambrose Akinmusire’s band) and Colin Stranahan. We are lucky to have them with us in CO now.
Billy Porter on the ending of Pose and what comes next
Emmy, Grammy, and Tony-winner Billy Porter will keep on marching through the doors Pose has opened
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Billy Porter seems in no mood for woeful lamentations on the end of
Pose. The morning after the cast and creators of FX’s landmark drama had gathered for a glamorous, COVID-safe, and reportedly eventful season-three premiere at New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, Porter, speaking by phone from his hotel room, is still in a spirit of revelry.
Rather than dwelling on the series’ end after three action-packed, award-winning seasons including a 2019 Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Emmy for Porter the stage and screen vet is here to celebrate all that
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Reality versus illusion: How religion poisons everything(3)
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By Douglas Anele
Richard Dawkins highlights another detrimental aspect of religion, that is, the widespread assumption that faith and religious doctrines are especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by a very thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect due to activities or claims in other areas of human endeavour.
But surely the uncritical or irrational privileging of religion especially in public discussions has had, and continues to have, very severe negative repercussions since it allows religious bigots and fundamentalists to get away with atrocities that otherwise should attract severe punishment. Another disturbing offshoot of the absurd phenomenon which has gained currency in recent times is the cheap label of ‘Islamophobia’ used to describe criticism of Islam irrespective of how valid or empirically corroborated the criticism might be, which is at bottom a d