by Charles Siegel

Americans learn about “checks and balances” from a young age. (Or at least they do to whatever extent civics is taught anymore.) We’re told that this doctrine is a corollary to the bedrock theory of “separation of powers.” Only through the former can the latter be preserved.  As John Adams put it in a letter to Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, later a delegate to the First Continental Congress, in 1775: “It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two, that the efforts in human nature toward tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution.” As Trump’s efforts toward tyranny move ahead with ever-greater speed, those checks and balances feel very creaky these days.

Why do we care?  What “balance” is to be preserved? “Separation of powers” is a defining concept of our government. But the phrase itself does not appear in the Constitution. What does it mean?

There is no official answer, of course. But Congress has provided a definition: at its direction, every ten years the Library of Congress publishes the “Constitution Annotated,” a “comprehensive, government-sanctioned record of the interpretations of the Constitution” that appears on Congress’ website. According to the Librarian of Congress, then, “separation of powers” is a “well-known concept derived from the text and structure of the Constitution. The Framers’ experience with the British monarchy informed their belief that concentrating distinct governmental powers in a single entity would subject the nation’s people to arbitrary and oppressive government action. Thus, in order to preserve individual liberty, the Framers sought to ensure that a separate and independent branch of the Federal Government would exercise each of government’s three basic functions: legislative, executive and judicial.” The Constitution sets those powers out in Articles I, II and III respectively. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.

by Herbert Harris

When we say, “I’m feeling self-conscious,” we usually mean we are uncomfortably aware of being the center of other people’s attention. We might worry about how we look, what we wear, or how we act. While we are, to some degree, concerned with aspects of ourselves, our main focus is on others and what they think about us. “Self-conscious” is an interesting choice of words that might reveal something deep about the nature of self and consciousness.

Two hundred years ago, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel introduced a groundbreaking idea: self-consciousness does not arise from introspection, but from mutual recognition. We become aware of ourselves as individuals not by looking inward, but by encountering another mind that perceives us as conscious, and by recognizing that mind in return. Hegel argued that this process of reciprocal recognition is the foundation of personhood. It is only through others that we truly understand ourselves. Hegel linked this movement from recognition to a broader concept of freedom. For him, freedom was not just the lack of constraints, but the achievement of autonomy through mutual recognition. According to Hegel, we become free not by turning inward, but by engaging in relationships that acknowledge and affirm our self-consciousness.

This insight has resonated across philosophy, psychology, and social theory. George Herbert Mead viewed the self as emerging from social roles and symbolic interaction. He emphasized how the self develops by internalizing others’ perspectives, especially through language and shared symbols, which create a ‘generalized other’ that shapes individual identity. Sartre described self-consciousness as an unavoidable confrontation with the gaze of the other. His concept of the ‘gaze’ illustrates how we feel exposed under someone else’s scrutiny and how their judgment influences our self-awareness. Frantz Fanon later developed these ideas, showing how the Black subject becomes aware of themselves through the racialized gaze of a white other, illustrating how power dynamics and social identity impact self-consciousness. Each of these thinkers extended Hegel’s idea of the self as socially constructed and relational rather than autonomous or private.

Although Hegel’s ideas have been highly influential, they would seem to have limited applicability to neuroscience-based explanations of consciousness. The primary explanatory frameworks in neuroscience are bottom-up, beginning with molecules and ending with complex neural network systems. But the Hegelian outside-in, top-down perspective might provide insights that both complement and inform neuroscience. Read more »

Gozo Yoshimasu. Fire Embroidery, 2017.

“Gozo Yoshimasu’s double-sided work on paper Fire Embroidery explores his response to the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. He embarked on the project out of a deep sense of sympathy and commitment, in pursuit of “poetry possible after March 2011”, without exactly knowing where he was heading. He started scribing lines and letters on exceptionally large manuscript paper that he handcrafted every day. The new routine resembled the way that Buddhist monks copy sutras; Yoshimasu prepared the materials, his groundwork, and ran a pen across them day after day, “as though tattooing” on his mind.

The series as a whole includes manuscripts on which are extensive enumerations of letters and words repeatedly dismantled and rearranged in response to the voices and shadows of the deceased, recovered by painted color layers. This series appropriates tragedy through the act of interfering with and destroying the process of language production, while creating existential dreamscapes offering new flux or a peculiar prayer.”

More here, here, and here.

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.

by Daniel Shotkin

Conflict follows us everywhere. Terrible drivers, horrible friends, evil politicians—the list goes on and on. For me, most conflicts never really made much sense. I avoid clashing with people as much as possible. It feels self-righteous, almost cringey, to be in a state of dispute. Ironic, because my favorite club in high school was debate. Still, I know people who, far from avoiding conflict, thrive in argument. So why do we conflict?

On a basic level, almost every human can agree on a core set of moral principles. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These are fundamental truths present in every culture. The three Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Confucianism all espouse that last point independently. Even cultural practices that are, to us, morally questionable (think human sacrifice, headhunting) can’t be chalked up to evil intentions. Can you really blame the Aztecs for wanting to appease Quetzalcoatl?

At the end of the day, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who acts without explicit good intentions. Look at a morally deplorable historical figure, and you’ll see that even they acted with “good” in mind. Regimes don’t declare war, restrict speech, or commit genocide for evil’s sake; they do so in the name of national security. Similarly, ask any two beefing high schoolers, and you’ll see that neither did anything, and even if they did, it wasn’t on purpose—and actually, it was the other one who wanted to start shit.

So, logically, we’re in agreement. Then why do we still conflict? Read more »

by Dwight Furrow

In a culture oscillating between dietary asceticism and culinary spectacle—fasts followed by feasts, detox regimens bracketed by indulgent food porn—it is easy to miss the sensuous meaningfulness of ordinary, everyday eating. We are entranced by extremes in part because they distract us from the steady, ordinary pleasures that thread through our daily lives. This cultural fixation on either controlling or glamorizing food obscures its deeper role: food is not just fuel or fantasy, but a medium through which we experience the world, anchor our identities, and rehearse our values. The act of eating, so often reduced to a health metric or a social performance, is in fact saturated with philosophical significance. It binds pleasure to perception, flavor to feeling, and the mundane to the meaningful.

American culture harbors a long-standing discomfort with pleasure born of its Puritanical roots and sustained by the contradictions of consumer capitalism. Even as we chase pleasure through consumption, we cloak it in guilt or dismiss it as indulgence. This ambivalence has moral, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. The dominant message is clear: enjoy, but not too much; indulge, but repent.

But this suspicion of pleasure misunderstands its role in life. Pleasure is not a passive sensation, an add-on to more “serious” pursuits. Rather, pleasure is a mode of attention, a reinforcement mechanism fundamental to cognition, agency, and sustained activity. The human brain is wired to experience pleasure from a bewildering range of sources and for good reason: Pleasure is a fundamental motivation. We are much more likely to engage in beneficial behaviors if we enjoy them. (Or course the same is true of harmful behaviors but the point about pleasure as motivation still stands.)

Indeed, pleasure motivates and sustains the very activities that give life meaning. When we speak of “flow,” of deep absorption in physical, creative or intellectual tasks, we are describing a form of pleasure inseparable from the activity itself. The distinction between pleasure and happiness matters here. Happiness is a long-term orientation toward life, a disposition of coherence and fulfillment. Pleasure, by contrast, is episodic, but no less essential. A life bereft of pleasure may be, under some circumstances, productive and ethical as well, but it is likely to be empty. Thus, we ought not treat pleasure as a luxury. It is part of the infrastructure of a life well-lived. Read more »

by Ken MacVey

Since 1914, the Federal Trade Commission ‘s mission has been to enforce civil antitrust and unfair competition/consumer protection laws. The question is whether this mission has been supplanted—whether the FTC under Trump 2 .0 is becoming the Federal Political Truth Commission.

My Background: The FTC Investigates the Movie and Record Industries

Many years ago I started my legal career as a lawyer for the FTC. In that role, I proposed investigations into the motion picture and record industries which were opened by the FTC.

The  publicly announced FTC investigation of the movie industry focused on possible collusion in the US  between a handful of major motion picture companies that dominated the motion picture markets in the US  and abroad. Not too long afterwards I recommended and got approval to investigate a  proposed merger between two of the top six record companies in the US that would have resulted in the largest record company in the world.

While the motion picture investigation did not result in litigation, the record merger investigation did lead to litigation by a small team of  FTC lawyers (including myself) that blocked the merger.

Antitrust and the Value of  Media Diversity

In pursuing these investigations, I discussed traditional antitrust concerns about reduced competition and collusion. But I also pointed out that the products were unique—they just weren’t commodities like cement or steel.  These were products of expression and culture. Antitrust focuses on how consumer choice is reduced by anticompetitive conduct. Here we did not face just a reduction in choice regarding widgets, but in ideas and expression.

But there never was any discussion on content—never was it suggested that certain kinds of movies or records were better than others, that some should be promoted, others not. Never were ideological slants or views considered or discussed. The point was always about protecting or expanding the range of consumer choice.

This idea of the antitrust value of diversity in media was not new. In fact, the Supreme Court in 1943 underscored the value of diversity and quantity in radio broadcasting when it held that the Federal Communications Commission could consider antitrust  concerns in regulating radio broadcasting networks. Then NBC owned two radio networks, one called the “red network” and the other the “blue network.”  Per the Supreme Court decision, the FCC  ordered the divestiture of the blue network. This network became ABC, the American Broadcasting  Company. Although the Supreme Court endorsed consideration of antitrust values to widen the scope of  what was available to listeners, it drew the line on government going after the content of expression. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

RIP Pocket (aka Read It Later) 2007-July 8, 2025

The recent announcement of Mozilla’s shutdown of the Pocket app caught me by surprise. It felt as if the rug was being pulled out from under me—the rug being a motley weave of all the online articles and stories I’ve ever wanted to read later but never did. What would happen to all those pieces saved on impulse for a rainy day?

For those who don’t use it or even know of it, Pocket was a bookmarking service for links you wanted to save and come back to at a later time. Pocket saved it all for you with an easy click, in a pleasant layout and a user-friendly reading format that didn’t require returning to the original site.

Before Pocket, I bookmarked everything on the browser, hoarding unwieldy lists of links that turned the browser into a digital dumpster. Pocket came along to eliminate the constant need to manage browser bookmarks.

Using Pocket, I amassed thousands of saves, going back years—a bottomless bucket of ‘wanna reads’, most of which have remained wanna reads. Early on, I noticed that I rarely opened a Pocket save unless it had to do with whatever subject I was researching at that moment—leaving all the rest unread. Why? I always found an excuse to postpone a visit to my candy store of saves, and fought an eerie sense of guilt by always promising myself to take the time to do so—someday. The truth is, I was no longer interested in many of those stories. Some were too dated. Others simply lost their appeal.

Now, the thought of losing them feels like losing a part of oneself that had once existed. Read more »

by Priya Malhotra

Virtue wasn’t always gentle.

In ancient Rome, virtus was a word of force and visibility. It came from the Latin word vir, meaning “man,” and encompassed ideals of military bravery, civic leadership, and public excellence. A virtuous man was someone who acted decisively in the public sphere—whether in war, politics, or the courts. Virtus was not about goodness in the moral sense. It was about fulfilling one’s public role with courage and competence. The term belonged to action, and it was earned through what one did, not what one avoided.

But like many powerful words, virtus changed as it traveled. As Latin gave way to the languages of medieval Europe, and Christianity replaced classical philosophy as the dominant moral framework, the term began to morph. Virtus became vertu, and then “virtue.” Its meaning narrowed, softened, and interiorized. Instead of valor, it came to suggest moral purity, humility, and patience. Instead of a call to public greatness, it became a standard of private behavior—especially for women.

By the late Middle Ages, “virtue” in women had become nearly synonymous with chastity. It was a euphemism for sexual propriety, and a woman’s moral worth was often judged not by her integrity or courage, but by whether she had preserved her virginity, and later, her marital fidelity. Her virtue was not something she earned through action, but something she was expected to carry—like a fragile inheritance, one that could be irreparably lost. The woman who guarded her virtue was good; the one who “lost” it, no matter the context, was fallen.

The consequences of this shift weren’t merely symbolic. They shaped how women were viewed, valued, and remembered. A woman’s virtue could determine her marriage prospects, her reputation, and her legal status. It was both an irrevocable statement of her morality  and a form of social capital. And over time, traits such as restraint, silence, and obedience became associated with female virtue.

This didn’t mean women completely lacked agency or complexity. They made difficult moral decisions constantly—often in conditions of constraint. But there was scant moral language to describe and give credit to those decisions or actions. Only when a woman’s strength came in the form of patience or sacrifice, was it sanctified. However, when it came in the form of autonomy or ambition, it was seen as far from praiseworthy.

You can see this dynamic clearly in the story of Penelope, queen of Ithaca in Homer’s Odyssey. Read more »

by Nils Peterson

Freedom, high-day!
High-day, freedom!
Freedom, high-day, freedom!

1. One summer, roughly forty years ago, I set off to a Florida seaside town to participate in a three-week summer stock version of The Tempest. It was designed for academics who had something to do with Shakespeare or something to do with drama. So, accepted into the program were set designers, costume makers, stage managers, and teachers. I had been teaching Shakespeare, by a quirk of good fortune for 20 years or so then. (As a young teacher I was walking down the department halls when the department head stuck his head out of his office, saw me, and said, “Nils do you want to teach Shakespeare next semester?” One of the regular teachers of it had just gotten a sabbatical.) So now I was going to be an actor and I was going to try out for the role of Caliban. A professional actor was going to play Prospero.

I was 6’6” then, skinny, with a voice that had done much singing. I spoke, I guess, with the lilt of an east coast academic who had spent a lot of time reading poetry out loud though now in California. I tried roughening my voice in the audition, as I did when teaching the play, and succeeded to some degree, but the role went to another man who had a wooden leg. The director had the idea that he would have the man take off his leg, walk around with crutches, and a fishtail would dangle where the leg had been. Caliban was, after all, half man half fish according to one of shipwrecked sailors who saw him. Also, the director found my voice most suitable for the court party. He also imagined a priestly quality to my bearing, so I ended up as the “good Gonzalo.” My costume was a beautiful, flowing, blue robe. I looked a little like a young Gandalf. I could have been Nils the Blue.

There were two women who tried out for Ariel and the director needed to fit them both in for there were no other roles available. He solved his problem by having them both play the part at the same time speaking the lines together but not quite in sync. That gave the words an unworldly mysterious feeling quite suitable.

In the play, the king is in a deep depression because he thinks his son has drowned in the sea during the shipwreck that opens the play. It is Gonzalo’s job to try to cheer up the king so he won’t do something desperate in his despair. The actor who played him had just come through a bad divorce. So, just as Gonzalo in the play tried to cheer up the king, so was Nils in real life trying to cheer up the actor who played him, would take him golfing in the afternoon and for a beer afterwards so he could unload his sorrows. Read more »

Storm clouds rolled in just as the sun was setting in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.

by Christopher Hall

It is now close to 20 years since I completed my Ph.D. in English, and, truth be told, I’m still not exactly sure what I accomplished in doing so. There was, of course, the mundane concern about what I was thinking in spending so many of what ought to have been my most productive years preparing to work in a field not exactly busting at the seams with jobs (this was true back then, and the situation has, as we know, become even worse). But I’ve never been good with practical concerns; being addicted to uselessness, I like my problems to be more epistemic. I am still plagued with a question: Could I say that what I had written in my thesis was, in any particular sense, “true?” Had I not, in fact, made it all up, and if pressed to prove that I hadn’t, what evidence could I bring in my favour? Was what I saw actually “in” the text I was studying?

These were concerns that no doubt had their origin in my set of personal neuroses. I had, in fact, done pretty much everything that was required of me. I had made close readings of text, found hidden parallels and contradictions, looked at the minutiae of the language used and connected those to the overall structure of the text. I had used and responded to previous criticism of the work. I had found analogues of the language in the text in previously written works, some not to that point discovered. I had, in short, done the work, and my committee seemed confident enough to sanction the addition of some letters behind my name.

But still. What “truth value” did my work hold? It could not, reasonably, be “replicated” – literary studies do not proceed by trying to discover if a given reader could come to the same conclusions I did independently. There was no p-value, no null hypothesis for me to overcome. None of the trappings of scientific solidity – which, fair enough, can have their own issues – were available to me. I knew, and know, that asking for such levels of evidence is pointless and counter-productive in literary criticism. But it seemed – and to some degree still seems – to me that between science and “making stuff up” there lies no graduated approach to truth – merely a massive abyss. It remains the case that we have difficultly articulating how non-scientific disciplines say things that are true without needing the scientific method to do so.

Jonathan Kramnick’s 2023 book Criticism and Truth is one of a series of recent attempts to do precisely that, and in it there is much to praise. Read more »

by Lei Wang

I solemnly swear this is not a column complaining about my parents.

But the first time I listened to this ten-minute meditation on Imagining Ideal Parents by the clinical psychologist and Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dan Brown, I cried the entire way through. Also the second, third, fourth, etc. times.

“Imagine yourself as a young child, only in this scene, you grew up in a family different from your family of origin,” Dr. Brown begins in his matter-of-fact manner, “with a set of parents ideally suited to you and your nature…” He continues asking you to imagine: parents who are perfectly attuned to your unique being—your internal state and not just your behavior—who are protective but not over-protective, and who are delighted and unthreatened by your discovering your sense of self, even if that self is very different from them. Parents who have no agenda for you.

I was confused at first about the premise of this meditation because I was still under the impression (a few years ago) that meditation is about accepting reality exactly as it is, and what good was this imagining anyway? Wouldn’t my mind compare these ideal parents to my very human ones and begrudge the gap even more? Wasn’t it just wishful thinking? But Dr. Brown wrote a comprehensive textbook on attachment disorders, and a good part of healing, apparently, is using imagination to create new possibilities, even for the past. Imagining can replace negative experiences with positive ones, giving one’s brain new grooves to groove in, especially when there are also emotions involved (my crying is productive!).

But I still felt guilty. Because I have to admit: when I first started following the meditation, I found myself imagining without realizing it a white, possibly even European family of origin for myself, loosely based on the families of some of my fancy college classmates, where the dad was some benevolent entrepreneur who understood how the world worked and played with investments that allowed him to be both wealthy and home a lot and the mom was a successful artist who still had plenty of energy to nurture and entertain with Barefoot Contessa recipes. I imagined not only an aesthetic, uncluttered house very different from my home of origin but a library and generational wealth.

THIS is what I wanted from my parents? How shameful. But of course what I really wanted was for them to have had a life where they felt safe and secure, instead of being flummoxed as immigrants in the new world while missing the old. What I wanted was for them to care about frivolous things like emotions and life purposes, and to do so, I had to imagine them as different people entirely. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.