by Brooks Riley

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by Rafaël Newman

If I were asked to name the creed in which I was raised, the ideology that presented itself to me in the garb of nature, I would proceed by elimination. It wasn’t Judaism, although my father’s parents were orthodox Jewish immigrants from the Czarist Pale, and we celebrated Passover with them as long as we lived in Montreal. It certainly wasn’t Christianity, despite my maternal grandparents’ birth in protestant regions of the German-speaking world; and it wasn’t the Communism Franz and Eva initially espoused in their new Canadian home, until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact put an end to their fellow traveling in 1939. Nor can I claim our tribal allegiance to have been to psychoanalysis, my mother’s professional and personal access to secular Jewish culture, although most of my relatives have had some contact, whether fleeting or intensive, paid or paying, with psychotherapy—since the legitimate objections raised by many of them to the limits of classical Freudian theory prevent it from serving wholesale as our ancestral faith, no matter the extent to which a belief in depth psychology and the foundational importance of psychosexual development informs our discussions of family dynamics.

No, our house religion was social democracy.

Our family commitment to sexual and racial equality, socialized medicine, decolonization, and government regulation of the market was manifest, of course, in a geographically and historically conditioned form: in electoral loyalty to the NDP, Canada’s mainstream progressive party, founded in 1932 as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and renamed the New Democratic Party in 1961. Our family credo held that the Liberal Party of Canada, known as the Grits, might look progressive enough, but their instincts would always be pro-business; any socially progressive policies they may have championed had been forced on them by their marriages of parliamentary convenience with the New Democrats. As for the Tories, Canada’s Conservatives, they were simply out of the question for progressives: it’s in the name. My choice of the NDP in the ballot box, when I came of voting age, was thus at once more, and less, than a deliberate commitment: it was a reflex, almost an instinct. It was second nature.

My first proper induction into retail politics was at the age of 14, several years before I was eligible to vote; and it involved working on a by-election campaign for the local NDP candidate in our Ontario riding of Broadview. Before we moved east to Toronto, from the Vancouver suburbs where we spent the mid-1970s, I had already twice ventured into political activism: once visiting a meeting of the local Trotskyist cell, where I was amazed to encounter my high school French teacher; and once at a rally for divestment by Canadian banks in then-apartheid South Africa. (This is not counting my fabled instrumentalization as an infant, when my mother protested the sale of Californian grapes at our local Steinberg’s grocery store in 1960s Montreal, holding me aloft, like Andromache for extra pathos, as she cited Cesar Chavez and the NFWA.)

Now, in 1978, freshly arrived in our new home in east-central Toronto, I was encouraged by my parents to volunteer in support of Bob Rae, who would go on, at 30, to win his first federal seat for the NDP that October and would remain a member of parliament for over two decades. Read more »

Sughra Raza. Aerial composition, March, 2025.

Digital photograph.

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A Cornucopia of Elegies

as clear as time when the air was green
and tenderfeet knew the ballet of beginning,

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by Christopher Hall

Despite writing my doctoral thesis on Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man, a work most notorious for its poorly optimized optimism, I am something of a natural pessimist. Pessimism is at the right moments a potent tool for clarity (as is, even I have to admit, optimism, though not surprisingly I think this is the case more rarely), and so it is disappointing that the moment when I could have used it the most, my generally bleak perspective on things failed me. During my Masters, the professor who would eventually become my thesis advisor told me that, given the pathetic job prospects, a Ph.D. was not a good idea. Well, in your mid 20s, no obstacle, current or future, seems like it can become an indurated part of your fate if you choose for it not to. I was neither ambitious nor greedy, and I was willing to work anywhere for peanuts; so, the jobs would be there. Well, they weren’t, and in the midst of massive writer’s block and a crisis of faith concerning what literary criticism actually does, my prospects for an academic career tanked. I’m not sure if I can accurately say “I should have listened” as I am gainfully employed in a place where my degree is nominally required. But I don’t teach literature. And the writer’s block quickly metastasized into reader’s block; I still read, of course, but the urgency is gone (and the multiple distractions of the internet age are not helping.). Ah well, there are worse things, etc., and what does one want with being “well-read” anyway?

I suppose the actual question I’m wondering about is why I ever thought I could make being well-read a career. As the English degree craters, and the idea of the university itself is under assault in the United States and elsewhere, those of us who remain interested in literate culture are sensing in its decline some correlation with the current apoplexy, if not direct causation.

But I am allergic to any argument which is centered in the “use” of the humanities, at least if we understand “use” purely in the sense of “useful.” The disjunction between the “use” of the STEM disciplines and the “uselessness” of the humanities means that the world will stand study of the sexual habits of the pink fairy armadillo, not necessarily because it might lead to some new patent or product, but because it seems to be the price necessary to pay to keep science “going.” There can be no such argument for a study of sexual politics in Middlemarch. And the attempts to provide a “use argument” for the humanities have all, to my mind, fallen flat. “The humanities make you a good critical thinker;” is there any discipline out there that advocates for naivete among its practitioners? Hopefully there are not too many engineers out there taking everything they see at face value. “The humanities make people better democratic citizens;” well, if reading Rochester, Beckett, Byron and other assorted depressives and nihilists have made me a better citizen, I am not aware of how. Read more »

by Chris Horner

In daily life we generally get by without invoking explicit moral positions or judgements. This is because, for the most part, the norms and taboos of the quotidian life are just embedded in what we do or say. This isn’t to say we all adhere to them all the time – far from it. But when we see such behaviours our responses will range, according to seriousness, from tutting to calling the police. At one end we have the norms and taboos of basic politeness, at the other the serious stuff about harm. But this mainly happens without anyone needing to invoke an explicit moral a code, since our responses are embedded in the ‘ethical substance’ of everyday life.

But there are times when we may ask ourselves whether a norm or taboo or a rule is right. We seek justifications. Then we might ask about the consequences of following a rule, or of the red lines that might mark real moral obligations and limits. Things that appear as  ‘common sense’ can turn out to be abhorrent – it was once ‘common sense’ to think that women shouldn’t be educated or that some races were ‘obviously’ superior to others. So, we need to be able to critically reflect. Even then moral philosophers like Kant and JS mill are unlikely to come up. It’s more likely to be the ‘Golden Rule’ (do unto others as you would have them do unto to you) or the ‘what would happen if we all did that?’ Such reflections conduct have their place. We should reflect on what we do, and maybe change it, or call for change.

But everyday ethical life isn’t based on such things. It is the other way around: moral talk is rooted in ethical life, most of which happens without much reflection. We don’t go around with propositions about morality ‘in our heads’, as it were. We just live our social lives. Moral maxims and theories are reminders of what we should consider, what matters, and we reach for them we when feel stuck. Explicit ‘moral talk’ is parasitic on that other stuff of everyday life – the practices and institutions that we don’t put into question most of the time, what Hegel calls Sittlichkeit. Read more »

by O. Del Fabbro

Why do we fight? That question has been asked by so many in the history of mankind: philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political theorists have come up over and over again with explanations as to why humans fight.

Nir Eisikovits, Professor of Philosophy at the University Massachusetts Boston, and founding director of the Applied Ethics Center, has in his recent book publication tried to answer that question in his specific, and very unique way: Glory, Humiliation, and the Drive to War.[1] Eisikovits’ main claim is that glory and humiliation are similar to a “two-stroke engine”, that is they are in “conjunction with each other”. To put it more simply: being subject to humiliation is so injurious that ending or reversing that state results in obtaining glory. The cycle of the two-stroke mechanism between glory and humiliation is what keeps the war machine running.

Until recently the German political scientist Herfried Münkler would have disagreed with Eisikovits. Especially Westerners live in post-heroic times according to Münkler. Drone warfare and more generally hybrid warfare allow societies to wage war without being explicit about it, and more importantly, there is no need for heroes anymore, if battles are fought remotely. Only lately, with the integration of drone warfare in classical warfare in Ukraine, has Münkler taken a step back and self-criticized his earlier statements. Eisikovits for his part is spot on, when he highlights how psychologically challenging remote drone warfare is for the pilots, and how they suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).[2] Münkler believed that times had changed, that because wars in the 21st century are fought with new technologies and societies are more peaceful now, heroes are no longer needed and glory is of no importance anymore. Eisikovits proceeds the other way around. Wars might have changed technologically, but the drive to war has not changed. Read more »

by Nils Peterson

“…another kind of net, that language, the one the world gives us to cast so that we might catch in it a little of what it is and what we are, and we are, among other things, the poverties of the language we inherit.”  Robert Hass, “Families and Prisons,” What Light Can Do.

These days when night and cold come so soon one wants nothing more than to huddle around a fire, read for awhile, then go to bed – but the world has its obligations.

I was walking the dog in the cold night air, almost remembering what I wanted to remember, and then it came to me, the opening paragraph of James Joyce’s “Araby.”

The first time I read it was magic, the feel and look of the winter air, the awareness of the intensity of one’s aliveness in it, and Mangan’s sister:

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Yes, the paragraph described me too, though I was far in time and space from “dark odorous stables.” (Actually, there were some old stables around where I lived then, used for garages for awhile, but now mostly storage sheds filled with mysterious things.)  

Then I remembered the girl next door, a year or two older than I who had once been the babysitter for me and my brother, but when I had caught up a little bit, passed puberty, and we were both going to high school, she walked ahead of me all the way while I shuffled behind and never said a word. But I certainly thought of her in my own way. Read more »

by Paul Braterman

This book is essential reading or anyone who is trying to make sense of what is happening in America (and, alas, in much of the rest of the world) today. It traces the intellectual roots of Trumpism back to its fascist (or perhaps more accurately Nazi) roots. It anatomizes the extraordinary coalition of the superrich and the disaffected that has made the Republican Party what it is today, explores the contribution of apocalyptic religion to the cult of Trump, and details the organizational networks that hold this coalition together. Most disturbingly, it shows that Trumpism is a symptom of a much larger and more deeply rooted phenomenon that will not disappear with Trump. More encouragingly, it points to inherent contradictions within the coalition that may yet prove its downfall. Finally, it urges those who value democracy to be active and organize at all levels. To which I would add, join a Union. It is the Faculty Union, not the University Administration with its $52 billion endowment, that is fighting Trump’s attempt to seize control of Harvard. [Update: the University has now rejected Trump’s demands.]

The author has been studying the phenomenon she describes here for over 15 years, and has written two earlier related books. This one manages to cover an enormous territory, from which I can here only present a few impressions, with a large cast of actors, combining together detailed discussion of organizations and arguments with firsthand accounts of political and religious gatherings, and the sometimes colorful biographies of many of the leading characters. It is as close to being an enjoyable read as the subject matter permits, skillfully navigating its complex narratives through some 250 pages of text, backed up by over 700 references, most of them with web links.

The book appears to have gone to press after Trump’s 2024 electoral victory, but before he took office. Its analysis helps make sense of the Trump regime’s most extraordinary behavior, such as its fondness for spreading measles, its assault on the academic and governmental research base that has served the US economy so well, its betrayal of Ukraine, and the Orwellian rewriting of American history that un-persons or sidesteps people as diverse as Colin Powell and Harriet Tubman. In each case, we can with the aid of the book understand what is going on. Simply put, Trump is an accomplished mafioso, and rewards his power base. The book does not however prepare us (how could it?) for the full impact of Trump’s own megalomania and erratic policy-making.

I have only one slight criticism, which may perhaps merely reflect my own interests. There is little discussion of the connections, dating back to before 1980, between biblical creationist organizations and the doctrinaire illiberal Right of which Trumpism is the latest aspect, or of the links that have been forged between these organizations, with their theological and pseudoscientific denial of climate change, and leading right-wing political think tanks. Read more »

by Priya Malhotra 

“How are you?” asked my aunt about a year ago in my living room in New Delhi, her tone languorous and inquisitive, her gaze perched on my face. Having recently moved back to India after about 28 years in the U.S., this deceptively simple question both thrilled and discomfited me. I was used to being in the U.S. where people routinely asked, “How’re you doin’?”—a greeting that always put me on the defensive. I’d always try to justify my existence by magnifying whatever I was doing with my life at that moment and try to make it sound important. That day, just as I’d grown accustomed to doing in the U.S., I rattled off the things I was doing to my aunt, which, at the time, weren’t a whole lot. I was visiting my ailing mother in the hospital, reorganizing things in the house, and getting in touch with friends. There was a great deal of leisure at that time, I must admit. (I can feel my stomach muscles contract as I write this—I feel guilty confessing to indulging in leisure. I feel I must legitimize my leisure time, make it sound somehow “earned.” See how conditioned I am?)

My aunt furrowed her eyebrows, confusion washing over her face as she said, “Priya, I didn’t ask you what you were doing. I wanted to know how you are.” And then I spilled out all my feelings about my mother’s illness, my move to India, and my various conundrums. At that time, I also began thinking about how much language reveals about a culture, and how everyday expressions in American English signify America’s devout veneration of action, motion, and productivity.

Besides “how’re you doing?,” there are numerous expressions in American English that reflect this obsession with action and ceaseless motion, this deeply ingrained notion that the value of doing vastly supersedes the value of being. “What’s happening?” “What are you doing this weekend?” “What are your plans for the summer?” The underlying implication is always the same—are you active enough to matter? Are you doing enough to validate your existence? (When I lived in the U.S., the pressure to do sometimes became so overwhelming for me that I started conjuring up grand plans for the weekend. Instead of admitting that I intended simply to veg out in bed and watch some Netflix, I’d say things like I was planning to see an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday, listen to a fabulous new jazz sensation in the West Village on Saturday, followed by dinner at a cozy Peruvian restaurant.)

Now back to language. What’s one of the first questions people ask each other when they first meet in America? Read more »

by Lei Wang

“In bardo again,” I text a friend, meaning I’m at the Dallas airport, en route to JFK. I can’t remember now who came up with it first, but it fits. Neither of us are even Buddhist, yet we are Buddhist-adjacent, that in-between place. Though purgatories are not just in-between places, but also places in themselves.

In The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home, a book by travel writer Pico Iyer on, among other things, the charm of airports, he quotes Geoff Dyer, who quotes the architect Vincenzo Volentieri:

“Birds in flight… are not between places, they carry their places with them. We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world.”

For a homing pigeon, home is a verb. I try to remember this as my flight is delayed, with bardo extended until 2am. The planes keep malfunctioning: two so far, with need for another. “We’re waiting as fast as we can,” I overhear. But bardo is better than dying.

My best friend loved bus rides as a child, because en route from one destination to another, one could do frivolous things, like listen to music or read a book that wasn’t necessary for school. It was a little bit like being sick: a time of respite from ordinary demands, as you and your paused ambitions travel to the kingdom of wellness.

During travel, you are “off the hook” in a way: you have a reasonable excuse for not getting back to people, a kind of natural digital detox. Internet is opt-in, not opt-out. You are already doing something everyone seems to agree is difficult and uncomfortable, and so distractions are socially sanctioned: juicy novels, non-arthouse movies, guilt-free fast food.

An airport is a free pass for ShakeShack, or for those early morning flights, a sweet and savory McGriddle. Of course, there are those who partake of salads and yogurt and honey crisp apples from home even en route, probably the kind of people who use the word partake. Read more »

I was startled for a moment before realizing that our neighbors had taken their child out of this suit before hanging it out to dry.

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by Ken MacVey

Do corporations have free will? Do they have legal and moral responsibility for their actions?

Many argue that legal and moral responsibility must rest on free will. If there is no free will there cannot be such a thing as legal or moral responsibility. But consider these two questions and their potential  answers.

Do corporations have free will? Answer: No.

Do corporations have legal and moral responsibility for their actions? Answer: Yes.

Both answers intuitively sound plausible. On reflection these two answers, when taken together, logically  imply  legal or moral responsibility may not necessarily have to rest on free will. But maybe something is wrong with these answers. Maybe corporations do have free will of some sort. Or maybe any responsibilities corporations are said to have really rest on human stakeholders who do have free will. And if that is right, what are the implications for the legal and moral responsibility of corporations as their decisions become increasingly driven by AI instead of by people?

Under American law corporations are considered to be artificial persons. They are artificial in the sense that they are creatures of law. They are persons in the sense that they can be legal actors or agents. They can own property, enter contracts, sue and be sued, and file for bankruptcy. They have rights. They have First Amendment rights to free speech. They are entitled to compensation under the Fifth Amendment if their property is taken by eminent domain. They have legal obligations—such as paying taxes. Corporations can also commit crimes, even manslaughter. For example, Pacific Gas & Electric a few years ago pled guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter charges stemming from a horrific fire in Northern California that PG&E caused. Corporations can have goals—sometimes they are recited in mission statements. They can take stands—such as endorsing by corporate resolution a ballot measure.

Historically corporations were not always  legally treated as persons or as entities that could be charged criminally. Originally under the common law ( Anglo-American judicial  precedents developed  over hundreds of years) corporations could not have what is called mens rea, the “guilty mind” required for charging a crime. Nor could corporations commit an actus reus, or a wrongful physical act, also required for charging a crime. Judges ruled that corporations did not have minds so they could not have wrongful intent or a “guilty mind.” Judges would emphatically note that corporations do not have mouths to speak with, eyes to see with, hands to touch things and people with, thus they could not commit the  “actus reus” or physical act required for being charged with a crime.  As Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall observed in 1819 in another context  “a corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Read more »

by Azadeh Amirsadri

I am in Del Mar having breakfast with two of my adult children who are telling me what sort of man I should date, and I wonder when did we switch roles. When did I stop being the one they were a little apprehensive about introducing a new person to and I  became worried about their approval? Is it because I am too open with them? Am I too accepting of everything they do? Not that at their ages, I would want to control them or anything, but still. Is it because the last guy I dated was too enthusiastic about building an addition to my house to live in after a few weeks of our meeting, even though a few things were starting to not go well? Is it because in my euphoria of having found love again, I briefly looked at every red flag presented to me and just filed it away in a very far away part of my brain? Or is it because my daughter saw who he was when they first met when he told her that he is a silo and can move easily between different groups. Did she sense that he was all compartmentalizing and barriers, to my openness and connections?

I don’t stay with those questions long enough, because we are surrounded by the Lululemon crowd at this beautiful outdoor cafe. What Tom Wolfe called the Social X-Rays are brunching, and unlike my kids and me, they did not order extra pancakes on top of their regular orders. We seem to have to taste as much variety as possible, so every order has an extra side order. This crowd though is slightly less social x-ray and more face-fillers and pouty-lipped. A part of me is envious of their toned bodies and their casual Southern California relaxed vibe, workout outfits, and flip-flops, and another part of me is amused at the whole face thing. After our meal, which looked amazing but tasted quite bland, we went to the beach and soaked up all the sun we could for one day before two of us had to go back to the East Coast to attend a funeral.

Michael was my brother-in-law and became my brother-in-love. From the first time I met him in 1984, while his mother disapproved of her middle son’s relationship with me, and his sister warned her brother not to eat the food I made in case I added some sort of sorcery to it, Michael was all kindness and acceptance. He was amused, yet not surprised by his younger brother’s choice, and welcomed me and my children to his family without any questions. He was curious about me and my history, wanting to know more about how I grew up in Iran and France, my catholic school experience, my learning English days, and my religious and national holidays. He and his wife hosted us at their house in Pittsburgh and we all still remember the pizza they bought that was so rich, it was wrapped in newspaper to absorb the grease.
Michael was one of the most intelligent men I have known. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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by Ashutosh Jogalekar

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people of a nation to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with their Executive, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Americans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Constitution with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, the Executive is chosen among Men and Women, deriving his or her just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Executive becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Executive, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Executives lawfully appointed should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such an Executive, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of the people of these United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their present Executive.

The history of the present Executive of the United States is a history of repeated injuries, usurpations and monarchical tendencies, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Checks and Balances, Separation of Powers and Due Process, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has caused the destruction of the United States economy, which until recently was the Envy of the World, and consigned its Citizens to poverty and inflation.

He has eroded the goodwill of the United States among the Nations of the world, turning what was once a most admired country into the world’s pariah.

He has alienated our Friends and Allies and embraced other Tyrants and autocrats. Read more »