I recently posted a funny anecdote to my Facebook feed about a home-schooling faux-pas. With school happening on Zoom this year, I’ve made an effort to hold class with my seven-year-old whenever I can — to teach things beyond what he’s learning in second grade. I’m not going to get into the details here, but let me assure you it was comedic gold — on par with Cosby’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. But the punch line resulted from my introduction of pronouns, and my use of the word “sex” rather than “gender”.
Anyway, I thought it was funny, and…
How the Concept of “Devil’s Advocate” Became Toxic to Productive Conversation
What does it mean to play “Devil’s Advocate”?
According to Wikipedia, devil’s advocate — or advocatus diaboli — was a real role created by the Catholic Church in the 16th-century as part of its canonization process. In order to be considered a saint, a person’s life must check off a number of boxes; so to test a prospective saint’s worthiness, the Church would hold a trial of sorts. The “Devil’s Advocate” was meant to investigate the saintly claims from a skeptical perspective, while an advocate for God would make the positive case. …
There is a character (Taylor) in the Showtime TV series Billions who wishes to be referred to by others with the pronoun “they”. This person is brilliant and successful, and they do not wish to be painted into a particular gender box. And thus the focus on pronouns.
I like and respect the character in the show (at least for the first two seasons), but I found their wishing to use the term “they” to be kind of silly. As someone who grew up in the 80s, for me the pronoun “they” indicates “more than one”, so to refer to…
Some thoughts on Jordan Peterson’s recent conversations with Sam Harris
Recently, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson had a series of public debates where they discussed, among other topics, the nature of truth and morality. Both thinkers are against moral relativism; both argue for a morality that is tied to some universal truth. For Harris, that universal truth is simple: suffering is bad, so behave in a way that leads to the least suffering, for you and for all. Simple to say, if harder to accomplish with precision and consistency.
Peterson’s anchor of truth is more difficult to discern. I suppose if he were pushed to verbalize it in a single…
Part I
INTRODUCTION
In 399 BCE, Socrates and a small band of his friends gathered in a prison cell to discuss philosophy for the final time. One month previous, an Athenian court had charged Socrates with three crimes: failure to acknowledge the city’s gods; the creation of new ones; and corruption of the youth. A majority of the five-hundred man jury had found him guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to death. Now, as sunset approached, it was time to carry out that sentence. When the jailer entered the cell carrying the cup of hemlock that would quench the philosopher’s life…
Jave Galt-Miller
TV Producer and Comics Writer. Read the first 20 pages of my “Trial of Socrates” graphic novel here: poliscomic.com
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