On Compassion
14/02/2021
“Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our windows. . .”
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SOCIETY
James Baldwin: Dark Days
13/01/2021
James Baldwin, the writer who has forged passion into eloquence for black people since 1948, at his house in the south of France. At fifty-six, he sees no progress in black education in the last quarter-century. The problem, he says, is the persistent delusion called white supremacy.
TELEVANGELISTS: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
14/07/2020
John Oliver demonstrates that scamming people is legal in the USA as long as you pretend it’s a church.
PUBLIC SHAMING: LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER [FULL TRANSCRIPT]
04/07/2020
John Oliver talks about the Christchurch mosque shootings, Brexit, and the power of public shaming, good and bad. With an interview with Monica Lewinsky.
NEW RULE: THE GUARDIANS OF GOTCHA | REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER [TRANSCRIPT]
28/06/2020
Bill Maher calls for an end to the shaming and canceling of people whose heart is in the right place on race issues, but don’t get it exactly right on the first try.
SUSAN SONTAG: ILLNESS AS METAPHOR
08/04/2020
Two essays by Susan Sontag are devoted to an analysis of myths surrounding paradigmatic diseases of modern times and metaphors that turn physical illnesses into a moral matter and lead to public shaming of their victims.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE ANCIENT AND HARMONIOUS WAY OF LIFE OF LADAKH
05/04/2020
The Ladakhis’ attitude to life—and death—seems to be based on an intuitive understanding of impermanence and a consequent lack of attachment. Rather than clinging to an idea of how things should be, they seem blessed with an ability to actively welcome things as they are.
UPTON SINCLAIR: THE JUNGLE – ESSAY BY RONALD GOTTESMAN
11/01/2020
As Ronald Gottesman points out in this discerning introduction, Upton Sinclair was a passionate believer in the redemption of mankind through social reform. His expose of the interlocking corruption in American corporate and political life was a major literary event when it was published in 1906, and caused an almost immediate reform in pure-food legislation.
HOW VEGANISM BECAME MAINSTREAM
03/01/2020
True, vegetarianism has been growing for many years, but did anyone foresee its most extreme variant rapidly ‘crossing the chasm’ to go from an oddball niche to a standard lifestyle choice?
Hannah Arendt: Society and Culture
24/10/2019
Hannah Arendt warns that mass culture increasingly utilizes the classics and other genuine works of art, transformed and made digestible, for entertainment. Since the appetites of the entertainment industries are insatiable, they will in time consume the classics, and thereby destroy culture.
La folla, cos’è? – di Pier Paolo Pasolini
14/09/2019
Avendo fatto in questi giorni (a Zafferana, in Sicilia, c’era un’atmosfera da linciaggio) esperienza della folla, mi è stato naturale rispondere subito a una lettera, firmata da Massimo Baldini, che mi pone delle domande, appunto, sulla folla (argomento della sua tesi di laurea).
New Rule: The Fudge Report | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
11/09/2019
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher calls on Americans to take control of their health and address the growing obesity epidemic.
Pier Paolo Pasolini on Abortion
07/09/2019
Who is in favour of abortion? No one evidently. One would have to be mad to be in favour of abortion. The problem is not to be for or against abortion but for or against its legalization.
New Rule: Armed and Lonely | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) – Transcript
17/08/2019
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher addresses America’s growing loneliness crisis and its link to mass shootings.
Abortion: Is It Possible To Be Both “Pro-Life” And “Pro-Choice”? – by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
05/07/2019
Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both.
Can Europe survive the new wave of populism? – Bernard Henri-Lévy with Douglas Murray (2017) – Full Transcript
02/06/2019
Bernard-Henri Levy and Douglas Murray debate ‘populism’ in 2017
Slavoj Žižek: The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) – Traduzione italiana
18/04/2019
L’ideologia è così radicata nella società che ha influenzato i nostri sogni. Se vogliamo cambiare la nostra realtà, dobbiamo prima cambiare i nostri sogni. Applicando la teoria psicoanalitica all’interpretazione cinematografica, Slavoj Zizek tenta di scoprire il significato nascosto di molti film hollywoodiani.
Slavoj Žižek: Political Correctness is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism [Transcript]
04/03/2019
The famed philosopher and social critic Slavoj Žižek describes political correctness as a tacit form of totalitarianism, an act of coercion built upon the premise that “I know better than you what you really want.”
Documentaries people don’t dare to watch: Land of Hope and Glory (2017)
03/03/2019
“Land of Hope and Glory” is a documentary by ‘Earthling’ Ed Winters, exposing the myth that the UK is an exception to the rule of cruelty in animal agriculture.
Welcome to this World
22/01/2019
A unique perspective on what Christianity teaches to our youngest and most impressionable.
Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds: A Clockwork Orange
02/01/2019
A Clockwork Orange is a futuristic warning against both mindless violence and the mechanical reconditioning that is often proposed as society’s solution to its ills. It offers a horrifying view of a future England in which gangs of hoodlums, or “droogs,” roam the streets freely, robbing, fighting, raping, and consuming illegal drugs and alcohol.