Nick Montgomery
Participating in bigthink is clunky because of the 'quick thought' / 'response' distinction. Ironically, the idea of 'joining the conversation' and contributing something substantial is more difficult than making a quick, uncritical 'quick thought'. Regular Web forums work better because they have ... Read More
I would like to know (from religious people, or people with experience in a particular religion): what are the sensuous aspects of your religion? How does participation in the ceremony influence the participant? I am not a religious person but I would like to gain an appreciation for religion. I ... Read More
Short answer: No.Capitalist liberal democracies have a very specific organization, and it has been shown that their institutions actually function to reproduce the capitalist system in important ways. The whole apparatus of taxation and the services it provides (police, healthcare, roads, highways ... Read More
First off: the desire for equality has been an important idea to promote and organize around (in abolition, women's struggles, gay rights, etc) and it will no doubt continue to be an important idea in the future. Without claiming that equality is a 'bad' thing, is it possible to question the ways ... Read More
we also need a way to see when/if people have responded to our ideas and our comments. you can see responses to your own ideas if you click on your profile, but you can't see if there are new ones, and you can't see if people are responding to your own thoughts. Ideally there would be a way to ... Read More
The vast majority of academia currently employs the 'banking model' of education. Knowledge is conceived as a big pile of data that students need to absorb and then spit back out onto their exams, tests, and essays. However, knowledge can be thought of in other ways. Knowledge can be ... Read More
As white person living in North America I'm committed to acknowledging my privilege. I'm also interested in finding new ways of thinking, knowing and acting that are more inclusive of different social locations. I didn't always think this way. I needed to learn about the white legacy of ... Read More
A lot of people are concerned about poverty, but fewer people are interested in connecting immense wealth to immense poverty. We might donate to charities, but most people with money aren't interested in thinking about the fact that their privilege comes at the expense of others. If you're ... Read More
Almost all of the comments on this site (and in the mainstream media) provide solutions to global warming in two main categories: (1) legislation, policy-making, lobbying. This relies on governments who often aren't receptive to making changes. They're worried about damaging the economy or ... Read More
Corporate globalization has meant that states are increasingly unable to regulate economic arrangements within their own countries. Regional trade regimes like NAFTA have increased corporate profits while destroying the livelihoods of people who rely on smaller-scale trade. Traditional economic ... Read More
I think what amiecook said was really interesting, especially the bit about the lampost: "For everything there is an opposite, it sounds simple but for a lampost there is everything that is not the lampost." Ferdinand de Saussure's work has a lot to do with these questions. Saussure studied ... Read More
Mary Robinson provides a good, short explanation of how corporate globalization is destroying the livelihoods of communities and individuals. However, she doesn't tell us much about solutions to these problems. Robinson seems to want to rely on governments and corporations to fix a problem that ... Read More
I sympathize with the anarchist tradition as well; however, I couldn't wrap my head around anarchism until I started learning about the things that are going on today within the anarchist movement. haymarket summarizes anarchism as 'political philosophy' but his description of anarchism remains ... Read More