The self-regard that Sikhs call haumai might show itself clearly in moments of greed or arrogance but it’s an undercurrent of most of our lives most of the time. Giving attention to this undercurrent, and working to overcome it, seems to me a worthy undertaking, whether or not you identify as Sikh.
Most of us in North America are only beginning to learn what it means to relate to the land and its original inhabitants in a reciprocal and sustainable fashion. Doing this involves appreciating the difference between property rights and stewardship—both in terms of what that means for how we treat the land and for whose land we say it is.
The point of climbing a mountain isn’t so much about reaching the summit as in what you bring down from it. Once you’ve caught a view of the limits of what’s possible you can explore the domain of the possible with greater freedom and understanding.
Philosophy only flourishes because certain brave, queer souls have looked on the world as it is and wondered why it might not have been some other way.
It’s not nice to think of yourself as a monster. There’s a strong tendency to want to harmonize the monstrous jumbling of categories in our self-understanding. But doing so creates further problems.
Literacy is one of the most transformative technologies that humans have ever invented. So transformative is it that it’s hard to imagine your way into an oral mindset from a literate perspective.
We’re used to being the smartest things on the planet. What happens when that’s no longer the case?
Plato, Plotinus, and the rest saw philosophical argument and investigation as one part—granted, a central part—of a broader way of life that was essentially mystical and spiritual in its outlook.
Reflecting on the religious conflicts of his time, Zera Yacob resolved to use reason to determine which aspects of these religious traditions did indeed derive from God and which were the inventions of contentious humans.
Starting with Plato, philosophy has systematically marginalized both literature and animals as beneath the dignity that philosophy has established for humankind.