Aliens, Seatbelts, and the Coronavirus
There is always a gray zone between anxiety and wise precaution.
Capitalism can collapse but doesn’t have to inevitably like Marx thought.
After a few hours, the adults finish their intricate sand-city.
If you want democracy to survive and Capitalism to be its best form, then you should defend beauty.
Language is the culprit.
Hope Entails Expectation, but Expectation isn’t Hope
Mess with fire as little as you can.
Markets, law, and government all have a similar problem.
Ideas define practicality.
MAD Capitalism and Mixed Market Rationality
It’s rational to be invincible, but what if invincibility only benefits you?
If you skip the old books and go straight to the breaking news, it will probably just break you.
You Couldn’t Have Been Listening if You Don’t Think Like Me
If someone doesn’t change their views into yours, they must be closed-minded.
If you can’t tell if it’s true, ask whom it will help (but don’t assume that’s easy to determine).
School can train us to “always” wait for our feeling of being reasonable to be confirmed.
You are born in a theater and have never been outside...
If You Think for Yourself Without Falsification, You’ll Go Crazy
If you try to verify that your wife doesn’t like talking to you (for example), you’ll focus on the times she doesn’t talk to you, whereas if you try to falsify that your wife doesn’t like talking to you, you’ll focus on the times she speaks to you.
Essays
Without creativity, the artifex disappears. Once that occurs, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must clash.
Inception, Dichotomies, and Freedom
If you claim you are not being incepted, you are only saying that because I claimed that you were.
In teaching theory, we risk rendering theory meaningless.
Metamentality and the Dismodern Self
Descartes famously said "I think; therefore, I am’;" today, it would be more appropriate to say "I think you think I think you think; therefore, I am."
Worry is something other people do. We never worry; we care.
Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment
If we judge, we self-delude ourselves into an understanding of the world and those around us that lacks reality, yet the whole reason we judge is to determine what’s real.
Should We Get Rid of the Internet?
People will generate culture even if they aren’t capable, and if society doesn’t equip its citizens properly, the generated culture will be one that dehumanizes and destroys.
On “Integrating People of Color” by Bernard Hankins
Bernard Hankins argues that a nation without imag-i-nation will never cease to be a nation of dis-crim-i-nation
If I am happy, then nothing can take my happiness away. If I feel happy, it will last until I feel sad.
The higher the joy, the less likely there is a bubble in the system.
Off and on, without conscious thought, we cannot help but view everything as a potential tweet, Facebook post, and/or picture.
On Materialism, Purpose, and Discernment
Without purpose, materialism is unavoidable.
In recognizing that we are all (im)moral, we are all better equipped to live with it.
If there is ultimately no way to determine truth, then there is ultimately no way to assure our values won’t turn against us.
Whatever you are thinking about is not what you are thinking about.
If a person allowed others to use a car that the owner knew was unsafe...
What do I say when I say "I love you?"
Creative Works
Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed that if she confessed her love to her best friend, her life would leave her body: she would move on.
My name is Ludwig, Mr. Ludwig, but you don’t actually know that, nor do you actually know if the words I used mean what you think they mean...
You touch my lips more than my old wife,
but how could I love you?
Can I join you? I love a porch at night, listening to frogs.
Twenty years after the old man started searching for his son, he received a new lead.
Belonging Again (Nonfiction Book)
With the decline of religion, what can provide people with the same sense of “belonging” to a community and to a story bigger than themselves?
Feeling at peace could be a sign of "the banality of evil."
Both Arendt’s “banality of evil” and Hunter’s “character” require community. Community is what makes possible both Hitler and Bonhoeffer.
There are now more modes of belief than ever: the skepticism and enlightenment that were supposed to free individuals from belief helped multiply beliefs.
Isn’t modern life, with all its existential anxiety, the loss of absolutism, Pluralism, and fragmentation, preferable to Nazi Germany and “the banality of evil?"
While at the University of Virginia, Rose spent several years working collaboratively with other artists at Eunoia, a creative community Rose helped develop in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rose now lives on a farm, manages a wedding venue named Mead Lake, operates Frozen Glory Photography, and teaches piano using visuals from Rose's Pattern Method.
A finalist for the 2020 UNO Press Lab Prize, Rose writes pieces interested in irony, misinterpretation, the subtle distinction between delusions and visions, and trade-offs between competing goods. Rose's creative works appear in The Write Launch, Allegory Ridge, Streetlight Magazine, Ponder Review, the Iowa Review website, The William and Mary Review, and upcoming publications of Pidgeonholes and Assure Press.