Democracy for the sake of dignity, thanks Vaclav

In my younger days I believed all kinds of things.  I thought that I'd live in Indianapolis for most of my life.  That never played out.  I thought that I'd probably be self-employed.  You never know, one day maybe.  I thought that democracy was preferable to other forms of government because it brought economic growth.  Way off on that one.  We're currently watching as most of the world's democratic countries go through extended periods of economic difficulties.  At the same time we see countries with non-democratic systems experiencing strong growth.  A horde of wannabe Cassandras argue that democracy should be reined in, that economic growth should take precedence over our freedoms.  Could they be right?

Always looking backwards, vol3

Two very interesting thinkers passed away this week.  One was very interesting, got a ton of press, and will likely be forgotten within a generation.  The other was very interesting, went through long periods of being largely ignored, and will likely be read and reread for the next several centuries.  The first was Christopher Hitchens, the second was Vaclav Havel.

Freedom to bare it all

When does "empowerment" to display yourself morph into just another type of exploitation?

Mind and body and children

Some will tell you that there's no such thing as body, that everything is an illusion created by the mind.

Others will tell you that the mind is simply an extended string of biochemical processes and reactions.  They're probably correct, but being verifiably, scientifically correct isn't always very useful when it comes to broader questions of humanity.

A video on materialism

I've always liked this style of animation, and the video is really well done: