Disc Golf and Philosophy Developing the Long Game By Strand Sheldahl-Thomason Every disc golfer has heard the slogan “grow the sport,” so it shouldn’t be a surprise that disc golf is, indeed, growing. In fact, it’s blowing up right now. The Professional Disc Golf Association has raced past 100,000 members to over 130,000 (I’m…
Black-ish Offers Antifragile Hope in Fragile Times By Myron Jackson These fragile times provide an opportune moment to learn from the TV series Black-ish. Following the tragic deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery (an all too common occurrence), the recent passing away of civil rights icons C.T. Vivian and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, along…
Moral Philosophy in the World of Pokémon Elements, Energies, and Relationships By Lance H. Gracy When I was young, I told my classmates that the pokémon, Alakazam, exists and helps me with my homework. I also told them that a consortium of Gengars encamp in a forest along our bus route, where they like to…
How Prince Zuko Restored his Honor By Helen De Cruz *For those who have not seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, spoilers will follow.* Honor is very important to Zuko, the banished crown prince of the Fire Nation. The young prince seeks to restore his lost honor by capturing the Avatar (a mythical fighter who will…
The Stand and the State of Nature by M. Blake Wilson When COVID-19––the pandemic itself but also the unprecedented social and political responses to it––hit the United States in March, 2020, savvy booksellers might have predicted that old books about plagues would start creeping back up the charts. After all, George Orwell’s 1984 was #1…
Grief and Violence in The Last of Us Part 2 “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself” Tim Jones [MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US PART 2] The opening line of Pearl Jam’s 2014 single “Future Days” is heard several times throughout The Last of Us Part 2, first…
Tove Jansson’s Moomins: Just Stories? Peter West In this short discussion of the Moomins and philosophy, I want to do two things. First, I want to point out some obvious instances of philosophy at work in the Moomins. Second, I want to suggest that the way Tove Jansson treats the relation between fiction and reality…
Time Travel and Causal Loops in Dark Taylor W. Cyr ***This post contains spoilers for the first season of Dark.*** If you have heard anything about the German Netflix series Dark, you probably know that time travel plays an important role in the story. Over the course of the show’s three seasons, Dark tells…
The Ethics of Survivor “It’s Just a Game” By Justin Kitchen This spring premiered yet another season (the 40th) of the CBS show Survivor. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s how an average game plays out: A number of people (usually 20) from different backgrounds are ‘stranded’ in a remote location—often on an island chain…
World-Breaker Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and the Divine in FX’s Legion Darian Shump First introduced in March 1985, David Haller, son of the X-Men’s Charles Xavier, has always been depicted as a troubled soul. As a child, his telepathic powers were triggered by a terrorist attack upon his home, obliterating the minds of the attackers and…
