Some Recent Titles from Aeon (hyperlinked to their texts)

The people’s prince

Beyond reason: the mathematical equation for unconditional love 

Dispatches from a cowboy past: a one-room classic country radio station (barely) holds on

How the Inkas governed, thrived and fell without alphabetic writing

Christopher Given-Wilson

 Why the Enlightenment was not the age of reason

Henry Martyn Lloyd

Algorithms are opinions, not truth machines, and demand the application of ethics

3 minutes

 

 

Comment on "Religion is about emotion regulation, and it’s very good at it."

One wonders how the effect upon the consumers of religion can be entirely beneficial if it is necessary to believe in an all-powerful supernatural being to experience it.  But what is the effect upon the purveyors of religion if they are required to employ falsehoods to sell it?  In particular, why do we provide tax breaks for churches if they are based upon sales fraud?  What is an atheist to think about the benefits of religion claimed by Professor Asma?   I shall have to consider these questions.  As I said earlier, Aeon is a good magazine.

Come, let us reason together!

Many scientists and other critical thinkers accept the notion that we have embarked upon a path toward catastrophic climate change caused by man's industrial activity; therefore, it is reasonable to assume that there is at least a ten percent chance that anthropogenic climate change is real. If we power down unnecessarily, we will nevertheless have an Earth as a Garden, which appeals very much to many people, but prevents capitalists from adding to their already swollen fortunes. Thus, we have a 10% chance of ending human life as we know it unless we power down as discussed in my energy papers.  The Earth as a Garden will frustrate people who love capitalism, high-tech gadgets, urban sprawl, and environmental destruction; but, the low-probability outcome is so horrible that only an idiot or a fool would take the chance.

What is Aeon?

Aeon is a newsletter dealing directly and indirectly with the most important issues that affect us most in these times.  The articles are short, interesting, and well written.  It appears in my email inbox from time to time - at least once a week.  Here is the website with a hyperlink for those who wish to subscribe:


https://aeon.co/ 

The link to subscribe to the newsletter is on the right under the heading photo.

Currently, Aeon does not accept comments.

Inasmuch as (1) I have considered for lo these many decades most of the "new" ideas presented in the many excellent articles of Aeon, and (2) Aeon provides no recourse to the reader who has thought harder and deeper upon the many important questions under consideration in Aeon and who is ready to correct, amend, or add to what has been written by the privileged Aeon authors, and (3) the only class of scholars who are permitted to offer contributions to Aeon, and only with great difficulty, are those who are least likely to have useful insights into their own topics because of restrictions in thought ancillary to their employment, namely, academics who are inclined to reject limits to growth and to accept the pedestrian thinking of the corporations that control their institutions, I propose to enter comments on Aeon articles in this blog; and, I offer the same opportunity to anyone else who wishes to comment.