Photo by Guillaume Meurice
What ties all these disparate reads together is a grappling with the human condition and our relationship to the broader world. Each book left me with a better understanding of the cosmos than I had before, even when I didn’t always like them. Such is the life of a curious reader amongst the billions of stars and stories.
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Today we face a choice, one that Fromm anticipated all those years ago. “We are at the crossroads:,” he wrote, “one road leads to a completely mechanized society with man as a helpless cog in the machine—if not to destruction by thermonuclear war; the other to a renaissance of humanism and hope—to a society that puts technique in the service of man's well-being.” I believe that the path of humanism and hope outlined by Fromm is our chance to rebuild the world for human beings, rather than machines. It only takes us imagining a better world and then advocating for it.
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In all, we need a vision for the praising of idleness for the 21st century— embracing Bertrand Russell’s dedication to less work and more play for all while adapting it to the unique challenges we face today. We must go against the grain of the mindset of overwork and develop a healthy balance between labor and leisure, one that places work in the proper perspective: as a means for us to achieve all the things we want to do and not as the end that we constantly judge ourselves by. One of the only silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it gave us more time to be home with our loved ones, to finally read that book we’ve been wanting to read for forever, or to bake the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. It was a moment for us to radically reevaluate the basic conditions of our overworked, underpaid, and wildly burnt out society. People realized, many for the first time, that there was a world beyond work.
As such, they started to reconsider the basic work arrangements in this country, which have not changed in a major way in nearly 100 years. It is high time we reevaluate this setup and move towards a leisure-oriented society; it will not just help those like me who work in an office, but it will help gig workers and part-time folks to improve their wages and benefits. A better balance between work and leisure won’t only make for better employees, but it will make for better citizens. With workers having more free time and less economic precarity, they will be able to fully participate in our representative democracy. They can devote energies towards improving our societies— from education and healthcare to election workers and candidate canvassers. They can build the social movements and political programs necessary to improve our world. The fight for less work is not merely a slight change in our daily arrangements; it's a revolution that will radically alter our lives and our country for the better.
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During her many years of activism, anarchist intellectual Emma Goldman wrote for a variety of publications, including Mother Earth, a magazine she founded in 1906. Her writing championed free speech and expression, free love and open relationships, anarchism, the rights of labor, education, birth control, and criticisms of religion. This essay will explore Goldman’s ideas about atheism and how they fit into her larger ideological framework. As her writings will show, three core themes permeate Goldman’s work: strong advocacy for individual freedom, rejection of Christianity, and the defense of atheism. In all, Emma Goldman’s radical atheism was rooted in her love of humanity, and while the term didn’t exist then, that made her a deeply committed humanist.
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In considering the philosophical problem of free will, one particular viewpoint keeps tapping the back of my mind, like a reliable friend who is there to remind you of your lapses. What if we’re approaching the free will discussion incorrectly altogether? What if the problem of free will can’t be solved, or at least not yet? What if we don’t have the requisite knowledge to definitively answer the free will problem?
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Anxiety is a concept that is nearly universally experienced but almost universally misunderstood. It is not plain nervousness, like when you stop abruptly at a stop light or surprisingly run into an ex-partner or an in-law. For me and many others, it is a constant, pervasive dread that permeates our very existence. A couple of years ago I realized that my anxiety was beginning to affect nearly every aspect of my life, from work and relationships to even my ability to sleep at night. It was here that I began my own investigations into anxiety, reading and studying as much as I could on the subject. From learning about Buddhism to Psychoanalysis and everything in between, I really didn’t crack the “anxiety code” until I discovered a nineteenth century philosopher who wrote a pioneering book on the subject in 1844.
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Image: New York TImes
Paul Kurtz’s skepticism is so much more than debunking the supernatural or fact-checking dubious claims. It is a powerful tool used in the service of improving ourselves, the lives of others, our societies, and our planet. It is rooted in the Enlightenment tradition of Immanuel Kant, who encouraged us to “sapere aude,” or “dare to know.” We often focus on the “know” part of that phrase, as cliches abound on the importance of knowledge (“knowledge is power,” “knowledge is half the battle,” etc.). Yet, Kurtz’s skepticism also homes in on the value of daring, how seeking knowledge can not only give us the correct answer but can give us a better life. We should dare to know—with all of the successes and failures we’ll find along the way—because that’s what makes life worth living.
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For many, like the renowned skeptic Martin Gardner, the problem of free will is much like the problem of consciousness, something currently unsolvable based on our lack of knowledge or an insufficient framing of the question. However, what if we’re approaching this the wrong way altogether? What if we’re making this problem harder than we have to? This is author Dan Barker’s take on the problem, in his new book, Free Will Explained. Barker, a former fundamentalist minister turned atheist, uses his breezy tone and biting wit to address one of philosophy’s most daunting problems, one he thinks we’ve grown from a molehill into a mountain.
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