On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, via @Susan Kaye Quinn
“To those who can hear me, I say do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.” —Charlie Chaplin The Final Speech from The Great Dictator, 1940
George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf
Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler’s aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics.
A local example of what Facebook has cost us by @ChrisCorrigan
So it seems easy enough for me to leave [Facebook]. But as I’ve posted my intention to do so, friends have shared with me their worry that if they leave Facebook, where will they get their local news and stay connected to what’s happening in the community?
And this right here is the cost of us all buying the convenience of Facebook at the expense of the hard work of building community. What happens on Facebook is not community. It is an empty calories version of deliberation and belonging. It gives the illusion of connection and conversation while simultaneously acting the same way big box stores do in small towns: by crushing what is local through convenience and lower prices. The community bears the cost.”
Think your efforts to help the climate don’t matter? African philosophers disagree via @dyckron
Complementarity has been used by African philosophers like Jonathan Chimakonam, Aïda Terblanché-Greeff, Diana-Abasi Ibanga and Kevin Gary Behrens to develop environmental philosophies based on shared relationships. According to these philosophers, a view of the world based on complementarity neither foregrounds nor diminishes humans. Rather, it sketches a relationship of equals defined by the mutual participation of all.
This thinking is averse to hierarchy. No individual can claim to have more value than another. Anything that exists serves as an important part of the environment and matters equally, whether alone or collectively. Complementarity holds that the relationships that unite individual things can extend to prove the value of every contribution, no matter its size.”
The McGill Office for Science and Society (OSS)
… a unique venture dedicated to the promotion of critical thinking, science communication, and the presentation of scientific information to the public, educators, and students in an accurate and responsible fashion. With a mandate to demystify science for the public and separate sense from nonsense, the Office has a history of tackling fake news in the world of science well before the term “fake news” even existed.”
