I periodically encounter the idea of the Social Contract being employed to justify something or other, some government policy or some informal opinion. However, when it’s employed in this way, such ideas strike me as commonly failing to do what the speaker intends largely due to the errors to the way they understand and attempt…
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There appears to me to be a lot of confusion surrounding our concept of Rights, and much of this seems to me to have to do with a failure of understanding and communication, both individually and collectively. Because there seems to me to be a great deal of imprecision when people refer to Rights, with…
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I wish I could remember where I first heard of Matthew Arnold. I recall encountering a long quotation from what is likely his most famous work, Culture and Anarchy,1 when reading another book and being drawn to it. (I thought it was quoted in Albert Camus’ The Rebel.2 However, I found from its re-read that…
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I’m certainly no fan of AI art.i To most concisely capture my opinion on the matter, you can borrow the sentiment I’ve repeatedly seen circulating on social media, attributed to one Joanna Maciejewska: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do…
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“You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra1 Three months ago, I introduced the concept of partisanism and discussed some of the problems it causes.2 Two months ago, I described how the partisan…
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Canadian Pharmacists Journal (CPJ) is the official publication of the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA).i It’s the only major journal publishing original pharmacy practice research in Canada that I’m aware of, and it’s also a good source of therapeutic information, including clinical practice guidelines (or their summaries) and clinical tools providing practical information that can be…
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I was at a particularly receptive point in my life when I first encountered Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind,1 and I realized it early on in the work when he presented an important concept. When describing his decision to part from the Eastern bloc in the early ’50s,i Milosz explains: My own decision proceeded, not…
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I’m back, at least temporarily. After I started working my last job, I knew that my essay writing was likely to fall by the wayside, but I never expected it to fall off so quickly as the demands of my work completely overtook my life. I honestly tried to at least finish this series that…
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I wanted to continue the discussion I started last month about my growing sense of political alienation.i While I think the behaviour of politicians constitutes an important piece of an explanation for this feeling, it’s only one aspect of something complex and unwieldy, something I need to examine slowly, piece-by-piece, if I hope to gain…
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Over time, I’ve been increasingly hit with this creeping notion that my views aren’t represented by the politicians I’ve been tasked at electing. It felt different when I was first old enough to vote and, though my political views have changed substantially and repeatedly in the years since, it’s only been quite recent that I’ve…
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