An update, not about relational ontology.
things are mostly heading in the smooth brain direction over here.
Thanks for taking the time to open this email! If you somehow were sent it and you haven’t subscribed, I’d love to have you on the email list—I try to not be annoying and then of course you can always tell me I’m annoying and unsubscribe any time you want.
In any case, if you enjoy this post, giving it a ♡ and/or commenting is helpful. It tells Substack I’m worth reading and it tells me what you think about my writing (especially if you comment and tell me what you think about my writing).
I promise I won’t actually make you read about “relational ontology” any time soon.
I’ve had this file sitting in my drafts for weeks now, meanwhile I haven’t sent a newsletter in a very long time. The file has had almost zero copy in it and carried the title “relational ontology” which is ridiculously overwrought and just makes me laugh.
Here’s all that I’d drafted under that header:
In Structure of Religious Experience, the Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray makes the case that the the “field of religion is the whole field of common experience organized in relation to the central fact of personal relationship.” By “field of religion” Macmurray meant the whole scope of ways that humans try to deal with paradox, or, as Tillich might say it, the whole scope of ways that humans express ultimate concern. If we take “common experience” (a phrase which could surely be dissected endlessly, but, for now we won’t) to mean something like “the desire for life and love” or even just “desire,” then we can understand Macmurray to mean that the whole human world of ultimate concern comes out of the complicated experience of desire necessarily taking place in a world of relationships.
Woof. I mean, I am interested in this and I have vague ideas of where I wanted to take that blog, but that’s a sticky paragraph that manages to say not much while using a lot of words.
It seems like I need a spring refresher for this blog. With that in mind, I’m starting to use a new template for these (meant to be weekly…) posts. They’ll be what they’ll be, minimally planned and edited, but still my best attempt at food for thought that I can manage while balancing work and school and other life things.
I am reasonably confident I’ll get back into this routine, because I’m going to resurrect my rule that if I don’t send my newsletter by end-of-day Thursday then I will owe someone twenty dollars and this time the someone will be my brother. He doesn’t know that yet, but it shouldn’t matter really since I don’t think he’ll ever get to cash in on it. I will do anything to avoid giving my brother twenty dollars. Love you, Joe.
The template I’m going to try out is what you see below. Each week, I’ll fill in each section with an update. Occasionally there will be other non-templated emails that may or may not be limited to paid subscribers. TBD.
Some thing(s) I’m feeling more certain about lately:
We really need more unions and more union membership, which I believed already, but now I can also cite the Catholic Church’s official stance on it, which might mean nothing to you or might mean something: “The Magisterium recognizes the fundamental role played by labor unions, whose existence is connected with the right to form associations or unions to defend the vital interests of workers employed in the various professions.”1
I’m going to get sucked into deeply caring about the Texas Senate race, even though I know better than to have too much optimism.
The pharmaceutical industry is evil, but I am a huge fan of my brain meds—it’s more complicated than I’m making it sound, but also still not that complicated.
My mom and dad were probably right when I was growing up, no TV on school nights makes for a better routine.
Some thing(s) I’m feeling less certain about lately:
I want to be unbothered and unconcerned with the ingredients that we let be in our food in America, not because I think they’re fine, but because it just feels like a step too close to becoming obsessive; unfortunately, based on the amount of lead we allow to be in our protein powders, I am starting to think I might need to be a little obsessive.
For no big reason aside from vibes, I used to really not care for St. Augustine, but the little bit of engaging with him that I’ve done for my ethics class is revealing a slightly less annoying figure than I’d thought.
I’d been absolutely sure that The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu was a terrible adaptation of the book, but after watching the whole series in a fugue state recently I can say it’s not terrible, just… weird.
Something I want to do less of:
Sleep poorly. It’s boring, but true. I managed to stick to my ideal schedule of sleeping from 10pm to 7am every night a couple weeks ago and that success has been haunting me with every poor sleep hygiene choice I make. At the same time, I’m drinking coffee at 5pm, so I fear the haunting and the poor sleep will continue at least another day or two.
Something I want to do more of:
Also kind of boring, but true: I need to get back on my Peloton. It’s the only exercise routine I’ve ever stuck with and all at once last August I just… stopped. Anyone have advice on this? Anyone want to exchange Peloton usernames and be accountability buddies? Do people do that?
Thanks for reading! I will see you with the same template next week and, soon hopefully, a few edited-for-blog versions of papers I wrote this year that I think will be interesting to share and discuss.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.
Official stance of the Catholic Church on labor unions. Catholics who oppose labor unions are anti-Catholic imo.