Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Covid 19

  • Our Own Naked Sun

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ In The Naked Sun (1957), Isaac Asimov imagines Solaria, a low-population world in which residents live on estates so large that one never encounters one’s neighbors in person. As robots are employed in virtually all manner of labor, the only human inhabitants of these estates are their owners. This contrasts…

  • Traveling Light

    by Mark English ___ I am in the process of reorienting my life. Over the years I have been caught up, as everybody is, in various projects, commitments, entanglements and responsibilities (or perceived responsibilities). Some of these commitments limited my opportunities for extensive travel, or at least the sort of travel I desired. In recent…

  • Belated New Year Contributors’ Roundtable

    by Robert Gressis, Daniel Kaufman, and Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Robert, Kevin and I inaugurate a new feature at EA: a New Years Contributors’ Roundtable. Publication was delayed due to my father’s passing, so please excuse the discussion’s lateness. Most if not all of what we discussed remains relevant, though of course, this was recorded well…

  • New Year Musings

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ 2021 was dominated by Covid. But, competing for our attention has been the deepening and hardening of our political divisions, with Trumpers on one fringe, Social Justice lunatics on the other, and the bewildered, seemingly impotent majority of the country in between, wondering what the hell is going on and…

  • New Year Musings

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ 2020 will be remembered in the US for three things: the Covid-19 pandemic; racial unrest, rioting, looting, and vandalism across a number of American cities; and the defeat of Donald Trump by Joe Biden in the US presidential race. Beyond their qualities as spectacle, notable enough in their own right,…

  • How to Lose an Election that You Should Win in a Fucking Landslide

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ To his credit, Joe Biden has been running a brilliant campaign…by not running one. Other than for a brief moment at the Democratic National Convention, one rarely ever sees or hears from the man, which is ideal for two reasons: first, Biden can barely put together a coherent sentence and…

  • COVID-19 and the Question of Competing Values

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ **Note: This essay goes up in the midst of another wave of Covid-19 in the US. In some places, it is a first wave and in others, a second.  Regardless it rightly disturbs us, and I think many will be tempted to dismiss what I say below, as if it…

  • Dialogues with Crispin on the Prolegomena: Vol. 3

    The third of my ongoing series of discussions with Crispin Sartwell on my Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics. https://youtu.be/Pmh39dGfgrM

  • Summer of 2020

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ I cannot recall a time which sent my mind swimming like this one.  Nor can I remember a series of events that have provoked such strong thoughts and feelings as those I have been experiencing of late. Indeed, I cannot recall a summer this tense since the notorious Summer of…