Nietzsche was my first love in philosophy. The first book of his I ever read was Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I read it, and was deeply addressed by what it said, not long after I first experienced my own vocation — that is to say my own calling, from the Latin for just that — to philosophy.
Read moreAssertions and Opinions
It is one thing to share an opinion. It is an altogether different thing to make an assertion. Confusion of the two typically serves the interests of coercive power, the power that forces. In contrast, clearly drawing the distinction between the two, and insisting on keeping the gap between them open and unobstructed, is in the interest of conducive power, the power that capacitates.
Read moreCoercive Power: The Power of the Closed Fist
The greater coercive power grows, the greater the number of those it puts behind bars, and the greater the number of bars with which it contains them. Eventually, those over whom coercive power is exercised can no longer even see the world beyond the bars that enclose them, confining them in their prisons. Their world itself shrinks down to the size of their prison cell.
Read morePowerful Words: Freedom of Speech
It is not the voices of the oppressors that are silenced, but the voices of the oppressed. It is they who need to be freed to speak.
Read morePowerful Speech: Disempowering Language
Free speech does not coerce, nor serve the power that does. Rather, free speech frees from coercion: It empowers. The power of speech as such is the power to free, not the power to coerce. It is the power of the open hand, not of the closed fist: of invitation, not compulsion.
Read morePowerful Words: A Confession
I was a cop once. It was only once, and only for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I must confess that once I was a fully-fledged officer of the law—with a blue uniform, a black duck-billed hat, a shiny badge pinned on my chest, a walky-talky hung at my side (this was long before the rise to ubiquity of cell-phones), a bully-stick in a holder on a leather belt studded with bullets, and a holster with a loaded handgun in it. I even bought myself a pair of mirrored sunglasses to complete the outfit.
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