Trailer Park Boys is a long-running TV show in a mockumentary style that follows three characters, Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles, who live in a trailer park in Nova Scotia, Canada. The action follows the trio’s misadventures as they create illegal money-making schemes. Each season of the show typically begins with Ricky and Julian being released…
Tag: existentialism
Circumstances beyond our control
There are two mistakes people can make about their circumstances. The first is blaming circumstances for things that are actually under their control, and the second is denying the ways in which circumstances limit what they are capable of. I have written in past blog posts about freedom and free will. I generally follow the…
Nihilism: the philosophy that doesn’t matter
What is nihilism? This is a question with many different correct answers. People have used the term to refer to different things. For me, it represents what I would call more specifically “philosophical” nihilism, a combination of philosophical positions that could loosely be said to form a worldview. These positions are as follows: With ontological…
Being nothing
I am what I am not. I am not what I am. Jean-Paul Sartre The concept horse is not a concept. Gottlob Frege What is the self? This is my interpretation. It is unique among things in the world in that it is a subject, while everything else consists of objects. The self is not…
Existential nihilism and despair in three songs and three philosophers
What is moving will be still What is gathered will disperse What has been built up will collapse These lyrics are an adapted quote from Lama Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Impermanence (aniccā in Pali) is an important idea in many forms of Buddhism. It is one of the three marks of…
Free will, personal responsibility, and fault
I want to outline my view of these topics. First, I’ll address some major mainstream positions. Most people believe in free will; within academic philosophy, the modern free will debate is characterized as compatibilism vs. incompatibilism. The “compatibility” in question is between free will and determinism. Technically, neither of these views necessitates certain beliefs about…
thoughts on mind 