An Index of my Medium Articles — I’ve indexed my posts by topic below so you can dive into my writing without endlessly scrolling on my profile page. You can also read my most substantial posts on The Sophist, my Medium publication. If you are not yet a member, you can support my work by joining Medium…

How does a soap bubble end up in that perfect spherical shape? Even if you blew a soap bubble through a non-circular aperture, the sphere will eventually form if the conditions are suitably calm. It’s surface tension that forms the sphere — the particles of soapy liquid are attracted to…

How We Create Meaning in Our Lives — At every waking moment we are faced with decisions to make. Decisions are guiding my hands as I type right now — what words to use next. Our decisions are a result of deliberations. We consider alternative possibilities and project those into the future before we settle on one course…

Here’s a terrifying thought for you — morality wasn’t handed out equally. The compassion of those with the most power matters more than those with less. The more dangerous you become, the more moral you are permitted to be by your own nature. This is an idea I found from…

It sounds cruel, but I don’t care anymore. Let me explain that feeling. — Pay attention to the world, and it will teach you its mysteries. The Hellenistic philosophies have a key concept in common, that is ataraxia, or a state of “unperterbedness”. It’s a state of mind that isn’t positively defined like “happy”, it’s a negation best translated as “not-disturbed”. …

It takes a crisis of the magnitude of the Ukraine war to see who’s really on the side of democracy. On the hard left, we have whataboutism; on the hard right, appeasement. Hard left and right really are cut from the same cloth. What makes these political positions ultimately similar…

At a young age, she asked herself, “Why bother?” Her answer turns our assumptions about freedom, rights, kindness and violence on their heads. — We have thoughts, feelings, hopes and desires. We also can be treated as statistics, objects…

A disappearing act for enlightenment — When you look at the philosophies of the world, from Buddhism of the ancient East to Existentialism in the modern West, there’s a fundamental idea that they all have in common. That idea is that there really is no “I”. We live out a fantasy of selfhood. It goes something…