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- The culture of finding and taking offense — the dominant culture of today’s college-students — means the end of free inquiry: which is predicated on suspending judgements and assumptions as long as possible.
- Underneath the surface of what we might call categorical misogyny — like workplace discrimination — there is a teaming, complex world of power relations between men and women that cannot be explained by the word misogyny. Even the slightest familiarity with serious literature, film, music, or art will tell us this. The word misogyny today is too often used to shut down debate about those complex relations. It is a mystical, talismanic word which stuns our thinking into silence.
- The ‘think piece’ which you’ll find everywhere, left and right, academic, and general, usually represents the crystallization and concentration of this simplified discourse about power. The granular moral ambiguity of the human animal is always discarded in favor of sweeping generalizations about good and evil — even while what counts as good or evil evolves and changes.
- We have forgotten that the word hero implies a serious dose of evil, of the law-breaker. By repressing the hero as such, we open the door for figures such as Trump, who promise to un-repress the hero and make them whole again.
- Morality is like nature: there are some poisonous plants and some vitalizing plants — but there is always a balance; always a need for both.
