Progressive Praxis

This blog represents a progressive viewpoint on current affairs embedded within a Socratic philosophy.

In English, this means two things: 1) as Plato has Socrates state, "An unexamined life is not worth living," and 2) basically all human beings suffer from an existential ignorance about the meaning and purpose of life, what a philospher named Voegelin called the Beginning and Beyond.

We live in a time of unbelievable upheaval. The twentieth century was one of the bloodiest in human history, and the twenty first is starting out as one of continuing backlash by fundamentalists of all religions against what they perceive as the modern world. Out of these times and individuals reflecting on them arise upwellings of the spirit to point out the falsity of the "old" symbols we use to make sense of life and in rare cases lead to a "discovery" of new symbols to define and make sense of and give purpose to our shared existence on this planet. If we are to make it out of the first decade of the twenty first century, human beings have to go beyond the crusty, reified meaningless fundamentalisms of the past that angry people of many faiths are hanging on to. Sometimes that may mean rediscovering the orginal intents of, for example, the founders of Christianity, and comparing it to the distortions of the present. Other times it may mean throwing out everything.

This will be a place to examine lives and seek answers that speak to our most common humanity.