“We are most human when we play freely, imaginatively, pointlessly. Gamification risks atrophying that most precious capacity.”
philosophy
Posted inFeature
Going Up and Going In
A solo climber considers the outermost reaches of risk, and the unlikely ways in which they redefine us.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Skill Nostalgia
“Is all the beekeeping, baking and leatherwork just escapist fantasy or the start of a radically human approach to work?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Bottom of the Ninth
“In baseball and in life, there is a cost to our pursuit of an error-free existence.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Brain Surgery Taught Me About the Fragile Gift of Consciousness
“After the trauma of a high-risk medical procedure, Eric Markowitz discovered a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought — but in presence.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Socrates Would Be Pleased
“With a class of college students and inmates, teaching philosophy in prison is a rowdy, honest and hopeful provocation.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fear and Trembling in the Garrison
“Tonight, across this country and on bases far afield, young American soldiers will take shifts guarding explosives. They did so last night. They will do so again tomorrow night.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Does Luck Exist?
“Lee John Whittington, a philosopher of luck, didn’t think ‘unluckiness’ was a quality people had. Then he met his wife.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Percival Everett Can’t Say What His Novels Mean
“The author of ‘Erasure’ is renowned for his satires of genre, identity, and America. But his great target may be language itself.”