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Articles by Benjamin Cain
Toxic Masculinity and Late-Modernity’s Ideal Man
A community for readers, writers, poets, satirists, creatives, and thinkers of thoughts The men’s rights movement’s overcompensation for the incoherence of manliness Press enter or click to view image in full size One of the underappreciated drivers of what Freedom House calls the global surge of authoritarianism and the retreat of democracy in the twenty-first century is the rising men’s rights movement.
Godless Societies are as Irrational as Religious Ones
By targeting the most simple-minded religious fundamentalists, New Atheists left the impression that theistic religion makes for an especially irrational and thus irresponsible, dangerous culture. Just think of some titles of books by the four leaders of that mass-media-created fad, known as "New Atheism," a movement that subsequently split up due to politicization, or infection by the wider culture war during the rise of Trumpian fascism.
There Are No Conservative Debaters
In the wake of conservative activist and provocateur Charlie Kirk's shooting, corporate news channels have rushed to praise Kirk for "debating" the issues, and thus for trying to settle disagreements with words rather than violence. This is to say that these outlets have seized on this opportunity to indirectly congratulate themselves for likewise supposedly staging political "debates" that support a healthy democracy.
Are People Special from a Cosmic Perspective?
A dialogue on whether secular humanism is consistent with philosophical naturalism Press enter or click to view image in full size This is a dialogue I had with on the relationship between philosophical naturalism and secular humanism. The big question ends up being whether any kind of anthropocentrism is justified, given the cosmic perspective that naturalism affords. This dialogue builds on our previous one on metaphysics, which is linked at the end.
Tool-Users and the Mastery of Writing
You've probably heard the meme that AI isn't just another tool. But whether AI is or isn't a neutral tool that can be used well or poorly is confusing because of Big Tech's hype around AI. For starters, there aren't any real AIs. Instead, there are large language models (LLMs) that repackage libraries of human-generated content. The meme that AI isn't just another tool would apply to a genuine AI, as in an artificial general intelligence, meaning a nonbiological mind.
Cultural Ironies and Men's Expendability
With the rise of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, civilizations have been largely patriarchal. Men have tended to rule over women, and that power arrangement reinforced rationales for the differences between men and women. Men and women were supposed to be masculine and feminine, respectively, and religion, art, and philosophy fleshed out those assumptions to train civilized boys and girls.
Our Maker's Creativity is Ambiguous
What's the difference between building and destroying something, or between being creative and destructive? We understand what it means for us to build things or be productive, rather than wasting our time. We might plan to build something based on a design in our minds, and we gather tools and materials and assemble the thing that matches our mental image. Destruction would be disassembly, or the reversion of an artificial state to the natural, wild default.
The Precarious Role of Metaphysics in Nature
This is a dialogue I had with about the role of metaphysics in philosophy, given the rise of the scientific picture of nature's creativity. Benjamin Western philosophy originated as a fusion of proto-science and a neoshamanic quest for wisdom or practical guidance. The idea was to learn how best to live based on understanding how the real world works. Western philosophy was likely influenced by Eastern schools of thought, such as Buddhism.
The Acute Meaning Crisis for Spoiled Consumers
There's likely a special meaning crisis for affluent members of technologically advanced, secular societies. The problem isn't just that information flows freely in such places, so even nonexperts learn the disenchanting truths about our basic condition of being people who've outgrown an inhuman cosmos. We evolved to live as animals in the wilderness, but we acquired cultural capacities, such as science and other liberal institutions, that enable us to see beyond our biological functions.
The Best Religious Response to Atheism is Two Words Long
Here's an irony: the best religious response to atheistic criticisms consists of two words, and few apologists have ever spoken them. For centuries, skeptics, secular humanists, and philosophical naturalists have refuted religious dogmas and rejected religious institutions and practices. God doesn't exist, so the scriptures and creeds are absurd, and religious organizations are grandiose frauds making a mockery of our potential to progress by solving problems with reason and empathy.
Religion as Faulty Technology or Disposable Art
The difference between technology and art isn't as clear as it might seem. The words "technology," "technical," and "technique" derive from the Greek word téchnē, meaning "art, craft, proficiency, systematic method, wiles, cunning," as drawn from Merriam-Webster. So, art, craft, and systematic proficiency are mixed up in the original meaning. This mix is still found in the assumptions that an artist has mastered a craft, and a craft's performance requires skill in adhering to a method.
AI Slop and the Artist's Struggle
It's easy enough to understand why writers would want to use large language models, or pseudo-AIs, to game a writing platform like Medium. If you can pass off an LLM-generated article as having been written by a person, that's easy money since you could churn out dozens of those articles in minutes. Presumably, LLMs will improve over the coming months and years, so their content will be harder to detect.
Spot the Difference Between Honest and Dishonest Writing
There are roughly two kinds of nonfiction writers: those who try to tell the truth and those who aim to cover things up. Truth-telling writers Truth-tellers may be applauded or reviled for their attempt to write the truth as they understand it. They may study various subjects and learn how to think critically, so that they're equipped to question social presuppositions, speak truth to power, or reveal profound truths that lie hidden in plain sight.
Femininity and the Humanist Restoration of Goddess Culture
Femininity and the Humanist Restoration of Goddess Culture • ‘The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”’ — Sigmund Freud, said to Marie Bonaparte Freud’s infamous mystification about what women want is understandable if we reflect on how men have oppressed women for thousands of years.
The Clash Between Metamodernism and Existentialism
The Clash Between Metamodernism and Existentialism This is a dialogue I had with about whether the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke’s account of spiritual purpose is consistent with the existential insight that people, unlike impersonal animals, inevitably experience alienation. The drug-fuelled 1960s saw a creative secularization of religious concepts and stories, even as Western religions were originally theologizations of naturalistic or pantheistic philosophies from ancient India and Greece.
The Engines of Cosmic Wildness
Ever since we became fixated on the exploration of symbols that make up our cultures, starting some tens of thousands of years ago, we grappled with the world by humanizing it. We imagined that the outer world is just like our mental interiors, animated by consciousness, reason, and will. There were spirits, gods, angels, fairies, and monsters around every corner, setting natural processes in motion, directing all affairs, and reigning over us.
When Conservative Jewish Rabbis Hide their Atheism
“Technology is the enemy of reverence.” So says the rabbi and author Harold Kushner in his book Who Needs God. There, he explains the problem with idolatry: What is wrong with idol-worship, with worshipping human achievements as if they were the ultimate accomplishment, is not just that it is disloyal or offensive to God. The sin of idol-worship is that it is futile.
The Corporate Source of Social Media Sophistry
Infotainment and philosophy for busy consumers Press enter or click to view image in full size Marshall McLuhan famously said that the medium is the message, which means that the technology used to present content sets some of the content’s parameters. Thus, we can learn about the kinds of content that are popular in an era by recognizing the limits of the technology that conveys the information. There’s an enormous difference, for instance, between books and tweets.
Must Religions be Lamely Theistic to be Socially Useful?
A dialogue on the sociology of religion and secular humanism’s prospects as an alternative faith Press enter or click to view image in full size Below is a dialogue I had with on religion’s social and political roles, and whether atheists can afford to condemn “religion” as such. The stereotypical atheist is an activist who angrily denounces religious folks for being irrational and wants all religions to end.
The Incoherence of Manliness
Debating who’s manly is a fool’s errand Press enter or click to view image in full size “But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea “We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well, But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.” ― Henry Lawson, When I Was King and Other Verses Like femininity, manliness or masculinity is a shifting cultural ideal, a model of strength, virility, and...
Trumpism and the Cthulhu Antichrist
Why liberalism should be grounded in existential humour Press enter or click to view image in full size Is Donald Trump essentially Cthulhu? I mean, is he a monster whose very existence proves there’s no God, and that life is an absurd nightmare that only intrepid philosophers and delirious mystics dare contemplate?
Is Religion Needed to Prevent Existential Despair?
Harold Kushner was the American rabbi and author of the popular book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981). He was a Reconstructionist Jew, which means he sought to reform Jewish conservatism by naturalizing the religion’s theology and practices.
Our Babyish Filters for Deep Time and Space
Our Babyish Filters for Deep Time and Space Suppose you defer to scientists when thinking about what’s real, and you adopt the modern skeptical attitude towards the outlandish, loyalty-testing dogmas you find in religions’ theologies. In that case, you’re liable to be complacent in judging yourself to be the adult in the room. Rather than being saddled with some bizarre anachronism, you’re the one with the rational worldview.
The Hiding of Sophistry in Skimmable Texts
The Hiding of Sophistry in Skimmable Texts Should writers adapt to the smartphone’s standards by writing only content that’s easily skimmed? That’s what one viral article that got around 9k claps and over 250 comments advises: People don’t read blogs the way they used to. They skim. They scroll. They snack on content. If you’re writing a 1,000-word blog post like it’s your thesis on the history of the Roman Empire, you’ve already lost 90% of your audience.
Prophetic Insights in the Cosmic Void
This is a notice of a dialogue I had with Nathan Fifield on whether my views overlap with the Western prophetic tradition, and whether dark cosmic insights are perennially found in countercultures.
Progress and the Daemonic Critique of Naturalness
Progress and the Daemonic Critique of Naturalness Art is supposed to be disposable or at least discretionary. That’s not just a point about art in the late modern period, in which content is often digitized and easily copied. Even priceless art objects are considered optional matters of taste. You appreciate the fine arts only if you’ve acquired the taste for such pretentious displays.
The Cosmic Importance of Art
Doesn’t science entail nihilism, or the illusoriness of all values? Contrary to the Aristotelian worldview that influenced the Church in the Late Middle Ages, due to the Church’s Thomistic integration of that teleological view of nature, there are no “final causes” or purposes that everything seeks to fulfill just by being a member of its natural kind.
The Link Between the Sublime and the Ridiculous
The Link Between the Sublime and the Ridiculous In The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine said, “The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately.” Paine wasn’t the first to explore this idea, according to Quote Investigator.
There is No Scientific Understanding of Nature
There is No Scientific Understanding of Nature There’s a difference between understanding something and controlling it. Often, we can control something by tracking its movements, predicting how it responds under various conditions, and exploiting that instrumental knowledge because we understand what we’re dealing with. Indeed, controlling something can become routine, in which case we treat the control as second nature.
Stephen Hawking’s Confused Pantheism
In Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen Hawking argued against the existence of God, but he also deified the laws of nature, so effectively he argued for pantheism, following Albert Einstein and Baruch Spinoza. Their version of pantheism, however, is deeply flawed. Hawking’s argument for atheism is that the laws of nature would leave nothing for God to do since the laws explain the universe’s origin and development.
The Wildness of Nature’s Subversive Creativity
How profound is the observation that nature is wild, as in uncultivated, uncontrolled, stormy, fantastic, barbaric, and deviant? Entropy and the asymmetry of time The thermodynamic concept of entropy can help us understand the roots of this wildness, and in The Big Picture, physicist Sean Carroll lays out Ludwig Boltzmann’s reductive explanation of that concept. Boltzmann and his colleagues argued that we could understand entropy as a feature of how atoms are arranged inside different systems.
Mark Carney’s Misplaced Faith in Trump’s Rationality
Adam Curtis’s multipart documentary Shifty revisits a familiar theme for him, one that’s central to John Ralston Saul’s book Voltaire’s Bastards. Curtis and Saul verge on siding with conservatives in repudiating the liberals’ technocratic overconfidence in logic and bureaucracy.
Should Secular Philosophy be Rooted in Cosmic Horror?
Should Secular Philosophy be Rooted in Cosmic Horror? This is a dialogue I had with about whether the existentially dark implications of philosophical naturalism are coherent and can support a viable secular culture. The European transition from medieval Christendom to liberal modernity was always going to be fraught because of an internal tension.
Faith, Forensics, and the Absurd in Christianity
Faith, Forensics, and the Absurd in Christianity Here’s a dialogue I had with about the upside and the downside of Christianity’s profound implausibility.
Love is Nature’s Compensation for Cosmic Horror
All living things suffer because they evolved and weren’t manufactured. Think of what it would mean to be “created” in the religious sense. When something is the apple of its inventor’s eye, the blueprint or prototype is the center of attention. A corporation spends millions of dollars on research and development, and products are mass-manufactured with giant machines and often elaborate secrecy so that nothing can interfere with the creative process.
The Cosmic Negation of Infantile Presumptions
Why have religious folks from the prehistoric animists to the polytheists, monotheists, and deists personified nature, populating it, in their imaginations, with ghosts, gods, angels, and demons? Because the thought that people have been embedded all along in a thoroughly impersonal universe is horrific. Such cosmic horror is likely antithetical to the purpose of propping up a mainstream civilized culture.
Where’s the Left-Wing Version of Trump in America?
Where’s the Left-Wing Version of Trump in America? Trumpism must be a bane to centrists and, thus, the corporate Democrats. Regardless of what you think of President Trump, he proves that radicalism is possible in the United States government. He shows that if you’re deranged or zealous enough, you can get a lot done in the White House, ignoring traditions in pursuit of a radical agenda.
Modern Self-Deification and the Array of Religions
How have the world’s religions accommodated the rise of science and secular humanism? AI-generated image by DeepAI The ultimate test of the world’s religions is how they were able to accommodate the rise of world-historic, science-driven progress, otherwise known as “modernity.” There’s a relative sense of modernity that applies to each culture’s golden, cutting-edge period, or its sense of its importance or superiority to earlier cultures.
Trump’s Strange Aversion to War
The paradox of Trumpism’s incomplete monstrousness One of the staggering paradoxes of Trumpism is that President Trump seems averse to waging wars. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be paradoxical since we could just assume that an antiwar president or other head-of-state just happens to be morally enlightened or empathetic towards his or her fellow humans.
Don’t Insult the Worldview that’s Home to My Mind
Individualism and the futile debate between theists and atheists Changing worldviews isn’t like changing socks. Culturally speaking, modern Europe and its American and Australian former colonies have been individualistic, thanks to Protestantism’s inward turn. These “Westerners” emphasize personal liberties, the autonomy to be whatever you want and to do what you like.
Science Should be More Lovecraftian
Sean Carroll’s half-hearted undermining of human vanities The likes of Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche, and H.P. Lovecraft married science with the horror genre. In doing so, they established a dynamic in which a mad few emphasize science’s departure from the uplifting assumptions of conventional discourse, while the guardians of society aim to show that the disparity isn’t so unbridgeable.
Napoleonic Cynics and the Pejorative Sense of “Ideology”
The dubious grounds for the pessimistic dismissal of idealists The pejorative sense of “ideology” you still sometimes find expressed today originated with Napoleon Bonaparte’s cynicism. As Britannica says, “when Napoleon linked the name of idéologie with what he had come to regard as the most detestable elements in Revolutionary thought, he invested the same word with all of his feelings of disapprobation and mistrust.” Napoleon’s cynicism is legendary.
Tribal Religions Aren’t Humiliating Enough
Deconstructing fundamentalism, and the need for a deflationary perspective Although science hasn’t eliminated theistic religions, the public availability of empirical knowledge about everything from nature’s inhuman scope to the history of religions has shifted the default in intellectual circles to skepticism about religious creeds and practices. Elsewhere, I’ve explained the two main reasons religions have persisted even long after the scientific revolution.
Is Civilization Doomed Without Religion?
Is Civilization Doomed Without Religion? A dialogue on secular faith and postmodern meaning in a godless cosmos AI-generated image by DeepAI Check out my dialogue with on the sustainability of secular humanism in postmodern times.
Conservatives Have Always Been Antimodern
Donald Trump’s crassness is just gloves-off conservativism Most who think of postmodernism at all probably associate it with the political left, as postmodernism is a highly academic topic, and the Western academy itself tends to be left-of-center.
The Scientific Whitewashing of Nature
Scientists are caught between nature’s monstrousness and their humanistic ethos In his book Reality is Not What it Seems, the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli argues that natural reality is relational and specifically informational. But we should guard against latent anthropocentric connotations of relational language in the hard sciences because the upshot of scientific discoveries is contrary to science’s valiant humanist ethos.
Science Made Theism Archaic
The simple dynamic that makes most religions preposterous The gods lived when everyone thought the world was relatively small. Thousands of years ago, before there were data to the contrary, everyone assumed that what existed was little more than the land on which they stood. There wasn’t even our planet as a spherical thing since no one in the ancient world had overwhelming evidence that the Earth was round.
How Objective is Science?
A dialogue on structural realism and the potential for neo-animistic scientific projections onto nature This is a dialogue I had with about the objectivity of science, and whether scientists humanize nature in their attempt to understand it with their models and popularizations.
What’s Behind Big Tech’s Cult of Transhumanism?
The philosophical issues that the fad’s propaganda ignores I’d wager that the average person who’s heard of transhumanism would associate it with Silicon Valley’s libertarian, tech-bro billionaires and their fanatical customers and hangers-on. Transhumanism, in that case, is essentially a sci-fi cult, a half-baked program for realizing the optimistic scenario you find in some science fiction.
The Gods of Philosophers and the Unwashed Masses
The problem with Bishop Barron’s dismissal of New Atheism In his interview with Tucker Carlson, the apologist and bishop Robert Barron explains why he doesn’t “like” the New Atheists. According to Barron, “there’s nothing new” about “their arguments.” Moreover, They were old hat, borrowed from Marx and Freud and Feuerbach especially. So, nothing new at the intellectual level. They were new in their nastiness.
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