James Lyons Walsh

I am not a journalist--in fact, I write pro bono--but this site has been ascribing my work published in newspapers to other people, so I'm using it as a tool. I'm proud to have dropped out of high school, out of the top graduate program in condensed matter physics in the United States, and out of science after finishing a doctorate in theoretical physics, because these acts betoken my refusal to be inculcated with the consumerist, militarist, pronatalist, religiocentric, racist, sexist, classist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, anthropocentric values so prevalent in the nation of my birth. These values are dragging two million species to extinction on a planet we do not own. Our own species is one of those endangered by the behavior that emerges in keeping with these values, as it has been since before I started refusing to go to school at age 14, in 1984. Back then, my main concern for our civilization's continued existence centered on nuclear winter, but Christmas of 1984, the first I spent institutionalized, fell in the last month that the global monthly average temperature was less than its 20th century average. Not everyone earning less money than they might is failing. Some simply refuse to adopt the brutality necessary to participate fully in the so-called meritocracy. I write to promote thoughtful living by humans and hence justice for all life on Earth. My essays have appeared in the Albany Times Union and the Albany Student Press. My letters have appeared in the Albany Times Union and The Washington Post. I blog at https://www.fpmalbany.org, at https://www.godispoor.org/, at https://www.proudfatherofnone.org/, and at https://www.momshair.org/.