Sam Dresser

Only at the end of his long magnum opus, Religion in Human Evolution, did Robert Bellah realize what his book was really about: play. Though the tome deals with the grandest subjects, attempting a vast synthesis of thinking from cosmology to anthropology, it is play that is eventually seen as the ultimate animating force. “Play was there all the time,” he reflects on his work, “just below the surface.”

The same could be said - is said - about play’s role in our history. Like Bellah, once it’s noticed you can find the play showing up everywhere you look. In the long view play is essential in the truest sense of the word. It is at the heart of fami...

Very interesting, provocative piece!

In non-arranged marriages partners can choose not only who they like (given that affections are reciprocated) but they can choose *how* they go about choosing. This seems to me a crucial point. The dating app industry is supremely weird in a variety of (often hilarious) ways, and I’ve got some excellent first hand data to back up the assertion. But it is first and foremost a choice to engage in it - plenty of people get on just fine without Tinder, of course, and do find love in Badiou’s sense of necessary spotanaity (if that isn’t too much of a contradiction). I just fail to see a qualitative difference, from a retrospective point of view, in w...

Over the last 15 years, I think what is meant by “War on Terror” has changed several times, and therefore so have the justifications. The original casus belli is, of course, the attacks of September 11th. ‘Punishing the terrorists’ under the guise of ‘ridding the world of terror’ and, in its stead, installing ‘beacons of democracy’ was all given intellectual and moral cover by of the attacks. The War on Terror is waged by the Americans and their partners against non-state and state actors – the only justification truly necessary for this campaign was the provocation of 9/11.

I guess because of the amorphousness of the term War on Terror, it became easy to tack on all sort ...

Several times I’ve bought a Eurail pass to spend a week or more bouncing between European cities, often spending the night on the train to save money and maximize distance. Some of the trains have been models of comfort, like that between Oslo and Stavenger, surrounded by dramatic vistas that are so easy to lose yourself in (hours will pass in a trance). Other trains were more trying, particularly the journey between Belgrade and Sofia, which was swelteringly hot and devoid of any refreshments, a clunky, unfriendly Soviet-era wagon. But even then – after hours upon hours on the train – I’m always a little disappointed to disembark for so many of the reasons mentioned in the essay: the pas...

Privacy, and valuing privacy, seem to be a fairly recent obsessions of ours. In the long and wide view, it’s rare. Whether you’re living in a cramped and open hovel with your extended family sometime in the 1400s or posting up in an ancient Roman apartment around the end of the Republic, or roughing it in the desert with the Bedouin, or living in any number of explosively crowded and poor cities, there ain’t much privacy for you. Privacy is a luxury and a consequence of our reverence for The Individual - both of which should suggest how unusual it really is.

Very interesting piece! I like the way it reminds me of how so many theories about the self grapple with what may, with some squinting, be called ‘distance’ – that which needs to be traversed between one’s self and, for lack of a better term, the world. How this ‘distance’ is articulated is really the defining feature of many theories and the comparison between Vedanta and VR does well to bring this out.

What a lovely, memorable piece! I was moved by the line from the Odes: “we’re ready/to trek the final journey as companions.” Oftentimes the ancients can seem so remote and austere, but Horace’s poetry in particular has a way of illuminating the human in them, and suddenly they’re not so distant anymore.

I wonder about a comparison with Lucian’s view on friendship and I’d be curious to hear what people think. I might be getting this wrong, but it seems for Horace friendship is found in repose: guys hanging out after work or a war with a bottle of wine and some good jokes. For Lucian, in his dialogue Toxaris, friendship is much more martial and involves big, heavy things like loyalt...

Americans take what they like from the Founding Fathers. It’s sort of like reading the Bible. If you’ve already got an idea of how things should be, it isn’t difficult to find some biblical support. You just have to dig deep enough. The Founding Fathers wrote so much, lived so long, and embodied so many contradictions that Americans of every political stripe, throughout our history, could call on them for buttressing and ammunition (“Yeah? Well Jefferson supported slavery, so....”)

The influence of the Founding Fathers remains strong, of course. They’re everywhere and, like another commenter said, often appear as a monolithic block, a clutch of cloned wigs and gen...

At fourteen, maybe thirteen, I made my first solo trek into New York City from the quite comfiness of suburbia. It wasn’t entirely solo - I was with a friend - but it was solo enough to feel like we were striking out on our own, independent and brave, barely pubescent Lewis & Clarks ready to face the fatal dangers of Midtown Manhattan on a quiet Sunday afternoon. “The City” lay at our fingertips, ready to be taken. We were not afraid.

But we did immediately manage to fall for nearly every scam in the book. I paid huge cash for comedy club tickets in Times Square that we couldn’t use for another 7 years (that two drink minimum kills you). I bought twenty dollars worth of candy t...

There are plenty of ‘sad songs’ - songs that naturally fall under that category - and then there are songs that really do make you sad. These sad songs, the ones that pack a punch, that can even be classified more objectively as ‘happy’, are difficult to listen to with other people.

I can’t share a sad song with the group, or with a close friend, or with anyone at all. Even though I know that, yes, other people do listen to the same song and might get the same feeling from it, I need to at least keep the illusion that this song is my song, that this emotion is my emotion. So to that extent, sad songs become a sort of warm comfort, like a quiet vista, or a beloved painting that reca...

This isn’t a joke: I enjoy Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Or some of it. His later work is a bit too mystical, too hand-wavy and theoretical. I can’t follow it, even with guidance. Perhaps I simply didn’t give it the time of day it requires. But I did dig into Being and Time, very slowly over the course of half a year, and found it extraordinary.

Of course it’s not at all the kind of book I’m capable of understanding without several patient helping hands. Even then, I doubt I got much of it. I felt the same as Gilbert Ryle, the book’s first and surprisingly sympathetic reviewer, did upon completing it: “I am well aware how far I have fallen short of understanding this diffic...

Solitary confinement is clearly cruel and unusual. The evidence shows that it is physically and psychologically devastating to the point that rehabilitation becomes impossible. It is and has been used as torture - and called by that name too. It is meant to annihilate a person. The argument for this is settled.

But that hasn’t kept it from being used. Why? The reason is that there is a fundamental disagreement about what the purpose of prison is. As the Scandinavians - and particularly the Norwegians - well-attest, prison can be made to rehabilitate inmates so that they can once again become functioning members of society. Meanwhile in America, and many other parts of the world, th...