LINKS - March 16th, 2022
The Book of Job, trash-burning volcanos, phenomenology, the ends of pandemics, and the meaning of happiness.
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
The Impatience of Job
By Abraham Riesman, Slate
“Lucky for us, there’s an ancient text that offers guidance on how to navigate the pain that lies before us, and how to start rebuilding in the ruins. It’s called the Book of Job. We just haven’t been reading it right.”
How to think like a phenomenologist
“One of the primary goals of phenomenology is precisely to get past this thorny issue of the world’s existence apart from our experience so that we can investigate a much more directly relevant topic: the world exactly as we experience it. By setting aside the ordinary philosophical distinction between consciousness and reality, we open up a wide variety of investigations that can help us better understand our ordinary lives.”
People, Not Science, Decide When a Pandemic Is Over
By Tanya Lewis, Scientific American
“All pandemics end eventually. But how, exactly, will we know when the COVID-19 pandemic is really ‘over’? It turns out the answer to that question may lie more in sociology than epidemiology.”
Ask Us Anything: Why can’t we burn our trash in volcanoes?
By Claire Maldarelli & Jessica Boddy, Popular Science
“At first glance, a volcano’s hot lava seems ideal for incinerating our trash. But, like so many things in science, it’s so much more complicated than that. And the short answer is, the effort might not be worth the reward.”
Happiness: To accept and find harmony with reason
By Desolhar, desolhar-philo.com/
Ok, so I’ll be honest, this website is nearly inscrutable to me. I am not even sure how to explain it. I encourage you to look around because it’s really something. I think it’s an attempt at organizing all of western philosophy into a taxonomy. I’m including this specific post where the author, who it seems goes by “Desolhar,” analyzed the definition of happiness in about 90 different philosophic texts, and then synthesized them into one simple definition: To accept and find harmony with reason. I found this fascinating, so I am passing it along to you. What do you think happiness is?