Tangent

In The Thing with Feathers, Noah Strycker writes about the humanity of animals, which raises the question: how do we justify killing them?

The crisis in Ukraine has been framed as a clash of civilizations. But the very concept of “civilization” gets fuzzier the more you examine it, and may not help to illuminate real-world conflict.

When we get to Mars—by government agency or reality show—how will we make up our neighbourhoods? The process has already started: for just five dollars, you can claim a piece of the Red Planet.

The middle class is shrinking. As the Internet has wildly expanded our options, it has, paradoxically, shrunk our horizons: as thinkers like Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform, warn, a generic set of crowd-pleasing blockbusters dominates more than ever.

In The News: A User’s Manual, Alain de Botton argues that more sensitive portrayals of criminals would lead to greater empathy. But news media doesn’t completely refrain from humanizing criminals—it just depends on their skin colour.

Before World War I, many believed that the end of war was as a “mathematical certainty.” Today, we laugh ruefully at such sentiments. But if peace is not a guarantee, there's a good reason for pacifism to lower its sights.

Disneyland was founded on nostalgia for an idyll that never existed—but when it comes to designing human happiness, maybe imagining the golden past makes for a better future.

The idea of “cowardice,” as both a military category and a moral concept, holds less water as our society becomes more considerate of the psychological factors—like anxiety—that compound our behaviour. But without a notion of cowardice, do we deserve our notions of bravery?

It seems impossible to contract post-traumatic stress disorder from trauma you did not experience. But the presence of PTSD in soldiers’ family members means we haven't fully understood the nature of PTSD.