As a straight, white, middle-aged, college-educated, settled-community, cisgender man, I know that I benefit from more than my fair share of privilege. So if I have found Pride Month somewhat stressful, I can only imagine how others must have felt. Pride Month just isn’t what it used to be. What […]
Historian David Olusoga has been speaking about the ironies of ‘cancel culture’: Olusoga, whose work has explored black Britishness and the legacy of empire and slavery, said that people “feel perfectly comfortable making these comments about me without being able to point to a single reference or footnote in my […]
Hello! I hope your Saturday is going well. Here is a talk I gave in November, at the Psychological Society of Ireland’s annual conference. The transcript appears below. Enjoy! * * * * * * Transcript: Psychology, religion, and public policy Now, this particular topic is very wide-ranging. I wouldn’t […]
Ireland often likes to see itself as a cosmopolitan kind of place, where the world’s tourists, investors, and bohemian artistes are promised the traditional hundred thousand welcomes. As the most recent example of our keenness to globalise, witness our incorporation of the latest intellectual trend: delusional-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-based anarchy! Last weekend’s violence […]
Well, that escalated quickly. Or, rather, slowly. Because when democracies start to fray, the corrosion is usually incremental. Few regimes are overthrown overnight. The first few inflammatory statements are dismissed as innocuous, even idiotic, but gradually norms are shifted, tribes moulded, and scapegoats identified. Out-group hostility is the fulcrum of […]
Here is a blast from the not-so-distant past: the Republican president speaks the day after the Democrats win a bitterly contested presidential election. Take it away, George W.: No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday across the country. […]
