This is a repost of a powerful poem by my late uncle John Gilmore, who was a US Marine in Vietnam, a substance-abuse counselor in civilian life, and a gifted poet in both realms. A[…]
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Author: Chris Sunami
Christian Humanism – Is it a Contradiction?
This is the text of an address I delivered in 2007 to The Ohio State University “Students for Freethought” student organization on the topic “Christian Humanism: Is it a Contradiction?” Good evening. I am here[…]
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Long Division
I first encountered author Kiese Laymon when I read his essay “You are the Second Person,” an unapologetically bridge-burning reckoning of his encounter with a assimilationist editor who tried to deracinate his work. What stuck[…]
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Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest
The second Pirates movie was an entertaining romp, with some great action sequences, featuring the always-compelling Johnny Depp. However, the film also featured a disturbing racial subtext. Most blatantly, the film trafficked in broad racial[…]
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Little Miss Sunshine
It is less accurate to say that this laugh-out-loud indie hit advanced a recognizable philosophical thesis of its own than to say that it delivered a big, fat, much-needed slap in the face to the[…]
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The Incredibles
In honor of the recent release of Incredibles 2, a repost of my look at the philosophical implications of the original movie. While I found it impossible not to like and enjoy Brad Bird’s animated[…]
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Animated Parables of a Broken World
It’s the 30th anniversary of three short animated films I saw when they were new, and never forgot. Some images can stick with you for a lifetime. When I was a teenager, in the late[…]
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Trump vs Obama: America’s A/B Experiment
There’s only one lens through which the Trump presidency makes actual sense: As a self-organizing A/B experiment in sociology, carried out on the grandest of scales. The A part of the experiment was a man[…]
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More Reconstructivists
Over the years my reconstructivist art theory has proven inspirational to a number of interesting artists, thinkers and academics. Here are a couple of the coolest ones I’ve come across recently: Above, painter Peter SmeethPeter[…]
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Both Eyes Open: Remembering James Alan McPherson
I first discovered James Alan McPherson when I read his masterful novella Elbow Room, in a collection of stories by black authors called The African American West. I traced it back to his Pulitzer-Prize winning collection, also[…]
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