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Dignity for All

What actions can we take to end "rankism" in society?

  • Donald Trump, Orchestra Conductor

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    Donald Trump, Orchestra Conductor

    If “All the world’s a stage,” we should give Donald Trump a standing ovation for his compelling personification of a demagogue. Mr. Trump has writ large the premise that undergirds a predatory world. The American election of 2016 can be seen as a contest over whether to affirm the primal surviva...

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    April 19, 2017

  • When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens

    A Philosophic Fiction: Part 3 of 4 An Eye for an Eye… Rob: If the Game of Selves were stable, the response to an act of predation wouldn’t be to demand “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.” Instead of retaliating, the goal would be to quell fires before they spread. But […]

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    April 19, 2017

  • When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens: Part 4

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens: Part 4

    A Philosophic Fiction: Conclusion A Better Game Bob: What will we do now? Rob: There have long been humans who sensed that the commonsense notion of selfhood was misleading. The people who supported our liberation wouldn’t have seen fit to back us if they had not begun to question separate and d...

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    April 19, 2017

  • President Trump: Poster Boy for Rankism

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    President Trump: Poster Boy for Rankism

    Rankism is the degradation of those with less power or lower rank. It’s somebodies using the power of their rank to humiliate or disadvantage those they see as nobodies. Rankism is no more defensible than racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. In fact, rankism—putting people down and keeping them ther...

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    April 19, 2017

  • How to Keep our Dignity While Ceding Human Preeminence

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    How to Keep our Dignity While Ceding Human Preeminence

    If we think of brains as organic machines–albeit far more complex machines than the digital computers we’ve built to date–then it’s clear that brain power has been limited by the stringent conditions of evolution, gestation in a uterus, and birth through a baby-sized aperture in the pelvis. Remo...

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    January 29, 2016

  • “Self” Is a Misnomer

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    “Self” Is a Misnomer

    [This is the third post in the series Why Everything You Know about Your “Self” Is Wrong. The series explores how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics.] As suggested in the two preceding posts in this series, selfhood ...

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    February 27, 2015

  • The Superself: Genome, Menome, and Wenome

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    The Superself: Genome, Menome, and Wenome

    [This is the fourth post in the series Why Everything You Know about Your “Self” Is Wrong. The series explores how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics.] Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent Of everything you thin...

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    February 27, 2015

  • What is Man?

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    What is Man?

    This is the fifth post in the series Why Everything You Know about Your “Self” Is Wrong. The series explores how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics. “What Is Man?” is the title of a little book by Mark Twain. He held...

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    February 27, 2015

  • Ducking Death; Surviving Superannuation

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    Ducking Death; Surviving Superannuation

    This is the sixth and final post in the series Why Everything You Know about Your “Self” Is Wrong. The series explores how our understanding of selfhood affects our sense of individuality, our interpersonal relationships, and our politics. We must believe in free will. We have no choice. – Isaac ...

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    February 27, 2015

  • What Was the Most Important Thing People Learned in the 20th Century?

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    What Was the Most Important Thing People Learned in the 20th Century?

    What was the principal take-away from the 20th century? Atomic energy? DNA? Penicillin? Or, something from the world of art or philosophy or psychology? The title question leaves plenty of room for debate. My answer is that the most important learning of the century was disabusing ourselves of th...

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    February 27, 2015

  • Curing the Poison of “Rankism”

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    Curing the Poison of “Rankism”

    I got a close look at the poison of “rankism” at the age of seven, when my classmate Arlene was sent to the hall for the whole school day. Arlene lived on a farm and wore the same dress to school each day. When she spoke, it was in a whisper. Our teacher, Miss Belcher, began every day with an ins...

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    February 27, 2015

  • 100 Words on Love: Unrequited

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    100 Words on Love: Unrequited

    We tend to discount our unrequited loves, but not getting our way with someone is as important to the narrative of our lives as the outcome we so ardently desire. As in all walks of life, so, too, in courtship: discovering what doesn’t work, provides the clues we need to change, and changed, to c...

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    February 27, 2015

  • Ending Academic Apartheid: Equity and Dignity for Adjunct Professors

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    Ending Academic Apartheid: Equity and Dignity for Adjunct Professors

    In choosing the academic life, most teachers expect to be part of a community committed to freedom, fairness, and justice. It’s the rare academic who does not take pride in belonging to an honorable profession. I was a young college president during the turmoil of the sixties and early seventies....

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    February 27, 2015

  • 6 Reasons You Can’t Win (And 3 Reasons You Can Anyway)

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    6 Reasons You Can’t Win (And 3 Reasons You Can Anyway)

    6 Reasons You Can’t Win Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent Of everything you think, And of everything you do, Is for yourself – And there isn’t one. – Wei Wu Wei 1. An interior witness acts as an impartial judge of our shifting fortunes, tracking our wins and losses. No matter what we ...

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    February 27, 2015

  • A New Default Self

    Robert Fuller posted a blog post

    A New Default Self

    Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent Of everything you think, And of everything you do, Is for yourself – And there isn’t one. – Wei Wu Wei Wei Wu Wei is the pen name of Terence Gray, a 20th-century, Anglo-Irish author of pithy provocations aimed, like the one in the epigraph, at the prevail...

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    February 27, 2015

  • Robert W. Fuller

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