Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday, we target: After

  • Do philosophers, would be and otherwise, and young people, pushing purported truth and causes (plus drinking, drugs and sex), take on big questions?
  • Does such luxury or advantage, even necessity, require a certain societal comfort, tolerance, available time, and academic or family support?
  • Are attendant afterthought or aftermath anticipations and implications often absent, opposite or violent?
  • Is there no lack of big questions, no matter how specious, especially if labeled existential (currently Global Warming/Climate Change top the list)? Why?
  • Are welcome matting illegal aliens and sanctimoniously second-guessing Israel’s and Ukraine’s wars of survival big question subjects?
  • Other than how to responsibly care for self and family, what is, currently, the biggest question for adult American citizens ?
  • Is it for whom to vote in November, not just for the President but the down ballot choices, such as they are, given democracy destroying gerrymandering?
  • Isn’t it damning that the people we elect have not used their power to cure that egregious cancer?
  • Isn’t it damning also that just 2 of 3 eligible voters voted in the 2020 election (though up from historic mid 50 % numbers)?
  • However satisfying or not, did last week’s debate make it clear that two different visions, different paths, are in play for America?
  • Domestically and Internationally, did we get what we voted for last time around?
  • Do records and observations to date, heeding tracks and words, provide answer for the biggest question: For whom to vote?
  • Does answer to that question require another big question: Is the election process trustworthy?
  • Is there work, endless work, required to ensure confidence? What measures matter, need to be verified or changed?
  • Is the answer to the “for whom to vote” much like Hemmingway’s comment on morality?
  • “What’s moral is what you feel good after and what’s immoral is what you feel bad after?” (Death in the Afternoon)
  • Is the profundity of the thought found in the word “after”?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.