Aeon
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A Trip to Malory Towers
At Aeon, Nakul Krishna revisits Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, a series of boarding school novels, for a glimpse at the ethics that join Blyton’s novels together.
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The Cost of Gay Liberation
Jim Downs writes for Aeon on the radical socialist roots of the gay liberation movement in America, as well as the role of economics in allowing individuals to shape an openly gay identity.
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A Rhetorical Tragedy
We enjoy tragedy because through it, we are able to purge those aspects of ourselves with which we are most uncomfortable. Our onstage avatar embodies all those thoughts and feelings, desires and fears, ambitions and delusions with which we are…
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A Blind Eye to History
At Aeon, Robert Neer discusses the particular absence of military history from American universities. While general history courses cover the overall societal impact of some military campaigns and political science covers the effect of military action on government, Neer notes…
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Romancing the Cure
Homer understood in the 8th century BCE what modernity has yet to accept—love can be an addiction, and when it is, we need substantial outside help. Angela Chen writes for Aeon on romantic love as addiction, and the taboos around…
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Origins of the “Fantasy North”
E.R. Truitt writes for Aeon on the long history of the “Fantasy North,” the lands, people, and culture at the top of the world that have fascinated pop culture for centuries. Truitt also marks the points in history when the…
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Keep Your Secrets
For Aeon, Tiffany Jenkins writes on the importance of secrets in a person’s individual development. In addition to psychological and sociological research, Jenkins traces the vital role secrets and secret-keeping plays in classical children’s literature.
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In Defense of Precisely Inexact Language
Writing for Aeon, Elijah Millgram uses 1984 and George Orwell’s Newspeak/doublethink idea of language to examine why imperfect language, and expression that is sometimes inexact, contradictory, or misleading, can be better for developing the scope of human reasoning.
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Killing Baby Hitler
Rebecca Onion writes for Aeon about taking the “what ifs” of history very seriously: In October 2015, when asked if, given the chance, he would kill the infant Hitler, the US presidential candidate Jeb Bush retorted with an enthusiastic: ‘Hell…
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Laboring for Masculinity
Allison J. Pugh writes for Aeon on the role of labor in defining American masculinity. After interviewing nearly a hundred subjects, Pugh looks at how work defines the self-worth of men, and how un/underemployed men try to redefine masculinity in…
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The Paradox of Growth As Good
Martin Kirk writes for Aeon on the paradoxical connection between economic growth and eliminating poverty. Kirk illustrates that increasing the size of the economic pie, by spending the world’s finite resources, with no change in distribution to impoverished populations, will…
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Does Anyone Speak English Here?
At Aeon, John McWhorter explores the twists and turns through English’s linguistic history that brought us the “deeply peculiar” language structure used today.