By: Travis Vaughn on March 11, 2024
In Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Pragya Agarwal wants readers to recognize the urgency of understanding implicit/unconscious bias.[1] Using “‘implicit bias’ and ‘unconscious bias’ interchangeably,”[2] Agarwal defines the terms as “biases that exist without our conscious knowledge, the ones that manifest themselves in our actions and reactions often without us realising it, rearing their heads when…
By: Noel Liemam on March 11, 2024
The reading for this week is challenging for me to read and to comprehend because of the size and the time I have for it. The book by Yascha Mounk, “The Identity Trap,” is broken down in four sections, which are the Origin, the Victory, and the Flaws of Identity Synthesis, and finally the fourth…
By: Akwese on March 9, 2024
Years ago I was a part of an Intentional Living Community. We came together around our commitment to both God and social justice. To live in the house required us to share a set of core values while also adhere to certain rules and community norms that included things like splitting house chores, rotating who…
By: Elysse Burns on March 8, 2024
The Identity Trap hits a raw nerve. Not because Mounk’s thoughts challenge strongly held convictions, but because I am once again reminded of humanity’s brokenness. We live in a broken world filled with injustice. Dr. Sandra Richter speaks to our fractured reality in Stewards of Eden. She writes, “Yahweh’s world was a world in which…
By: Daren Jaime on March 8, 2024
As my 2-year-old son slept across my chest in our Westchester County apartment, my life would change by this morning. I was awakened by my sister’s call; a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She wanted to know if I got called into work. I usually would work the day shift, but on 9/11,…
By: Esther Edwards on March 8, 2024
“We need and desperately want to make sense of our world: to compose/dwell in some conviction of what is ultimately true.”[1] But what is ultimately true? Can we really know? These questions, steeped in skepticism, form the basis of postmodern thinking. It seems to have set the societal tone in how life, truth, and faith…
By: Kari on March 7, 2024
“He’s the best thing God could ever give to America!” It is a rare moment when I am speechless. It took me a moment to respond. I was at a church speaking to the children about my life in Africa. One of the teachers was telling me of the “horrific” state of America. His comment…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 7, 2024
Bothersome, that is how I found this book and my trying to understand. I do not believe I would’ve ever been a philosophy major….it hurts my head. My thoughts on Steven Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault; I get it, or I think I get it, we are going down…
By: Julie O'Hara on March 7, 2024
When doing some research for undergraduate assignments I ‘discovered’ that my home state has incredibly deep racist roots. In 1857 Oregon voted for statehood and adopted a constitution which explicitly said that no free negro or mulatto could legally move into Oregon, own property, or make contracts. Further, the state would make laws to punish…
By: Shela Sullivan on March 7, 2024
Here is an individual I like to have coffee with! Yascha Mounk’s book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time refers to a situation where rigid adherence to group identities, whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion, or other factors can hinder meaningful dialogue and understanding between different groups. Here are…
By: Erica Briggs on March 7, 2024
Befuddled. That’s the word I would use to describe my efforts to understand where Yascha Mounk is coming from in The Identity Trap. On the one hand I weighed his personal background: his mother lost most of her family in the Holocost, he became a teenage activist noting Germany’s lack of support of refugees, and…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 7, 2024
I am appalled at prejudice and injustice based on race or ethnicity. I did not come to this conviction initially from any social or political movements that were seeking to address it, but it was formed in me from my Christian worldview, stemming from the heart of God. In Psalm 67:4, the Psalmist writes “May…
By: Chad Warren on March 7, 2024
My teenage daughter and I recently discussed the book she just finished reading for school, Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451.”[1] What we both found fascinating was how, nearly 75 years ago, he imagined much of the situation we find ourselves in today. Written in 1951 Bradbury portrays, he imagined a world where people are entertained…
By: Ryan Thorson on March 7, 2024
Hi, I am a follower of Jesus. My given name is Ryan, my family name is Thorson. I have lived almost all of my life in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America in the late 20th and early 21st century. I have been married to my best friend for almost twenty years…
By: Graham English on March 7, 2024
“The Identity Trap” by Yascha Mounk is a book that I didn’t want to read but, ultimately, I’m glad I did. I was born and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa in the darkest days of apartheid. I was born with a number assigned to me that identified my gender as male and my…
By: Christy Liner on March 7, 2024
In 2021, my family moved to Austin, the most liberal city in the state of Texas. I love it here. I love the diversity and honestly have no intention of leaving this city as long as I live in Texas. I laugh when my conservative family worries about the influence this city has on us.…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 6, 2024
Author Yascha Mounk in The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time starts his book by reminding the reader that throughout history there have been small groups of people who have mistreated, enslaved, and otherwise wielded power over other large numbers of people who have been deemed to be less equal.…
By: Jennifer Vernam on March 6, 2024
Goodreads describes Explaining Postmodernism as an “intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.”[1] Its author, Stephen Hicks, takes us on another step of our journey in understanding the current context in which we find ourselves. Themes from…
By: Chris Blackman on March 6, 2024
To all reading this, what would go through your mind if, prior to meeting someone for your first date, they sent you an email or a text that says, “Before we meet, there is something I need you to know. I am an ex-felon and served three years in the Nevada State Prison.” I had…
By: Pam Lau on March 6, 2024
In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was post-truth: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”[1] In that same year, the people around the world from all political and religious beliefs watched with mourning as unbelievable stories were…
