Writing helps me to develop and understand concepts that come to mind intuitively or reflexibly, frequently providing unanticipated insights as I reread what I’ve written, a sort of communication mechanism connecting me to my subconscious perhaps, or perhaps just a means to add dimension to perceptions and introspections. 

Whatever the case, it’s an important cognitive tool.  

It led me recently, as I worked on a micro story, to reflect on the similarity between neoliberal and “woke” philosophies, in both cases, purportedly liberal but in fact, extreme in their exclusionary tendencies and refusal to tolerate dissent.  In each case, advocating censorship and demanding conformity in the name of liberty and thus, oxymoronic. 

Then, while writing this brief reflection, it brought to mind a similar phenomenon with reference to Christianity, how the Paulist revolution totally turned the original concept espoused by the Nazarene and his direct followers on its head, turning a positive doctrine of inclusion and tolerance into a negative exclusionary and restrictive means of control. 

Our minds, as Freud, Jung and others noted, are strange and complex instruments, capable of finding truth in the depths of deception while concurrently distorting reality to promote deceit.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.