Distracted by Difference

Michael Sobocinski

The Lure of Unity: Buber, Merton, and the Self

Martin Buber and Thomas Merton both tried to move past the fragmented self. Why is the desire for unity so important, and how can it sometimes lead us astray?

Michael Sobocinski

The Wound Before the Wound

Long before disconnection hardens into grievance, it starts as something smaller and easier to miss, in the ordinary arithmetic of small social costs.

Michael Sobocinski

Scheler, Buber, and the Political Economy of Ressentiment

How Max Scheler's ressentiment and Martin Buber's I-Thou/I-It distinction show why shame psychology and neoliberal political economy describe the same wound.

Michael Sobocinski

The Wound Doesn't Care What You Feed It

Grievance politics and market extraction look like separate problems. They're the same relational failure, and ignoring that costs us more than we think.

Michael Sobocinski

The Philosophy Behind Taking Connectedness Seriously

Before something is one thing or many things, what is it? A deep dive into Aristotle, Whitehead, and Buber on potential, relation, and becoming.

Michael Sobocinski

Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Logic Behind a Relational Universe

A closer look at the actual argument structure behind Parmenides's monism and Heraclitus's logos, and why this ancient dispute quietly underwrites a contemporary case for relational ontology.

Michael Sobocinski

The 2,500-Year-Old Argument About What's Real

Parmenides argued that reality must be one and unchanging, while Heraclitus saw order in constant change. People still debate this question.

Michael Sobocinski

The Buffer: What Holds Us When We Face Death

Since 2011, strangers in a hundred countries have met over tea and cake to talk about dying. The research on death anxiety suggests what they're looking for.

Michael Sobocinski

We Shall All of Us Die

In Tolstoy’s novella, a dying judge finds comfort with one person in his house: the servant who says those words to him and sometimes sits up all night holding his legs.

Michael Sobocinski

Why I'm Writing This Book

On our wounded children, a collapsing culture, and a conviction that they are the same problem.