James William Beard

Documenting my work in print, art, and thought. An experiment in the IndieWeb.

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  • Listening to Rick Roderick

    November pasture in Texas with a lone black cow

    Rick Roderick: Philosopher, Teacher, Humanist, is someone I only encountered recently. I was a child during the years he worked with the Teaching Company (now Great Courses), so it makes sense that I wouldn’t have known about him. But it’s also a travesty, because so much of his work applies to the situations we all encounter on a daily basis. Enough so that it can be eerie and prescient to watch him describe, in the 90s, conditions and conflicts I’ve wrestled with now since 2016. I ran into his work by binging episodes of Worlds Beyond Number, a dungeons and dragons actual play that is firmly grounded in storytelling, fables, and philosophy/morality. If you haven’t listened, you should check it out! I enjoyed it enough to subscribe to the Patreon that supports the show, and lo and behold, their fireside chat segment for subscribers linked directly to Roderick’s lectures. Spoilers for episode 14 of Worlds Beyond Number, but here is an excerpt from the fireside chat:

    Brennan Lee Mulligan:
    Rest in Panama. Yes, exactly. They’re asking is there anything, philosopher or text I should check out? Actually, Taylor, I think you and me have similarly, you’re a big fan of the American Pragmatists, too, right? Like utilitarian–

    Taylor Moore:
    I am. I was also a philosophy undergrad major, and I really got a type.

    Aabria Iyengar:
    You’re not beating the allegations that you’re just Brennan doing a bit right now.

    Moore:
    I know. I’m him but worse. I’m the Danny DeVito to his Arnold Schwartzenegger. That’s okay. I’m the fun one. I’m the nasty [laughs] I’m the nasty one. I gamble. Yeah. I think I did my senior paper, did my dissertation, or whatever they’re called.

    Iyengar:
    Senior thesis?

    Moore:
    Yes, on William James.

    Mulligan:
    I’ll give a rec. I’ll give a rec, Taylor shared a great video lecture series by this guy, Rick Roderick, that I really loved, which is a great, go watch Rick Roderick. Those lectures are really fun.

    Iyengar:
    Drop the link. I feel like I have to study for this fucking game. I only minored in philo—well, no, I didn’t finish my minor. Well—

    Moore:
    Rick Roderick rules.

    Mulligan:
    Rick Roderick rules.

    Moore:
    Yeah. Everybody should watch Rick Roderick.

    Mulligan:
    But that dilemma, that philosophical dilemma, I think is really interesting because seeing Eursulon in that moment, speaking as myself, right? It’s like justice is a project, right? In other words, I don’t personally believe that justice exists in a natural, fixed state in the universe outside of human beings, right. That there’s, like, some moral rule in the black hole at the center of our galaxy that’s like we’re either getting it right or wrong, but rather that it is like a project that human beings are collaborating on to make a more just world, which is a thing that we have to define, we have to create the definition for it. And that’s our biggest moral imperative, right? And in that moment where you’re sitting there and you’re like having these conflicts where you’re like, I have just meted out death to so many people.

    Mulligan:
    None are more deserving of it than Morrow here. And then you have to realize, did I kill those people because it was justice or did I kill them because I was in danger and I was defending myself? And suddenly you have this moment of, even with Naram, there was some great—he had this moment where he’s like, do I do something incredibly self sacrificial or do I do something a little bit more, a little bit more in some ways, like pagan? Like, no, man. I’m going to rip this derrick up. I’m going to save this kid who just saved me. And that’s how this goes down. And I think that there’s this, in that moment where you realize that all the urgency is gone.

    There are three lecture courses available on rickroderick.org. As of writing this, I’ve completed the first lecture series, which describes and interrogates the history of philosophy and human values. I’m looking forward to the second and third series, which are titled Nietzsche and the Postmodern Condition, and The Self Under Siege, respectively. But rather than moving through them, one after the other, it seems more fitting to slow down and ruminate on the issues brought up by each lecture. So, over the coming months, I’m going to try to directly respond to the lectures and draw parallels to other articles and media that reflect the realities presented by Roderick. Because ultimately, I think his lectures have gained a timeliness and eternal quality in the years since his passing.

    As a final aside for this post, I find it very reassuring to find a voice like Roderick’s coming from Texas, and by extension, the American south. Not because I believe any of the mess that is stereotyped onto the South, but because his work and its simple clarity is a reminder that those of us who work in the region have our own canon of voices to draw from. This ability to focus and universalize with a regional twist is extremely vital in an era defined by the algorithmic flattening of culture. It breaks the simple and lazy stereotyping that is all too easy to fall into. Because ultimately, that flattening comes with an agenda– the desire to consolidate power through narrative, and this desire is something that must be resisted on all fronts. To fail to do so puts people, places, and minds themselves into a dire situation.

  • Upcoming essay in the fall issue of Floral Observer

    A newly emerged dog day cicada resting on a post after molting.

    A little over a month ago, Rachel at Taxonomy Press contacted me to suggest submitting to the fall edition of her risograph publication, the Floral Observer. She saw an Instagram story of the above snapshot of a newly emerged cicada, and thought it would be great for a missed connections style inclusion in the seasonal magazine– an idea that I absolutely love. I’m a big fan of my own missed connections with the critters I notice while out and about, which often includes backyard anoles, suburban squirrels, and the occasional swamp denizen like a king snake or snapping turtle. This cicada really stood out as well, partly because I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen one so freshly new, and straight out of its shell. After a bit of messaging back and forth, the invitation morphed into an opportunity to write a diary of place on Houston’s swamps, which is a feature I’ve written on before with welcome to my anticapitalist swamp.

    Through a process of writing and editing (thanks Rachel!), the piece morphed into one about the numerous anole lizards in my life, and their continued existence in the hustle and bustle of the city. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

    The days are long and unforgiving in the held breath of late summer. All that pressure is building up, and the city’s ready to burst. I try to regulate as best I can, but sometimes the best I can do is to scurry back and forth, looking for shelter wherever it may be. This morning’s respite is the familiar routine of packing orders and heading to the post office before the lunchtime rush. By 10am, the sun’s too high in the sky for a comfortable bike ride, and I head to the car in a hurry again.

    Houston’s roads are rarely nice, but they can impress in spite of it all when you catch a view of nature; the palm trees lining petrochemical plants along the Gulf Freeway, the ivies that cling to US-59’s retaining wall, and the grackles that dive between cars during rush hour all testifying their continued existence within the city. Your continued existence is enough, reads the sticker at my desk. 

    Before I’ve even managed to leave the neighborhood, he’s climbed onto my windshield wiper. Brown anole! I can’t continue on. What if he fell? There’s no good place for him to hide on this trip, and I remember him from a few days ago. A premonition of what’s happening now, as I wondered if he was occupying my car while it sat in the driveway. If you don’t drive it everyday, nature tries to reclaim it. A safe space for them.

    The fall issue of Floral Observer is currently available for preorders here, on the Taxonomy Press website. You can also pick up copies in person at Taxonomy Press’s upcoming events, which include:

  • Thinking about the Indie Web

    A tombstone that reads WORK

    I originally set up this website as a place for my ceramics work, which has slowly grown since my first bit of mold making in late 2022. I’m still working with ceramics, and planning to share those pieces here once some web design and layout work is completed. And once I photograph my current backlog of pieces from the last two years. 😭 But in the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the question “What shape should this personal practice site take?”

    Enter the Indie Web! I came across indieweb.org and really fell in love with the principals contained in that movement. The first line on their site is a definition:

    The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.

    Sounds a lot like something I’ve been looking for over the last few years. Like many in my generation, I grew up with a computer in the house, and later a smart phone in my pocket. Social Media arrived in college, and the years since have sprinted along towards an designed outcome of monopoly. But I’m also old enough to know that the web doesn’t have to be run by a series of 5 major website, which silo users into environments that are painful to use and punishing to leave.

    So now that posting has simultaneously lost its joy, and felt more necessary than ever, we’re left trying to find some way to deal with the situation. Finding the description of POSSE, short for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, is right in line with the strategy I landed on– that we need to focus on our own, controllable sites, and send that info out to other sites like instagram, bluesky, etc. Adding to this, I’m very inspired by Cory Doctorow’s use of a blog as a daily writing practice and external synthesis machine– something he calls a public book, or the MEMEX Method. I’ve kept an artist’s journal in the same way in real life, but letting that hidden work also apply to my professional efforts is something I have not tried. I’m interested, for this reason, in trying to use the older structure of a blog for a website, because of this comparison to a written journal and cumulative work. Less business card, more a repository of thoughts that can unfold over time.

    As always, it’s easy to promise a lot up front and fail to deliver later, but let’s see how the process develops.

    -JWB

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