Paulo Seabra

I'm something of an art casual, so I don't really know much about it, but I do know I always liked Vincent Van Gogh. I'm also something of an MMA casual, so I don't really know much about it, but I do know I always liked Conor McGregor, and I especially always liked his famous quote about the aforementioned painter. In many ways to follow MMA, or perhaps any individual sport, is quite an interesting thing in that you find it is much more dynamic than any team sport. Following entire teams all throughout the years or even decades is starkly different than following individual fighters throughout what is often a rocky career in a rocky sport, in which time alone stands undefeated. Thus, in many ways to follow a fighter's career is more like following an artist – sometimes you like him a lot, other times less so, sometimes he's in his prime, other times he stumbles a little bit. And then when you look back at the fighter's entire career, from beginning to end, ...

Self-confidence is a very nice thing to have, or so they tell me. In fact, its importance nowadays seems even more sharply pronounced, I'd say largely due to the openness that social media provides, what with people being, or having to be, at least occasionally, more honest about their shortcomings and insecurities. When everything is visible and recorded you might as well call attention to it in order to take the edge off, I suppose. Additionally it seems as though motivational videos and other such content is quite popular. Everyone seems to be gunning after something they aren't entirely sure they'll ever achieve, and so they often turn to sources of motivation to keep on going or to find the strength to get up after getting knocked down. Then again, there are also the cynic pessimists like me who think it's all a bunch of baloney... Or well, not always. I do think there's an important place for self-confidence, as evidenced, for example, by my thoughts on Conor ...

A while back I was taking a class on something or other, and at one point we had to do some presentations about personal character traits. In my presentation I wanted to bring up two or three of them, and subsequently confront them with more or less their respective opposites. One of those traits was humility, and I wanted to confront it with its polar opposite, which I consider to be arrogance. And what I came to realize is that either humility and arrogance can indeed be pretty much the same thing, or alternatively it's just that extreme humility can at times become virtually indistinguishable from plain old arrogance... In order to illustrate this for the presentation I immediately thought of Jon Snow of all people, a fella known for being virtuous and humble, but perhaps to the point of a stubbornness that borders on arrogance or even momentary blindness, as he followed the moral example of his adoptive father who was likewise virtuous and humble, even unto death... Whether or ...

Sorry to disappoint but no, I'm still not a muslim. But at this point I do feel that this should be inconsequential, at least with regards to what I wanna talk about now. It shouldn't matter what you are, it should matter what the book says, because when you're right, you're right, as the saying goes. As such, there's no reason why the Quran should an exception... I already wrote an article about my favorite, and I guess more personal verse, the intricacies of which I can't at this present time recall in great detail, though I fully remember the moment in my life that made me appreciate said verse in the first place, and I likewise remember the time in my life during which I wrote that brief article on what I perceived to be a beautiful sense of religious stoicism. And so today, because it is a similar day, and because this has been on my mind a lot lately, I figured I'd ponder a bit about my second favorite Quran verse, which would be the sixth and final v...

You don't need to discuss atheism for a long time before you find yourself presenting, or being presented with, the claim that atheism is just a lack of belief in God. In that sense atheism isn't so much a preposition but more so the rejection of one, it's not defined by the presence of one thing, it's defined by the absence of that thing. Atheism would then be, not so much a thing in and of itself, but more a rejection of God and by extension religion, which means that atheism only has any meaning insofar as religion is itself a meaningful presence in the world. I myself used to present this kind of claim when I was seventeen or eighteen, but I have since stopped, keeping in line with this recurring theme of mine that in recent times I've been critical of many aspects of the atheist movement. This lack-of-belief talking point is one of them, and though I may have addressed it here and there, I figured that a slightly more in-depth approach made sense... So is athe...

A long while back I made myself a Reddit account, mostly to try and hopefully get Jordan Peterson's attention over some stuff I wrote. It was a total long shot though, there was always a slim chance he wouldn't read it, and so that's exactly what happened. Who'd have thought, hey?... But anyway, I then decided to write a new post defending what I perceived to be, to my knowledge, his worst point as it relates to religious belief and morality. I got some interaction out of it, but enough to kinda sour my appreciation for the site. One person made the typical edgy comments on religion, as well as some wild claims that apparently didn't require any evidence whereas I couldn't say two plus two equals four without an entire university of science backing me, another person brought up a ton of random stuff I ain't never heard of and also a little beside the point, and a third person thought Jordan's worst point would have been something else to begin with. No ...

To be perfectly fair, this did happen during a discussion about abortion, so I guess I can't really hold it against the guy... I was just perusing various YouTube videos, as I perhaps regrettably so often do, and about a multitude of subjects as well, not just veganism, when I came across a decidedly vegan video about something or other and I decided to pull my usual argument, namely that it makes no sense for vegans to speak of expanding the moral circle when their own moral circle doesn't include unborn people to begin with. I thought I was making some good points, avoiding ad hominem stuff though perhaps I was being a tad sarcastic here and there, and I was having a good time when all of the sudden, bang! I get hit in the face with this absolute gem. His second sentence is the crux of this here article of mine. Imagine being so kind and so loving and so compassionate that you tell a random stranger online that his mother should have aborted him, or merely exercise her righ...

I solemnly believe that every farmer, as well as every slaughterhouse worker, and even every consumer out there, they all have the right to self-determination, which means getting to choose what they do with their own bodies. No one has the right to tell a farmer he's not allowed to hold a cattle prod in a certain way, and subsequently wave his arm around in various different ways in order to achieve various different results. It's his arm, his choice, gosh darn it! End of subject! As far as the business side of things goes, no one has the right to tell a CEO that he's not allowed to live his best life, making whatever socioeconomic decisions most benefit him and his family and his second family. And as far as the individual consumer goes, no one has the right to tell anyone else that they're not allowed to buy whatever they want at the supermarket. So if you're not prepared to financially provide for that that farmer, or that CEO, or that random consumer for that m...

Okay, fine, it's not a religion per se but you can't argue it's not sorta like one. I'll be the first one to admit that comparing any ideology or philosophical system to a religion is something of a cheap shot, or it's otherwise a bit of a boring cliché. But then again, I think some clichés are clichés for a good reason... In its most immediate sense a religion would be a set of beliefs we hold as more important than any other, and for that reason those beliefs ultimately permeate all aspects of our lives, both individually and collectively. This means that, loosely speaking, whatever you value most, whatever it is that you place as number one in that system is, for lack of a better word, your god. So because vegans defend veganism as an all-encompassing moral philosophy it then permeates all aspects of their lives, and thus they act accordingly with it, in all ways. And they can do all things through beans, which strengthen them... This is not to say that veganism ...