On Second Thought Ezra

Tag: philosophy

  • Choosing a Life That Holds — Part VII

    Choosing a Life That Holds — Part VII

    A life does not need to stand out to be good. In a culture that equates worth with growth and visibility, choosing sufficiency may be less about settling — and more about refusing to postpone living.

  • Maintenance Is Not Stagnation — Part IV

    Maintenance Is Not Stagnation — Part IV

    Maintenance is the quiet labour of keeping things from falling apart. In a culture that celebrates novelty and growth, the work of care, repetition, and repair is easily misread as inertia — when it is often the very continuity that allows relationships, bodies, and institutions to endure.

  • When Optimisation Becomes Identity — Part II

    When Optimisation Becomes Identity — Part II

    When optimisation becomes identity, stability starts to feel like failure. In a culture that equates worth with growth and momentum, ordinary days can look like evidence of stagnation — even when they are the very patterns that sustain a life.

  • The Compassion Con: Why Appeasing the Abuser Never Leads to Peace

    The Compassion Con: Why Appeasing the Abuser Never Leads to Peace

    Explore how a generation raised to equate self-defence with aggression has become vulnerable to propaganda and radicalisation. This article examines why rational debate cannot undo terror-fueled extremism—and why appeasement is not peace.

  • Discomfort is not harm.

    Discomfort is not harm.

    The Discomfort of Learning Is Not a Psychological Crisis Part of the ‘Not Quite What You Meant’ series By: Ezra Nadav Somewhere along the way, we began to confuse learning with comfort. In adult learning environments especially, training rooms, university lecture halls, continuing education seminars, there’s a growing expectation that the space must feel safe.…