The Philosophical Practice of Jason Ross

07/10/2025

The Daily Maverick has prevented me from commenting further on their post (and comments from a seemingly racist, hate filled readership) and so I will comment further on it here: When Israeli forces seized the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, they acted outside their jurisdiction, without due process, and against international law.
That’s not a “detention” — it’s an abduction.

Referring to these humanitarians, some of them South African citizens, as being “detained” sanitizes what it really is: the extrajudicial capture of unarmed humanitarian activists delivering aid to a besieged civilian population.

And South Africans, more than most, should recognize this pattern.
It echoes the logic of apartheid regimes — state violence disguised as legality, language used to mask injustice, and a system built on impunity.
Israel’s tactics mirror those once used here: forced removals called “relocations,” political prisoners called “detainees,” and repression framed as “security.”

We of all people should know:
When words soften crimes, oppression survives.

The Department of International Relations says Israel will release the South Africans detained for taking part in the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla.

21/07/2025

#3 Anxiety is the imagination turning on itself.

11/05/2025

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIn_BWGClBd/?igsh=MXNid3c1dGY0MWxxMg==

04/05/2025

"The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings."
George Monbiot

20/03/2025

A gentleman arrives and tries to make himself comfortable on the therapy couch. "What brings you here"', I ask. "I think I have issues I need to finally deal with", he replies with some urgency. "What sort of issues?", I ask. "My wife says I'm a narcissist", he replies through a fake smile. "Well, if you imagine that narcissism was a spell, you just broke it." And so our difficult journey of honesty with self begins. But, more on narcissism later.

It seems to me that no relationship can survive the absence of accountability. Even though we may arguably be nothing much more than the sum of our defences, it seems incumbent upon us to take responsibility for who and how we are in the world, especially in relation to others.

19/03/2025

It is no longer about who you are but about whether you obey

Trump’s return marks a new chapter in Gaza’s genocide and a new McCarthyism at home, says British-Tunisian commentator Soumaya Ghannoushi.Having vowed to “op...

03/03/2025

Psychology has increasingly become our new priesthood, propagating a particular doctrine, such as it is your moral duty to be happy. Those who fail to be happy are considered "resistant" to therapy and are eventually rendered not only morally inept but biologically dysfunctional, placed on increasing doses of medication.

My ongoing study of philosophy and psychoanalysis has helped me explore a different kind of doctrine, one that does not sell the false promise of happiness but rather upholds the value of truth in our lives. Therapy from this perspective becomes a process of being open to and honest with oneself and others, embracing what it means to be human and alive in our times. This kind of therapy becomes a form of resistance rather than one of conformity.

If it was a doctrine of its own, the first commandment of Existential Analysis would be: Nothing out of obligation. "Obligation" never ends well and only lends to oppressive environments.

21/02/2025

I bought this T-shirt more than a decade ago. It seemed controversial at the time and few really understood what it was about - accountability. The text is starting to peel off but the statement seems more relevant than ever. I cannot deny that I benefited from the horrors of apartheid, that I continue to do so, and that apartheid is unfortunately alive and [un]well.

21/02/2025

As of 1st March 2025: Existential Analysis is being served, in person, in my new neighbourhood - corner of St James and Station street, Observatory, Western Cape (above Saint James Cafe )

03/01/2025

To "unpack" your stuff. Psychology is full of such cliches. Jeannette Winterson writes that "It's the cliches that cause all the trouble". To "get over it"; to "unpack things"; or "deal with your baggage"; or to find "the tools". I just hauled a truck load of stuff across the country. We want our baggage, it gives us the (false) sense of something solid to our existence. We carry the burden of it around with us so that we feel like we have a history, a place, have had a significant enough existence, or find purpose in some problem to solve. But we never end up feeling real enough. Don't get me wrong: the contents of our boxes have a story to tell, but in resisting these truths we wrap it all up in plastic and paper, lug it around the world or hide it in the attic. To be truly naked is to step outside of what we have already lived.