San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival: On the Negative Impact of the Castro’s Culture

Ideological intolerance may not be typically thought of as stemming from a psychological pathology from unresolved emotional problems, especially if the ideology is classified under “political speech.” Even so, the vehemence with which flashes of hostility are unleashed by an intolerant ideologue against people objecting to the person’s ideology and thus to it being imposed as if it were God’s eternal truth is plainly psychological. Volunteering at a film festival in San Francisco in late June, 2026, I was the receiver, or lightening rod, of such vitriol from two attendees and the festival’s manager who oversaw the volunteers because I had unwittingly made statements that violated the dominant ideology not only at the festival, but in San Francisco moreover. In business schools, it is well known (or should be well known) that an organizational culture can reflect a wider culture in the organization’s environment. A toxic local or societal norm, which reflects values, beliefs, and even assumptions held by a sufficient proportion of inhabitants to gain a “critical mass,” can infect organizational cultures within the locality or society. I contend that this dynamic applied to the Frameline (LGBT) film festival in 2026 and the wider the Castro (gay) district of San Francisco then, where the festival was based. The same overreaching ideology and hostile defense mechanism were salient both in the non-profit organization and, extending beyond the Castro neighborhood, in San Francisco itself as well as in at least some of the suburbs.

The full essay is at "San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival."

 

Intimidation in Retail: The Case of San Francisco

Visuals are an important ingredient in consumer marketing, so it is surprising to come across retail managers who are so purblind as concerns the latent yet obvious passive aggression in some of the visuals that those managers themselves approve in the name of security. The espoused, yet utterly fake claim that customer experience is improved by the added sense of safety—the actual underlying motive lies in loss prevention—is typically outweighed by the very human negative experience from being intentionally intimidated by passive-aggressive visuals. It may be that such managers, frustrated by high rates of in-store petty theft (i.e., “shoplifting”), are unconsciously taking their latent aggression out of the customers as a group. Even if not, the lack of judgment is palpable from the visuals themselves. It is no wonder that an increasing number of customers prefer shopping online. 

The full essay is at "Retail Intimidation ."

Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

The full essay is at "Educating Scholarly Priests."

On Harvard's Inner Elite: The Case of Larry Summers

Should instructors themselves lead righteous, moral lives if they are going to be allowed to teach college students? Does the character of a teacher matter? Should a professor be inclusive rather than exclusivist? These questions are distinct from the much more easily answered question of whether convicted criminals should be allowed to teach college students. Harvard’s Larry Summers, the last U.S. Treasury Secretary of the Clinton presidency, a president of Harvard University, and a professor there, came to personify these moral questions in November, 2025 after Congress released a trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s email exchanges with Summers. Besides resigning from the board of OpenAI, Summers attempted to continue teaching, but then suddenly announced that he was taking a leave of absence from Harvard even though the semester had just a few weeks remaining (including Thanksgiving break). If as I suspect Harvard’s administration pressured him to bow out, at least temporarily in a leave of absence, the irony would be that such a sordid organizational culture casted one of its own kind away. I contend that Summers’ case at Harvard is more complex than first meets the eye.

The full essay is at "On Harvard's Inner Elite."

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not! 

The full essay is at "Enjoy Your Holiday."

The University of California at Berkeley

In visiting a university even for a short period of time, a surprisingly deep grasp of its dominant organizational culture's mentality is possible, especially if it is foreign to the outsider's perspective and yet draws on  instinctual urges whose imprints one has previously seen. It is perhaps human, all too human to relish sending harsh messages to outsiders, albeit indirectly because cowardness and self-illusion are included with the appetite for blood. This can be so at a university even if scholarly visitors are among the targets. The primitive instinctual urge to aggressively harm people by reminding them unnecessarily that they are not in the tribe can have sufficient power to overcome other contending urges to characterize the very culture of an organization. I will argue that the University of California at Berkeley can be characterized as such. For I witnessed this triumphant urge in rather  obvious behavior of some faculty and administrators. I came rather quickly during my visit to grasp the nature and roots of the favorite blood-sport of enough rude faculty members to get a picture of those primped  up, intellectually stunted "scholars" at that heavily passive aggressive university. The message of exclusion for taxpayers visiting the campus and scholars invited to give a lecture there, I being neither, was made clear to me by a student employee at the main library,  which tellingly is closed on Saturdays even during the semesters: Even if a visitor on the large campus does not have an umbrella and rain is pouring down, the university's shuttle buses are only for students, faculty, and staff. The student enjoyed his power to say no to me; I could not detect even the slightest tone of shame in representing such an inhospitable institutional host. Bad air! Instead, the he relished the firmness in the power to say no, which is to say, to exclude. In contrast, the campus shuttles at Yale, ironically a private university, transport anyone around campus! So much for California being easy-going. So much for UC Berkeley sporting intellectually curious and passionate scholars in search of new ideas from visitors. Rather, Nietzsche’s new birds of prey, whose spite naturally issues out from deep ressentement, populate the faculty and their bosses. So much for even common courtesy and gratitude to California taxpayers and distinguished professors from other universities invited to deliver a lecture; if you are walking around campus or walk out of a library and get wet, tough luck! Public is apparently below even common. 

The full essay is at "The University of California." 

Golda

In introducing a screening of Golda (2023) at Yale, Shiri Goren, a faculty member in the university’s Near Eastern Languages department, told the audience that “the non-Israeli, non-Jew Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir in the film." Strange. Normally, a presenter of a film would say, "Helen Mirren plays Golda." I contend that a squalid ideology accounts for the difference. Rather than evincing gratitude that such an excellent actress would play an ugly character (in the film, even Golda herself refers to her feet in a derogatory way), the implication obvious to everyone in the room was that an actor can, or even worse, should only play characters of the actor’s own background. How dare an actor play a character of a different background. Goren’s basic ignorance of the craft of acting (i.e., playing characters who are not like oneself) belies her credibility in teaching a course called Israeli Society in Film. Did the screenings only include films whose actors were Israelis? Golda herself was Ukrainian. Goren also taught Israeli Identity and Culture, which explains why her knowledge of acting was eclipsed. To Goren, a group-identity that monopolizes a person's self-image trumps the craft of acting. I contend that underlying her false-belief or delusion concerning acting (and film, moreover) lies a much larger problem: namely, that of the artificial monopolization of one of several group-identities that apply to a given person and can precipitate an exclusivist ideology alone one axis. Each of us has more than one group-identity, so to allow one to envelop one’s very identity is artificial and thus problematic. Resulting ideologies tend to be monopolistic and thus too extreme too. 

The full essay is at "Golda."

Yale : A Private Police-State on Steroids

Academia is its own sort of community, with its own distinctive culture. A university campus is not akin to a small town. To treat a campus as such, and thus to allow universities to have their own police departments rather than security guards, evinces a category mistake and presents issues of political legitimacy. The U.S. Constitution gives police power to the state governments, rather than to private companies and non-profit private organizations. Secuity guards, not police employees, belong to the categories of companies and non-profit organizations, both of which being qualitatively different than governments or states. Hence the matter of legitimacy should be raised when one organization, such as Yale, presumes not only to have its own private police force, but also to use it (and its security guards) to enforce local laws and university regulations off campus. When a university, again referring here to Yale, saturates its campus with police cars with emergency-alert blue-and-red lights blazing on top and headlights constantly and pensively on, and adds security guards on virtually every corner as if according to a military-style command coverage of the entire campus and beyond, the passive aggression and tacit message of deep distrust subtly undercut academic pursuits and the related psychological stamina of students, faculty, and even alumni who are auditing courses or conducting research as scholars "in residence." The saturated presence of pensive guns and distrustful staring eviscerates an anademic atmosphere of peace and tranquilly, and thus subtly eclipses academic learning and teaching. An academic atmosphere is vital to a college and even a large university so students and faculty can feel free to take ideas to their limits without fear of intimidation and being distrusted so. A pathological weaponizing of distrust is harmful even though the victims don't realize that they are being victimized. I contend that the unbiquitous, constant surveillance is unethical, and furthermore that university administrations that unfairly inflict such an aggressive culture of distrust should be held accountable externally by governments and internally through boards of directors and pressure from alumni.  Paranoia is at the root of this type of dysfunctional organizational culture, such as existed at Yale as of 2023. The extreme distrust backed up by hostile staring, flashing lights, and even guns ought to be flagged as toxic and unethical. 

The full essay is at "Yale: A Private Police State on Steroids."

Ideological Word Games: The Modern Weapon of Choice?

When I was young, my dad would sometimes criticize me for engaging in “word games.” Perhaps I was already parsing words; my parents and maternal grandfather were all lawyers. My last name is Worden, after all. I was raised to pronounce the name, war-den, and only after decades did it occur to me that people might spell the name as Worden rather than Warden if I pronounced it as word-n. I was the first even in the extended family to use the alternative; as Nietzsche wrote, no philosopher is a man of his time. We tend to think outside the proverbial constrained “box” because we critique assumptions and arguments (i.e., critical thinking), including those of the “boxes” that society leaves unquestionably standing as part of the status quo—the tyranny of which has repelled philosophers wetted to the idea that no stone should be left unturned, even if a society deems some stones as sacrosanct. It can be dangerous even to question the solidity of those stones, especially if they formed out of ideological controversies wherein tussling instinctual urges contesting for societal dominance. In this too, I am drawing on Nietzsche, who even viewed the content of ideas as being instinctual urges. In being willing to subject societally cherished ideas to fundamentally unique and deep scrutiny, Friedrich Nietzsche is the last, at least as of my time living in an American desert, both academically and geographically, where plenty of Nietzsche’s “herd animals” freely roamed. They were particularly vulnerable to ideological word-games in unquestioningly accepting the words from the insurgent ideologies as valid.

The full essay is at "Ideological Word Games."

Target’s Senior Managers in Damage Control Mode: A Forensic Appraisal

The number of transactions at Target, a major American retailer, during the weekend before Christmas in 2013 came in at between 3 to 4 percent lower than for the same weekend in 2012.[1] That the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2013 are five less than in the previous year and number of transactions at other retailers during the weekend in 2013 is slightly higher than for the previous year suggests that Target did indeed take a financial hit due to the massive breach in electronic security. The debit and credit-card numbers of up to 40 million customers (between November 27^th and December 15^th) could have been compromised by hackers who immediately began selling the “secured” information from abroad.[2] Lest this lesson in the downsides of electronic commerce and globalization be enough bitter medicine to swallow, Target’s damage control gives us a rare opportunity to glimpse the mentality of the company’s corporate-level managers by inference.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available at Amazon.

Mistrust in Business: A Nietzschean Critique

In his commentary on the loss of trust in business, government and society, Michael Wolff laments to decline of trust through what he calls “consumer history.” As trust can be maintained with little or no further cost once established, Wolff is perplexed as to why more business practitioners, politicians and even religious functionaries do not rush to fill the gap.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Wiley Punishing Resellers: Beyond Profits

Publishers sell English-language textbooks at lower rates in developing countries. Such “cut-rate foreign goods” are a staple on e-Bay. In late October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that pits the practice against the claims of publishers of copyright infringement. The case began when Wiley accused a USC doctoral student of copyright infringement and won a $600,000 judgment. The student not being able to afford the judgment, Wiley successfully urged the judge to take the student’s golf clubs and his computer after his graduation—as if sending the student to his room without dinner even though the vase is still broken. Clearly, the clubs and computer could not come even close to covering the judgment. Given the lack of publicity on the particulars, I doubt that the terms were even designed to be a deterrent. If I am correct, the motive comes from more of a “stick it to him” mentality. Whereas a legal analysis of the case is doubtless most typical, I want to try to uncover the sordid nature of this mentality behind the “clubs and computer” slap-down.

The full essay has been incorporated into On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available at Amazon.

A Society Based on Corporate Culture: A Case of Sickness behind Fakeness?

Scripted "conversations" for employees.   Some customers as "members," and the others "not."   A larger cup of coffee being an "upgrade."   It occurs to me that a blue collar worker would simply laugh in the face of a chain retail store employee using any of these misappropriations as if they were natural and fitting.  That the rest of us don't laugh and the employees are not even likely to be aware of their own fakeness, much less stop it, tells me that modern society has to some extent adopted the corporate practice, even if tacitly.  That is to say, many of us have been mindwashed into accepting fakeness as authentic in the public square.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.