Category: personal life

• Giving Up to Live

  Life is a series of untaken roads and unfulfilled potentials.

  Evan Tan

  January 19, 2021

  gay, personal life, rambling, reflections, travel

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• The End of the F***ing Year

  To say that 2020 has been a maddening year would be the biggest understatement ever.

  Evan Tan

  December 22, 2020

  metaphysics, personal life, pop culture, rambling, reflections, travel, world events

  absence of free will, end of 2020, end of the fucking world, end of the year 2020, free will, john rawls, richard dawkins, what's happening at the end of the year

• Go Fake Yourself

  The more I think about pinning down who the “authentic self” is, the more I question that it even exists.

  Evan Tan

  December 6, 2020

  metaphysics, personal life, philosophy, rambling, reflections

  authenticity, be true to yourself, evan tan, evan tan writer in manila, how to be true to yourself, stay true stay you, to thine own self be true is bad advice, writer in manila

• Just Because It Is, Doesn’t Mean It Has to Be (Or Why Facts Aren’t Enough to Determine Futures)

  Facts are not ethical statements. So how can we make moral judgments from observation?

  Evan Tan

  October 25, 2020

  personal life, philosophy, reflections, vegan

  are animals conscious, ethics and veganism, evan tan writer in manila, is ought problem hume, morality, ought implies can immanuel kant, veganism, veganism appeal to nature, veganism morality

• “The Universe is Having a Wank”: Teleological Explorations, By Way of Birthdays

  There’s nothing that drives you further down into introspection like the waning high of your birthday that’s almost about to end (except probably a close brush with death, a bus speeding at 100 kilometers per hour barely colliding with the car you’re in at a highway—but that’s another story.)

  Evan Tan

  October 3, 2020

  metaphysics, personal life, philosophy, rambling, reflections, Uncategorized

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• You are a rat

  “The earliest known mammals were the morganucodontids, tiny shrew-size creatures that lived in the shadows of the dinosaurs 210 million years ago. They were one of several different mammal lineages that emerged around that time. All living mammals today, including us, descend from the one line that survived.”

  Evan Tan

  July 25, 2020

  rambling, reflections, Uncategorized

• What If Everything Will Have Always Been Us

  As I went to bed and fell asleep, I started dreaming about dying, and I thought about how I slowly started to unravel, like fabric that had started to fray and were now becoming threads of different colors again.

  Evan Tan

  May 31, 2020

  metaphysics, personal life, philosophy, reflections

  evan tan writer in manila, panpsychism theory, world religions panpsychism, writer in manila

• To See Clearly, Don’t Shy Away from Conflict: Chronicles During the COVID-19 Community Quarantine

  Recently, I was in a heated Twitter debate about how people who had animal companions but were not vegan were essentially in a master-slave relationship. While some of my friends argued with me directly, some chose not to reply and instead resorted to subtweets and snarky, shady remarks. Those who did the latter did not…

  Evan Tan

  May 17, 2020

  personal life, philosophy, pop culture, rambling, vegan

  evan tan writer in manila, How social media encourages groupthink, how to argue better, How to overcome willful blindness, How to overcome willfulness blindness margaret heffernan, margaret heffernan willful blindness, Philosophy for our Times podcast

• Why People Would Rather Get Covid-19: Chronicles During the Covid-19 Community Quarantine

  A few days ago, my friend Nancy and I were talking about how we’re all adjusting to this new normal (a term used to exhaustion that it is already grating on my ears), as we carried our groceries back to our condos. Yes, we were lucky–alive and well, not yet driven to the brink of…

  Evan Tan

  April 11, 2020

  personal life, Uncategorized, world events

  coronavirus, covid-19, covid-19 community quarantine philippines, covid-19 diary, covid-19 philippines, evan tan writer in manila, hiv and covid-19, pandemic philippines, writer in manila

• Suffering is a Cookie: Chronicles During the COVID-19 Community Quarantine

  I suffer because I believe that I deserve that cookie. But I also know that eating that cookie comes with consequences.

  Evan Tan

  March 22, 2020

  personal life, philosophy, pop culture, rambling, reflections, vegan

  buddhism concepts, covid-19, covid-19 community quarantine philippines, covid-19 diary, evan tan writer in manila, first noble truth, writer in manila