The Philosophical Optimist

            Ours is a postdiluvian era.   The deluge that we have come through, and in whose aftermath we now live, is feminism, in all its various waves.   Gone are the days when the Jetsons would have an episode mocking Jane’s desire to learn how to drive, along with the very idea of “lady drivers” (what Precambrian stratum did that sort of thinking belong to, anyway?).   Now, we are more likely to see television shows where the women are equal partners with the men (in numbers and in power), if not the leaders of their respective groups.   Such is indeed an example of positive progress, and the sort of spiritual development that constitutes genuine progress, and not just an increase of our power over nature that so often is called by that name.             Still, the waves of feminism keep coming, and some feminists, it appears, will not be happy u...

If you didn’t see this coming, you should   have: it has been announced that the next person to play the Doctor in the BBC series Doctor Who will be a woman.   As the show’s makers have insisted, the cries of outrage probably have been greatly exaggerated, since narrow-mindedness is not a thing whovians are known for.   More importantly, this turn of events should not have surprised fans of the show at all.   Indeed, the show seems to have been preparing us for this eventuality for quite some time.             It all begins, oddly enough, not with a chair (that was Juno ), but with Matt Smith’s hair.   When (in “The End of Time”) David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith, the Doctor immediately begins inspecting his new body.   When he gets to his hair, this is his reaction:       “Hair.   [feels his hair, which is slightly long]   I’m a girl!   No! ...