About Me

Website: https://understorey.blog

My name is Ty, and I would consider myself a postmodern Protestant Christian. My academic background is in philosophy, particularly philosophy of religion. I completed my undergraduate studies at Arizona State University (2023) and my MA at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (2025). I am a United States Navy Veteran, and my professional occupation is land surveying. This page is covers some of my views in broad strokes. (At least the ones that I think are relevant to readers of this blog.)

As stated, I identify as a postmodern Protestant Christian. Not of the variety found in Radical Orthodoxy but of the Gianni Vattimo and John Caputo variety. Namely, the sort of postmodern Christian who is anti/non/post-metaphysical. As such, I have no special fondness for the historic creeds of orthodox Christianity. It would be entirely approrpaite to lump me in with the “Christian atheists” such as Slavoj Žižek. To the extent that I’ve identified with any particular denomination or church, I have historically been most closely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association.

I am a socialist. As can probably be guessed based on my postmodern, anti-metaphysical disposition when it comes to religion, I am not of the orthodox or traditional ideological variety. With Vattimo, I identify as a socialist to the extent that I prioritize politics over economics. I desire to live in a world that has justice for all people no matter who they are or what station they occupy in life. I believe every person ought to have a right to healthcare, education, transportation, dignified labor, and the basic necessities of life. Democracy is at the core of my political identitfy, and I believe we ought to live in a truly democratic society. As far as reform goes, that would look like automatic voter registration with ease of access to ballots, preportional representation, no barriers to alternative parties/candidates, reduced federal power (localization), etc. Work places ought to also be democratized after crossing a certain threshold in size.

Finally, I am philosophically an American pragmatist. At the end of the day, my Rortian pragmatism informs my way of thinking about religion and politics. It keeps me averse from making truth the highest priority in my life. Instead, I prioritize constructing a worldview that makes sense of experiences and intuitions that I have. At the end of the day, it is entirely a subjective, individuated exercise on my part. The purpose of this blog is not to argue for the beliefs that I have so as to convince others. Rather, my purpose in writing posts for this blog (beyond organizing my own thoughts) is to explicate my beliefs that I find important, and perhaps someone will find some use for them in constructing their own worldview.