Prior to his arrival in New York City, Rory worked as a teacher at Scottsdale Preparatory Academy, a Great Books-based liberal arts school in Arizona. Before that, Rory earned a B.A. in American History and an M.A. in Political Theory, both from Arizona State University. Rory's time in the Sonoran was preceded by a deeply cherished period of immiseration, commonly called ‘youth,’ in the Appalachian backwoods of Western Pennsylvania.
Rory’s most salient philosophical, moral, and political commitments are to critical theory, integral theory, cosmopolitanism, and direct deliberative democracy. These commitments shape his feelings, thoughts, and actions in two important ways. First, these commitments mean that he seeks always to unite theory with practice, as beautifully summed up by Marx: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Second, these commitments mean that the end to which this union of theory and practice is directed, always, is human liberation—from hierarchy, oppression, injustice, false consciousness, and the illusion of the self, among other things. Through such emancipation can arise autonomy, actualization, and transcendence, and Rory believes that helping to realize these potentials for all persons, including oneself, should be the purpose of any compassionate life. This way of being is exemplified, in Rory’s opinion, by Nietzsche’s figure of Zarathustra, whom he therefore denies accordingly.
