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• Lex Luthor: Man of Steel

  Luthor views Superman as a demigod who looks down on humanity and believes that in order to “save” the human race from extraterrestrial threats, Superman must be stopped.

• The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

  Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

• Eloi! Eloi! L’mah Sh’vaktani?

  But I cry out to you, Adonai;
  my prayer comes before you in the morning.
  So why, Adonai, do you reject me?
  Why do you hide your face from me?

• RIP Chester & Jordan

  Against my will,
  I stand beside my own reflection.
  It’s haunting,
  How I can’t seem,
  To find myself again.

• The Meaning of Ascetic Ideals

  You understand me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this denier—he actually belongs to the really great conservative and affirmative forces of life.

• Song of Myself

  Do I contradict myself?
  Very well then I contradict myself,
  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

• Elizabeth Woolridge Grant

  “I majored in metaphysics in college, that’s what I got my degree in. And the reason I chose that was because the Jesuits who were teaching that subject, they weren’t just theologians, they also had backgrounds in science. Obviously the quest for peace, the quest for knowledge of something bigger is… that’s the end game. ...

• Not An Addict

  It’s not a habit, it’s cool, I feel alive,
  If you don’t have it, you’re on the other side.
  I’m not an addict, maybe that’s a lie.

  It’s over now, I’m cold, alone,
  I’m just a person on my own.
  Nothing means a thing to me,
  Oh, nothing means a thing to me.

• Female Gaming Experience and Representation in Video Game Virtual Worlds

  Video games and the carefully crafted virtual worlds they offer for exploration and engagement are important to understand. In this article, we observe why they are important to understand for female commentators and those with feminist concerns, although research has also examined matters as varied as racism, racial representation, colonialism, cyberbullying, and much more in ...

• The History of Indian and Africana Philosophy

  Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King’s College London, takes listeners through the history of philosophy, “without any gaps.” The series looks at the ideas, lives and historical context of the major philosophers as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition.

• The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

  Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King’s College London, takes listeners through the history of philosophy, “without any gaps.” The series looks at the ideas, lives and historical context of the major philosophers as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition.

• The Grand Inquisitor

  Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the story, Ivan, a rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed to throw this conception into the form of a poem, ...

• Children of the Revolution

  I put this stream together a few years ago and just recently came across it again. It’s some friends and I doing a questline in Tibia set to some electronic music and some lectures by Alan Watts.

• Pneuma

  We are spirit
  Bound to this flesh
  We go around one foot nailed down
  We’re bound to reach out and beyond
  This flesh become Pneuma

• Sooner or later we all face death. Will a sense of meaning help us?

  ‘Despite all our medical advances,’ my friend Jason used to quip, ‘the mortality rate has remained constant – one per person.’

• Why do you believe what you do? Run some diagnostics on it

  Many of the beliefs that play a fundamental role in our worldview are largely the result of the communities in which we’ve been immersed. Religious parents tend to beget religious children, liberal educational institutions tend to produce liberal graduates, blue states stay mostly blue, and red ones stay mostly red. Of course, some people, through ...

• Would you rather have a fish or know how to fish?

  A good attitude towards knowledge shines through various character traits that put us in a healthy relationship with it. Philosophers call these traits epistemic virtues. Instead of praising those people who happen to possess some piece of knowledge, we ought to praise those who have the right attitude towards it, since only this benchmark also ...

• What Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy can offer in the Anthropocene

  With our collapsing democracies and imploding biosphere, it’s no wonder that people despair. The Austrian psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl presciently described such sentiments in his book Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). He wrote of something that ‘so many patients complain today, namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their ...

• Hurt

  Everyone I know,
  Goes away in the end.

  And you could have it all,
  My empire of dirt.

• We all know that we will die, so why do we struggle to believe it?

  Existential shock emerges from a radical alteration of the inside view, where the primal confusion lifts so that the person directly experiences herself as insubstantial. I see the truth of no-self, not merely as an idea, but in an impression. I see that my ego is an imposter, masquerading as a permanent self. The most ...

• The Humanitarian Crisis of Deaths of Despair

  We can see why despair, as a condition opposed to hope and hopefulness, can be such a debilitating state of mind. Despair undermines agency. The despairing person may conceive of plans and goals but feel that he is so unlikely to achieve them that they are not worth the investment of time and energy, or ...

• How Mengzi came up with something better than the Golden Rule

  That which people are capable of without learning is their genuine capability. That which they know without pondering is their genuine knowledge. Among babes in arms there are none that do not know to love their parents. When they grow older, there are none that do not know to revere their elder brothers. Treating one’s ...

• October

  I can’t run anymore,
  I fall before you.
  Here I am,
  I have nothing left.
  Though I’ve tried to forget,
  you’re all that I am.
  Take me home.
  I’m through fighting it.

• The Meaning to Life? A Darwinian Existentialist has his Answers

  A century after Darwin, Jean-Paul Sartre said that we are condemned to freedom, and I think he is right. Even if God does exist, He or She is irrelevant. The choices are ours.

• Two Candid Discussions of Mental Wellbeing

  Two philosophers talk about their personal experiences with depression and suicidal ideation.

• Philosophers in the Midst of History

  This excellent series by Professor Gregory B. Sadler helps put some major thinkers in the Western tradition into historical context. Context is key when attempting to properly interpret a writer’s intentions, motives, influences, and thought processes.

• Descending

  Drifting through this boundlessness,
  This madness of our own making.

  Sound our dire reveille,
  Rouse all from our apathy,
  Lest we,
  Cease to be.

  Stir us from our,
  Wanton slumber,
  Mitigate our ruin,
  Call us all to arms and order.

• Diseases of Despair

  This article from Wikipedia is an interesting read about diseases of despair, of which I have suffered through myself in the past.

• Can you step in the same river twice? Wittgenstein v Heraclitus

  Wittgenstein thinks that we can get clearer about such disputes by likening the things that people say to moves in a game. Just as every move in a game of chess alters the state of play, so does every conversational move alter the state of play in what he calls the language-game.

• Deus Absconditus – The Hidden God

  The Deus Absconditus is actually quite simple. It is a rejection of philosophy as the starting point for theology. Why? Because if one begins with philosophical categories for God one begins with the attributes of God. For Luther, it was impossible to begin there and by using syllogisms or other logical means to end up with a ...

• Breaking Down

  I guess I never noticed how it came creeping in,
  My enemy emotion but I can’t sink or swim,
  I say I’m feeling hopeless, they give me medicine,
  They give me medicine, they give me medicine!

• Richard Feynman was Wrong about Beauty and Truth in Science

  The problem is that it’s difficult to defend the notion that the truth is recognisable by its beauty and simplicity, and it’s an idea that has contributed to getting fundamental physics into its current mess.

• Miracle

  Don’t wait for a miracle to tumble from the sky,
  To part the seas around you or turn water into wine.
  Don’t wait for a miracle, the world is passing by,
  The walls that all surround you are only in your mind.

• Philosophy Should Care about the Filthy, Excessive and Unclean

  Philosophy traditionally has been about ‘higher’ questions: what is knowledge? What is the meaning of justice? What is the nature of ultimate reality? These questions soar above the petty concerns of the everyday and reach towards a realm of pure ideas. But can the ‘unclean’ – dirt, mud, bodily wastes, the grime of existence – ...

• To Avoid Moral Failure, Don’t See People as Sherlock Does

  Holmes’s failure to relate is not just a matter of his actions or his words (though sometimes it is also that), but what really rubs us up the wrong way is that Holmes observes us all as objects to be studied, predicted and managed. He doesn’t relate to us as human beings.

• How the Dualism of Descartes Ruined our Mental Health

  Toward the end of the Renaissance period, a radical epistemological and metaphysical shift overcame the Western psyche. The advances of Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon posed a serious problem for Christian dogma and its dominion over the natural world. Following Bacon’s arguments, the natural world was now to be understood solely in terms ...

• How do we Pry Apart the True and Compelling from the False and Toxic?

  When false and malicious speech roils the body politic, when racism and violence surge, the right and role of freedom of speech in society comes into crisis. People rightly begin to wonder what are the limits, what should be the rules. It is a complicated issue, and resolving it requires care about the exact problems ...

• The Amity Affliction

  It’s like there’s cancer in my blood,
  It’s like there’s water in my lungs,
  And I can’t take another step,
  Please tell me I am not undone.

• Philosophical Writing Should Read like a Letter Written to Oneself

  I came to philosophy bursting with things to say. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Not that I stopped talking, or, as time went on, writing. But the mood of it, the key in which it was pitched, moved. I came to feel answerable. And not just to myself or those I knew but to ...

• To Boost your Self-esteem, Write about Chapters of your Life

  In truth, so much of what happens to us in life is random – we are pawns at the mercy of Lady Luck. To take ownership of our experiences and exert a feeling of control over our future, we tell stories about ourselves that weave meaning and continuity into our personal identity.

• Atheism has been Part of Many Asian Traditions for Millennia

  To many, atheism – the lack of belief in a personal god or gods – may appear an entirely modern concept. After all, it would seem that it is religious traditions that have dominated the world since the beginning of recorded history. As a scholar of Asian religions, however, I’m often struck by the prevalence ...

• Is Consciousness a Battle between your Beliefs and Perceptions?

  Imagine you’re at a magic show, in which the performer suddenly vanishes. Of course, you ultimately know that the person is probably just hiding somewhere. Yet it continues to look as if the person has disappeared. We can’t reason away that appearance, no matter what logic dictates. Why are our conscious experiences so stubborn?

• Was the Real Socrates more Worldly and Amorous than We Knew?

  Socrates is widely considered to be the founding figure of Western philosophy – a thinker whose ideas, transmitted by the extensive writings of his devoted follower Plato, have shaped thinking for more than 2,000 years. ‘For better or worse,’ wrote the Classical scholar Diskin Clay in Platonic Questions (2000), ‘Plato’s Socrates is our Socrates.’ The ...

• Muhammad: an Anticlerical Hero of the European Enlightenment

  Publishing the Quran and making it available in translation was a dangerous enterprise in the 16th century, apt to confuse or seduce the faithful Christian. This, at least, was the opinion of the Protestant city councillors of Basel in 1542, when they briefly jailed a local printer for planning to publish a Latin translation of ...

• The Matrix 20 Years On: How a Sci-fi Film Tackled Big Philosophical Questions

  Incredible as it may seem, the end of March marks 20 years since the release of the first film in the Matrix franchise directed by The Wachowski siblings. This “cyberpunk” sci-fi movie was a box office hit with its dystopian futuristic vision, distinctive fashion sense, and slick, innovative action sequences. But it was also a ...

• A Philosophical Approach to Routines can Illuminate Who We Really Are

  There are hundreds of things we do – repeatedly, routinely – every day. We wake up, check our phones, eat our meals, brush our teeth, do our jobs, satisfy our addictions. In recent years, such habitual actions have become an arena for self-improvement: bookshelves are saturated with bestsellers about ‘life hacks’, ‘life design’ and how ...

• Ibn Tufayl and the Story of the Feral Child of Philosophy

  Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Andalusian, fashioned the feral child in philosophy. His story Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the tale of a child raised by a doe on an unnamed Indian Ocean island. Hayy ibn Yaqzan (literally ‘Living Son of Awakeness’) reaches a state of perfect, ecstatic understanding of the world. A meditation on the possibilities ...

• Climate Strikes: Researcher explains how Young People can Keep up the Momentum

  As part of one of the largest environmental protests ever seen, over a million young people went on strike on Friday March 15 2019, calling for more ambitious action on climate change. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, a Swedish school girl who protested outside the Swedish parliament every Friday throughout 2018, young people in over 100 ...

• Descartes was Wrong: ‘A Person is a Person through Other Persons’

  According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the ‘self’/‘other’ distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher ...

• Do you have a Self-Actualised Personality? Maslow Revisited

  Abraham Maslow was the 20th-century American psychologist best-known for explaining motivation through his hierarchy of needs, which he represented in a pyramid. At the base, our physiological needs include food, water, warmth and rest. Moving up the ladder, Maslow mentions safety, love, and self-esteem and accomplishment. But after all those have been satisfied, the motivating ...

• The Concept of Probability is not as Simple as You Think

  The gambler, the quantum physicist and the juror all reason about probabilities: the probability of winning, of a radioactive atom decaying, of a defendant’s guilt. But despite their ubiquity, experts dispute just what probabilities are. This leads to disagreements on how to reason about, and with, probabilities – disagreements that our cognitive biases can exacerbate, ...

• The Problem of Addiction

  In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Sally Satel about addiction. They discuss whether addiction should be considered a disease, the opiate epidemic in the U.S., the unique danger of fentanyl, the politicization of medicine, PTSD, and other topics.

• Why the Demoniac Stayed in his Comfortable Corner of Hell

  I am not what one might call a religious man. I went to church, and then to confirmation class, under duress. My mother, whom I secretly regarded as more powerful than God, insisted that I go. So I went. Her insistence, however, had the unintended consequence of introducing me to a pastor whom I came ...

• African Art in Western Museums: It’s Patrimony not Heritage

  Museums with colonial-era collections have always known about the brutal parts of their biographies. But, through acts of purification via historical distance, they have chosen to ignore them. Museum directors now have to re-think their position as defenders of their collections in light of a different political agenda that locates people and their patrimony in ...

• Skateboarding Defies the Neoliberal Logic of the City by making it a Playground for All

  Skateboarding today is a global phenomenon, with around 50m riders and thousands of skate parks worldwide – it will even feature as a sport in the 2020 Olympic Games. From the full on testosterone of Thrasher skateboard magazine to the fashionable styling of Vogue, the skater girls and boys of Kabul to the Native American ...

• Between Gods and Animals: Becoming Human in the Gilgamesh Epic

  The Epic of Gilgamesh is a Babylonian poem composed in ancient Iraq, millennia before Homer. It tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk. To curb his restless and destructive energy, the gods create a friend for him, Enkidu, who grows up among the animals of the steppe. When Gilgamesh hears about ...

• Having a sense of Meaning in life is Good for you — So how do you get one?

  The pursuit of happiness and health is a popular endeavour, as the preponderance of self-help books would attest.

  Yet it is also fraught. Despite ample advice from experts, individuals regularly engage in activities that may only have short-term benefit for well-being, or even backfire.

  The search for the heart of well-being – that is, a nucleus from ...

• Tools for Thinking: Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Freedom

  Negative freedom is freedom from interference. You are negatively free to the extent that other people do not restrict what you can do. If other people prevent you from doing something, either directly by what they do, or indirectly by supporting social and economic arrangements that disadvantage you, then to that extent they restrict your ...

• Should contemporary philosophers read Ockham? Or: what did history ever do for us?

  If you are a historian of philosophy, you’ve probably encountered the question whether the stuff you’re working on is of any interest today. It’s the kind of question that awakens all the different souls in your breast at once. Your more enthusiastic self might think, “yes, totally”, while your methodological soul might shout, “anachronism ahead!” ...

• Does Microdosing Improve your Mood and Performance? Here’s what the Research Says

  Our study, published today in PLOS One, tracked the experience of 98 users over a longer period – six weeks – to systematically measure any psychological changes.

  Overall, the participants reported both positive and negative effects from microdosing, including improved attention and mental health; but also more neuroticism.

• How Seeing Snakes in the Grass Helped Primates to Evolve

  Evolution has favoured the modification and expansion of primate vision. Compared with other mammals, primates have, for example, greater depth perception from having forward-facing eyes with extensively overlapping visual fields, sharper visual acuity, more areas in the brain that are involved with vision, and, in some primates, trichromatic colour vision, which enables them to distinguish ...

• Introduction to Deontology: Kantian Ethics

  One popular moral theory that denies that morality is solely about the consequences of our actions is known as Deontology. The most influential and widely adhered to version of Deontology was extensively laid out by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant’s ethics, as well as the overall philosophical system in which it is embedded, is vast and incredibly difficult. However, one ...

• My Heroine

  I bet you laugh, at the thought of me thinking for myself,
  I bet you believe, that I’m better off with you than someone else.

  I will save myself!

• Native Tongue

  I want the world to sing in her native tongue,
  Maybe we could learn to sing along,
  To find a way to use our lungs for love and not the shadows.

• Don’t let the rise of Europe steal World History

  The centre of a map tells you much, as does the choice where to begin a story, or a history. Arab geographers used to place the Caspian Sea at the centre of world maps. On a medieval Turkish map, one that transfixed me long ago, we find the city of Balasaghun at the heart of ...

• Meant to Live

  We were meant to live for so much more,
  Have we lost ourselves?
  Somewhere we live inside.

• Philosophy Can Make the Previously Unthinkable Thinkable

  Overton was concerned with the activities of think tanks, but philosophers and practical ethicists might gain something from considering the Overton window. By its nature, practical ethics typically addresses controversial, politically sensitive topics. It is the job of philosophers to engage in ‘conceptual hygiene’ or, as the late British philosopher Mary Midgley described it, ‘philosophical ...

• The Existentialist Tradition

  This just recently arrived in the mail: The Existentialist Tradition: Selected Writings, edited by Nino Langiulli. I’m very happy to have found this book in good condition. This was my first introduction to existentialism around 10 years ago. I originally found it at the University library and the ideas contained within are thought-provoking and sometimes ...

• The Empathetic Humanities have much to teach our Adversarial Culture

  Certainly, reading isn’t a zero-sum game. One can and should cultivate multiple modes of interpretation. Yet the nostrum that the humanities teach ‘critical thinking and reading skills’ obscures the profound differences in how adversarial and empathetic disciplines engage with written works – and how they teach us to respond to other human beings. If the ...

• Passion and Grit Create a Work of Art

  John Rodney Mullen (born August 17, 1966) is an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, inventor, and public speaker who practices freestyle and street skateboarding. He is widely considered the most influential street skater in the history of the sport, being credited for inventing numerous tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. As a ...

• Psychology’s Five Revelations for Finding Your True Calling

  Another finding is that, when you invest enough effort, you might find that your work becomes your passion. It’s all very well reading about the benefits of having a passion or calling in life but, if you haven’t got one, where to find it? Duckworth says it’s a mistake to think that in a moment ...

• Slaying the Snark: What Nonsense Verse tells us about Reality

  A passionate logician, Carroll had been working on a three-part book on symbolic logic that remained unfinished at his death. Two logical paradoxes that he posed in Mind and shared privately with friends and colleagues, such as Bradley, hint at a troublemaking sentiment regarding where logic might be headed. ‘A Logical Paradox’ (1894) resulted in ...

• Modern Technology is akin to the Metaphysics of Vedanta

  You might think of the atma like this. Imagine you’re watching a film in the cinema. It’s a thriller, and you’re anxious about the lead character, trapped in a room. Suddenly, the door in the movie crashes open and there stands… You jump, as if startled. But what is the real threat to you, other ...

• Why Amartya Sen Remains the Century’s Great Critic of Capitalism

  Every major work on material inequality in the 21st century owes a debt to Sen. But his own writings treat material inequality as though the moral frameworks and social relationships that mediate economic exchanges matter. Famine is the nadir of material deprivation. But it seldom occurs – Sen argues – for lack of food. To ...

• Reach out, listen, be patient. Good arguments can stop extremism

  Many of my best friends think that some of my deeply held beliefs about important issues are obviously false or even nonsense. Sometimes, they tell me so to my face. How can we still be friends? Part of the answer is that these friends and I are philosophers, and philosophers learn how to deal with ...

• Subjectivity as Truth

  When subjectivity, inwardness, is truth, then objectively truth is the paradox; and the fact that truth is objectively the paradox is just what proves subjectivity to be truth, since the objective situation proves repellent, and this resistance on the part of objectivity, or its expression, is the resilience of inwardness and the gauge of its ...

• Just a Memory

  A song that I used to love and adore, in another life.

• Judith II

  Faith without works is,
  Talk without works is,
  Faith without works is,
  Dead, dead, dead, dead.

  Sit and talk like Jesus,
  Try walkin’ like Jesus.
  Sit and talk like Jesus,
  Try walkin’ like Jesus.

• How Al-Farabi drew on Plato to argue for censorship in Islam

  You might not be familiar with the name Al-Farabi, a 10th-century thinker from Baghdad, but you know his work, or at least its results. Al-Farabi was, by all accounts, a man of steadfast Sufi persuasion and unvaryingly simple tastes. As a labourer in a Damascus vineyard before settling in Baghdad, he favoured a frugal diet ...

• Possibility and Necessity: An Introduction to Modality

  This essay explains basic modal concepts, illustrates some different kinds of possibility and necessity, and briefly explains how we try to identify whether a modal claim is true or false…

• Attention is Not a Resource but a Way of Being Alive to the World

  However, conceiving of attention as a resource misses the fact that attention is not just useful. It’s more fundamental than that: attention is what joins us with the outside world. ‘Instrumentally’ attending is important, sure. But we also have the capacity to attend in a more ‘exploratory’ way: to be truly open to whatever we ...

• Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr

  It’s our curse,
  that makes this world so hopeless.
  Allowing our,
  king to spread his genocidal wings.

• What Einstein Meant by ‘God Does Not Play Dice’

  ‘The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One,’ wrote Albert Einstein in December 1926. ‘I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.’

  Einstein was responding to a letter from the German physicist Max Born. The heart of the new theory of quantum ...

• Nier: Automata

  Nier Automata Story Summary

  Nihilism and Artificial Intelligence

• Awake & Alive

  I’m at war with the world and they,
  Try to pull me into the dark.
  I struggle to find my faith,
  As I’m slippin’ from your arms.

• Dare You to Move

  Welcome to the planet,
  Welcome to existence,
  Everyone’s here,
  Everyone’s here.
  Everybody’s watching you now,
  Everybody waits for you now,
  What happens next?
  What happens next?

• Sappy

  And if you save yourself, you will make him happy.
  He’ll keep you in a jar, then you’ll think you’re happy.
  He’ll give you breathing holes, then you’ll think you’re happy.
  He’ll cover you with grass, then you’ll think you’re happy.

• Word Up

  If there’s music we can use it,
  Be free to dance.
  We don’t have the time for psychological romance.
  No romance, no romance, no romance for me, mama.
  Come on baby, tell me what’s the word?

• Do You Really Want It?

  Everybody wants to change the world,
  But one thing’s clear:
  No one ever wants to change themselves,
  That’s the way things are.
  All because we hate the buzzkill,
  Jaded when we need to feel,
  But we can change it all.
  (We can change it all)
  We can change it all,
  If you really want it!

• Interview with Simone de Beauvoir (1959)

  Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

• How Camus and Sartre Split Up Over the Question of How to be Free

  Sartre, the existentialist, who said that humans are condemned to be free, was also Sartre, the Marxist, who thought that history does not allow much space for true freedom in the existential sense.

• Food for Thought with Elon Musk

  Joe Rogan interviews Elon Musk

• One

  I feel angry, I feel helpless,
  Want to change the world, yeah.
  I feel violent, I feel alone,
  Don’t try and change my mind, no.
  Society blind by color,
  Why hold down one to raise another?
  Discrimination now on both sides,
  Seeds of hate blossom further.
  The world is heading for mutiny,
  When all we ...

• Being ‘interesting’ is Not an Objective Feature of the World

  What does it mean for an experience to be interesting? First, to say that something is interesting is to describe what the experience feels like to the person undergoing it. This is the phenomenological quality of the experience. When we study the phenomenology of something, we examine what it feels like, from the inside, to ...

• Why it’s only Science that can Answer all the Big Questions

  Science is like Michelangelo. The young Michelangelo demonstrated his skill as a sculptor by carving the ravishing Pietà in the Vatican; the mature Michelangelo, having acquired and demonstrated his skill, broke free of the conventions and created his extraordinary later quasi-abstractions. Science has trod a similar path. Through its four centuries of serious endeavour, from ...

• Why Atheists are Not as Rational as Some Like to Think

  Clearly, the idea that being atheist is down to rationality alone is starting to look distinctly irrational. But the good news for all concerned is that rationality is overrated.

• Religion is About Emotion Regulation, and It’s Very Good at It

  Religion is real consolation in the same way that music is real consolation. No one thinks that the pleasure of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is ‘false pleasure’ because singing flutes don’t really exist. It doesn’t need to correspond to reality.

• The Varieties of Religious Experience

  The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James (1842 – 1910). James was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.

• Is Religion a Universal in Human Culture or an Academic Invention?

  Smith wanted to dislodge the assumption that the phenomenon of religion needs no definition. He showed that things appearing to us as religious says less about the ideas and practices themselves than it does about the framing concepts that we bring to their interpretation. Far from a universal phenomenon with a distinctive essence, the category ...

• O Me! O Life!

  The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

• Pragmatism & Postmodernism

  What is it for something to be true? One might think that the answer is obvious. A true belief gets reality right: our words correspond to objects and relations in the world. But making sense of that idea involves one in ever more difficult workarounds to intractable problems.

• Emptiness, form, and Dzogchen ethics

  For a hundred years, the West has wrestled with the problem of ethical nihilism. God’s commands once provided a firm foundation for morality; but then he died. All attempts to find an alternative foundation have failed. Why, then, should we be moral? How can we be sure what is moral? No one has satisfactory answers, despite many ingenious ...

• Lifelines

  When I open my eyes and see the lines that live on the life I left behind,
  I feel disconnected from the place that I call home.
  When I try to rewind I can’t design a way to go back to that place and time.
  I remember that moment that changed everything I know.
  Everything ...

• Fade In / Fade Out

  When the morning comes and takes me,
  I promise I have taught you everything that you need.
  In the night you’ll dream of so many things,
  But find the ones that bring you life.
  And you’ll find me.
  That’s where you’ll find me.

• What did Max Weber mean by the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism?

  The proliferation of knowledge and reflection on knowledge had made it impossible for any one person to know and survey it all. In a world which could not be grasped as a whole, and where there were no universally shared values, most people clung to the particular niche to which they were most committed: their ...

• What makes People distrust Science?

  Some people are reluctant to accept particular scientific findings, for various reasons. When the aim is to combat skepticism and increase trust in science, a good starting point is to acknowledge that science skepticism comes in many forms.

• Is Philosophy Absurd? Only When You’re Doing it Right

  When we sense that something – or everything – in life is absurd, we’re experiencing the clash of two perspectives from which to view the world.

• The Problem of Atheism

  A crisis is taking place in the contemporary world in a variety of forms, cutting across the realms of culture, ethics, politics, and so forth. At the ground of these problems is that fact that the essence of being human has turned into a question mark for humanity itself. This means that a crisis has ...

• Don’t Stop Dancing

  At times life is wicked and I just can’t see the light.
  A silver lining sometimes isn’t enough,
  To make some wrongs seem right.
  Whatever life brings,
  I’ve been through everything,
  And now I’m on my knees again.

• What is Christianity?

  The problems with interpreting the scriptures too literally are exemplified. Anybody that seriously calls herself a Christian should examine the things discussed here. Sapere aude!

• Philosophers Should be Keener to Talk about the Meaning of Life

  Seeing no other way to interpret the question, many philosophers conclude that the question is confused. If they go on to talk about meaning in life, they have in mind the meaning of individual lives, the question of whether this life or that life is meaningful for the person who is living it. But the ...

• Seven Types of Atheism

  For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and ...

• The Dynamics of Faith

  Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The content matters infinitely for the life of the believer, but it does not matter for the formal definition of faith. And this is the first step we have to make in order to understand the dynamics of faith.

• Why Our Declining Biblical Literacy Matters

  Biblical literacy is likely lower in Australia today than at any point since the convict era. General levels of familiarity with the Christian scriptures are difficult to plot precisely, but studies of Bible reading habits, and data on various forms of Christian socialisation, indicate a significant decline in Australians’ exposure to the Bible over the ...

• Marxism and Existentialism

  Far from being exhausted, Marxism is still very young, almost in its infancy; it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains, therefore, the philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it.

  As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real freedom beyond the ...

• Why Religion is not Going Away and Science will not Destroy It

  In brief, global secularisation is not inevitable and, when it does happen, it is not caused by science. Further, when the attempt is made to use science to advance secularism, the results can damage science.

• Skateboarding: An Existential Art

  Rodney Mullen (born August 17, 1966) is an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, inventor, and public speaker who practices freestyle and street skateboarding. He is widely considered the most influential street skater in the history of the sport, being credited for inventing numerous tricks, including the kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. As a result, he has been called the “Godfather of Street Skateboarding.”

• My Name is Human

  I don’t want your answers
  I’m not asking questions
  So you keep your answers

• I Believe Because it is Absurd

  This paradoxical expression makes a routine appearance in philosophical evaluations of the rationality of religious belief, in contemporary polemics addressed to an imagined opposition between science and religion, and in virtually every reputable dictionary of quotations.

• Man’s Search for Meaning

  “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”

• Memento Mori

  By highlighting the fact that time is short, death meditation can help us to put things in perspective and appreciate the present more. It can remind us that the things we get so worked up about are not worth it – our appearance, career, how our achievements compare with those of our peers, the satisfaction ...

• Gone Away

  I reach to the sky
  And call out your name
  Oh please let me trade
  I would

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

  In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought.

• Disillusioned

  We have been overrun by our animal desire
  Addicts of the immediate keep us obedient and unaware
  Feeding this mutation, this Pavlovian despair

  We’ve become disillusioned
  So we run towards anything glimmering

• The Second Sex

  The Second Sex is a 1949 book by the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history. Beauvoir asks “What is woman?” She argues that man is considered the default, while woman is considered the “Other”. According to Beauvoir, two factors explain the evolution of women’s condition: participation in production ...

• Postmodernism in Ancient Greece

  Antilogic involves the assignment to any argument of a counterargument that negates it, with the implication that both argument and counterargument are equally true.

• The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories

  The Bible is a series of books written, edited and assembled over thousands of years. It contains the most influential stories of mankind. Knowledge of those stories is essential to a deep understanding of Western culture, which is in turn vital to proper psychological health (as human beings are cultural animals) and societal stability. These ...

• Lateralus

  Black then white are all I see
  In my infancy.
  Red and yellow then came to be,
  Reaching out to me,
  Lets me see.

• Parabola

  Twirling round with this familiar parable
  Spinning, weaving round each new experience
  Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing

• What do you really believe?

  Most of us have views on politics, current events, religion, society, morality and sport, and we spend a lot of time expressing these views, whether in conversation or on social media. We argue for our positions, and get annoyed if they are challenged. Why do we do this? The obvious answer is that we believe ...

• Lost in Translation

  It would surely be a category error to assume that the story of Christ’s overthrow of death and sin cannot express a truth that transcends the historical and cultural conditions in which it was first told. But, before we decide anything at all about that story, we must first recover it from the very different ...

• The Doomed

  Behold a new Christ,
  Behold the same old horde.
  Gather at the altering,
  New beginning, new Word.
  And the Word was death,
  And the Word was without light.
  The new beatitude:
  “Good luck, you’re on your own.”

• Reality and the Imagination

  In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about meditation, the need for stories, the power of technology to erase the boundary between fact and fiction, wealth inequality, the problem of finding meaning in a world without work, religion as a virtual reality game, the difference between pain ...

• ‘Know thyself’ is not just silly advice: it’s actively dangerous

  The problem is this: if we change while our self-image remains the same, then there will be a deep abyss between who we are and who we think we are.

• The Four Horsemen

  This little chat, a casual yet intellectually stimulating discussion between four brilliant minds was so excellent that I felt the need to share it. Many topics are discussed spanning science, religion, psychology and sociology. The way they interact with each other with sincerity, empathy and humility and a sense of fellowship is hard to come ...

• Our Illusory Sense of Agency Has a Deeply Important Social Purpose

  Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other.

• The Sunset Limited

  Black feels that he can persuade White from committing suicide. With Black stopping White right before he was about to kill himself, Black feels that this is destiny.

• The Myth of Sisyphus

  For me “The Myth of Sisyphus” marks the beginning of an idea which I was to pursue in The Rebel. It attempts to resolve the problem of suicide, as The Rebel attempts to resolve that of murder, in both cases without the aid of eternal values which, temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary ...

• Zombie

  Missio – Zombie (The Cranberries Cover)

• Philosophy Primary Sources II

  This post will serve as Part II of Philosophy Primary Sources and a supplement to Primary Sources & Encyclopedias (check out the Links section for even more research sources). There are certain books that are essential to an education about the human condition of which I believe should be available for free and with easy access ...

• The Teaching of Buddha

  The Teaching of Buddha is a collection of writings on the essence of Buddhism, selected and edited from the vast Buddhist canon, presented in a concise, easy-to-read, and nonsectarian format. It also includes a brief history of Buddhism, a listing of the source texts, a glossary of Sanskrit terms, and an index.

• Alan Watts – The Trickster Guru?

  I have often thought of writing a novel, similar to Thomas Mann’s “Confessions of Felix Krull,” which would be the life story of a charlatan making out as a master guru – either initiated in Tibet or appearing as the reincarnation of Nagarjuna, Padmasambhava, or some other great historical sage of the Orient.

• Without Music, Life Would Be a Mistake

  The Glitch Mob – Our Demons

  Clint Mansell – Death is the Road to Awe

• Schopenhauer

  A key focus of Schopenhauer was his investigation of individual motivation. Before Schopenhauer, Hegel had popularized the concept of Zeitgeist, the idea that society consisted of a collective consciousness that moved in a distinct direction, dictating the actions of its members. Schopenhauer, a reader of both Kant and Hegel, criticized their logical optimism and the belief that individual ...

• The Absurd

  My contention has been that death and the certain prospect of death make an absurdity out of life. But, argues Albert Camus, even if we humans were immortal, this would make life no less absurd.

• The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism

  The summaries of the relation to nihilism of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, and Stirner, a nearly forgotten figure in intellectual history, are all perspicacious. Even the chapters on Nietzsche, about whom volumes are written these days, provide new insights. The brief section on the problem of nihilism for Japan is unprecedented in the English literature, ...

• Lost Tribes

  A few nights ago, I watched The Lost City of Z, which is about British explorer Percy Fawcett who was sent to Bolivia and later made several attempts to find an ancient lost city in the Amazon. He disappeared in 1925 along with his son on an expedition. It got me thinking about people today who are still uncontacted ...

• Antilogicalism

  Jordan’s death has caused me to re-evaluate many things in my life, and so I decided to write this post. I started this blog using Facebook’s note system sometime in 2010 or 2011. It started as me just saving things (articles, quotes, etc) from around the web that I figured I would want to look ...

• Amazon Order History (2004-2008)

  Wow! I logged into my old Amazon account today and checked out my order history. I actually got rid of a lot of these books a long time ago, specifically the theological ones, so I just had to catalogue it.

• Empty Walls

  I loved you
  Yesterday, before
  You killed my family.

• The Map of Philosophy

  This video is such an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the various areas of philosophical interest. The narrator explains the intricate relations that each area has with the others. Also included in each section of the video are links to more videos about each specific subject. Carneades.org really did a great job creating this. They ...

• Reason & Faith

  In a recent post I had asked myself if my approach to and conclusions about Truth and God, in both my thoughts and in some of my older writings, were completely backwards. Did I begin and end in the wrong place? Was my thought process illogical? Did I even ask the right questions and use ...

• The Wrong Side of Heaven

  I spoke to God today, and she said that she’s ashamed.
  What have I become, what have I done?
  I spoke to the Devil today, and he swears he’s not to blame.
  And I understood, cause I feel the same.

• Scribblings on the Wall

  Just some things on my mind… completely unfocused and scrambled. I could probably make a separate post for each of these thoughts, but… nah. More of a splurge to release mental energies than a proper blog post.

• Emil Cioran

  Over this past Easter weekend, a good friend of mine happened to mention an obscure philosopher that he had recently stumbled upon. After a bit of research, I’ve found this philosopher to be a man after my own heart. This philosopher’s name is Emil Cioran and he had some interesting things to say about existence. ...

• Must-Watch Movies & TV

  A list of must-watch movies and television series, all according to me of course! There are so many more movies that should be on this list, but all of these have some special meaning for me.

• Disturbed

  Never again will I be dishonored
  And never again will I be reminded
  Of living within the world of the jaded
  They kill inspiration
  It’s my obligation
  To never again, allow this to happen

• Silence

  As nihilism encroaches upon the West and the death of God is both celebrated and denied, Silence offers a unique and insightful perspective on religion and the faithful.

• Books I Must Read!

  Conscious of being unable to be anything, man then decides to be nothing. … Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has turned back upon itself.

  – Simone de Beauvoir

• Philosophy Primary Sources

  Some primary sources from the history of philosophy. This was the first of two posts that inspired what is now the Bookshelf.

• Video Games as Spiritual Activity

  I’ve seen it in the passionate music and epic stories of Final Fantasy. I’ve seen it in the comradery of split-screen deathmatches in Goldeneye. I’ve seen it in the power struggles and great friendships of the silent Tibia. Hell, I’ve seen it in Guitar Hero.

• Thinking About a Lack of Thinking

  A good education consists not only of the memorization of facts or methods, but, more importantly, of the development of understanding and thoughtfulness, which arouse the mind to curiosity and innovation.

• Two Brothers

  The Norris brothers entertain us during their first season.

• God Went North

  The part of the whole process that made it so complicated was that we were not only splitting physically, but also splitting spiritually and emotionally because we didn’t see things the same way anymore.

• Oh, Me

  I can’t see the end of me
  My whole expanse I cannot see
  I formulate infinity
  Stored deep inside me

• The Gay Science

  For believe me, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored seas! Live in war with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and spoilers, you knowing ones, as long as you cannot ...

• Economics is for Everyone!

  Chang explains why every single person can and SHOULD get their head around basic economics. He pulls back the curtain on the often mystifying language of derivatives and quantitative easing, and explains how easily economic myths and assumptions become gospel.

• The Aging Paradox

  I feel like a lot of my time has been spent climbing toward some philosophical or ideological plateau – some time and place where there is no more need to philosophize, where everything has been solved for eternity. Where I’d have the answer to every metaphysical and ethical dilemma. That’s what used to intrigue me ...

• Being & Becoming

  Macann is best known for his ontological phenomenology: Being and Becoming (2007). Distinguishing three stages in the development of human consciousness, Being and Becoming situates ontological philosophy at the first (‘originary’) stage, analytic epistemology at the second (‘objective’) stage, and transcendental philosophy at the third (‘reflective’) stage. The fact that historically, ontological philosophy has always ...

• Plutonomy and the Precariat

  We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted — and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very ...

• Dancing Mad

  Life… Dreams… Hope… Where do they come from? And where do they go…? Such meaningless things… I’ll destroy them all!

• Critical Voter

  Why waste the next election feeling suckered, ignored or manipulated when you can follow the simple lessons in this book to become a member of the most fearsome of all demographics: the free and truly independent critical thinker.

• The Matthew Effect

  You’ve been sucking tit
  Asleep in your cradle
  Given the world
  You’re still ungrateful

• Circuminsession

  What is fire without that for which it burns?

  What is money without her for whom he earns?

  What is justice without those for whom to serve?

  What is a mother without a daughter to preserve?

• Scientism contra Philosophy

  Many people mistake knowledge for wisdom because they are intimately related, and this is unfortunate because they are quite different in an important way. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts and information. Wisdom is the synthesis of knowledge and experiences into insights that deepen one’s understanding of relationships and the meaning of life. In other ...

• Cryonics – Toward an Immortality of the Body

  Unlike the miraculous rebirth of one’s soul at the hands of Osiris, the practice of cryonics promises the rebirth of a younger, fitter, and not-dead you—all through the miracle of future scientific progress.

• Leaves of Grass

  Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
  Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
  That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
  That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,

• Philosophy of Language

  Does language affect the way you think about the world?

  A radically positive answer to this question is a strong form of the linguistic relativity thesis, which says that the language you speak broadly affects or even determines the way you experience the world, from the way you perceive it, to the way to categorize it, to the ...

• Constitutional Idolatry?

  The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of ...

• The Psychology of Video Games

  Video games are big business. They can be addicting. They are available almost anywhere you go and are appealing to people of all ages. They can eat up our time, cost us money, even kill our relationships. But it’s not all bad! This book will show that rather than being a waste of time, video ...

• Philosophy via Facebook? Why Not?

  Academic philosophers tend to have a narrow view of what is valuable philosophical work. Hiring, tenure, promotion and prestige depend mainly on one’s ability to produce journal articles in a particular theoretical, abstract style, mostly in reaction to a small group of canonical and 20th century figures, for a small readership of specialists. We should ...

• Christ Copyright

  Don’t form thoughts, trust politicians
  Forfeit soul, pursue religion
  Lose free will to gain protection
  Sink the ship with good intention

• The Hidden World of Immanuel Kant

  A Philosophy Now podcast.

• The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond

  Alan Kirby says postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new technologies and contemporary social forces.

• We Loved with Every Step We Take

  How do you love when your heart is broken?
  How do you speak when you feel outspoken?
  I can forgive and be forgiven
  By learning to heal with a heart wide open

• Everything is Broken / A Message of Hope…

  ‘Kintsugi’ (or ‘Kintsukuroi’) is the Japanese art of repairing broken objects with gold.  Once repaired, the objects are considered more beautiful for having been broken.

  In today’s world, perhaps more than ever before, we are subject to a continual and interminable bombardment of images touting promises of an almost laughably untenable perfection.

• Herd Mentality

  Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use ...

• Psychiatry as Pseudoscience

  There are no known biological causes for any of the psychiatric disorders apart from dementia and some rare chromosomal disorders. Consequently, there are no biological tests such as blood tests or brain scans that can be used to provide independent objective data in support of any psychiatric diagnosis.

• Civil War

  Look at your young men fighting
  Look at your women crying
  Look at your young men dying
  The way they’ve always done before

• The Filter Bubble

  A filter bubble is a result of a personalized search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (such as location, past click behavior and search history) and, as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively ...

• Laughing at Nothing

  Disputing the common misconception that nihilism is wholly negative and necessarily damaging to the human spirit, John Marmysz offers a clear and complete definition to argue that it is compatible, and indeed preferably responded to, with an attitude of good humor. He carefully scrutinizes the phenomenon of nihilism as it appears in the works, lives, ...

• Requiem for the American Dream

  Requiem for the American Dream is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time – the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us ...

• Meta-ethics

  Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God? When you think about morality, what comes to mind? Is it a list of sins to avoid in order to make it into heaven and avoid hellfire? Or perhaps a duty to ...

• Science as Mythology

  Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological theory advanced by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge. It holds that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious, and ...

• Tightrope

  There is a thin line between what is good and what is evil
  And, I will tiptoe down that line, but I will feel unstable
  My life is a circus and I am trippin’ down that tightrope
  Well, there is nothing to save me now, so I will not look down

• Meditation & The Dark Night

  The meditation-and-the-brain research has been rolling in steadily for a number of years now, with new studies coming out just about every week to illustrate some new benefit of meditation. Or, rather, some ancient benefit that is just now being confirmed with fMRI or EEG.

• The Humanities Are Not “Frivolous”

  At Zócalo Public Square, Irina Dumitrescu argues against the notion that a liberal arts education is a luxury, sharing stories of political prisoners whose knowledge of languages and poetry proved crucial to their survival.

• Quantum Mysticism

  Quantum mysticism is a set of metaphysical beliefs and associated practices that seek to relate consciousness, intelligence, spirituality, or mystical world-views to the ideas of quantum mechanics and its interpretations. Quantum mysticism is considered by most scientists and philosophers to be pseudoscience or “quackery”.

• Reflections on Another World

  You’ll never forget your first dragon. Tibia is an online fantasy world in which you may escape the mundane realities of your boring life. Thousands of people plug into this Matrix-esque world (it is literally a matrix) every day to mindlessly murder trolls and goblins in the vain effort to increase their skill numbers. Tibia offers a huge world ...

• Divine Wisdom

  In The Secret Doctrine we are told that Plato was not merely the greatest philosopher of Greece but also an Adept who belonged psychically, mentally and spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, a ‘Fifth-rounder’ in the Fourth Round, immensely higher than is our present humanity. He imparted spiritual truths through myths and allegories as ...

• Socially Conscious Hip-Hop

  My gut feeling says it’s all fake
  I hate to say it but fuck it, shit I done lost faith
  This isn’t a small phase, my perspective’s all changed
  My thoughts just keep picking shit apart all day

• We Know So Little About So Much

  I find it very interesting that even with the exponential growth in knowledge that we have witnessed from ancient times through the industrial age to the digital age, there still remains so much that is simply unknown to us. I have no doubt that the human spirit will in time conquer each and every question that ...

• Right in Two

  Angels on the sideline
  Puzzled and amused.
  Why did Father give these humans free will?
  Now they’re all confused.

• On Mythology

  Campbell’s concept of monomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation.

• The Matrix

  As interesting as the movie can be, that is not entirely what this post is about. This post is about the ideology of many of the folks that frequent the so-called Dark Web. On the main hub of the Dark Web, namely, the Hidden Wiki, one will find categories with links to hidden services of ...

• 411VM #28 (1998)

  Skateboarding used to be one of my great passions. I was never a team sport type of guy, but skating offered a form of personal development and discipline that was unique unto itself. And it was more than just a sport. It was a lifestyle and an art form. There was always a new trick ...

• Why the Hell do you Blog?

  I may be biased, but I think bloggers are a very brave lot. Knowing that anyone in the world with an Internet connection could potentially be watching as they share everything imaginable. Their political leanings, life philosophies, deepest depressions, and their intimate moments from sex to childbirth to mortality.

• Dark Night of the Soul

  The dark night of the soul
  comes just before revelation.

  When everything is lost,
  and all seems darkness,
  then comes the new life
  and all that is needed.

• Society

  It’s a mystery to me
  We have a greed with which we have agreed
  And you think you have to want more than you need
  Until you have it all, you won’t be free

• Pyre

  When you opened your eyes on the world for the first time as a child,
  How brilliant the colors were, what a jewel the sun was,
  What marvel the stars, how incredibly alive the trees were…

• Smoking Kills (Your Organs): 6 Major Organs Damaged By Cigarette Smoke

  Coughing up heaping globs of mucous isn’t even the half of it. Neither is losing all sense of stamina, or coming home to a stale-smelling house with yellowed walls and furniture. No, the biggest consequences of smoking are, by and large, ones you will never see. These, however, tend to be the deadliest.

• On Science

  The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

• καὶ μαίνομαι κοὐ μαίνομαι

  Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?

  Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

• Zen & The Art of Postmodern Philosophy

  Nietzsche views Buddhism as a passive kind of nihilism, a sign of weakness. Contrary to Nietzsche’s opinion of Buddhism, the historical Buddha wanted to “steer clear of notions of permanent existence and nihilistic nonexistence.” Within the context of the historically later Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, classical Madhyamika thinkers, for instance, emphatically rejected a nihilistic interpretation of ...

• Zazen

  Sitting fixedly, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen.

  – Dōgen Zenji

• Why Stephen Hawking is Wrong

  In his recent best seller, the world’s most famous scientist proclaims that philosophy is dead. But those who ignore philosophy are condemned to repeat it. And those who disparage philosophy are usually slaves of some defunct philosopher.

• White Noise

  All the others. The others who spend their lives believing that we still believe. It is our task in the world to believe things no one else takes seriously. To abandon such beliefs completely, the human race would die. This is why we are here. A tiny minority. To embody old things, old beliefs. The devil, the ...

• What’s on the Agenda

  I remember, in my youth, feeling a certain sense of loss when I realized that the WWF was scripted. In the same way, reality television fans would be bummed to find out that their favorite show is scripted. It’s a feeling akin to what is felt when one learns that the Easter Bunny does not exist, Santa ...

• What is the Life of Meaning?

  Depending upon whom one asks, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” may be one of the most profound questions of human existence or nothing more than a nonsensical request built on conceptual confusion, much like, “What does the color red taste like?” Ask a non-philosopher, “What do philosophers discuss?” and a likely answer ...

• What is Noble?

  The spiritual haughtiness and nausea of every man who has suffered profoundly – it almost determines the order of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer – his shuddering certainty, which permeates and colors him through and through, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, ...

• What if Heaven Was Hell and Vice Versa?

  I wanna make you use yo mind, God has sent a sign
  And when you listen to these rhymes, nigga take your time
  Again I ask, Heaven was hell and vica versa
  Would you start doin’ evil in order to nurture–the spirit man?

• What Exactly is Wikipedia Doing?

  Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging ...

• What Do You Take for Granted?

  Do you ever stop and imagine, “We are living on a giant rock that is hurtling through space around a gigantic ball of fire!”

• Video Games as Creation

  Supreme Court Sees Video Games as Art

  June 27, 2011|By John D. Sutter, CNN

• Untitled 2

  A wise man once said, “Know thy-self!” But what if one gets so caught up in trying to get to know their self that they forget to live their self?

• The Everlasting Gospel

  The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

  Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy.

  Thine has a great hook nose like thine;

  Mine has a snub nose like to mine.

• Tourniquet

  My God, my tourniquet
  Return to me salvation
  My God, my tourniquet
  Return to me salvation

• To Be Governed

  To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

• There is Nothing New Under the Sun

  The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries ...

• The Urban Vote is In

  From Urban Dictionary:

  God 19684 up, 7639 down – A guy who talked to some Jewish guys, some Christian guys, and some Islam guys, and accidentally caused more people to die than anyone else in human history.

  “And people wonder why he doesn’t talk much to us anymore.”

• The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

  US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went ...

• The Parable of the Arrow

  The Buddha was sitting in the park when his disciple Malunkyaputta approached him. Malunkyaputta had recently retired from the world and he was concerned that so many things remained unexplained by the Buddha. Was the world eternal or not eternal? Was the soul different from the body? Did the enlightened exist after death or not? ...

• The New Idol

  Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states.

  A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.

  A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and ...

• The Myth of Homo Sapiens

  I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral ...

• The Madman (in me)

  I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither ...

• The Logic of Basho

  Nishida Kitarō’s logic of basho, contra the substance logic of Aristotle and the predicate logic of Kant?

• The Kyoto School’s Takeover of Hegel

  Suares’s first book-length publication on philosophy fills a conspicuous lacuna of scholarship on the complex relationship between Hegel and the philosophers of the Kyoto School. The uptake of Hegel’s thought in Japan has been addressed by scholars in articles, book chapters, or in passing within the context of other subjects; but given the pervasive influence ...

• The History of an Error

  And Plato said, “Let there be Truth,” and there was Truth. Man saw that the Truth was good, and he separated the Truth from the truth. Man called the Truth “Form,” and the truth he called “illusion.” Such is the spectacular deceit that marked the beginning of thousands of years of philosophical confusion. To the ...

• The Free State Project

  The Free State Project (FSP) is a political movement, founded in 2001, to recruit at least 20,000 libertarian-leaning people to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas. The project seeks to overcome the historical ineffectiveness of limited-government activism by the small, diffuse ...

• The Floating Continent

  Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? …Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?

• The Deep Web

  Mike Bergman, founder of BrightPlanet, credited with coining the phrase, said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the ...

• The Curse of Greyface

  In the year 1166 B.C. a malcontented hunchbrain by the name of Greyface got it into his head that the universe was as humorless as he, and he began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of Serious Order. “Look at all the order around you,” he said. And from that, ...

• The Crowd is Untruth

  And to honour every man, absolutely every man, is the truth, and this is what it is to fear God and love one’s “neighbour.” But from an ethico-religious point of view, to recognize the “crowd” as the court of last resort is to deny God, and it cannot exactly mean to love the “neighbour.” And ...

• The Book of Wisdom

  I was licking a custard cream when it suddenly turned into the perfect cry of a baby.

• The Antichrist

  I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind… And one calculates time from the dies nefastus on which this fatality arose — from the first day of ...

• The Anarchist Cookbook

  The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and other items. It was written by William Powell to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

• That’s My Pharmacy!

  WESTLAND, Mich. (WXYZ) – Men with guns tied up employees at a Westland pharmacy while they stole prescription drugs and cash.

  Karen Wilkie ran up to the store after she received a disturbing phone call about her boss Ollie.

  “I just got the phone call that he was robbed and they tied him up,” said Willie.

  Her boss ...

• Søren K. (March 30, 1846)

  The present age is essentially a sensible, reflecting age, devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial, short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing in indolence. In contrast to the age of revolution, which took action, the present age is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements: nothing happens but still there is instant publicity. There ...

• Some More Early American Documents

  Federalist Papers vs. Anti-Federalist Papers

• Social Contract Theory

  Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. Socrates uses something quite like a social contract argument to explain to Crito why he must remain in prison and ...

• Skin

  Let them find the real you
  Buried deep within
  Let them know with all you’ve got
  That you are not your skin

• Shakyamuni

  Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

• Self-Transcendence

  Buddhism begins with a man. In his later years, when India was afire with his message and kings themselves were bowing before him, people came to him even as they were to come to Jesus asking what he was. How many people have provoked this question – not “Who are you?” with respect to name, ...

• Secessio Plebis

  Secessio plebis (withdrawal of the commoners, or Secession of the Plebs) was an informal exercise of power by Rome’s plebeian citizens, similar to a general strike taken to the extreme. During a secessio plebis, the plebs would simply abandon the city en masse and leave the patrician order to themselves.

• Scientific Prophecy

  Ran across this website by chance. Interesting stuff. It’s called Future Timeline. Not sure how accurate the predictions will be.

• Satire & Farce

  George Carlin and Dane Cook

• Revolution on the Horizon?

  Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, ...

• Revaluation of Natural Values

  Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and ...

• Religion as Escapism

  The tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

• Religion & Nothingness

  Keiji Nishitani attempts in this book to reformulate the question “What is religion?” away from attempts to amass historical evidence from a variety of traditions in order to create a universal definition of religion based on certain shared characteristics, from using an objective viewpoint to encounter religion as some type of object whose characteristics can ...

• Recreational Mary Jane Proposals Pass

  Should marijuana be treated like alcohol? Or should it remain in the same legal category as heroin and the most dangerous drugs? Votes this week by Colorado and Washington to allow adult marijuana possession have prompted what could be a turning point in the nation’s conflicted and confusing war on drugs.

• Recreation

  The choice of nutrition; the choice of climate and place: the third point at which one must not commit a blunder at any price is the choice of one’s own kind of recreation. Here, too, depending on the degree to which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of what is permitted to him, that is, profitable ...

• Re: Ecclesiastes

  The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect – what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now – and yet it seems ...

• Ratio Legis est Anima Legis

  The law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate.

• Primary Sources & Encyclopedias

  Links for research purposes

• Power and Terror

  Whether Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and political philosopher, is the most important intellectual alive, as the New York Times once famously called him, is open for debate. But without a doubt, Chomsky, now 73, is one of the most straight-talking and committed dissidents of our time. A steadfast critic of United States foreign policy ...

• Posthumanism

  The posthuman recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, instead understanding the world through context and heterogeneous perspectives while maintaining intellectual rigour and a dedication to objective observations of the world. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ...

• Philosophy of Gaming

  In a speech at the Free Play conference in Australia in September 2007, Jonathan Blow suggested games were approaching the level of societal influence of other forms of art, such as films and novels. One example that Blow cites is World of Warcraft, which he labels “unethical”, stating that such games exploit players by using a simple ...

• Philosophy as Autobiography

  Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.

• Perennial Mysticism

  Amidst all of the teachings of the world, this Dharma is to be practiced, and nothing is to be believed. Such also is the Way of Christ, where the Way is to be practiced, for the practice of the Way is indeed Faith and Faith the practice of the Way, and nothing is to be ...

• Patriocracy

  Americans are polarized and angry. In the crossfire, the loudest voices drown out reason and facts with fear and anxiety. Patriocracy explores the extreme polarization in America that cripples the country from tackling its most serious problems. Whether it’s the national debt, healthcare reform, the war on terror or illegal immigration, Americans are shouting at each other ...

• Past Tense

  A compendium of quotes from various authors with some of my own ideas interspersed throughout.

• Open Letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein

  I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

  I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an ...

• Open Letter to Kansas School Board

  I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory ...

• OOOH! What Now Nietzsche!?

  In its answers to the question concerning beings as such, metaphysics operates with a prior conception of Being. It speaks of Being necessarily and hence continually. But metaphysics does not induce Being itself to speak, for metaphysics does not recall Being in its truth, nor does it recall truth as unconcealedness, nor does it recall ...

• On Truth & Lies in a Non-Moral Sense

  What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; ...

• On the Preachers of Death

  There are preachers of death; and the earth is full of those to whom one must preach renunciation of life. The earth is full of the superfluous; life is spoiled by the all-too-many. May they be lured from this life with the “eternal life”! Yellow the preachers of death wear, or black. But I want ...

• On the Origin of Inequality

  Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men

  By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Of Man & Intellect

  Self-deception seems to be not only a common occurrence among the animal named man, but the rule of law with exceptions few and far between.

• ObamaCare

  Illegal taxation of U.S. citizens?

  Employer reduction of employee hours to avoid the law?

  Criminal government?

• Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted

  What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. Our whole European culture is moving for some time now, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a ...

• Nothing from Nothing Ever Yet was Born

  When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This is for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof for such a claim is wanting.

• Noteworthy

  Indie Game: The Movie is the first feature documentary film about making video games. It looks specifically at the underdogs of the video game industry, indie game developers, who sacrifice money, health and sanity to realize their lifelong dreams of sharing their visions with the world.

• Note #24719462

  They are all children of God, loved and created by the same heart of God… Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God — please forgive me… Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal… What do I labor for? ...

• Nobuo Uematsu

  This man… nobody even compares to his 16-bit era musical genius. No contest. Period.

• Noam Chomsky

  Noam Chomsky is a widely known intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist, a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left-wing of American politics. You can find his political views here.

• Nishitani

  My life as a young man can be described in a single phrase: it was a period absolutely without hope… My life at the time lay entirely in the grips of nihility and despair… My decision, then, to study philosophy was in fact – melodramatic as it might sound – a matter of life and ...

• Nietzsche & Buddhism

  In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to Buddhism. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions–they are both decadence religions–but they are separated from each other in a very remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to compare them ...

• New York State Celebrates First Same-sex Marriages

  NEW YORK/NIAGARA FALLS, New York (Reuters) – Wedding fever hit New York on Sunday, as hundreds of gay and lesbian couples lined up to be married on the first day that same-sex marriage was legal in the state.

  In western New York, two grandmothers became the state’s first legally wed same-sex couple, one month after Governor ...

• ‘New Facebook Guidelines’ Chain Letter About Copyright Laws Still A Hoax

  Users who’ve logged onto Facebook in the last 24 hours may have seen friends posting a message about “New Facebook Guidelines.” The message urges others to copy and paste the post, lest the company use their content for commercial use without their permission.

  But users shouldn’t be so quick to post the message to their own ...

• My Heart is Broken

  I will wander ’til the end of time, torn away from You.

• Misology

  And, in fact, we find that the more a cultivated reason purposely occupies itself with the enjoyment of life and with happiness, so much the further does one get away from true satisfaction; and from this there arises in many… a certain degree of misology, that is, hatred of reason; for, after calculating all the ...

• Meta-Physical Non-Sense

  Arguments for and against the Existence of God

  The polytheistic conceptions of God were criticized and derided by the monotheistic religions. Since the Enlightenment, monotheistic concepts have also come under criticism from atheism and pantheism.

• Memorable Movie Quotes

  God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s ...

• Meister Eckhart

  Education and culture were the two driving forces behind European urban development in the 13th and 14th centuries. Among the mendicant orders that had settled in the cities were the Dominicans (ordo fratrum praedicatorum), dedicated to promoting in their teaching, way of life, and preaching the ideal of man’s self-discovery—self-cultivation—as a singular cultural value. The ...

• Maybe Logic

  Well, to quote Bucky Fuller, I seem to be a verb… I can’t seem to find any constant Robert Anton Wilson.  It seems to be a process of change all the time. I’m certainly not the guy I was at 40, and I certainly am not the kid I was in Catholic School at 7 ...

• Manifest Destiny Part 2

  Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers.

  One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.

  “Tell me, you dumb beast.” demanded the Priest in his ...

• Manifest Destiny Part 1

  The Principia Discordia

  Be ye not lost among precepts of order…

• Mad Men

  REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 4, 2012– Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA) today announced a collaboration with consumer products giant Unilever to feature a variety of its most popular consumer brands in EA games. The agreement will first feature a variety of Unilever products in The Sims Social™, each integrated in a unique way to enhance players’ in-game experience ...

• On Liberty

  One day, I came upon a man urinating in a bus station. When I confronted him about his action, he turned to me, without stopping, and said:

  “Keep in mind that since the universe is in constant flux, nothing that occurs one moment has any relevance to anything else. Everything you believe, feel or think is ...

• Lau Tzu say…

  The way that can be spoken of

  Is not the constant way;

  The name that can be named

  Is not the constant name.

• Kill Your Heroes

  Well, I met an old man
  Dying on a train.
  No more destination,
  No more pain.
  Well, he said
  “One thing before I graduate
  Never let your fear decide your fate.”

• Kierkegaard Attacked the Christianity of the Church, Nietzsche Attacked Christendom as Such

  No, the opposite of sin is faith, as it says in Romans 14:23: “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” And this is one of the most decisive definitions for all Christianity – that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

• Kierkegaard Aphorisms

  I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

• KATHARSIS my bad caps lock

  Catharsis is a term in dramatic art that describes the “emotional cleansing” sometimes depicted in a play as occurring for one or more of its characters, as well as the same phenomenon as (an intended) part of the audience’s experience. It describes an extreme change in emotion, occurring as the result of experiencing strong feelings (such as ...

• Jim Carrey on Awakening

  The new Jim Carrey and the old Jim Carrey

• Life Beyond Logic

  The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it. The only question is, in what form the other appears, how it remains in spite of all, and how it is to be grasped.

  It is appropriate for philosophizing to strive to absorb the non-rational and counter-rational, to ...

• Is a Revolutionist a Terrorist?

  If so, considering the original spirit of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is an American revolution even possible?

  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

• Imagine

  Imagine there’s no heaven
  It’s easy if you try
  No hell below us
  Above us only sky
  Imagine all the people
  Living for today…

• I’m a Modern Man

  A man for the millennium. Digital and smoke-free. A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist, politically, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been uplinked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high tech lo-life. A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, bi-coastal multitasker and I can give you ...

• I Heart Huckabees

  Existential psychotherapy is a philosophical method of therapy that operates on the belief that inner conflict within a person is due to that individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence.

• Human Rights Watch – World Report

  Human Rights Watch – World Report (2017)

• Heroin Diaries

  You can’t quit until you try
  You can’t live until you die
  You can’t learn to tell the truth
  Until you learn to lie

• Happy Belated Internet Freedom Day

  R.I.P. Aaron Swartz

• Great Doubt, Great Death, Great Awakening

  The Kyoto School (京都学派 Kyōto-gakuha?) is the name given to the Japanese philosophical movement centered at Kyoto University that assimilated western philosophy and religious ideas and used them to reformulate religious and moral insights unique to the East Asian cultural tradition.” However, it is also used to describe several postwar scholars from various disciplines who have taught at ...

• Girl with Golden Eyes

  She speaks to me in Persian
  Tells me that she loves me
  The girl with golden eyes
  And though I hardly know her
  I let her in my veins
  And trust her with my life

• GameWatch

  Links to Keep Up to Date on Video Games and Movies

• Full Sail Graduates

  The 2010 Spike TV Video Game Awards paid tribute to the year’s outstanding achievements in the industry for games, designers, music, animation, and more. Full Sail University graduates put their marks on the evening as 33 graduates were credited on 8 winning projects, including Game of the Year winner Red Dead Redemption.

  Worked on by 14 Full ...

• From Underground

  My path was not the normal one of professors of philosophy… To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet. Since my schooldays, however, I was guided by philosophical questions. Philosophy seemed to me the supreme, even the sole, concern of man. Yet a certain awe kept ...

• Incomplete Thoughts (Formerly “Finish It”)

  And one more special message to go,

  And then I’m done, then I can go home.

• Fade to Black

  Life, it seems, will fade away
  Drifting further every day
  Getting lost within myself
  Nothing matters, no one else

• Existentialism is a Religionism

  And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress ...

• Existential Escapism

  Video game addiction is a known issue around the world, with the advent of broadband technology in the 2000s it has evolved into a different level of addiction which involves the creation of an avatar and living a ‘second life’ through MMORPGs massive multiplayer online role playing games. World of Warcraft has the largest MMO ...

• Everything the State Says is a Lie, and Everything it has it has Stolen

  At this point I can no longer avoid giving a first, provisional statement of my own hypothesis concerning the origin of the “bad conscience”: it may sound rather strange and needs to be pondered, lived with, and slept on for a long time. I regard the bad conscience as the serious illness that man was ...

• Ethos

  This documentary examines the flaws in our systems, and the mechanisms that work against democracy and the environment. From conflicts of interests in politics and unregulated corporate power, to a news media that serves the interests of powerful elites; ETHOS explores the systems that lead us into over consumption and warfare. Too often the media ...

• End of Watch (2012)

  I am the police, and I’m here to arrest you. You’ve broken the law. I did not write the law. I may disagree with the law but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy. Nothing you do will stop me from placing you in a ...

• Enable Dislike Button (2011)

  Researchers from Sophos have spotted a currently circulating “Enable Dislike Button” Facebook scam.

• Dream is Destiny

  Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled. The worst mistake that you can make is to think you’re alive when really you’re asleep in life’s waiting room. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and ...

• Dread & Freedom

  Innocence is ignorance. In his innocence man is not determined as spirit but is soulishly determined in immediate unity with his natural condition. Spirit is dreaming in man. This view is in perfect accord with that of the Bible, and by refusing to ascribe to man in the state of innocence a knowledge of the ...

• Doomsday Profiteering

  The group most vulnerable to doomsday claims is children. Teachers report that many of their students are frightened and some are even considering suicide. This is the most tragic consequence of the 2012 hoax.

• Domestic Drones

  Congress is finally standing up to President Barack Obama on targeted killing. Almost a year after three American citizens were killed in US drone strikes, legislators are pushing the administration to explain why it believes it’s legal to kill American terror suspects overseas.

• Distributive Justice

  Principles of distributive justice are normative principles designed to guide the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity.

  After outlining the scope of this entry and the role of distributive principles, the first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members ...

• Dead Man’s Ballet

  Oh no, how could this happen to
  Such an amazing young boy
  I had my whole life ahead of me

• Handlebars

  I can hand out a million vaccinations
  Or let ’em all die in exasperation
  Have ’em all healed of their lacerations
  Have ’em all killed by assassination

  I can make anybody go to prison
  Just because I don’t like ’em
  And I can do anything with no permission
  I have it all under my command

• Coping with Nietzsche’s Legacy

  I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous–a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

• Civil Liberties Organizations Launch Protests Against CISPA

  On January 17, some of the most popular websites locked their doors, blacking out for hours at a time to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, a Congressional bill that would have censored certain websites if they were found to host pirated content. Three months later, the Internet is at war with Congress again, this time over the ...

• Civil Disobedience

  I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe–“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be ...

• Books Should Be Free

  Books Should Be Free is a website that offers over 3,000 free public domain audio books and eBooks available for PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, Kindle, and MP3 players.

• Biblical Prophecy

  In a chapter entitled “The Messianic Prophecies of the Old Testament Fulfilled in Jesus Christ,” Josh McDowell lists a grand total of 61 Old Testament prophecies he claims were fulfilled in the life of Jesus. The first great problem with accepting these as valid proof is that there is no extra-biblical source of validation. True, ...

• Between Angels & Insects

  There’s no money, there’s no possessions
  Only obsession, I don’t need that shit
  Take my money, take my obsession

• Best Undergrad College Degrees by Salary (2008)

  FORMAT:

  Degree Type

  Starting Median Salary

  Mid-Career Median Salary

• Behold the Man

  Now I go alone, my disciples, You, too, go now, alone. Thus I want it.

  Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.

• Behind the Scenes

  Metaphysics, however, speaks continually and in the most various ways of Being. Metaphysics gives, and seems to confirm, the appearance that it asks and answers the question concerning Being. In fact, metaphysics never answers the question concerning the truth of Being, for it never asks this question. Metaphysics does not ask this question because it ...

• Aphorisms 2

  “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

  – Noam Chomsky

• Aphorisms 1

  “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

  – Buddhist Teaching

• And Justice for All…

  Libertarianism, in the strict sense, is the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. In a looser sense, libertarianism is any view that approximates the strict view. This entry will focus on libertarianism in the strict sense. For excellent discussion of the ...

• An Imagined Dialogue on Eastern & Western Philosophy & The Nature of Knowledge

  “The search for knowledge is like the search for true love. We live in a web of relationships, be it of propositions or people. Sometimes we are in a skeptical mood and we grasp for a solid base—a belief that we’re sure of or a friend or lover we can trust completely—but experience seems to ...

• Amor Fati

  There is in Nietzsche an unequivocal affirmation of life, and it would be precisely wrong to say, “notwithstanding the equivocality that he injects into his every assertion,” for there is nothing in Nietzsche that withstands his equivocality. Yet, it speaks to the essence of Nietzsche’s posture to observe that there is nothing diffident or less than ...

• American Hegemony

  Author of Blowback, The Sorrows Of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days Of The American Empire, Chalmers Johnson has literally written the book on the concept of American Hegemony. A former naval officer and consultant of the C.I.A., he now serves as professor Emeritus at UC San Diego. As co-founder and President of the Japan ...

• America, the Great

  There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

• Aleister Crowley

  “I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?”

• Absurdism

  This is not a pipe, for any representation of an object does not constitute the essence of said object. The map is not the territory. A tip for metaphysicians.

• A Parable

  What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, “This life which you now live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal ...

• A Fragment of Life

  If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

• A Declaration

  When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the ...

• A Buddhist View of Addiction

  In this essay, I refer to drugs – meaning drugs of all kinds, anything we might become habituated to and that we enjoy to the degree of dependency. It seems that drugs are widely misunderstood. They have a very long history. People of all kinds, and in all times, need something to make their lives ...

• Epistemology & The Soul

  When I began to inquire into the relationship of the body to the mind, spirit, or soul, I had no idea how deeply profound the topic really is, and how hotly debated it has been throughout history. Most people today would explain, in a very Neoplatonic way, that the human soul is analogous to a ...

• Natural Theology & Classical Apologetics

  Why is there something rather than nothing? Or in a more subjective sense – How and why do I exist? These questions have intrigued mankind for thousands of years. Is it possible to prove the existence of God? Each side of this ancient debate is by no means lacking of great scholars and philosophers. Everybody ...