“And the word “courage” should be reserved to characterize the man or woman who leaves the infantile sanctuary of the mass mind.” Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly In the privacy of our minds many of us disagree with the ideologies, political agendas, and government mandates of our day, yet in public we comply. We […]

“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.”    Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News Most people think that consuming the news makes one an informed citizen who is equipped to form intelligent opinions on social and political issues. In this video, drawing from the Swiss author […]

“The spiritual decline of the earth is so far advanced that people are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the disintegration and to recognize it as such.”   Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics Carl Jung held a pessimistic view of the future of Western […]

 “We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.” W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions Intuition is one of the most powerful faculties for gaining knowledge about the world. Along with reason, science, and imagination, it is one of the primary means by which we discover […]

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  Hanlon’s Razor What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry? Is it due to a conspiracy of the ruling class? In this video, relying on the Italian historian Carlo Cipolla’s essay The Basic […]

“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society In the mid-1950s the French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote a book titled The Technological Society. In sit he proposed that technology, or more broadly what […]

“Big Pharma is one of the largest and most profitable businesses in America, and in order to sell their chemical goods to allegedly treat the mind/psyche, pharmaceutical companies must convince society that people’s mental and behavioral problems are caused by their bodily chemicals.”    Daniel R. Berger, The Chemical Imbalance Delusion  An epidemic of mental […]

“The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.”      Leonardo Da Vinci Today many subscribe to hustle culture and believe that to be successful in business, a career, or a creative endeavor, it is necessary to work long hours, burn the midnight oil, and sacrifice leisure, rest, and sleep. But many who follow this […]

“It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.”       Marie-Louise von Franz To be a philosophical pessimist is to be acutely aware of the tragic side of life and to believe that suffering overshadows joy, […]

In an interview in 1964, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke stated:      “The most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won’t be men or monkeys. They’ll be machines—the remote descendants of today’s computers. Now, the present-day electronic brains are complete morons. But this will not be true in another generation. They will start to […]

 “The Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”     Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation The release of the iPhone in 2007 profoundly transformed how we interact and experience the world and so marked the dawn of a […]

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.”    Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims At the age of 21, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was browsing a bookstore […]

Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of history’s greatest novelists, but he is also one of history’s greatest psychologists. His stories contain depictions of characters who span the spectrum of human personality, from those of abject evil, to those saintly in nature. Friedrich Nietzsche was so impressed with the works of Dostoevsky that in a letter […]

“For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, “The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a […]

One of the surest ways to ruin our life is to be in a close relationship with a narcissist. Whether it be a narcissist as a parent, husband, wife, colleague, or friend, if we are forced to deal with a narcissist on a daily basis we suffer. But even worse than having a narcissist in […]

 Many believe that the most important social divide in the West today is between the political left and right. Much of the discourse in the corporate and independent media revolves around this battle, and many believe that its outcome will have existential ramifications for the future of the West. But is this political conflict acting […]

“. . .when a living organism is cut off from its roots, it loses a connection with the foundation of its existence and must necessarily perish.”   Carl Jung, Aion Carl Jung dedicated his life to a single goal, which as he notes in his autobiography, was to “penetrate into the secret of the personality.” […]

“The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all…Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “yea” to it all.” Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art […]

…totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it… bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Many people have amnesia regarding that fact that a mere few […]

“…in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”   Silence Dogood, pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, Number 49, 2-9 July 1722 Freedom of […]