“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Goethe

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Goethe

Characteristics that define our hyper-real age; Neo-tribalism, emotive reasoning, chronic cognitive biases, unearned self-righteousness, hedonistic presentism, rapid onset amnesia, black & white thinking, conspiratorially flavored assumptions, addiction to hyper-stimulation, bad attitudes.

Characteristics that define our hyper-real age; Neo-tribalism, emotive reasoning, chronic cognitive biases, unearned self-righteousness, hedonistic presentism, rapid onset amnesia, black & white thinking, conspiratorially flavored assumptions, addiction to hyper-stimulation, bad attitudes.

Telling the truth about Jew hatred Howls in the darkness

We need to stop calling these people Liberals: they are fundamentalist progressives & mostly clueless. "Telling the truth about Jew hatred", by Telling the truth about Jew hatred, by @NickCohen4 open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Move fast, break everything: Nick Land and accelerationism - ABC listen Nick Land is one of the more interesting contemporary philosophers, and one of the most disturbing. This week we're talking with the author of a new book that sets out Land's ideas, from cybernetic ca...

Ideas matter. This guy's ideas are all over the shop and out there and have landed in the lap of America's most unstable president and his main influences. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Unfashionable idea 537: For Searle, knowledge is most likely to be advanced through free inquiry, and claims to knowledge can only be validated (as opposed to dogma or speculation) as knowledge by being subject to the tests of free inquiry. 🧐🤔🎆

To politicize everything is to exhibit pure hubris: "I am so confident in my partisan beliefs that I believe the world should be remade in accordance with them." You're one step removed from primates; you're not a god. Learn the meaning, explore the depths, of 'humility'.

"The first thing to do is not to provide a 'practical' solution. Don't act. Just think. The biggest danger today is to be dragged into 'doing'—to act, to intervene—to avoid the confrontation with the fact that we don’t really know what is going on." Žižek

We use to be the tools of the powerful; now, we're the tools, or useful idiots, of algorithms and collective infantilism. A motto for our age might be: "Anything but have to think, carefully!"

Stealers Wheel - Stuck in The Middle With You HQ YouTube video by ATP69

“No amount of evidence will ever persuade a fool”
Mark Twain www.youtube.com/watch?v=m41Z...

We always start with ourselves. We are not a problem to be fixed with endless techniques, but a living being that must bring practices into its own life and personalize them so they become real, and not the performance of an ideal person we hope to become.

I guess it depends on where you position the marker for the shift from middle to leaning, to firmly positioned, to radical, to extreme. The philosopher John Gray would certainly have much to add to a version of the radical left.

Have you got a similar diagram for the radical left-wing? How about one for their meeting points from a structural view? I'm always interested in the overlap. Thanks.

Anna Sergi, "How to Recognize the Mafia Abroad: Critical Notes on ‘ndrangheta Mobility" (Policy Press, 2025)

Thank you to @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social and Miranda Melcher for the chat about my How To Recognize the Mafia Abroad
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(1) The concept of a hyper-ideologization of existence describes a state where every facet of human life—from the coffee you drink to the words you use in private—becomes a political or ideological statement. It is the collapse of the "private sphere" into the "political sphere."

(2) In this state, nothing is neutral. Existence itself is no longer lived; it is performed and judged through the lens of a specific worldview.

Dr. Michael Uebel on Reimaging Equanimity

For those paying the most exploitative of exploiters (Spotify): open.spotify.com/show/7Exf03R...

The Imperfect Buddha Podcast Buddhism Podcast · Updated Monthly · The Imperfect Buddha podcast has been addressing anti-intellectualism and ideological capture in western Buddhism and spirituality more broadly since its inception...

For Apple users: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

You, dear follower, can find all our past episodes by heading down this digital rabbit hole: newbooksnetwork.com/category/aca... We've been less active of late but there are plans for a new season of more radical content.

Emotional self-restraint is key to reducing suffering in this world. Emotional determination is mostly the product of ignorance. What stories about emotions and feelings have our dominant ideologies been telling? Do they have anything to say about self-restraint?

"The end is in the beginning and yet you go on." Samuel Beckett

My friend Franco likes to argue that dividing the world between left and right is no longer a valuable means for making sense of the world we inhabit. Far better to divide it between the unthinking and ignorant, and those capable of thinking beyond their ideological obsessions. What do you think?

When an ideology repeatedly intrudes into people’s life uninvited, through bloodshed and intimidation, lies and deception indifference ceases to be a neutral position.

David Deutsch: The Enlightenment, 'irrational memes' and how Wikipedia turned woke The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a book on theoretical physics. They sound more like a weepy divorcé’s YouTube comments below a...

The many universes theory has convinced me for a while: why would evolution produce one universe when an infinite number would produce infinite evolution? Unless you dispute infinity, there is no reason to believe existence is contained by a single emergence. spectator.com/article/davi...

My friend Franco likes to argue that dividing the world between left and right is no longer a valuable means for making sense of the world we inhabit. Far better to divide it between the unthinking and ignorant, and those capable of thinking beyond their ideological obsessions. What do you think?

"Everything has already been said. But since no one listens it is necessary to say it again."
Andre Gide

"Everything has already been said. But since no one listens it is necessary to say it again."
Andre Gide

Nils Frahm - Them YouTube video by Erased Tapes

Music that makes life seem deeply precious for a moment. youtu.be/Wk02R4UNE3k