Leader vs Influencers: A Case Study Of Elon Musk
Top influencers does not equate to real leaders. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were top influencers, and they were all deranged. As for content of contribution, Musk’s boaring project misses…
jtoddring
If You Are Going To Vote, Read This
Things are changing rapidly in the world, but as of this moment, we can say a few things about the major political parties of the Western world, with reasonable certainty.…
Stressed? Read This. Amygdala Highjacking – A Few Brief Thoughts
When under great stress, or when in great fear, our biological fight or flight response is triggered strongly, the amygdala is highjacked, which then highjacks our frontal cortex and our…
Kafkaesque?
It might be called Kafkaesque, that this talk focuses on bureaucracy and its tyrranical absurdities, while Kafka’s most important contribution was, not simply to highlight the tyrrany of bureaucracy, but…
On Fads and Pop Culture Gurus
Interesting discussion here (linked below), on the power of ritual, the positive functions of mythology, and the value of mentors. One negative point: the cold immersion fad is rooted in…
The Fundamentals Of History
(The following thoughts were written in response to a podcast, linked below.) I liked this podcaster’s treatment of the Druids, which was very good. However… This talk (linked below) asks…
Free Your Mind: Escaping The Mental Prison Of Cognitive Bias
As Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” People who cannot admit that they were wrong, turn their minds to stone, turn their brains off, and…
The Last Empire
It is the illusion of powerlessness among the people which upholds every empire – for a time. But the illusion eventually wears off. No empire lasts forever. Every empire falls…
The Sociology Of Delusion
Automation is going to eliminate most jobs. That could spell tyranny and neofeudalism, and the birth of a highly stratified society, where the priviledged few live in material comfort, the…
Five Monkeys, and The Art of War:Or, How To Launch A Successful Revolution
Gandhi said, “Cowards can never be moral.” And he was right. Cowards always choose personal comfort over conscience. The question then, is, how to instill courage in the people, at…
A better world, and a better life
How do we build a better world? How do we build a better nation, a better community, a better life? The answer is the same in all cases. Alertness, always…
Retrieved from the memory hole: Our collective imagination
Here is a note from the memory hole, to jolt us back to a sense of reality: which means, a sense that all things truly are possible – with the…
On Justice Warriors, and The Death of Freedom
When I hear people talk disdainfully or scoffingly at what they refer to as “justice warriors”, I have to cringe – not because they are right, although to some degree…
The Power Elite: What Every Thinking Person Needs To Know
C. Wright Mills’, The Power Elite, is unquestionably one of the most important books ever written in sociology, social theory, social philosophy, social psychology or political-economy – and it of…
The Global Co-op Movement: The Better Way – and, The Way Ahead
I used to think that co-ops were a nice idea, very practical, a nice little niche for a few people around the margins and the periphery, with strong ideals, doing…
Boycott Big Tech: Go To Purism & Linux
This will definitely be my next laptop: Purism Librem. My MSI is still fast, reliable, and bullet-proof, after three years of use – while all my previous laptops bogged down…
Buddhism: Surface & Depth; Or, Big Mind & Baby Minds
Buddhist meditation and mindfulness are very popular now, and have become mainstream. Hospitals, churches and secular classes are now offering meditation and mindfulness training and practice. That is a good…
Reclaiming Democracy In Canada – And Around The World
In the 1960s, there was a cultural awakening which spread rapidly around the world, and Chomsky is right in calling it both a cultural awakening, and also, an outbreak of…
Who To Trust: The Short Answer
Who to trust? That is always a perennial question, and particularly now, when not only government, corporations, politicians and corporate and state media have repeatedly been shown to have lied,…
On Puritan-Capitalism: Money As The Measure Of All Things
The mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to…