On History: Clarity & Delusion
It’s good to see some of the millennia-old illusions about history being slowly peeled away. To speak of the Roman Empire as, “the world’s greatest killing machine” is refreshingly honest.…
consciousness
Figuring Out AI Consciousness
AI generated image Artificial Intelligence keeps popping up everywhere from generative AI which created the image above to the financial sector. What AI is currently doing is copying and reformatting…
I’m Struggling With Julian Jaynes
I first came across Julian Jaynes and his controversial (or at least provocative) book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, back in the late 1970s.…
Science, mysticism and enlightenment: or, the use and abuse of language
Will the real new age please stand up? “Castaneda’s popularity made him the subject of a TIME magazine cover story, published on 5th March 1973 (Vol. 101 No. 10). In…
Who Are The CIA?
Who are the CIA? This will tell you everything you need to know. Here’s where things really started to go wrong: 1947, the National Security Act, which created the National…
The Bridge of Montaigne; and The Roots of Our 21st Century Crisis
What a delightful bridge Montaigne has been, and is: not only between the present modern world and the Renaissance, which is stupendous treasure enough, but also, in another short span,…
Reading History And Social Theory As If People, The Planet, Or The Future Mattered
A Review of Stephen Toulmin’s Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda Of Modernity, and, A Reading List For Thoughtful People Slow to get going, then increasingly fascinating, Toulmin’s Cosmopolis is a…
The Most Dangerous Epidemic Of All
Just over 100 deaths in the US from the coronavirus, and what is the government response? Fascist lockdown. The pattern is the same across the Western world, mirroring the…
The Central Challenge Of Our Time
What is the central challenge of our time? It is not what most people think it is. It is not race or gender, or climate change, or the environment broadly,…
The Collapse of Modern Civilization
More than 150 years ago Thoreau commented, “Our sills are all rotten.” He was right. It is for that reason that Western, and Westernized, “modern” “civilization” is collapsing. This could…
US 2020 Election: One Choice Only – The Oligarchy
Chris Hedges states there is no choice in the 2020 US election if it is a choice between Trump and Biden: both are a vote for the consolidation of the…
Importing From China: A Virus? Or A Totalitarian Model Of Elite Control?
Someone prescient once said, “Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little security, deserve neither, and will lose both.” We would do well to remember those words now.…
Fantasy and Indoctrination: Rough notes on a few fantasy novels: part two
Here are two more fantasy books that I could not get through. That makes three in a row. And to think, I had a love affair with Terry Brookes’ Shannara…
Reflections On Stillness & Action
We need stillness and action – both, and urgently so. This should be becoming perfectly clear. I’ve travelled through 20 countries, but still I find stillness the greatest adventure, and…
Degeneration, Collapse, and Rebirth
What we are facing is systemic degeneration: ecologically, culturally, spiritually, intellectually, psychologically, socially, and biologically in terms of degenerating health and shortening life spans. This is the slow-motion collapse of…
Take Time To Renew Your Spirit
Happy Earth Day Weekend!
Enlightenment: Raising Consciousness & The Cloud of Unknowing
Ideology is neither salvation nor liberation. As important as a paradigm shift, a shift in world view, or a shift in consciousness and perspective, clearly is, we must understand this.…