After the Holocaust, academics and others tried to make sense of the murder of six million Jews. Historians pointed to the rise of nationalism following the First World War; the dismal state of the German economy when Hitler rose to …
The Complicity of Compliance
We live in an age of agendas.
In the pursuit of them, behaviors that are otherwise deemed unacceptable supposedly become acceptable or even necessary. Justified by them, what is otherwise deemed immoral supposedly becomes moral.
The champions of agendas make …
Awaken Aletheia!
“In reality we know nothing; for the truth lies in the abyss.”
ἐτεῇ δὲ οὐδὲν ἴδμεν: ἐν βυθῷ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια.
These words were spoken, it is said, by Greek philosopher Democritus, to which attests Diogenes Laertius in his Lives …
The Triumph of the Apocalyptics
In the course of almost four years, and really dating back a decade and a half, I’ve managed to read most of the writings of the intellectuals, titans of industry, and government officials who constructed the strange reality of 2020 …
The death of New Labour’s populism
It was around 2014 that I started to notice tracts warning about the dangers of populism from organisations with a close affiliation to New Labour. Over the decade since, little has changed: injected with the rocket fuel that was Brexit …
John Gray: liberal civilisation is finished
John Gray recently visited the UnHerd Club. Below is an edited version of his conversation with Freddie Sayers.
Freddie Sayers: Is it your view that liberal civilisation has passed into history?
John Gray: Yes, and it’s not coming back. …
John Gray: liberal civilisation is finished
John Gray recently visited the UnHerd Club. Below is an edited version of his conversation with Freddie Sayers.
Freddie Sayers: Is it your view that liberal civilisation has passed into history?
John Gray: Yes, and it’s not coming back. …
The Dangerous Game of Gain-of-Function Research
Why have we not discovered intergalactic alien life yet?
Enrico Fermi posited that a series of events need to occur for such advanced civilizations to emerge. Life must exist, Life must evolve to sufficiently complex organisms without going extinct, those …
A Dark Comedy About our Divided America
Before Michael Lacoy begins his dark comedy, Stay Safe, he includes a page with two quotes. Both are worth repeating in whole below. They are a perfect intro to the book and the past several years of reality:
Look at …
How to Cope in the Midst of Crisis
The other day I found myself in a defiant mood. It’s not my default position, these days. Most often, I adopt a ‘I’ll ignore the government and every subsidiary authority and every captured agency or institution, and get on with …
Truth-speaking and the Technocratic Cabal
Truth-speaking (or truth-telling) is not the same as truth. At least not in the familiar sense of a correspondence between what is stated and the state of affairs to which it corresponds – the so-called correspondence theory of truth. Or, …
The Social Meaning of Hortatory Yard Signs
They’re difficult to miss, especially if you live near a well-to-do neighborhood in or near a US city. I’m talking, of course, about those lawn signs that, using various symbols and slogans, announce to all and sundry that the residents …
Stuck to Our Own Metaphors
Though we don’t often think about it, we live and act quite frequently on the basis of metaphors. And that is for a very good reason. The realities of the world around us are far too vast and complex for …
The Covid Narrative Flunked the Critical Thinking Test
At the height of the Covid hysteria, several times I encountered variations of the meme “It’s not a pandemic; it’s an IQ test.” Probably the memesters were poking fun at those duped by the mainstream Covid messaging.
In any case, …
Can paedophilia ever be a thought experiment?
Imagine that a philosophy professor is invited onto a podcast. The hosts ask him to describe a thought experiment he finds interesting or provoking. He decides to pick a scenario in which an adult male has sex with a “willing” …