How many people have noticed that, today – since at least the beginning of the so-called ‘pandemic,’ but probably earlier – governments, or constitutionally speaking, those who occupy the position of the ‘state,’ have acted as if citizens have no …
On Broken Friendships
One warm, early-1980s weekday afternoon, I was walking east on Delancey Street in New York City’s Lower East Side. At that time, as were many areas of the city, Delancey was kind of rundown. I don’t remember what brought me …
Is Serfdom Humanity’s Default?
In the mid-20th century, the economist Friedrich von Hayek warned that the rise of centrally-planned economies—whether in the form of socialism/communism or fascism, which he argued have common roots—was leading us all (back) down “the road to serfdom.”
The term …
The Left Needs to Find Itself
It is tiring to be accused of being ‘far-right’ by people doing the bidding of the corporations and investors who recently made a killing on Covid. It is particularly irritating that such people, whilst deriding low-income workers and the ‘uneducated,’ …
The Drumbeat of Trauma-Inducing Events in Our Lives
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that’s been beat too much
‘Til you spend half your life just to cover it up, now…
Do Israel’s critics understand Evil?
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 …