Like all the most influential religious leaders, for every mystery they solve they pose another. Their guidance takes us deeper into the human mind than ever before but their torches only illuminate a fraction of it. The more we explore anima incognita, the more evident it is just how inadequate our maps of it are.
ReadIn Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche described what he called “The Last Men”. These are human beings who have overcome all[…]
ReadReading Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition today, it’s easier to see how much he got right, and why so much that was done in postmodernism’s name was an aberration.
ReadHow habits of thinking can challenge unthinking habits.
ReadBy the time you read this, something truly dreadful might have blighted the world. Pinker does not prophesy that this won’t happen; he simply reminds us why it should not and need not, as long as we don’t give up the notion of the emancipatory power of reason to help illuminate the way forward. If that is naive, even more naive is the belief that despair, fatalism or superstition supplies a credible alternative.
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