Centuries ago, the Italian philosopher and priest Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote, “Good can exist without evil, whereas evil can not exist without good.” The good does not need evil, it […]
Category: Psychology
Until Morale Improves
The beatings will continue until morale improves. Cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe (1936) Many years ago a friend of mine was managing a sales team. One evening, at a house […]
The Memetic Heretics
Memetics, the science of information flows, existed long before the internet, but a Belgian court went against long-held knowledge when it sentenced a group of digital Memetic Heretics last week. […]
The Little Man
In the summer of 1945 psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) wrote a riveting essay entitled Listen, Little Man! – addressing all the forms of the ‘Little Man’ and ‘Little Woman’ who […]
Computer Still Says No
Humor is often prophetic. The sketch from Little Britain –‘Computer says No’– is exactly twenty years old. An unfriendly, cold-hearted hospital receptionist conveniently suspends all of her humanity and responsibility […]
The Triviality Trap
In our world today the good needs strengthening through resistance, protection and creation. The bad needs closure through demolition, justice and learning. The past needs reexamination and the future needs […]
The Conditionality Curse
Freedom is the absence of conditionality. In this industrial, mechanical, technical era, however, conditionality is the ever-expanding center of existence. All of our appliances and software revolve around the concept […]
From Individual Power to Collective Shame
In 1919, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) founded America’s first public relations firm, applying psychoanalytic discoveries to promote consumerism and to use latent sexual energy to manipulate the masses […]
Building the Non-Lie
It’s harder than it seems to build a truthful venture atop the ruins of a World of Lies. Whoever has had the courage to start such a new venture is […]
Addiction Cure Suppressed
The strange disappearance of books and articles on baclofen “Drinking heavily, you abandon people–and they abandon you–and you abandon yourself–It’s a form of partial murder but too sad to go […]
Assumptions are Dangerous
Especially for the Targets of PsyOps: You & Me Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — […]
Revenge of the Epistemologists
How to Acquire Knowledge? What can we know? Perhaps not an uncontroversial question nowadays, yet an important one. Right after his speech at the Heritage Foundation Tucker Carlson said that, […]
On Indifference and Identity
When Moral Relativism Becomes Nihilism Back in 2007, Argentinian native Máxima Zorreguieta, who married Dutch crown-prince Willem-Alexander in 2002, angered many Dutch people by saying she ‘searched for the Dutch […]
Er klopt iets niet
Het was nog erg vroeg, maar zoals altijd en overal in New York was het leven op straat in volle gang. Ik liep vlak bij het metrostation Brooklyn Borough Hall […]