Mass murder is no unintentional inevitability, much less a mistake; it is always the logical and even deliberate conclusion of utopian thinking. However, to explain why, it is first necessary to touch on personality disorders. Possibly the most perplexing paradox I have come across is that of the self-loathing narcissist, though if you think about…
Philosophy and Morality: Refuting Consequentialism
Moral consequentialism is one of many terms that has a double meaning. Looking it up typically yields fairly reasonable-sounding ideas such as judging the morality of an action based on its results, i.e. utilitarianism. However, there is another meaning to moral consequentialism that you should be aware of, and that is the idea that truth…
As Above, So Below
And as all is one, so one is all. Nearly every religion has some variation of that principle, but there is one in particular that formed around that very principle not just in a theological context, but also philosophical and historical. The military and economic successes of Ancient Athens created a highly prosperous society where men…
Adam Kadmon, Tabula Rasa
There is one theme far more consistent than any other in ancient wisdom: we are not God. We can never know God, we cannot even understand God, and for that very reason, we can never know with any certainty if God is even real. Whatever the nature of God, it is beyond the capacity of humans to…
Synthesis
The man behind the curtain is a priest. The curtain obscures the fact that what you're looking at is a religion, and everyone comes away thinking that it's a "science;" no it's not. - Lewis Barton Well friends, I missed last week's post because I had the flu and I didn't feel like doing anything…
The Legacy of Zarathustra
This is not something I had planned to write, but I felt it necessary in order to convince my friend Jacob Tothe that western philosophy is in fact partly inspired by eastern philosophy. The original conversation may be viewed here, if you are curious. Zarathustra was an ancient Persian prophet, whose name in Greek is…
Utopia…
...is a pointless fantasy. There can be no such thing as a perfect society. In fact, the original Greek word was ούτοπία ("outopia" - no place), rather than εύτοπία ("eutopia" - good place). Stick a pin in that thought for now, because I'll come back to it. All societies have problems, and demanding a society…
Aspects of Thought and Ways of Thinking
Over two years ago now, I wrote an article titled There are Two Types of People as a way of explaining some basic psychology. As tempted as I was to re-publish it here, I think I can simply include all of the points I need while taking an entirely different approach to the topic. See,…
Mysticism in Animé
I have a confession to make: I used to be an animé junkie (though never an out-right otaku), something that my sister teased me about incessantly at the time, as she is not a fan of Japanese... anything other than food, really. She is a bit of an occultist, however, and managed to get me…
The Gnostic Heresies
Gnosticism, in some ways, gave birth to religion as we know it, but has also bastardised religions for millennia, leaving them as barely recognisable husks of their original form. Christianity is hardly the only religion to have gone through this, but for my purposes, I don't really need to focus on the others. For now,…
Sasha V's Sesquipedalian Soliloquies 