Tag: philosophy

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Westerners

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“We cannot rebuild western civilisation” vice-president JD Vance warned in March shortly after entering the office. The west people are so worried about has a familiar story behind it: It originates in the ancient world in the conjoining of classical Greek philosophy and the Hebrew Bible and then weaves its way through medieval Christendom or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first … Continue reading Westerners

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World of Organised Crime

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A bandit becomes a monarch, a gang becomes a government and organised crime at the heart of every modern state. Homo Criminalis shows the emergence of modern society through the evolution of the underworld and its crimes. From Chinese banditry and eighteenth-century English tea smuggling to today’s cocaine submarines and the high-tech crimes of tomorrow, showing how the world’s dark underbelly shapes us, no matter how we try to outpace it. Mark Galeotti, a prolific author specialising in Russia and organised crime, shows “our dynamic interconnected globalised networked cross-cultural world is so permeated by organised crime. It is very hard … Continue reading World of Organised Crime

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Capitalism’s permanent revolution

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We are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, Capitalism and its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological and artificial intelligence. British-American staff writer and economic journalist at the New Yorker, John Cassidy author of Dot.con, which examined the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, and How Markets Fail, which illuminates the origins of the great financial crisis of 2007-08. Cassidy starts with the colonial monopoly capitalism of the East India Company, as seen through the critical eyes of William Bolts, a disgruntled … Continue reading Capitalism’s permanent revolution

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Blurring of public and personal space, amid social media’s constant scrutiny

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Private life is now in mortal danger according to acclaimed cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins, who takes readers on an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s who declared that “the personal is political” to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age. Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, Jenkins asks a timely question: Can private life survive the demands … Continue reading Blurring of public and personal space, amid social media’s constant scrutiny

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Apprenticeship dominated training and skill in early modern Europe

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Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all male teenagers would serve and learn as apprentices. In the Market for Skill, Patrick Wallis, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy. He shows non-agricultural work in England was “anything but hereditary between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries”. Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient … Continue reading Apprenticeship dominated training and skill in early modern Europe

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Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

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Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural economist at the London School of Economics, defines Beliefism as a discrimination against those with different beliefs to us. In today’s civil discourse, one exacerbated by the anger-stoking effects of digital doomscrolling and the perverse incentives the media has constructed for political discourse (Anyone who changes policy in response to criticism, for example, is gleefully reported to have performed a “humiliating U-turn”.) The citizens of the US and UK are becoming more polarised and inclined to avoid altogether those who aren’t their ideological comrades. Do you really avoid people who are strongly against immigration? … Continue reading Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

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Correlating rigid thinking to political extremes

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  Political Neuroscientist attached to Cambridge University, Dr Leor Zmigrod discovers the biological factor that drive ideologies to extremes and her research into the physical and psychological origins of extremism. Her definition of ideology is a rigid and dogmatic way of thinking that discourages thought in favour of a pre-determined and hermetically sealed belief system. Her findings “Prejudiced children’s rigidities were not constrained to one domain: they were everywhere. Rightly spilled into every response, every reasoned thought and miscalculation.” Zmigrod reveals the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours. She using powerful tools of neuroscience to show that our political … Continue reading Correlating rigid thinking to political extremes

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Better and clearer practices in “the evidence”

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Kucharski, a professor of mathematics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explores how proof is not just a mathematical concept but a vital tool in decision-making, justice, and survival. From the medieval Islamic world to the recent pandemic, scientific progress has relied on different methods of establishing fact from fiction. Today, in the face of ever-increasing disinformation, how we prove things – to ourselves and others- has never felt more urgent. There is far more to proof than axioms, theories and scientific §       of someone’s guilt, or deciding whether to trust a new type of financial transaction, weighing … Continue reading Better and clearer practices in “the evidence”

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The giant Trauma

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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the 1789 French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two … Continue reading The giant Trauma

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How can be broaden our minds

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Academic philosopher, Simon Critchley explores why Mysticism is about existential ecstasy – an experience of heightening one’s senses and self into a sheer feeling of aliveness and provides a fascinating overview of Christianity’s great outliers. Mystical experiences offers us a practical way to open out thoughts and deepen the sense of our lives, whether through a mainstream connection to God or by taking part in mind-altering experiences. Whether so-called “mystical” experiences are felt to be religious, spiritual aesthetic or something else, people have been trying to report, describe, and make sense of this strange kind of ecstasy for a thousand … Continue reading How can be broaden our minds