The documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
Read MoreAt the end of the 19th century, the prospect of the death of God filled people with terror.
It would — we were told — lead to anarchy and despair.
Worried intellectuals assembled new religions — Marxism, Spiritualism, psychical research, Social Darwinism, western Buddhism — and scrambled onto them like life rafts as they awaited the deluge.
But 150 years on, it is extraordinary how absent ‘God’ is from people’s lives, and how little people notice.
Read MoreWe’re in an entirely new level of interconnection, and we’re freaking out. Breathe.
Read MoreOne of the figures in the controversial Tube protest by Extinction Rebellion is a Buddhist teacher who has embraced a new form of revolutionary Buddhism put forward by Rob Burbea. The blowback from the protest show the limits of this philosophy in practical terms.
Read MoreRowan Williams on the role that mysticism and spirituality can play in helping us confront the systematic unreality of our economic and cultural system.
Read MoreWe’re so used to stories of snowflake students having meltdowns over Halloween costumes that it’s refreshing to remind ourselves they really can change the world for the better.
Read MoreI was walking to the Extinction Rebellion protest last weekend, and I suddenly started crying.
Read MoreApologies for the delay in writing. I’ve been in California for the last three weeks, immersed in preparing for Burning Man, then going to Burning Man, then recovering from Burning Man.
Read MoreIt was when I took the escalator in Tottenham Court Road station that I realized quite how much Gay Pride has been embraced as a national festival. The entire tube station was festooned in rainbow colours, like a SuperMarioKart racetrack. Outside, a huge sign read Love is Love.
Read MoreHow are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?
Read MoreWatch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.
Read MoreThe documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
Read MoreAs most of you know, I'm working on a book about the place of ecstatic experiences and altered states of consciousness in post-religious / secular / rationalist society.
Read MoreFollowing on from my earlier post on 'the varieties of transcendent experience', I remain interested in the role of transcendent experiences, or the yearning for the transcendent, among humanists. Someone who is definitely exploring in this area is Sanderson Jones, one of the founders of the Sunday Assembly, which is a booming humanist congregation.
Read MoreIn his magnum opus, The Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor charts western society’s unprecedented shift from a consensus belief in transcendent reality to a worldview that is much more immanent or ‘this-world’.
Read MoreWisdom is a watering-hole at which animals of many different species can come and drink - as long as they don’t insist on trying to convert, denounce or attack each other, but instead meet in friendship and good humour.
Read MorePeter Vardy is a theologian and perhaps the leading Religious Studies teacher in the country. After teaching theology at Heythrop College and writing several best-selling books on ethics and religious philosophy, he and his wife Charlotte - also a theologian - set up Candle Conferences, which runs huge events for RS students around the country.
Read MoreIt's been a busy couple of weeks, hence no newsletter last week. I feel like I am spinning plates at the moment. Luckily I'm off to Cornwall tomorrow to take it easy with some good friends. In the meantime, here are three insights I have taken from this weekend's wild adventure.
Read MoreMy great-great-great grandfather, a York Quaker called Henry Isaac Rowntree (that's him on the left), set up Rowntree's chocolate company in York in 1862. He was an amiable young man, 'perhaps the only Rowntree with a sense of humour' according to one historian.
Read MoreI went to the book-launch of a new book on well-being policy yesterday, which brought together some leading figures in this nascent movement - including David Halpern of the government’s ‘nudge unit’, Canadian economist John Helliwell, psychologist Maurren O'Hara, and Juliet Michaelson of the new economics foundation.
Read MoreI attended a seminar on wonder at the Centre for Medical Humanities in Durham last week. This post comes from our discussions there. Thanks to all the participants and to Martyn Evans for a great day.
Read MoreWhen I was six, my best friend Joe and I could give ourselves head-rushes by contemplating the size of the universe. We let our imaginations rise from the Earth, to the Solar System, to the Milky Way, and then stretched our imaginations as far as they would go to comprehend the universe. Then we’d wonder what was beyond that, and for a second we’d feel a sort of dizziness at the mystery in which we found ourselves.
Read MoreA few months back I was giving a philosophy workshop in a mental health charity. It was one of my less popular events - only one person turned up, a Romanian man who had recently moved to the UK and was finding it tough. We talked about Socratic philosophy, about the idea of engaging your inner voice in a rational dialogue, and the man (let’s call him Anghel) quietly told me that he heard voices.
Read MoreHow do you fit experiences of ecstasy, awe, wonder, the Sublime, or the Numinous into a materialist paradigm, without reducing or devaluing such experiences? With difficulty.
Read MoreI was up in east Scotland on New Year's Day, and found myself walking along a path called the John Muir Way. A few days later, a book I was reading mentioned a famous naturalist called John Muir, so I looked him up. It turns out John Muir was a father of modern conservationism, and the founder of many of California’s national parks. He is also a perfect specimen for my research into ecstatic experiences in nature.
Read MorePope Francis has taken the unusual step of replying to two letters in La Repubblica, in which the founder of the paper, Eugenio Scalfari, wondered out-loud what he'd ask the new Pope if he had the chance. In particular, he wondered, what is the attitude of God to atheists like him, who try to follow a good life although they can't believe in God.
Read MoreSteven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive linguist, would not make a very good ambassador. In his latest diatribe, he attempts to reassure humanities scholars that science is not their enemy. Science is good, and humanities scholars should stop complaining about 'Scientism'. Unfortunately, he says this in such a tactless and, er, Scientistic way that it’s guaranteed to annoy not just humanities scholars, but no doubt many scientists too.
Read MoreI want to explore the idea of Greek philosophy as a meeting-point between various humanisms, including Christian humanism, atheist or agnostic humanism, Islamic humanism and Jewish humanism.
Read MoreIs it possible to for a professional sports team to put character before external success? I visited Saracens rugby club to find out.
Read MoreImagine, if you will, the scene. The Enlightenment has defeated Religion, and its various champions meet to carve up the vanquished enemy’s territories. Philosophy takes the chair: ‘Right then, settle down everyone. Thank you. Now, let’s see...Religion used to offer ethics and laws.
Read MoreI’m in Holland again, this time in Utrecht, where yesterday I did a three-hour workshop at the University of Humanistic Studies. It was gratifying to have lots of bright students scrutinising my ideas, though also grueling in so far as the students very intelligently saw the limitations of Stoic philosophy.
Read MoreBig day today. I’ve finally finished my report on grassroots philosophy groups, which you can download here: Connected Communities- Philosophical Communities.
Read MoreA global bank's reputation is at rock bottom after a string of money-laundering scandals, fraud cases, and government bail-outs. A new CEO is appointed, with a mission to clean up the bank’s profile. He introduces a ‘five point ethics plan’, including strengthened risk controls, more enlightened incentives for bankers, an 'ethics hot-line', and a huge ethics training programme for the company’s 300,000 employees - arguably the biggest ethics training initiative in the history of American business.
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