On Wednesday, anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee hung himself in a Barcelona prison, while awaiting extradition to the US on charges of tax avoidance. McAfee had long insisted there was a conspiracy against him and all of humanity, and in the minutes before he died, he played his final card — uploading the letter Q to his Instagram.
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, I saw the name ‘Bo Burnham’ trending on Twitter.
I looked him up, he turned out to be a young comedian who made one of the best films of 2018, ‘Eighth Grade’
Eighth Grade is a deeply cringey, touching and scary film about the effect of social media on an awkward eighth-grade wannabe-influencer.
Read MoreWe’re in an entirely new level of interconnection, and we’re freaking out. Breathe.
Read MoreHis simple, hopeful message - humanity is waking up and you are a part of this great evolution - made more sense in 1999. What does he have to say to 2019? I went to see him speak in London, to find out.
Read MoreIn Oregon, there is a honey fungus that is four miles wide and possibly 8000 years old. It appears in our reality as small white mushrooms.
Read MoreRecently, I’ve noticed several friends and acquaintances – mainly millennials - getting into magick. A 30-year-old successful professional woman who pays to consult a globe-trotting voodoo-priestess about her love life. A 33-year-old musician who's left a humanist community and joined a coven. Stephen Reid, formerly a leader of UK Uncut, who then set up The Psychedelic Society and now runs magick rituals.
Read MoreLast week, if you remember, I was at a Buddhist seminar in the Colorado mountains, taught by a Tibetan Buddhist lama called Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This was quite different to other Buddhist retreats I’ve been on. There wasn’t much meditation, instead there was four hours of teaching every day, over nine days.
Read MoreThe only thinker whose popularity on YouTube comes close to prophet-of-rage Jordan Peterson is Alan Watts, the British popularizer of Eastern wisdom. Watts’ talks from the 50s, 60s and early 70s have millions of views on YouTube, and are often edited to the accompaniment of orchestral or ‘chillstep’ soundtracks and jazzy collages of modern life.
Read MoreI've come back from India after an interesting three weeks. I went there with the vague intention to find a guru and take my spiritual practice to the next level. I say 'vague' because I wasn't quite sure how one went about finding a guru.
Read MoreI've been exploring the history of ecstasy in modern culture. One of the ways the Enlightenment tried to naturalize ecstasy was by developing the concept of hypnosis. In the 18th century, Franz Mesmer showed that he could achieve just as miraculous healings as a priest through his own rituals, the success of which he attributed to ‘magnetic fluids’.
Read MoreThis year I got some funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to teach a course in practical philosophy with three partner organizations - Manor Gardens, a mental health charity in North London; Low Moss prison in Glasgow; and Saracens rugby club.
Read MoreThere is an anecdote in the psychotherapist Stephen Grosz’ book, The Examined Life, about a client who is always talking fondly about the house he is renovating. Whenever he’s had a bad week, he lets off steam by talking about all the wonderful improvements he will make to this dream-house - the new conservatory, the bay windows, the rock garden, and so on.
Read MoreWe all love a bit of ecstasy, don’t we? Not the drug (though that’s a form of ecstatic experience) but, more broadly, those moments of expansion, elation and awe we sometimes feel, when our heart-strings seem to vibrate in harmony with the universe, when the vast, black and empty cosmos seems suddenly to radiate with love. We’re all into that, yeah?
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 MorePublic anger over revelations that governments snoop on our internet activity comes partly from a sense that our online selves are not entirely in our control. The more networked we are, the more our selves are ‘out there’, online, made public and transparent to a million eyes.
Read MoreSimon Critchley, an English philosopher at the New School in New York, has suggested that all philosophy is an attempt to deal with two disappointments: religious disappointment, or the loss of faith; and political disappointment, or the search for justice. In his most recent book, Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, he attempts to put these disappointments behind him, and work out a relationship between religion and politics.
Read MoreBig day today. I’ve finally finished my report on grassroots philosophy groups, which you can download here: Connected Communities- Philosophical Communities.
Read MoreThe eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there was no newsletter last weekend. Apologies. The reason for this is I have journeyed deep into the warm, pulsating heart of the happiness movement.
Read MoreAs regular readers know, I’m researching the rise of grassroots philosophy groups for a project called Philosophical Communities. This has got me thinking about the roles of groups and networks in the history of ideas, and I’d like to sketch out some initial thinking. I hope the following isn’t too pretentious...
Read MoreA few newsletters back, I talked about the idea of the ‘mass intelligentsia’, and posted an interview I did with Melvyn Bragg about the term (he used it in this programme on class and culture back in March). I’ve been digging into this idea a bit more since then, for an academic research project I’m doing on philosophy clubs. I’d like to unpack the idea some more, if that’s alright by you.
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