When learning about Gnosticism, in a book about technology (To Be a Machine), I was struck by how similar the teachings of Gnosticism were to the psychology of Jung, so I looked into it and discovered that Jung was indeed influenced by Gnosticism. The Seven Sermons to the Dead is apparently a work created by … Read more
Jean Piaget – The Language and Thought of the Child – Summary
Before Piaget, there was very little work done to understand child psychology. While there has been considerable progress since, there is a large debt of gratitude that psychology owes to him. Piaget, in The Language and Thought of the Child, like his other works, didn’t just teach us how children perceive the world, he taught … Read more
Baudrillard and Theology by James Walters is a synthesis of the world of one of the most challenging and interesting thinkers of our time. And with the virtualization of the world, he has become more relevant. Baudrillard thought that our culture has become increasingly synthetic and artificial, and out of contact with what we used … Read more
In The Interpretation of Dreams, one of the classic works of psychology in the 20th century, Freud wrote that dreams were created by two processes in the mind. The first comes from an unconscious force which construct a wish that is expressed in the dream. The second is censorship which distorts the expression of the … Read more
Written in a lucid conversational style, the essential argument made by Jaron Lanier is that smartphones carry ramifications that could spell disaster for the human species. Smartphones are an invention that we take for granted. But we should remember how recent this invention is. Since we carry around this device everywhere, we are always being … Read more
The worst and most common piece of advice given is, “read the great books” but as CS Lewis hinted in The Screwtape Letters, this is a terrible piece of advice. Don’t read the great books, because you might not like them, or be interested in them. Only read what you are drawn to. That’s how … Read more
“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing” – Isaiah Berlin If we look back toward the beginning of the universe, we can see the fragile nature of existence. If events unfolded differently, life would not exist. Particles and anti-particles, or matter and anti-matter, were residues of the energy created by … Read more
There is a major crisis in the world. Many people have stopped taking scientists seriously. The nefarious combination of fake news, faux-experts, less critical thinking, echo chambers, and confirmation bias have contributed to a confused world that no longer knows how to differentiate between what is true and false. Why can’t there be a consensus … Read more
The central message of What I Learned From Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul is: don’t take success personally. Entrepreneurs and traders are sure to fail if they do take success or failure personally. Why a Book on Losing? A lot of people have made money, but everyone has lost money, so it’s clear … Read more