Enjoying the view from Limbo
John Cleese, the most famous member of the Monty Python troupe, has chosen to spend his final years in the posture of one of his most famous characters, the Black Knight in The Holy Grail, continuing to taunt and threaten his foe in spite of having been reduced to nothing but a head and torso, all his limbs having been lopped off. In...
Liberty's Labors Lost / What is The Establishment? / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 10, 2022
Elon Musk, who soiled himself for all time by defecating on the people of Ukraine last week, has decided to raise his profile in the pantheon of profiteering punks to yet another level of shame. This time, rather than waiting for a tyrannical government to actually invade a smaller, sovereign neighbor, destroy much of that neighbor’s infrastructure, and kidnap thousands of its children...
In 2018, reacting in part to an endless litany of cases over the years of university students telling me, usually in matter-of-fact tones, that they and/or their friends had been prescribed brain-altering psychological drugs to treat depression, anxiety, sleep problems, or what have you, I finally decided to sit down and sort out in writing some of my various frustrations at this mass...
A psychiatrist named Mark Horowitz is making waves these days by publishing research indicating that there is in fact no substantial scientific evidence showing that ordinary human depression, for which hundreds of millions of people around the world are taking powerful prescription medication, has any connection to the supposed chemical imbalance in the brain for which the standard “antidepressant” medicine is alleged to...
If politicians figure out there is big money to made in something, they will legalize it — but regulate it at the same time, to ensure they have first dibs on the profits. If politicians are desperate for votes, they will lower themselves to anything to entice anyone, no matter how worthless and mentally decrepit, to support them. And so, in a perfect confluence...
The reason bureaucrats love to produce litanies of rules designed, in substance and in spirit, to reduce everyone to generic, interchangeable minions is obvious: Bureaucracy is the definitive realm of the generic, interchangeable minion, in whose work flexibility, contextual choice, and free-thinking are not merely discouraged but absolutely counterproductive. Is it any wonder that the denizens of such a mechanized realm succumb, in...
Elon Musk, a multi-billionaire who has devoted his whole adult life to getting as rich as possible, often by selling out all free market principles to gain government protections and special government contracts, and an overgrown baby who flirts with libertarianism in the post-Ayn-Rand-follower sense, i.e., freedom redefined as license to indulge in recreational drugs and have all the mindless fun you want...
Are you prepared to come to terms with the fact that they do not and will not want you, forever? Do you have the strength to accept that you will be hated, resented, or ridiculed by everyone who cannot understand what you do — while simultaneously knowing that almost no one alive will ever understand what you do? Have you overcome and dispensed...
Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 29, 2022
Love for “nature” in the modern sense grows in inverse proportion to one’s ability to love nature in the ancient sense. That is, if humans today were more interesting, less mindlessly slavish, less devoted to the emptiest pursuits, and more open to the consideration of ideas, beauties, and ways of living truly alternative to those promoted in the popular culture, I would probably...
Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 25, 2022 · Last modified December 29, 2022
Jordan Peterson appeared on a program hosted by Piers Morgan to discuss Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. He insisted, among other things, that (a) Putin is in no significant way similar to Hitler or Stalin, i.e., not really a tyrant of global expansionist intentions at all, (b) there is no possible way that Ukraine can win the war, (c) even if Putin decides...
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