Philosophy

Book Review: "Young-Civilizationists" are the new “Young-Earth Creationists"

This is Graham Hancock’s most recent book, a follow-up to Magicians of the Gods, painstakingly evaluating the evidence that hints at a lost civilization in deep antiquity (Atlantis?)

An admission, I used to be a "young-earth creationist," which means that I was among the Christians who believe that God created the world and universe about 6,000 years ago. A commonly-held and dogma-driven view of history that we now view as absurd and anti-rational which necessitates ignoring a lot of evidence. Almost nobody (Christians included) is now a young-earth creationist - but (even the intelligentsia of) society still holds some very dogmatic views of history that require ignoring a lot of evidence. Graham Hancock has written several books thoroughly documenting and analyzing this evidence. According to the mainstream view of history, our species suddenly jumped from scratching about in the dust to building the pyramids and other megaliths of tremendous proportions and size - civilizational endeavors requiring mastery of complex mathematics and engineering principles. While our modern civilization can barely keep the lights on in a lot of places (and can't even keep the Notre Dame cathedral from burning down), we're made to believe that ancient humans jumped right from chasing down megafauna on the flatlands with spears to the decadent project of building giant monuments perfectly aligned to the astrological starscape above, in a matter of (at the most) a few thousand years, while they were mired in a barbaric and deeply superstitious societal state. Indeed, "young civilizationists" (like young-earth creationists) believe that something magical happened about six millennia ago.

Is beauty vain, or is beauty, instead, a philosophical treasure that refracts the potency of our inner life force?

Is physical beauty something we've programmed to respond to by the 5000 ads a day? Is the obsession with one's own physical beauty a sign of a deeply corrupt soul? If all you have to offer is that which you did not earn, you'll be terrified to lose it. Is the lustful obsession with physical beauty the way of what appears to be a man, but is really an animal?
OR is physical beauty a gift from the divine (or evolution if you prefer)? A reward for when we draw nearer to the most metaphorically divine act, that of creating new life in our own image.

It's all too easy to call the woman vain who spends hours before the mirror fixing her make-up. Mainstream self-help pop culture would call her insecure for the way she frets over how her attire falls on her form. Surely, she must be compensating for her intellectual shallowness or bad childhood when she rouges her lips.
But what about the health-conscious Biohacker - who spends hundreds of hours a year in the gym shaping their physique? Who never misses a day without their collagen supplements? Who shines beautifying wavelengths of red light on their skin every day?
The Biohacker who dares to defy human condition: grow old, grow ugly, and die - long thought of as nonnegotiable. The Biohacker who spends a small fortune on sophisticated anti-aging supplements and tools for the fight to become a beautiful immortal, have they merely multiplied vanity by delusion?

The Internet is making everyone stupid, and that's a good thing!

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is a book that dramatically changed how I view the Internet. You don't need to read this book because the title says it all - your suspicions are correct, the Internet is NOT very good for our minds.

We answer your Biohacking and Lifehacking questions in this Q&A podcast...

We recorded this while I was pepped up with PEMFs administered directly to my forehead with the IC Hummer, hopefully, it makes me a perkier podcaster!

Is stoicism past its due date as a mindset?

The philosophy articulated by the embattled Marcus Aurelius as his personal life and empire threatened to collapse around him in 170 BC. It's over 2000 years old, and we are now living in a world utterly inconceivable to even the most imaginative Roman aristocrat in the midst of a psychedelic Dionysian fever dream. Modernity seems architected to conflict directly with every facet of evolutionary psychology and the philosophical values that have edified men and women for millennia. While new science, thinking, and practice from the fields of Biohacking and personal growth seem to offer pragmatic solutions in a world doing its damnedest to claw away our free will with digital talons.
In a world utterly corrupted by politics, big business, big government, and devouring ideology, is stoicism as a mindset an individualistic "cope" to keep your metaphorical hands off pitchforks that should be raised?
That's the question I'll be exploring today with Will R. Young, a behavioral finance strategist, philosopher, top-performing superforecasters in the Good Judgment Project, author of a new book, "The Enough Equation," and avid surfer - he knows a thing or two about dodging shark fins.

Book review: Masterful magical realism!

I recently finished the third book in the compelling historical fiction series ”War God” by Graham Hancock, about the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Cortés and his band of conquistadors.

What captures your attention for hours on end and makes the novel such a page-turner is its descriptions of the scale and severity of violence. This book is a snapshot of probably one of the very most violent episodes in human history; when one of the most ambitious men in the world, Hernán Cortés, with a technologically superior force of several hundred conquistadors took on an empire of possibly as many as 30 million Aztecs and ultimately prevailed.

Yesterday someone reminded me of a thing I once said...

"I don’t believe in love."

Which might sound terrible. Or ridiculously nihilistic. Sometimes I intellectually have a deer-in-the-headlights moment when confronted with how my opinions and outlook on life have changed over time. We were slightly different people a year ago and we certainly were five or ten years ago. In the last year, I’ve experienced greater depths of and previously unknown dimensions of love, yet I resisted the temptation to just respond:

I was wrong. I now believe in love.

When I said that I didn’t believe in love I was grasping at a more nuanced point which is that “love” is a poor word to describe a very complicated aspect of human psychology and motivation that has both light and dark sides.

I've researched some Nootropics that you may not have heard of before; Bromantane, Cerebrolysin, Cortexin, Ladastan, Mildronate...

You can get these from a vendor I've vetted, RUPHARMA.com - based in that big, cold, scary country that the mainstream media wants you to hate. Check out their site and you'll see a number of Nootropics and performance enhancers that are maybe a bit foreign to you. To me at least these are European exotics, they are all branded and manufactured in either Russia or different European countries. I'll explain a little later why this is appealing to me as a veteran Nootropics user.

What do you think of the whole AI trend taking the internet by storm right now?

If you're like most people I've talked to recently, you're somewhat wary of it. But there's a lot of silver lining to the AI cloud steadily advancing over the internet that I want to point out and I thought I should let you know how I'm using it going forward in my work as an Applied Neuroscience Strategist.