Reading a great book (specifically nonfiction) is to acquire, within a matter of hours, the insights and knowledge that the author spent months, years, and sometimes decades developing. Books are therefore knowledge multipliers, shortcuts to years of research and thinking, and the more books you read, the more hard-won knowledge you accumulate in a fraction of the time.

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity. Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000.

We can wonder about what others are thinking or feeling without ever hearing them say a word. My toddler holds an empty ice cream cone, looking despondently at a melting ball of goo on the ground. It is obvious that she is sad she lost her treat. An orangutan brushes his head with a leaf, then hands the leaf to a human caregiver.

For centuries, we’ve given lavish attention to the specifics of punishment, and left Heaven woefully under-sketched.

For this exercise to work, we need to establish a couple of ground rules. First, drop your logic defense. That’s the exercise. Then, consider that everything that the mind could possibly imagine … has indeed occurred. If time and space are one, we will one day be able to revisit the realms of what we call our “imagination.”

According to the principles of the ancient teachings of feng shui, the money corner (wealth corner) is located in the back Southeast area of your house, of..

We all can learn from the great men & stoics who have shed light upon living a good life. These good life quotes & sayings will help you live the good life.

This weekend, French cultural institutes are sponsoring free intellectual rave parties in 65 cities across five continents. The Night of Philosophy and Ideas (La Nuit de la Philosophie et des Idées), which started as a small gathering among intellectuals in Paris in 2012, has become a global festival devoted to deep thinking.

You wander through life as if half-awake, time passing by. Activities you used to enjoy are now trite, exhausting, and empty of meaning. You feel alienated from others, who now seem far away, belonging to an inaccessible, alternate world where happiness is still possible. You are pushed further into the dark, hateful place inside yourself, where your thoughts– abusive, apathetic, and pessimistic– swirl relentlessly: I hate myself, it’s all pointless, I want to die. From where you are, there seems to be no hope, no relief, no escape. You are depressed.

Can Stoicism teach us how to live? A lot of people seem to think so. They identify as “modern Stoics,” a movement that has gained traction over the past two decades, with thousands of members now congregating online and off to practice a self-help version of the philosophical life. They include athletes, military officers, CEOs, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and writers like The New Yorker’s Elif Batuman, who described in a 2016 feature for the magazine how the Stoic philosopher Epictetus helped her cope with a long-distance relationship and sneaky taxi drivers in Turkey.

Buddhist teachings often speak about the concept of self and no-self. It can be a challenge to understand but is fundamental to spiritual practice.

On this special Losar episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken travels to Kathmandu to speak with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, world-renowned teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and founder of the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal. In this special teaching, Rinpoche shares his past life memories and talks about his own experiences with the continuity of…

In retrospect, yes. I was always questioning things, and had a very keen sense of justice and injustice. I would never let an argument drop, and was generally quite annoying. My parents certainly weren’t surprised that I became a philosopher.

Philosophy is a profoundly interesting subject. Often many people have little to no understanding of what the subject actually is, and don’t realise how influential it has been on numerous aspects of their lives. Ever come across the question “if a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well that annoyingly difficult question was sprung out of the philosophical notion of Idealism.

To be or not to be. That is the question. (Seriously.) David Benatar’s chapter “Why Coming Into Existence is Always a Harm” from his book Better Never To Have Been (2006) argues in favor of the latter: it’s better (for me) not to be. It seemed intuitively plausible at first,1 but upon reflection, I find myself unconvinced. I worry that Benetar-style anti-natalism involves contradiction, equivocation, or a false sense of commensurability. In this post, I’ll explain.

I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by the sometimes odd choices for the historical figures that adorn the currencies we use every day…

Contrary to popular belief, not all philosophers are nerds. Nor are all nerds philosophers. I am living proof of that, since I was a nerd long before I was a philosopher. I played Dungeons & Dragons, I got good grades, I edited the school newspaper and was on the debate team. Imagine one of the kids from Stranger Things, but not heroic.

A tempting fallacy about morality is to think that wickedness must arise from transparently abhorrent motives, and goodness from nice ones. Few explicitly endorse this crude dualism, but many breezily equate hatred with evil, love with goodness, or both. This way of thinking makes it difficult for us to see the dangers of moral zealotry, one of the most insidious motives for wicked behavior.

The influential Austrian-born thinker elucidates his concept of falsifiability, which holds that scientific theories can never be proven true, only demonstrated to be false