MindMatters

For as long as cultures have had contact with each other, attentive observers have noticed the similarities between their respective myths. Today, scholars hypothesize that these similarities are either the result of accident, cultural sharing or diffusion, or a shared collective unconscious of symbols. But in his revolutionary book, The Origins of the World's Mythologies, E.J. Michael Witzel...

Your MindMatters hosts can't be hitting the books and reading non-fiction ALL the time! So on this week's show we'll be sharing some of the novels, movies and shows that, in our estimation, are insightful of the human condition, artful enough to be called something like literature - and entertaining enough to add a little joy to our days - and which are certainly worth discussing. A...

"Just one of those things." Sometimes you just can't find your keys. Sometimes you lose your TV remote. But sometimes, an object might fall from your grasp, never to be seen again. Sometimes objects might disappear from their usual home, only to reappear in the same place days, weeks, or months later - sometimes in a completely unexpected and implausible location. Sometimes a missin...

In his dystopian classic 1984, George Orwell introduced the concept of newspeak. Better known today as doublespeak or doubletalk, even those who haven't read the book will probably recognize the phrases "war is peace" or "freedom is slavery". Orwell was inspired by the Soviets' abuse of language in their propaganda, something that leaders and PR firms everywhere engag...

Today we return to Chapter 5 of Andrew Łobaczewski's groundbreaking work Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes to discern the impact of various ideologies on everyday life, and how dangerous delusions and deviant individuals can warp them into something barely recognizable, culminating in the social system Lobaczewski calls 'pathocracy&apos...

How has it come to be that our universities, societal norms and cultural values have taken a sharp turn down the road of instilling stupidity - instead of intelligence? When we see that the most tried and true (and ancient) approaches to the use of mind and emotions are being relegated to the dung heap, when we notice that many of the most advanced ideas put forth from cognitive behavioral therapy...

Groucho Marx defined politics as "The art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." One could hardly come up with a better definition of postmodern politics. On today's show we discuss the psychological roots of this postmodern mayhem, which is manifesting in radical racial/gender politics in classrooms and universiti...

If you're human, then chances are you believe something that "everybody knows" to be true. And if you're a thinking human, then chances are you know that such beliefs can turn out to be not so true after all. Everybody knew saturated fat is bad for you, after all. But now they don't and the opposite is true. Fancy that! Whether it's beliefs, emotions, or behaviors, so...

What is the nature of reality, and why does it matter? Whether we know it or not, we all have a worldview - a set of very core beliefs and assumptions about the way the world works and our place within it. Sometimes those assumptions work, sometimes they don't, but as long as they are left unexamined, we can't say we've come any closer to actually understanding who we are and what w...

"Do you believe in God?" It's the mother of all loaded questions. What does the questioner really want to know? That you're part of their tribe? Whether or not you're a superstitious simpleton? What do they mean by belief? What do they mean by God? It's not a simple question, and the answer is never so simple as yes or no. In his recently published talk, "Who Dar...

Between hysteria, censorship, endless war and climate catastrophe it seems the world has fallen victim to chaos and irrationality. On today's show we take a hard look at the origins of this madness and what to do about it, utilizing a work by one of our favorite philosophers, R.G. Collingwood. Collingwood, an English philosopher, archaeologist and historian, passed away in 1943. But just thre...

What is the fate of the average individual when psychopaths openly govern a country and pathological individuals occupy every office of importance across society? Join us today as we seek answers to these questions and continue our conversation on Chapter 5 of Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology. In previous shows we discussed how schizoid individuals create grand ideologies, character-...

It appears that every sentient creature experiences pain in one form or another, serving as it does to provide an immediate signal to potentially life-threatening events. As humans we may experience qualitatively different dimensions of pain, from physical illness all the way to moral and spiritual anguish. However, in modern society, whether it's seen as an injustice imposed by the 'eli...

Is money evil? Is profit theft? Is poverty the only way to be holy? Then if so, some of the first Western capitalists - Cistercian monks running extensive factories - didn't get the memo. Today on MindMatters we delve a bit deeper into Rodney Stark's book, Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, specifically his take on the rise of capitalism....

Everyone is by now well aware, whether through personal experience or vicariously via the news, of the toxic legacy of Christian fundamentalism. Whether it's authoritarian dogma or the many scandals that have plagued the Catholic church, many so-called 'Christians' have given plenty of ammo to their accusers. Meanwhile individuals are largely left to fend for themselves in a society...

Can a government of, by and for psychopaths exist when the vast majority of individuals governed by such a group can be said to be relatively normal? Psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski believed that it could, outlined the factors that allow for its functioning, and coined a term for such a social structure: a pathocracy. On this week's show we will be delving deeper into the workings of patholog...

Most people have a very common sense understanding of politics and various forms of government. Aristotle divided governments into three distinct forms: the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the polity (similar to modern notions of the republic), and revealed what they looked like when they were corrupted: the tyranny, the oligarchy (or in more modern terms, the technocracy), and democracy, respectiv...

What happens when two of the biggest and best known minds in the Western world decide to come together under one roof and publicly debate one of the most contentious and divisive of all political ideological issues - Capitalism Vs. Communism - and which one confers happiness to the greatest number of people? Well that's exactly what Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek did recently much to the de...

Today's Western cultural landscape seems to give us all the wrong messages of what happiness is, and how one should go about attaining it; we're programmed for unhappiness and seemingly trapped in ways of thinking and being that only make for more unhappiness! On this week's MindMatters we discuss John F. Schumaker's book In Search of Happiness - Understanding An Endangered Sta...

In Jordan Peterson's latest YouTube Q&A, a subscriber asks about the nature of the soul. Peterson's answer touches on the nature of consciousness, ethics, responsibility, character, theology, and what it all might mean metaphysically. In short, many of our favorite topics here on MindMatters! So join us as we dive into Peterson's ideas on the soul, their applications to everyday...

On today's show we discuss the research of computer engineer Bernardo Kastrup, a man who has devoted a significant amount of his professional life to developing a robust and comprehensive critique of the materialist worldview. He is the author of numerous books, including The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality, and Why Materialism is Baloney, as...

On this first episode of MindMatters, we dive into the biggest mystery of our times: consciousness. What is it, why is it so mysterious, and why is it important? Materialists either explain it away or deny it really exists, but the mind is much more than that. It can't be so easily denied. Everything in our experience, from our sensations and feelings to our theories and choices in life - all...