Academy of Ideas

The modern West is in decline. Economic stagnation, rising tax burdens, moral disorientation, political corruption, bloated bureaucracies, and soaring levels of poverty, drug addiction and homelessness, all point to a...

“Many are born; few live. Men without personality are innumerable and vegetate molded by their environment, like melted wax.” José Ingenieros, The Mediocre Man In the early-20th century, the Argentinian philosopher...

“…the fairy tale is the great mother of the novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly read novel of your time. And you know that what has been on everyone’s lips for millennia, though repeated...

“And then comes the knowing that in me there is space for a second, large, and timeless life.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God According to Carl Jung the second half of life cannot be lived...

“This is an exceedingly dangerous time and we are confronted with a problem which has never been known in the conscious history of man… This is not a light but a darkness; the powers of darkness are coming up…” Carl...

“We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become…more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent.” Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of...

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men Throughout Western history, the idea of civilizational collapse has been bound up with visions of apocalyptic catastrophe...

“We have technology, convenience, security, and a measure of prosperity, but where is the beauty? Where is the beauty that we know we cannot really live without?” John-Mark Miravalle, Beauty: What it is and Why it...

Marie-Louise von Franz was a Swiss psychologist who closely collaborated with Carl Jung from 1933 until his death in 1961. One of von Franz’s primary topics of interest was fairy tales. For like myths, fairy tales...

“Will men be able to give up toying with the idea of another war? It is now a question of existence or nonexistence...For the danger that threatens us now is of such dimensions as to make this last European catastrophe...

“And the word “courage” should be reserved to characterize the man or woman who leaves the infantile sanctuary of the mass mind.” Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly In the privacy of our minds many of us disagree with the...

“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.” Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News Most people think that consuming the news makes one an informed citizen who is...

“The spiritual decline of the earth is so far advanced that people are in danger of losing their last spiritual strength, the strength that makes it possible even to see the disintegration and to recognize it as such.”...

“We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.” W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions Intuition is one of the most powerful faculties for gaining knowledge about the...

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Hanlon’s Razor What is responsible for the sickness of modern society? Is it the evil machinations of the power hungry? Is it due to a...

“Man is caught like a fly in a bottle. His attempts at culture, freedom, and creative endeavor have become mere entries in technique’s filing cabinet.” Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society In the mid-1950s the...

“Big Pharma is one of the largest and most profitable businesses in America, and in order to sell their chemical goods to allegedly treat the mind/psyche, pharmaceutical companies must convince society that people’s...

“The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.” Leonardo Da Vinci Today many subscribe to hustle culture and believe that to be successful in business, a career, or a creative endeavor, it is...

“It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.” Marie-Louise von Franz To be a philosophical pessimist is to be...

In an interview in 1964, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke stated: “The most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won’t be men or monkeys. They’ll be machines—the remote descendants of today’s...

“The Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.” Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious...

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.” Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels...

Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of history’s greatest novelists, but he is also one of history’s greatest psychologists. His stories contain depictions of characters who span the spectrum of human personality, from...

“For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited...

One of the surest ways to ruin our life is to be in a close relationship with a narcissist. Whether it be a narcissist as a parent, husband, wife, colleague, or friend, if we are forced to deal with a narcissist on a...