Academy of Ideas

“. . .when a living organism is cut off from its roots, it loses a connection with the foundation of its existence and must necessarily perish.”   Carl Jung, Aion Carl Jung dedicated his life to a single goal, which as he notes in his autobiography, was to “penetrate into the secret of the personality.” […]

“The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all…Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “yea” to it all.” Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art […]

…totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it… bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Many people have amnesia regarding that fact that a mere few […]

“…in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”   Silence Dogood, pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, Number 49, 2-9 July 1722 Freedom of […]

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.” Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel’s Journal Depression is the darkest of human experiences. It saps our energy, weakens our will to work, destroys our desire to socialize, decreases our motivation to exercise, and sometimes even jeopardizes our […]

In the 1st century AD, the Greek orator and philosopher Dio Chrysostom wrote:  “Luxury makes pains seem even harder, and dulls and weakens one’s pleasures. For the person who is always luxuriating and never touches pain will end up unable to endure any pain at all, and also not able to feel any pleasure, not […]

“It seems to me that we face very grave crises indeed and that, if we are to survive, we need not just a few new measures, but a complete change of heart and mind.” Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World There seems to be […]

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and [destroys] itself. . .It is in vain to Say that Democracy is … less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all […]

“To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both…” Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols According to a 2010 study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, the health risks of chronic loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. To mitigate […]

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”   George Orwell, 1984 George Orwell’s writings have experienced a spike in popularity over the past several decades and for a good reason – modern societies are becoming ever more like the dystopia Orwell depicted in his […]