Intelligence, Sincerity and Artificial Blindness

Truthful examination of cultural and social dynamics is bound to be met with a wall of obstruction. One is liable to be portrayed as a bigot by people on the Left, and one is liable to be portrayed as a collectivist by people on the Right. In both cases what we see is a...

Knowledge and Righteousness

In the film "White Oleander," a girl who has been exposed to Christian preachings asks a boy who is into science, "Does knowing things tell you what is right and wrong?" As a matter of fact, knowing things does a lot to help know what is right and what is wrong.Knowing the...

Confronting Worldview Panic

Very few things threaten people more than having their worldview challenged. And when something arises that threatens their worldview, the first reaction is to destroy it.We see this with Hurricane Carter. Since he was a child he was seen as a dangerous individual. What made...

REVIEW Pears Cyclopedia 2012-2013

By Sam VakninAuthor of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" The 2012-2013 edition of Pears Cyclopaedia is the first major revision in some time. It adds considerable heft to veteran chapters as well as re-introduces categories of knowledge from previous ...

Government, Science and Private Organs of Deception

There are many people who state that they don't want the government telling them how to think. And yet these same people are perfectly happy to let non-government entities such as Christian Right, Texas Oil, Jehovah's Witnesses and right-wing talk radio tell them what to...

Intelligence and Success: False causes, true causes

Many ideas about the causes of intelligence and success are wrong. This is as much the case for those who have negative outlook as it is for those who believe that they are positive.There have been times and places in which having a brain was equated with cynicism and...

Conscience and Consciousness

A very important, though not much discussed, factor in psychology is conscience. Apparently psychopaths (or sociopaths) are people lacking in conscience; but not much is said about the character of the conscience that people who do have conscience possess. In fact, different...

Aggressive Ignorance, Paranoia and Conmen

There are two kinds of ignorance: Ordinary ignorance and aggressive ignorance. Ordinary ignorance recognizes that it is ignorance and is willing to learn. Aggressive ignorance is quite different. It aggressively resists any attempt to correct it. And instead of pursuing...

Intelligence and Subversion of Intelligence

Camille Paglia, in addressing socialist tendencies of some American university students, said that the toilets in which they graffitied their slogans came from capitalism. There is a problem with that argument. There were toilets in the Soviet Union as well; and there are...

Youth, Commitment and Life-Owning Lies

The problem with people making life decisions when they are very young is that they do not come from the position of adequate knowledge. They know only what they have been taught; and if what they have learned were incomplete or corrupt, then it will take them a long time to...

Rational Interests and Ron Paul

As Ron Paul and others are waging a war on the government in the name of liberty, it is time to tell what they would rather not have you hear. And that is as follows: Without what they are attacking, they would have very little of what they have. I have nothing against...

Public Intellectuals: Rise of Librarian and Decline of Author

By Sam Vaknin Author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" There are two flavours of public intellectual: librarians and authors. Librarians possess a synoptic view of mostly trivial and anecdotal data, interspersed with histories, accepted truths, slogans,...

Renaissance and Nazism as Ideas of Progress

By Sam Vaknin Author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"The Renaissance as a reactionary idea of progress The Renaissance ("rebirth" c. 1348-1648) evolved around a modernist and, therefore, reactionary idea of progress. This statement is not as nonsensical as...