Has man created civilization to give himself security? Security for what? For boredom? Most human beings need a certain amount of challenge, of external stimulus, to stop them from sinking into the blank stare and blank consciousness of the idiot.” (Colin Wilson, New Pathways in Psychology)

For most of human history leisure was a rare luxury. Toiling from dawn to dusk just to survive was the lot of almost all men, women and children up until a few hundred years ago. With the onset of the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century and the rapid intensification of the division of labor that accompanied it, there occurred a “Leisure Revolution”. Not only did this period of rapid industrial...

Most people care too much about what other people think and that can even damage the psychological health. We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. 

In the modern World a great emphasis is placed on the attainment of social validation and on looking good in the eyes of others. That is creating a population of men and women who are stunted in their development. Social validation is derived primarily from one thing – success in the external world, or at least the appearance of it. Our job title, our material possessions, the size of our bank account, our physical looks and fashion choices, the status of the people we associate with, such are the...

Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only being that can believe in fiction - things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights. Or, quoting Buddhism: All is fiction!

Analyzing parts of this original Buddhist vision, Harari goes on to retell the history of our species. Seventy thousand years ago, there were at least six different human species on earth. They were insignificant, like animals, whose ecological impact is easily recovered by Nature. Today, there is only one human species left: Us. Homo sapiens. And we think we rule this planet.

Through our entire human history, from its evolutionary roots to the age...

Both the philosophy of Buddhism and the religion of Islam have a common view of happiness: You will never be happy by earthly pleasure.

Pavlov discovered that the conditioned reflex could be developed most easily in a quiet laboratory with a minimum of disturbing stimuli. Every trainer of animals knows this from his own experience; isolation and the patient repetition of stimuli are required to tame wild animals. . . .The totalitarians have followed this rule. They know that they can condition their political victims most quickly if they are kept in isolation.