“The self-handicapper reaches out for impediments, exaggerates handicaps, and embraces any factor reducing personal responsibility for mediocrity…”  Steven Berglas and Edward Jones, Drug Choice as a Self-Handicapping Strategy Rather than simply contending with external obstacles to success, many of us actively collaborate in our own defeat. We are our own worst enemies and our inability […]

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind The internet has connected the world, but it has also unleashed a torrent of hostility. The primary source of this hostility is the online hater. Hidden behind a screen and protected by anonymity, these individuals mock and insult creators, podcasters, online personalities, […]

“The difficulties of our psychotherapeutic work teach us to take truth, goodness, and beauty where we find them. They are not always found where we look for them: often they are hidden in the dirt or are in the keeping of the dragon.” Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 16 We all possess what Carl Jung […]

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 faltering civilization. While many agree that the West is faltering, explanations as to why vary; some blame the collapse of religion and the loss of […]

“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, physician, and essayist José Ingenieros wrote a book titled The Mediocre Man. In it he explores what distinguishes the mediocre masses from those who […]

“…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 endlessly, still comes nearest to the ultimate human truth.”  Carl Jung, Red Book Many people think of fairy tales […]

“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 in the same manner as the first. “Whoever carries over into the afternoon the […]

“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 Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra According to Carl Jung, the primary forces which shape history are not […]

“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 Morality In the late 19th century, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche observed that Western civilization was in a state of decline; it […]

“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 caused by invasions, plagues, war, or natural disasters. But today, the greater danger may be a dark age of […]