What is the fate of the average individual when psychopaths openly govern a country and pathological individuals occupy every office of importance across society? Join us today as we seek answers to these questions and continue our conversation on Chapter 5 of Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology. In previous shows we discussed how schizoid individuals create grand ideologies, character-disturbed people weaponize them and turn them into a mass movement, and how psychopaths infiltrate...

It appears that every sentient creature experiences pain in one form or another, serving as it does to provide an immediate signal to potentially life-threatening events. As humans we may experience qualitatively different dimensions of pain, from physical illness all the way to moral and spiritual anguish. However, in modern society, whether it's seen as an injustice imposed by the 'elite' or the 'patriarchy', or as the deficiency of one drug or another, all forms of suffering are heaped...

Is money evil? Is profit theft? Is poverty the only way to be holy? Then if so, some of the first Western capitalists - Cistercian monks running extensive factories - didn't get the memo. Today on MindMatters we delve a bit deeper into Rodney Stark's book, Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, specifically his take on the rise of capitalism. Running Time: 01:11:22 Download: MP3 - 65.4 MB

Everyone is by now well aware, whether through personal experience or vicariously via the news, of the toxic legacy of Christian fundamentalism. Whether it's authoritarian dogma or the many scandals that have plagued the Catholic church, many so-called 'Christians' have given plenty of ammo to their accusers. Meanwhile individuals are largely left to fend for themselves in a society that was founded on Christianity but that is overwhelmingly nihilistic and materialistic, denying its own...

Can a government of, by and for psychopaths exist when the vast majority of individuals governed by such a group can be said to be relatively normal? Psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski believed that it could, outlined the factors that allow for its functioning, and coined a term for such a social structure: a pathocracy. On this week's show we will be delving deeper into the workings of pathological groupings - groupings that wield enormous amounts of power both overtly, and covertly, and over...

Most people have a very common sense understanding of politics and various forms of government. Aristotle divided governments into three distinct forms: the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the polity (similar to modern notions of the republic), and revealed what they looked like when they were corrupted: the tyranny, the oligarchy (or in more modern terms, the technocracy), and democracy, respectively. However, over the course of the early 20th century there appeared qualitatively different...

What happens when two of the biggest and best known minds in the Western world decide to come together under one roof and publicly debate one of the most contentious and divisive of all political ideological issues - Capitalism Vs. Communism - and which one confers happiness to the greatest number of people? Well that's exactly what Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek did recently much to the delight, disgust or confusion of many thousands. How would Žižek defend Communism? How would Peterson...

Today's Western cultural landscape seems to give us all the wrong messages of what happiness is, and how one should go about attaining it; we're programmed for unhappiness and seemingly trapped in ways of thinking and being that only make for more unhappiness! On this week's MindMatters we discuss John F. Schumaker's book In Search of Happiness - Understanding An Endangered State of Mind and delve into what happiness actually is, what it isn't - and some of the perennial values which nurture...

In Jordan Peterson's latest YouTube Q&A, a subscriber asks about the nature of the soul. Peterson's answer touches on the nature of consciousness, ethics, responsibility, character, theology, and what it all might mean metaphysically. In short, many of our favorite topics here on MindMatters! So join us as we dive into Peterson's ideas on the soul, their applications to everyday life, and the implications for what they might say about the nature of the universe, and our place within it....

On today's show we discuss the research of computer engineer Bernardo Kastrup, a man who has devoted a significant amount of his professional life to developing a robust and comprehensive critique of the materialist worldview. He is the author of numerous books, including The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality, and Why Materialism is Baloney, as well as many articles. Today we'll be discussing one of his latest articles, "Physics Is Pointing...