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Showing posts with the label Yuval Harari

The Laughter of Wolves

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  The Laughter of Wolves John Michael Greer As I write these words, lean gray wolves are pacing through a rain-soaked landscape in eastern Europe.  Dim rumbling sounds in the far distance, like summer thunder that’s strayed into the wrong season, don’t bother them. Nor does it trouble them that the forest around them is dotted with the decaying ruins of buildings abandoned half a century ago. Something else doesn’t disturb them, either, but we’ll get to that. Keep the wolves in mind as we proceed. Keep them in mind. It may seem like an improbable leap from wolves running through the forest to a flustered speech by one of the pampered darlings of the Western world’s corporate aristocracy, but there’s a connection. The pampered darling is Yuval Noah Harari, the chief intellectual of  the Davos set these days. I hope I won’t be accused of setting up a straw man if I mention that he’s a gay vegan atheist who practices mindfulness meditation and writes the kind of big-picture history books

Hollywood, Predictive Programming and You: Are We Living in a Science Fiction Movie?

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  Hollywood, Predictive Programming and You: Are We Living in a Science Fiction Movie? By David Gosselin As part of our on-going civilizational short story project, enjoy this latest deep-dive into the magical world of movies and fiction. It’s one of life’s great ironies that fiction often comes closer to truth than anything else. The latest wire, headline, or speech notwithstanding, the greatest stories handed down to us over generations endure in ways that the typical Hollywood blockbuster or major news headlines rarely can. These stories do so because they capture something immutable and timeless about the nature of man, transcending both the time and space we inhabit. And yet, they are perennial reminders of the revelations awaiting within each of us daily. How many other things can we say that about in life? However, while fiction ironically possesses the magical ability to reveal the transcendent and poetical dimensions hidden beneath everyday reality, another kind exists. Unlike