(1 comments) SHARE        Saturday, May 11, 2024
Aryan Idols and the Search for Indo-Europeans: The Prehistory and History of Fascist Mythology Part I The search for "Indo Europeans" seems a particularly lost cause. Why hypothesize a culture, language and geographical region and a time older than the Sumerians when there is no concrete evidence? In spite of this, the English and German linguists and archeologists were particularly determined to find one to discover such a culture, not in the name of scientific objectivity, but for political and economic reasons.

SHARE        Thursday, May 2, 2024
Neocon Realists and Global Neoliberals Dead on Arrival: A Theoretical Autopsy The Western world is disintegrating. But the capitalists&deep state agencies that are failing are not chickens with their heads cut off. Myopic&inept political actions are driven by the bankrupt theories that inform them. Journey the cesspools of the most conservative fields in academia, International Relations, infested by CIA agents&jackals. See why Neoconservative Realism&Neoliberal globalism theories are dead on arrival.

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, April 6, 2024
Jean Houston's Psycho-Historical Recovery of the Self: Sacred Psychology in Western History Can we draw any meaningful connection between the macro world of the evolution of societies & the micro world of individual development? Jean Houston argues that both macro and micro-worlds go through crisis and pathology that can be overcome through group rituals as they have existed throughout Western history.

SHARE        Friday, March 22, 2024
Monotheistic Roots of Nationalism Part II: Commonalities in Socialization Between Monotheism and Nationalism Monotheism and nationalism are far from opposites in how they use propaganda. Both use sacred texts; mark social time with special occasions; mark social space with territories and each expects people to make pilgrimages. Conversion methods are similar and loyalty and exclusivity are demanded. A lifetime membership is expected and leaving is punished with exile.

SHARE        Sunday, March 10, 2024
The Monotheistic Roots of Nationalism Part I: What Nationalism and Monotheism Have in Common Anthony Smith and George Mosse have pointed out how nationalism has built itself up using the same techniques as religion. However, it is not any religion. It is no accident that ancient pagan societies never had nationalism. Neither has Buddhist or Taoist China. It is the characteristics of monotheistic religions that contain the key.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, February 29, 2024
Nationalism as the Religion of the Modern West If anyone from a tribal society had heard that a piece of colored cloth could motivate people to kill others and give up their own lives they would say we were crazy. When did nationalism start? What are the phases it has gone though. What other kinds of loyalties must nationalism overcome?

SHARE        Sunday, February 11, 2024
Out on a Limb With Dialectical Materialism As a dialectical materialist I have always felt that the categorization of schools of philosophy into "idealist" and "materialist" was too narrow and reductionist. In the work of Steven Pepper & Andrew Reck I identified 5 schools of philosophy, not 2. Come join me in high adventure into ontology and epistemology.

SHARE        Sunday, January 21, 2024
Fame vs Celebrity: Movies, Music, Sports and Politics What does fame mean? Does fame go back to hunter-gatherers or does it have an origin later in history? What does it mean to be a celebrity? Is it common in all societies or are celebrities historically emergent? What's the relationship between being famous & being a celebrity? Are these terms interchangeable or are they distinct? Why are political celebrities treated with more hostility than celebrities in movies sports&music?

SHARE        Saturday, January 13, 2024
Yankee Micro Social Psychology Part II: Reference Group Criticisms of Dialogical Psychology and Social Constructionism In the 1960s some social psychologists took issue with the individualist bent of mainstream social psychology. But in doing so they treated scientific experiment itself as individualist. That meant social psychology could not be scientific. On the other hand social reference theory has shown that social psychology can be anti-individualist & scientific at the same time.

SHARE        Sunday, December 24, 2023
Yankee Micro Social Psychology Part I: Individualism and its Social Shadows The subject of social psychology seems to be an oasis from the relentlessly individualist orientation of psychology. But in the US is the same old social contract theory foundation where the individual is thought to interact in a voluntary, accidental & incidental way with society. Yet there is opposition. While the work of social reference theory is not Marxist, it is deeply social in a way similar to the work of George Mead.

SHARE        Saturday, December 9, 2023
Crowds, Masses and Movements: Right Wing and Left Wing Macro Social Psychology What are the characteristics that make a crowd different from a group? Are crowds any more emotional than groups or individuals? Are crowds any more manipulatable than groups? Are crowds any more destructive than groups or individuals? How do we account for our suspicions about crowds? Why do people join movements? What might exist to keep people from joining movements even when it may serve their self-interests?

SHARE        Sunday, November 26, 2023
Collectivist, Individualist and Communist Selves Part II Mead's construction of the self was set in the industrial capitalist society of the early 20th century. Since then cross-cultural psychologists say that 70%-80% of the world is collectivist. No one to my knowledge has applied Mead's work to the collectivist self. I attempt to do this. 100 years later socialist societies have developed communist selves. How would Mead's work apply to a communist self? This is my own synthesis.

SHARE        Friday, November 10, 2023
Collectivist, Individualist and Communist Selves, Part I: The Process Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead Human beings have three layers of identity: temperament, personality and a self. The self is the unit of identity necessary and sufficient to link us directly to society. This self must learn to play roles, learn rules and navigate situations. These characteristics of the self in the hands of the great social psychologist, George Herbert Mead, comes closest to a Marxist theory of what a social individual looks like.

SHARE        Friday, October 13, 2023
The Science of Superstition Part II: Its Developmental and Bioevolutionary Foundations A child psychologist says childhood superstition originates in "essentialism", which explains teleology&anthropomorphic superstitions. But how do we explain adolescent &adulthood superstition? Is superstition abnormal? Is abnormal behavior inherently superstitious? Sometimes superstitions are rational. Research shows modern humans are a little less superstitious than the ancients.

SHARE        Friday, September 29, 2023
The Science of Superstition: Its Social and Psychological Foundations Part I Have you ever insisted on using your lucky pen before taking an exam? Psychologists can predict that some types of work are more likely to produce superstitions than others. Which types of work would you bet on? What's the difference between having a rational routine & having a superstitious routine? By what processes are superstitions acquired? What role does contagion play when we become overly attached to places & objects?

(6 comments) SHARE        Friday, September 15, 2023
Greater of Two Evils: Why the Democratic Party is Worse Than the Republican Party for 85% of the Population We're reposting this article about the Democratic Party five years after it was published because after re-reading it, the author, Bruce Lerro, wouldn't change a thing. In addition, the Democratic Party has become even more right-wing since it gained power in 2020. At the end of the article he will name the many ways it has gotten still worse.

(6 comments) SHARE        Saturday, September 9, 2023
Heroic Skeptical Odysseys into Parapsychology Part II How can you tell what the optimal conditions are for a solid scientific process for determining the truth for a paranormal claim? The 5 criteria are falsifiability, fruitfulness, comprehensiveness (scope), simplicity (Occam's razor) and conservatism (preserving past scientific knowledge). Find out how they operate in practice.

(10 comments) SHARE        Friday, September 1, 2023
Heroic Skeptical Odysseys Into Parapsychology Parapsychologists complain that skeptics are narrow and close minded. It's actually parapsychologists who refuse to admit evidence against them. Learn about the spectrum of the paranormal & 8 tests skeptics use to evaluate paranormal claims. Skeptical scientists self-organized to contest the flood of New Age thinking that began in US during the mid 1970s. They were funded by neither corporations, the state or universities.

SHARE        Saturday, August 12, 2023
Why Neopagan Marxists are Not Pantheists or Animists We are part of external nature & have an affinity along with primates as real objective beings. But we also have an internal nature - a psychology. We know from cosmologists the natural world goes back to subatomic particles. But how far back does internal nature go? Pantheists argue that psyche mental life & consciousness go back to subatomic particles. There were other forms of internal life in nature before these arose.

SHARE        Monday, July 24, 2023
The Cycles and Spirals of Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of Italy, The Netherlands, Britain and Yankeedom How long has capitalism existed? Has it always been with us all the way back to tribal societies or a product of the modern age? Is there any pattern to its evolution or is it random? Can capitalism go on forever or does it have fatal internal weaknesses? Why does capitalism grow flush in some countries, then die out and re-ignite elsewhere? What is happening in the world-system in the 21st century has never happened before.