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Abstractions as Gods — On the things we make sacred

• [article] Gesticism — 26 Jan 2026
  Lots of things are happening, but anything <em>can</em> matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention. I’m not going to spend more time trying to reduce the core idea than that.
• [article] On Cynosure — 7 Mar 2025
  Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives of others. Everyone agrees.
• [article] Aesthetics are facts too — 21 Feb 2025
  Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what evidence they care about.
• [article] BDSM as a lazy ideology — 17 Jan 2025
  BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
• [article] Speaking in tongues — 23 Aug 2024
  Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.
• [article] Panpsychism isn't that fun — 22 Sep 2023
  Panpsychists reckon they’ve one-upped materialists and non-materialists in explaining how consciousness might have come to be by telling us that everything is conscious. Then they just leave us hanging.
• [article] On managing magic mushroom experiences — 29 Jul 2023
  Mushrooms change the balance between inside-out forces (the all-consuming neural networks that support the ‘self’) and outside-in forces (the environment and world around us). This model seems most useful in explaining the mushroom experience.
• [article] The value of ritual — 17 Mar 2023
  Rituals are often dismissed, but they’re just procedures with a purpose. We all engage in ritualistic behavior—many habits and routines meet this criteria. Redefining them through the uncomfortable lens of ritual prompts us to question our own practices and beliefs.
• [article] Mundane Cults — 27 Feb 2023
  We’ve been taught that cults are dark and scary things. But we have been fooled. The cult is a prominent building block of modern community. If you’re not in one, you’re probably doing something wrong. The question is, is the cult you’re in a cult you chose?
• [article] Abstractions as Gods — 28 Dec 2022
  We can use abstractions to get a handle on complex features of the world. By personalising centres of purpose in the world, we can better connect them to ideologies. This permits the crafting of ever more graceful solutions to our complex world.
• [article] Spirituality of Mind — 29 Aug 2022
  The secular world replaced the soul with a mind in the brain. Modern science of mind finds no such thing, but a collection of mini-minds which does not stop at the body, but extends into the world. This philosophy presents us a secular spirituality, a god we can all believe in.
• [article] Useful Pharmacology — 28 Jul 2022
  We absolutely love some drugs. Others terrify us. The difference is familiarity more than any other single thing and the result is confusion. A much more principled framework for thinking about drugs is thinking of them as tools.
• [article] It's not 'just' a placebo — 28 Dec 2021
  The phrase “it’s ‘just’ a placebo effect” is used to wave away inconvenient findings that some alternative therapies work, because we don’t know how they work. But many of us frankly don’t know how any medicine works and this blind one-directional faith is often misguided.
• [article] The Value of the Sacred — 24 Aug 2021
  The sacred isn’t a social myth; a delusion of the religious. It is what happens when we bind moments of personal meaning and power to something greater than ourselves. And, without the sacred, we are left unable to transform meaning into purpose.
• [article] In praise of the sage — 19 Jul 2021
  Our culture spurns the ‘guru’ as a charletan and the traditionalist as a relic. Legitimate knowledge comes from reasoned observation, not intuition. Except that this is a lie that we tell ourselves and which blinds us to how useful the sage can be.