Risultati letto da "Charles Featherstone" in Tutte le categorie

Mankind can rule itself without the force of top-down authority, and freedom is more than just choosing how to meet the needs and demands of capital. Inequality is structural and intentional, not inevitable and necessary. It does not have to be this way. In solidarity, we are better. Think for yourself, and question authority. This is the essence of anarchism, which has a bad name and reputation because it attacks the necessity of centralised power and authority.

When and why are you justified in withdrawing from public life? In the brief but remarkably rich essay On Leisure (De Otio), the Stoic philosopher Seneca explains his choice to withdraw from public life into contemplative retirement. Born to a wealthy and literary family, Seneca was brought to...

The Classic of Changes (I Ching / Yìjīng / 易經) is one of the oldest and most enduring texts in the Chinese literary tradition, and one of the oldest books on record. The trigrams and method are classically attributed to the culture hero and legendary emperor Fu Xi (c. 2800 BCE), who also...

You probably know George Eliot as the author of legendary dramatic works like Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss—but did you know she also wrote sci-fi tales of gothic horror? First published anonymously in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1859, this short but skin-crawling tale is very different...

This beautifully curated anthology draws on major historical figures including Emerson, Thoreau, Carlyle, Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Francis Bacon, Montaigne, and Aristotle. The pieces range across themes such as the sentiment of friendship, its pleasures, and the art of choosing...

In a utopian future society, where all social unrest has been engineered away, a man has an awakening. Starting as a happy worker drone, he meets a woman who reveals to him the reality of life outside the state's control - the glories of chaotic nature in the world and in the heart. They become entwined with a conspiracy against the state, and eventually try to escape beyond the walls of the state's control... only to meet betrayal, failure, and a dark ending in the glorious light of the state's total control.

Of the many profound works by James Allen, the pioneering voice of the New Thought movement, The Mastery of Destiny stands as a powerful and practical guide to the pinnacle of self-creation. While his timeless classic, As a Man Thinketh, laid the foundation by revealing the formative power of thought, this volume builds upon it, charting the path to conscious living and absolute self-command.

"You can surpass God himself. He is beyond suffering evil; you are above it. Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach...

No discussion of the 19th Century is complete without Napoleon. We begin with Charles Phillips’ eulogy, summarizing the strangeness and contradiction of the most influential man of his time. Followed by 7 brief speeches by Napoleon himself.

When a meteorite crashes into a farmer's well in the rural hills of Massachusetts, it brings with it something that defies every category known to science. Scientists at Miskatonic University puzzle over the rock, finding it behaves unlike any known mineral: it retains heat, it shrinks without...

What does it mean to be truly unshakeable? How do you ensure that insult and injury do not harm you? Seneca knew how to endure the unendurable. Despite being one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome, but his life was a sustained exercise in surviving forces beyond his control. He was nearly...

The birth of liberation movements in the C19th saw a rise in fighting for the rights of workers. William Morris believed decries the belief “not that Commerce was made for man, but that man was made for Commerce”, with the profit motive that renders all work miserable when “It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.”

“The drug can make a man the exact opposite of what he is…” John Sturman has everything except the one thing that matters: the creative spark that would win the heart of Sylvia March, the woman who believes her soul can only mate with genius. But when his brother returns from India...

Written as a letter of a friend who’s not sure he’s on the right path De Tranquillitate Animi is one of the most intimate and practical works of Stoic philosophy. Serenus confesses to a restless indecision, a “sickness of the soul” that keeps him vacillating between public duty and...

Can happiness be built, or does it only arrive by chance? Seneca takes up what he calls the question everyone rushes toward without stopping to think about: what is a happy life, and how is one actually achieved? Addressed to his elder brother Gallio, this is the Stoic legend at his most...

The Huáinánzǐ (淮南子) is one of the great synthetic works of early Daoism. It weaves together cosmology, statecraft, and self-cultivation into a vision of the Dào (道) as the formless, generative source of all order. It is also known under its full title Huáinán Hóngliè...

Not all Chinese philosophers were concerned with ethics or society. The most famous figure on the other side is the Epicurus of China, The Yáng Zhū. While it forms Book 7 of the canonical Daost text Lièzǐ (列子), it is so different to the rest of that work that James Legge, the first...

The Tàishàng Gǎnyìng Piān (太上感應篇) is the most influential morality text in Chinese history, a succinct layperson's guide to Daoist ethics. It gives a long series of life rules, for both action and thought, listing specific good and bad deeds and the consequences they invite, with...

"They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken... Young men's associations invite me, pay me, and laugh at me while I lecture. 'Linley, the mad microscopist,' is the name I go by." In 1858, microscopy is the cutting-edge science of the day. The cell nucleus had been seen, and soon chromatic...

Progressive Islam takes over England, and two men go on the run with a barrel of rum and a wheel of cheese, intent on keeping English pub life alive. Packed with songs, satire, and style as only Chesteron could write. And what are these drinking songs that came under such fire? Simply some of the dearest and most delightful poems that Chesterton or anyone else has ever written: The Song of Right and Wrong, The Song of the Dog Quoodle, Wine and Water, The Logical Vegetarian, The Good Rich Man, The Saracen’s Head, and The Rolling English Road."