For most of us adapting to life’s changes can be extremely difficult. We are, many would claim, creatures of habit – locked in patterns of interaction, value hierarchies, and neurosis. Nevertheless, in spite of our difficulties with adapting to change it’s impossible for us to escape its intrusion. Even if we lived our entire lives confined and isolated from other people we would still undergo changes in our perceptive...

Every action – and inaction – of our lives is political. From the purchases we make, beliefs we act upon, and fears we internalize, we are inescapably political animals. In spite of this unavoidable social reality, various institutions and agencies claim ‘objectivity’ and ‘fairness’ are subverted by political biases, and encourage us to adopt ‘post-ideological worldviews’. News outlets try...

How valuable is your time? How do you discriminate among similarly-constructive responsibilities, creative endeavours, and courses of study? How often do priorities come into conflict? It seems to me as though a great many people claim that their time is valuable, but their behaviour speaks quite differently of their intentions. ...

Numerous institutions, traditions and prejudices function as modes of oppression and prevent us from collectively addressing the tragedy of the commons. Acts of legislation arbitrarily prohibit and criminalize our actions, schools indoctrinate us with a tacit deference to authority, and our interpersonal relationships are prone to crystalizing vicious spirals of interaction. Taken as a whole, they manufacture a society in which...

“Modern research on remote viewing began in the 1970s, largely funded by the CIA and other U.S. government agencies, which were primarily interested in the possibility of psychic spying. Two physicists, Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ developed the basic experimental procedure at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). In these tests the subject had to try to describe a place where an agent, or ‘beacon person,’ was located....

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, aka ‘The Elvis of cultural theory’, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. ‘The Giant of Ljubljana’ is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Žižek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly...

In his wonderful short text Notes of a Publicist – written in February 1922 when the Bolsheviks, after winning the Civil War against all odds, had to retreat into the New Economic Policy of allowing a much wider scope to the market economy and private property – Lenin uses the analogy of a climber who must backtrack from his first attempt to reach a new mountain peak to describe what retreat means in a revolutionary process,...

Slavoj Žižek on resurrecting the Left for Reuters’ The Great Debate - Watch more Videos at Vodpod. In this short clip cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek speaks directly to those on the revolutionary path. With characteristic zeal, he describes the state of the Left following 2009′s global economic decline and shares his outlook on the road ahead for advocates of progressive and radical sociopolitical ideologies. Arguing that...

Western civilization, like its analogs throughout history, is plagued by taboos of all sorts. We have taboos about how to relate with potential mates on first dates, taboos about the quality and quantity of information we share with colleagues, taboos about gender dynamics, class dynamics, and all sorts of other relationships. Many of these taboos have become so ingrained within the social consciousness that any challenge to them can be...