It is unsurprising that making it into the 1% is going to guarantee a life of sweetness and ease, whilst being reduced to abject poverty, say in a Brazilian favela, will produce a life that will probably be nasty, brutish and short. In the last post we talked about Jordan B. Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, lobsters, their dominance hierarchies and how these fascinating bottom-feeders might provide a glimpse into our own social realities. Peterson poi

The most interesting cultural phenomena are often the most divisive. Movies in particular seem to be ideal for splitting audiences into love it/hate it camps. The following films leap to mind: Magnolia, Fifty Shades of Grey, Antichrist, Eyes Wide Shut, Transformers, Prometheus, The Big Lebowski, 2001 A Space Odyssey (my verdicts, if you are interested: love, hate, love, love, hate, love, love, not sure). Jordan B Peterson is a Canadian academic and he is a polarising characte

If we are to make positive changes in our lives, to self-create, to self-overcome, we must have the facility to choose to make those changes and we must have the power to act on those choices. And yet there is an apparent paradox in Nietzsche’s philosophy, in that he advocates cultivation of the self while denying the existence of human free will. If we are not ‘free’ to change ourselves, what use are his exhortations to personal transformation? Free will - a philosophical co