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Author’s note: Cited passages are taken from the 1988 Stephen Mitchell translation, London, Macmillan.

Tao Te Ching, the “Book of the Way,” was ostensibly composed by the pseudonymous Lao Tzu, about whom next to nothing is known, sometime around the time of Confucius (551-479 BC). It’s things like this that add even more irresistible mystique to this slender volume, (more…)

René Magritte, Golconda, 1953.

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The twofold crises of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic are perfect opportunities for modern nihilists and culture-destroyers of every stripe to let off all the brakes. It is not often that world events align so cleanly with the rhetoric and goals of our enemies, which presents some troubling developments (more…)

Mars, ca. 2nd century AD.

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You are here because you are convinced of the rightness of your ideas. This is not meant in a specific, epistemological sense; as in, your ideas have been verified by some kind of universal truth or that they are backed by data drawn from rigor, though these things could be applied to many of the ideas we hold on the Right. I mean that you are convinced enough of what you hold to be true that you are taking a risk in upholding it, even in the face of great adversaries. (more…)

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What makes a place? Perhaps the best definition is simply where one feels they can linger. A “place” is a location that can be both a destination and a path. When we consider places, they invariably have a few attributes that make stopping there or passing through there a memorable experience. The opposite of a “place,” as it where, (more…)

He doesn’t even have shoes on.

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The McCloskeys waving what amount to toys in the hands of the untrained was the single most impotent display of fear and guilt that has graced the screens of the West this month. This incident was laughable in and of itself, but was made even worse by the couple’s spineless cope of a public statement on the matter: (more…)

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Six black people have been found dead, hanging from trees, during the month of June so far. They were all ruled as suicides by local police. Black people refuse to believe that’s true, of course. The circumstances of these deaths too closely resemble the lynchings of yesteryear, right down to the surrounding social turmoil and the highly public spectacle of the corpses. (more…)

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The Alphabet Company, the parent of Google, has a market capitalization of $991.53 billion, which is about the same size as the nominal gross domestic product of the Netherlands. Chrome accounts for 68% of the global desktop browser market, (more…)

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The term “failed state” conjures images in the mind’s eye of collapsed banana republics, exploding Islamic theocracies, and Somalia in general. It’s a condition that would be unthinkable in the West; the countries and nation-states that constituted a vast majority of the world’s white people have remained mostly in place for centuries (more…)

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There is a fascination with seemingly random piles of bricks showing up at riots unlawful assemblies protests benefit balls in major cities across the United States. To the eagle-eyed observer, pallets of blunt objects appearing in the line of planned marches and gatherings is just a little too convenient — and concerning — to brush away as a coincidence. (more…)

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The “Karen” meme has quickly spread like wildfire across Twitter. It’s a more easily referenced offshoot of the previously unnamed “I would like to speak to the manager” joke that was more broadly associated with tannie haircuts and Ray-Bans than anything else. Now that there’s a name for it, it’s easier to crack a joke, especially at the expense of those who seem to embody the trope’s worst attributes. (more…)

Richard Parkes Bonington, Riva degli Schiavoni, 1826.

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Quarantine, quarantine, quarantine.

The Internet™ loves talking about the “quarantine.” It was one of the most popular terms used on Google during the month of March in the United States, a search for the term on Twitter returns millions of unfunny shitposts, (more…)

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Leaked documents from Amazon depict a “heat map” of Whole Foods stores at risk of unionization. One of the determining factors was a given store’s ethnic diversity. The more diverse a store is, the less likely it is to unionize, according to the metric used. (more…)

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I will preface this by saying that this year, you’re most likely not struck in traffic. We owe a great big “thank you” to the ‘rona for making Earth Day 2020 a rousing success. It’s positively alpine out there!

In normal times, however, it’s highly likely that a majority of you jump into a car in the morning, crawl your way towards a workplace of some kind on a slab of freeway, (more…)

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Aleister Crowley’s essay “Cocaine” is not among his most-discussed works, being overshadowed by those more esoteric, salacious, or dense. Nonetheless, “Cocaine” is an entry worth noting in the Crowley catalog on account of its prophetic nature and as an insight into Crowley’s personal philosophy and mental state.

Crowley begins with a tantalizing weave spun about the seemingly supernatural powers of cocaine; referring to it as an “herb,” he describes its capacity to provide man with near-immediate self-satisfaction and thumos-imbued energy. (more…)