Company gone away in the world already
“How many in whose company I came into the world are gone away already!” — Meditations, book 6, 56. I can imagine Marcus Aurelius writing these words while encamped Continue Reading
Apranihita: The Radical Philosophy of Aimlessness in an Age of Consumerism
Apranihita is a Sanskrit term meaning “wishlessness”, “aimlessness”, or “freedom from striving”. In Buddhist thought, it refers to a deep letting go—the abandonment of chasing, grasping, or needing things to Continue Reading
The Fire of Becoming: Heraclitus, Judge Holden, and the Eternal Strife of the World
“Thus the world is not to be identified with any particular substance, but rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change.” — Heraclitus (source) This Continue Reading
Cultural Hegemony in Action
I’ve spent a good deal of time digesting Antonio Gramsci’s writings this year, the Italian marxist famous for his writing his Prison Notebooks while locked up in Mussolini’s prison. Areas Continue Reading
No Soul, No Problem: Feuerbach and the Myth of Mind–Body Dualism
The dualism of mind and body—the belief that we possess an incorporeal essence, a soul that is truly “us,” and that the body is merely a vessel or flesh-puppet animated Continue Reading
S***’s Creek Without Marxist Dialectics: A brief history of Britain
Introduction I’ve been working on this article for some time now, here and there dipping into Historical materialism, the primary Marxist methodology to studying not just history, but the approach Continue Reading
What is hyperreality and why it matters
Has the thought ever crossed your mind that life feels increasingly artificial, as if everything around us is more curated than real? In an age dominated by screens, media, and Continue Reading
The Immortality Illusion
Our focus is fame’s ancient precursor: kleos! And I’d like to explore it in some depth so I can set the tone of this article. Kleos is an ancient Greek Continue Reading
The Illusion of Suffering
If we could sum up the essence of this article in one overarching sentiment, it would be captured by this quote from our favourite Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius: “Whatever the Continue Reading
The Great Economic Chain
The Great Chain of Being was once a dominant concept that provided a vertically ranked hierarchical structure to the universe, with God at the top, followed by angels, humans, Continue Reading
The Doctrine of Flux
Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Ephesus, in what is now Turkey, around 535-475 BCE. At Standupphilosophers, we embrace his doctrine of flux: Heraclitus believed that everything Continue Reading
The Fragility of Potential: Reflections on Nietzsche’s Acorn
In Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphoristic brilliance, we find a profound meditation on potential and its precarious nature: ‘The most wretched little animal can prevent the mightiest oak tree from coming into Continue Reading
Stoicism vs the Crowd
Recently I’ve been revisiting Seneca’s Moral Epistles which are a letter collection of 124 letters addressed to his friend Lucilius. Among these letters, Letter VII, better known as ‘On Crowds’ has caught my Continue Reading
Contemplations on Space
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin —Matthew 6:28-29 From this passage, Jesus Continue Reading
The Buddha view of Desire
Buddhism is more than just a religion, it’s a philosophy of the mind that’s been offering profound insights since around 500BC—plenty of time for contemplating the mind! What I’d like Continue Reading
The Modern Philistine
There’s an archetype I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now based on my own observations about how certain people behave that includes their beliefs, psychology etc. in regards Continue Reading
Transduction, the neglected weapon of Naturalism
Crack open any neuroscience textbook and you’ll be taught about the processes of the brain and the relationships between sensory organs, neural activity, and even the arising of subjective Continue Reading
A less encumbered philosopher
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, responded to the news of a shipwreck and the loss of his belongings with a Stoic attitude, remarking that Fortune was advising him to be Continue Reading