Most people are familiar with the plot of the The Matrix. The 1999 film portrays a dystopian future where the “reality” that people inhabit is actually a simulation created by machines intent on subjugating the human race. The film has continued to resonate with many people because of a growing sense that our modern world
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There is a phrase you are as likely to find in a serious philosophy text as you are in the wackiest self-help book: ‘Know thyself!’ The phrase has serious philosophical pedigree: by Socrates’ time, it was more or less received wisdom (apparently chiselled into the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi) though a
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Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice famously begins by saying, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” In the hundreds of pages which follow this statement, Austen depicts many marriages, some successful and some decidedly not. The successful ones –
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Forget waiting for Superman. I’m waiting for Wonder Woman. Since the various stories of Harvey Weinstein’s crimes and misdemeanors have appeared in the news this week, I keep looking for one in which a woman tells Weinstein to take a flying leap (or something a little more explicit) in a public place. I kept looking
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In his play “The Knights,” the Athenian playwright Aristophanes creatively and humorously showed the insidious power of demagoguery. A satire written in the 5th-century B.C., the play depicted a Greek city-state that was succumbing to weaknesses of democracy. “The Knights,” one of the oldest Greek plays to survive, pits two smooth-talking demagogues against one another. One
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People get angry for all sorts of reasons, from the trivial ones (someone cut me off on the highway) to the really serious ones (people keep dying in Syria and nobody is doing anything about it). But, mostly, anger arises for trivial reasons. That’s why the American Psychological Association has a section of its website
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