What does it mean to be a Samurai? One who lives and dies to usher a battlecry.

To emerge unscathed from the danger of battle. No space can be made for distraction nor idle prattle.

Fronting the vanguard on the attack and holding the line in retreat. Cowardice for the Samurai is the lowest form of self-deceit.

A lifetime of years spent preparing for death. Loss of honour though cowardice would be the greatest of thefts.

Martial expertise manifest in the glint of blinding metal. Through suffering the Samurai can still appreciate the flower petal.

Overcome fear of death and…

When the outlook for the future is grim and the world appears bleak

What is it we ought to pay attention to, pursue, and seek?

Personal and collective journeys put on hold thanks to a tiny, abstract killer

Hopes and dreams suspended, the fragility of civilisation has never felt realer

Holed up inside I’ve come to appreciate that suffering and ego are birds of a feather

But are they destined to flock together forever?

Is humanity’s descent into the realm of the unconscious a predetermined path?

Or will we come full-circle, guided by the wizard’s staff?

What is it the…

“The same tools that can be used to sell me something I don’t really need can now be used to sell me a politician I really don’t need or an ideology that I really don’t need. It’s the same tools. It’s the same hacking of the human animal and manipulating what’s inside.” - Yuval Noah Harari

Freedom and control have forever been entangled in an intricate dance, where the swing of one partner animates the graceful sway or floundering blunder of the other.

On the micro level, maintaining control over the trajectory of one’s life and the decisions made within…

• Dreams unbound by space and time — where do such bright hallucinations lead us each night?
• Are these constellations of past memories, lovers, places, and friends, the mere product of a slumbering reality machine?
• Or when combined with events yet transpired, sights unseen, and worlds non-existent, do such experiences lend themselves to meaning?
• Is our reality tethered to this waking universe?
• Or can our mind only grant us access to these worlds and realities through sleep?
• Is reality here and now, me writing these words and you reading them? …

National governments the world over are coming to deploy exceptional surveillance measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the People’s Republic of China, the past several months of crisis management has presented the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the opportunity to operationalise, test, and refine reward and punishment mechanisms foundational to the logic of the country’s emerging ‘Social Credit System’ (SCS). The SCS relies on the use of big data collection, sharing and analysis methods to secure enhanced control over market and social processes on the behalf of the government.

If successful in containing the pandemic or at…

At the heart of every great question lies an irreconcilable paradox. The previous article in this series described the metaphysical camp of positivism, highlighting how this worldview continues to maintain dominance over collective understandings of reality. Positivism insists that we can separate ourselves from reality and view the world as a detached observer. It advocates that our understanding of facts can be separated from our relationship with them. In doing so positivism asserts that we can obtain objective facts about the world around us and the social realities we inhabit. …

Envisage a wooden chair standing alone in a room. One could say the chair exists as an object in and of itself. It has an identity in time and space. It has physical integrity and appears solid. If you picked up and moved the chair to another location it would still be appraised as the same chair. An individually oriented analysis such as this identifies the chair as a unique and isolated unit existing apart from the relations that constitute it. …

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

— Richard Bach

Though it might not appear as such, we have been granted a gift in these extraordinary times of pandemic. A gift unexpected and for many of us undesired, yet a gift nonetheless. It is likely a gift which accompanies other hardships and losses. Reduced work hours, a struggling business, a lost job, a strained home environment, an uncertain future. Yet if we are to utilise the gift provided…