The world's most easily anticipated cultural crisis.

Incorporating as a creed, not a religion... AFAIK Cambridge University started this side of the game...

A revolution wasted on the revolutionaries.

Youth is wasted on the young.  Conformity is wasted on the conformists.  Revolution is wasted on the revolutionaries.

On ostensible motivations: money, fame, power, respect, sex.

This is not a bad trait, on your part, but you need to become more accustomed to dealing with the division between ostensible motivations and actual motivations:

even within a demimonde as obviously artistic and altruistic as rap music, ONLY A MINORITY OF PEOPLE really care about rap music itself, whereas some people are just trying to make money, just trying to get laid —some people are literally trying to deal cocaine (etc.) and the significance of the music is tertiary.

The same could be said —sadly— about stand up comedy (cocaine dealers, whoremongers, etc.).

Why did my father get involved with Communism?

Why did he get involved with Hinduism and (before that) so called "Christian existentialism"?

Perhaps for the same reasons he struggled to become an actor at the Stratford festival (a small town in Canada).

It would be jejune to meet my father at any one stage of his life and think, "This man has a sincere interest in the study of Hinduism", or the study of Communism, or anything else.

Some people do: some people's ostensible motivations really are the same as their "occult" motivations, shall we say.

It's rare.

For the most part, you're looking at that overly familiar list of motivations again and again: money, fame, power, respect, sex.  Not necessarily in that order.

Even in Cambodia, even in Laos: people ostensibly doing humanitarian work.

It's pathetic, but it's the damn truth.

I've taken advanced (400 level) courses in the philosophy of Plato: I'm the only person in the room interested in Plato.  I've been in political science classes: not a single other person there is interested in politics.  Even the classes I took in Cree, as a language: nobody else wanted to learn Cree.  I never met anyone else interested in the politics of Asia/China in a whole university program devoted to that subject.

That's my experience.  And now I'm meeting people via a polyamory dating app (where I describe myself as a dissident intellectual, vegan and nihilistic atheist, etc.) because this youtube channel utterly failed to bring even a single colleague into my life.

Appealing to self-interest, as opposed to "doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do."

The riddle of the five year plan.

Socrates of New Orleans.

Socrates started out in the agora.  Ended up in prison with a bottle of hemlock.  I ain't playing that Socrates game by those Socrates rules.  Socratic method is overrated.  Even at Harvard.

If you want to live in imitation of Socrates, don't forget the way in which he died.

The Spirit of Season Three.

The long-awaited sequel... COWSPIRACY 2: DON'T BLAME JESUS, a.k.a. 

Christspiracy: the Revenge of Doh.

Department of Not Taking the War Seriously.

Tattoos and swords: being perceived as dangerous is better than being perceived as innocuous.

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My advantage (and disadvantage) in life is that people find me terrifying: this is partly "intellectually intimidating", but it's partly some other type of fear —several other types of fear, perhaps.

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Interesting.  Do you have much success with that?

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Depends on what you mean by success.

A lot of people perceive me to be a genius, in a lot of different contexts.

Not a lot of people want to work with me.  Not a lot of people want to help me.

Being perceived as a talented, handsome genius is better than being perceived as an untalented, ugly moron.

Being perceived as dangerous is better than being perceived as innocuous.

I have never had the impression that men who are "more approachable" have better lives than those who are intimidating and unapproachable.  And we're talking about people being intimidated by my intellectual and ethical qualities: they're not intimidated because I'm great at basketball, etc.

^ We're living through a period of history in which wealthy and highly educated men get covered with tattoos (even facial tattoos) in an attempt to be MORE intimidating.  Is this more or less civilized than the 18th century aristocrat, who would swagger around wearing a sword, ready to challenge anyone to a duel over a point of honor, etc.

E.M.