well-being technology — Philosophy for Life | Blog | Philosophy | Wisdom | Spirituality

Being an entrepreneur is arguably the highest status job in the world at the moment. In the 1960s, it was the rock star. In the 1980s-1990s, investment bankers were the ‘masters of the universe’, the object of cultural fascination (and loathing), depicted in books like Bonfire of the Vanities or American Psycho. Now? No one could give a crap about investment bankers — they’re souped-up traders who bet with other people’s money and the only thing they invent are bullshit derivatives. But the entrepreneur? The ‘founder’? All kneel before their genius.

Entrepreneurship, Tech, Culture, Business, StartupJules EvansJanuary 7, 2023Entrepreneurship, Tech, Startup, BusinessComment

The Religion of the Future Police

In 2015, Google engineer Anthony Levandowski started The Way of the Future, a church to worship super-intelligent AI. And now we have the Religion of the Future Police, began by former Google manager Malcolm Collins and his wife Simone.

Culture, Entrepreneurship, Genetics, Religion, TechnologyJules EvansDecember 16, 2022Comment

10) HG Wells and the New World Order

This is the latest entry in my Spiritual Eugenics research project, which researches the overlap between eugenics and New Age spirituality. You can find the rest of the project here.

Science Fiction, Technology, History, Evolution, CultureJules EvansJanuary 27, 2022Comment

7) Edward Bulwer-Lytton and the Coming Race

This is the seventh entry in my spiritual eugenics series, which explores the overlap between eugenics and New Age spirituality. You can find the whole series here.

You probably haven’t heard of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. If you have, it’s likely because he was the author of supposedly the worst ever opening sentence of a novel: ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ — a line so cringe, it’s inspired an annual prize for bad writing.

Culture, Spirituality, Literature, Fantasy, Science FictionJules EvansDecember 31, 2021Comment

6) Dune, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and ‘occult eugenics’

This is the latest chapter in my project to explore ‘spiritual eugenics’. It looks at occult eugenics in the practices and books of members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a very influential occult society of the late 19th century. Its members believed they could use sex magic to engineer the incarnation of highly-evolved beings — an idea which would appear in later fantasy fiction, including Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Magic, Occult, Spirituality, Dune, CultureJules EvansDecember 10, 2021Comment

On Hellbound

This month, Los Angeles finally opened a museum for the movies. It’s telling that it took LA over a century to open a commemoration of its greatest achievement — California has never been much for dwelling on the past. Yet I wonder if the opening of the museum is also something on a tombstone, marking the end of the era when Hollywood ruled the world.

Netflix, Korea, Asia, TV Series, CultureJules EvansNovember 25, 2021Comment

Bo Burnham and the end of selfie culture

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the name ‘Bo Burnham’ trending on Twitter.

I looked him up, he turned out to be a young comedian who made one of the best films of 2018, ‘Eighth Grade’

Eighth Grade is a deeply cringey, touching and scary film about the effect of social media on an awkward eighth-grade wannabe-influencer.

Bo Burnham, Comedy, Culture, InternetJules EvansJune 11, 2021Comment

Spiritual technologies

Our psyches are deeply connected to the material and symbolic worlds we weave around us. The habitat of our daily lives re-inforces our habits, for good and ill. All our stuff – our apartments, our clothes, our books, our TV, our online activity, our food, our relationships – helps make us who we are, in a powerful feedback loop.

Art, Spirituality, Transhumanism, well-being technologyJules EvansNovember 2, 2018 Comments

Review: The Wellness Syndrome

How are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?

Review: The Happiness Industry by William Davies

Watch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.