analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

On Culture

stuff On the things we create, and how they create us

show:

analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental questions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • there are no levels 1 May 2026 [article] Ideas that stick are shaped to be interesting, not true. Some of these are weaponised; snuck by our faculties of reason. AI uses them in spa...
  • useful men 4 Apr 2026 [article] It’s true that the ‘pathways’ to manhood are closing. I don’t think it’s a crisis of masculinity though. It’s a crisis of no more excuses fo...
  • values don't matter 21 Feb 2026 [article] Values often function as virtue ethics—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent: courage for a soldier isn’t co...
  • hydraulic despotism 1 Dec 2025 [article] Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice....
  • sacrificing the self 4 Apr 2025 [article] When we want to identify with a group, we bias ourselves to filter out all theother ways we could be. It helps us cut down all our competing...
  • aesthetics are facts too 21 Feb 2025 [article] Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them...
  • bdsm as a lazy ideology 17 Jan 2025 [article] BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to...
  • when groups go bad 3 Jan 2025 [article] Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile e...
  • useful groups are biased groups 27 Dec 2024 [article] The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or l...
  • mob mentality is fine 20 Dec 2024 [article] You could think of a collection of group dynamics like ‘groupthink’ or ‘deindividuation’ or whatever are bad. Or you could consider that our...
  • catastrophic leadership is actually really hard 13 Dec 2024 [article] For group dynamics to produce really bad behaviour, you really need to work at it. You have to train your authority figures to be cruel, pre...
  • there are no levels 4 Oct 2024 [article] The ‘naming’ problem, where by naming something we feel we have explained it, the ‘language’ problem, where the words we use stop others fro...
  • men and women are from earth, fool pt. iii 27 Sep 2024 [article] This book is basically, “men are terribly emotionally fragile, and they can make small steps to be better, but women need to just stop bothe...
  • men and women are from earth, fool pt. ii 20 Sep 2024 [article] I guarantee, no matter how sexy traditional gender roles are to you, that you do not want to be like Gray’s ‘men’.
  • men and women are from earth, fool pt. i 13 Sep 2024 [article] Not only is there is absolutely no difference between men and women in how they complain or offer criticism, but the ‘men’ Gray describe cou...
  • great spirits of history 6 Sep 2024 [article] The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or bette...
  • speaking in tongues 23 Aug 2024 [article] Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling unde...
  • why do people kill themselves? 16 Aug 2024 [article] Suicide is the interaction between personal despair and the failure of communities to provide reasons to live. We can’t answer Camus’ “one t...
  • it's not social media, life is just worse 2 Aug 2024 [article] Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fa...
  • ideologies stack 15 Jun 2024 [article] Fringe theories always seem to cluster together. It seems weird, but mainstream theories also do, we just don’t often examine them. Examinin...

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