analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

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stuff On togetherness

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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

  • successful prophets 27 Jun 2026 [audio + edited transcript] The most successful prophet isn’t a person. It’s a shared abstraction the group charges up and pins to a convenient emblem. Charisma is conf...
  • you can catch madness 13 Jun 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Folie à deux isn’t a rare clinical curiosity. It’s one misleading face of social isolation—intimacy plus loneliness, the same machinery runn...
  • successful prophets 5 Jun 2026 [article] We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successf...
  • folie à deux: the madness of two 4 Jun 2026 [article]
  • 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...
  • hydraulic despotism 21 Feb 2026 [audio + edited transcript] You’re not coerced by malice. You’re coerced by convenience. Control the flow, control the people: the most discredited theory in political...
  • atavism isn't the answer 7 Feb 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Seed oils, raw milk, cold plunges, tradwives—one template runs them all: name a modern ill, invent an ancestral past, sell the return as cur...
  • gesticism 26 Jan 2026 [article] Lots of things are happening, but anything can matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention....
  • 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....
  • mundane cults 29 Nov 2025 [audio + edited transcript] Cults aren’t the fringe. They’re the architecture of ordinary community, and not being in one usually means something’s gone wrong. The ques...
  • men aren't from mars 15 Nov 2025 [audio + edited transcript] Men and women aren’t wired differently. We read the same behaviour as reasonable in him and unreasonable in her—normalising troubled men whi...
  • 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...
  • on cynosure 7 Mar 2025 [article] Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits o...
  • language is a barrier to communication 28 Feb 2025 [article] Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are at...
  • 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...
  • 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...

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