21 Lessons for the 21st Century

How does a fascist evaluate art? How does a fascist know whether a movie is a good movie? Very simple. There is just one yardstick. If the movie serves the national interests, it is a good movie. If the movie does not serve the national interests, it is a bad movie. And how does a fascist decide what to teach kids in school? He uses the same yardst

European Union’s draft Constitution, which says that ‘while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny’.

Homo sapiens conquered this planet thanks above all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions. We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them.

Hardly anyone has just one identity. Nobody is just a Muslim, or just an Italian, or just a capitalist.

Don’t expect perfection. One of the greatest fictions of all is to deny the complexity of the world, and think in absolute terms of pristine purity versus satanic evil. No politician tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but some politicians are still far better than others.

A crucial law of storytelling is that once a story manages to extend beyond the audience’s horizon, its ultimate scope matters little. People may display the same murderous fanaticism for the sake of a thousand-year-old nation as for the sake of a billion-year-old god. People are just not good with large numbers. In most cases, it takes surprisingl

A ritual is a magical act that makes the abstract concrete and the fictional real. The essence of ritual is the magical spell ‘Hocus pocus, X is Y!’5

Only in 1955 – ten years after the Holocaust – did Lincoln Cathedral repudiate the blood libel, placing a plaque near Hugh’s tomb which reads: Trumped-up stories of ‘ritual murders’ of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Li

For years I lived under the impression that I was the master of my life, and the CEO of my own personal brand. But a few hours of meditation were enough to show me that I hardly had any control of myself. I was not the CEO – I was barely the gatekeeper.

If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The exact details don’t really matter. Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story.