Download Free Darkened Enlightenment Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Darkened Enlightenment and write the review.

The premise of Darkened Enlightenment is to highlight the fact that there currently exist a number of socio-political forces that have the design, or ultimate consequence, of trying to extinguish the light of reason and rationality. The book presents a critique of modernity and provides a socio-political and cultural analysis of world society in the early twenty-first century. Specifically, this analysis examines the deterioration of democracy, human rights, and rational thought. Key features include a combination of academic analysis that draws on numerous and specific examples of the growing darkness that surrounds us along with a balanced practical, everyday-life approach to the study of the socio-political world we live in through the use of popular culture references and featured boxes. The general audience will also be intrigued by these same topics that concern academics including: a discussion on the meaning of "fake news"; attacks on the media and a declaration of the news media as the "enemy of the people"; the rise of populism and nationalism around the world; the deterioration of freedom and human rights globally; the growing economic disparity between the rich and the poor; attempts to devalue education; a growing disbelief in science; attacks on the environment; pseudoscience as a by-product of unreasoned and irrational thinking; the political swamp; the power elites and the deep state; and the variations of Big Business that impact our daily lives. This book will make a great contribution to such fields as sociology, philosophy, political science, environmental science, public administration, economics, psychology, and cultural studies.
Why spiritual and supernatural yearnings, even investigations into the occult, flourished in the era of rationalist philosophy. In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, John V. Fleming shows how the impulses of the European Enlightenment—generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion—were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the “darker” pursuits of the esoteric and the occult. His engaging topics include the stubborn survival of the miraculous, the Enlightenment roles of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and the widespread pursuit of magic and alchemy. Though we tend not to associate what was once called alchemy with what we now call chemistry, Fleming shows that the difference is merely one of linguistic modernization. Alchemy was once the chemistry, of Arabic derivation, and its practitioners were among the principal scientists and physicians of their ages. No point is more important for understanding the strange and fascinating figures in this book than the prestige of alchemy among the learned men of the age. Fleming follows some of these complexities and contradictions of the “Age of Lights” into the biographies of two of its extraordinary offspring. The first is the controversial wizard known as Count Cagliostro, the “Egyptian” freemason, unconventional healer, and alchemist known most infamously for his ambiguous association with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which history has viewed as among the possible harbingers of the French Revolution and a major contributing factor in the growing unpopularity of Marie Antoinette. Fleming also reviews the career of Julie de Krüdener, the sentimental novelist, Pietist preacher, and political mystic who would later become notorious as a prophet. Impressively researched and wonderfully erudite, this rich narrative history sheds light on some lesser-known mental extravagances and beliefs of the Enlightenment era and brings to life some of the most extraordinary characters ever encountered either in history or fiction.
Neoreaction is not your grandfather's conservatism, but the web 2.0 era marriage between modern engineering principles and classical anti-democratic thought. Its central tenet is that the Enlightenment was a mistake, and in The Dark Enlightenment, Nick Land burns progressivism to the ground, salts the earth around its ashes, and raises an altar to anti-humanism in its place. Land explicates the main ideas of neoreaction-the Cathedral, neocameralism, formalism, etc.-always viewing democracy, liberalism, and politics in general through the lens of Darwinism. The result is something like Thomas Hobbes as ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft. Included in this volume is an unreleased essay by Land on the writing and impact of The Dark Enlightenment. Absolutely none of this incendiary work has been proven wrong in the ten years since it was written. No doubt it will remain relevant for many years to come.
In "From Darkened Minds to Radiant Futures: Rediscovering the Age of Enlightenment," embark on a captivating journey through one of history's most profound intellectual revolutions. Delve into the tumultuous yet exhilarating era of the Enlightenment, where minds dared to challenge the shackles of tradition and ignorance, paving the way for a new dawn of reason, liberty, and progress. In this illuminating exploration, acclaimed historian [Kichen Mage] guides readers through the corridors of power, philosophy, and culture that defined the Enlightenment. From the salons of Paris to the coffeehouses of London, witness the clash of ideas and the birth of revolutionary thought that would shape the modern world.
Declaration of Human Rights.
An award-winning journalist’s extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years—a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that’s “the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful” (The Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians—who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives—and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold—a grime-stained scrap of fabric—that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnos’s harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons, how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has—and survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting, and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today, Blindfold is “a triumph of the human spirit” (The New York Times Book Review)—combining the emotional power of a captive’s memoir with a journalist’s account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.
The Dark side of enlightenment highlights the search, application and the effect of knowledge in new age, spiritual and other fringe areas in our daily lives. It deals with the social and cultural issues in the modern world as we can move around freely between borders and experience international media in every corner of the world. It deals with the individual's internal strife created through the bias of media and the adoption of the dominating materialistic world religion at all costs. It raises the moral question on the agenda and collateral both of international warfare, world politics and personal cut throat careers as the author tries to find a middle ground between physical and spiritual growth and survival in a modern lifestyle while applying age old values. The dilemma is given context by means of the author's autobiography in order to highlight how subtle change creates perception which could be both a blessing and a curse. Today we live in future times where our private lives are increasingly public and the last freedom that the author resorts to is that of the mind. An individual can transcend an invisible boundary from which nothing will ever look the same, not even the mind which posited the question in the first place as pointed out by Nietzsche. The Dark side of enlightenment is written chronologically starting with the life of the author. This is done in order to give an insight into a "normal" life for the reader. Slowly as life move into the teenage years peer pressure and teenager behavior exercises pressure on the author to which he respond accordingly with reasoning based upon experience gained up to that point in life. As we progress in the autobiography opinions become more visible through thought experiments. There is a peak in experience due to large number of critical experiences such as parenting, changing job, countries and cultural background which allows for the development of a moral baseline and reasoning. The later chapters deal with society and the external environment such as the media which had now become the peer-pressure of a young professional trying to find his feet in life. With the relocation to another country, a period of stability allowed for reflective reasoning of past experiences which not only gave valuable time for research but time to deal with solutions. There is a selection of blog articles which do not form part of the core of The Dark side of enlightenment but they allow for thought experiments and further inductive reasoning of the reader. Because of our busy lives we often look at experiences as single moments in time. The backdrop of the autobiography enables one to see these individual moments snowball into a cumulative life experience that defines us and our future. This book is a culmination of the work on ranging from Rudolf Steiner, Helena Blavatsky, Plato, Karl Marx including more recent authors like Malcolm Gladwell and giants such as William F Engdahl, Noam Chomsky. The work includes experiences of the author and the outlook of age old tradition and its value to mankind. The backdrop is the author's life in the IT industry and exposure to banking and financial institutions and the inner workings of these powerful companies. The philosophical outlook amalgamates with the classic works in science such as Einstein's theories and the dancing Wu-Li masters and other scientific pieces such as The China Study. Not only does it highlight the perils an individual face in the future but also the possible avenues to overcome them. It shares the outlook and journey of the author in order that any individual can find a path to peace through the various avenues explored in this book.