Welcome to Issue #85 of Rebel Intellects
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The Rebel Intellects newsletter and membership community are for those who strive to think, grow, and challenge the status quo.
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👤 Rebel of the Week
Why Spinoza still matters
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) is a model of intellectual courage. Like a prophet, he took on the powers-that-be with an unflinching honesty that revealed ugly truths about his fellow citizens and their society.
📚 Light Reading
This is how your brain distinguishes reality from imagination
In terms of brain activity, imagining something is very similar to seeing it, so why don’t you confuse the two more often?
What’s the status of flaunting your status?
Privacy, discretion, and, to a large extent, anonymity are the baselines for stealth wealth. In the world of the ultra-wealthy, luxury is only quiet if you don’t know what to listen for.
Living without purpose
When you lack purpose, you lack motivation. One of the side effects of modern-day convenience may be a lack of real purpose for the overwhelming majority of us.
🔎 Study of the Week
The psychology of belief in manifestation
Do you believe in manifestation? This is the idea that positive self-talk, visualisation, and symbolic actions can attract success in life.
Those who believe in it often see themselves as more successful, have stronger aspirations for success, and feel more likely to achieve it. However, they may also be drawn to risky investments, have experienced bankruptcy, and believe in achieving unlikely success quickly.
📺 Video of the Week
For many people, retirement could last for 30 years or more. By interviewing hundreds of retirees, Dr. Riley Moynes has discovered a framework that can help make more sense of this challenging chapter of our lives. (13 mins)
🎙 Podcast Episode
How far would you follow authority? To what degree are your decisions contextual, and what does this have to do with matching the length of a line, the banality of evil, propaganda, giving shocks to strangers, or how we should educate our children?
🗣 In Quotes
“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.”
— Friedrich von Schiller
👀 Perception Watch
None of these lines are actually moving. Prove it by planting a finger on the screen.
😲 WTF
While most parents do what they can to prevent or stop their babies from crying, that's not always the case in Japan. That's because it's a 400-year-old Japanese tradition that if a sumo wrestler can make your baby cry, it means he or she will live a healthy life.
During a special ceremony, parents hand over their infants to sumo wrestlers, who bounce the tots up and down and sometimes even roar in their little faces to get the tears flowing.
😁 In the Memetime
📖 Book Club
Nearly everyone swears, yet we insist that people eliminate profanity from their vocabularies, and we punish children for using the very same words we use every day.
Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny. In What The F, Benjamin Bergen explains why and what that tells us about our language and brains.
🤔 Contemplation Corner
🎧 The Song of the Week
Crooked Fingers — Twilight Creeps (2005)
Listen to the Rebel Intellects playlist on Spotify.
🧠 Become a Rebel
Elevate your thinking, one maverick at a time. Each month, our learning community delves into a different philosopher's wisdom. Click here to join us.
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👍 Thanks for Reading
As always, if you enjoy this newsletter, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. If you’re not finding it valuable, please consider unsubscribing—no hard feelings!
Live well, and I’ll see you next week.
John