Today is added to the site a new article about "mind viruses," a term that many will recognize as used popularly by Richard Dawkins some years ago.
From the blog entry:
Throughout history, philosophers, priests, and political authorities have promoted ideas about life, reality, and human nature that sound profound but are in fact deeply mistaken — and whose effect, whether intended or not, is to make ordinary people feel guilty, fearful, and dependent on outside authorities for guidance. These ideas spread from generation to generation the way a virus spreads through a population: not because they are true, but because they are repeated, because they serve the interests of those who promote them, and because they become so embedded in the culture that people accept them without examination. The Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oinoanda, writing in the second century AD, described this phenomenon with striking precision: "the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing — for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep." Epicurus himself had identified the most destructive of these false notions more than two thousand years ago and built a philosophy designed specifically to cure them — restoring each person's confidence in their own senses, their own feelings, and their own capacity to find happiness in this world, in this life, without fear of gods, death, or the judgment of others. The items below name twenty-nine of the most common and persistent of these mind viruses, and explain how Epicurean philosophy cures each one.
The outline can be accessed at the link below or by opening up the "Analysis Articles" menu in the left navigation sidebar.