Guilt, shame and responsibility

Guilt and shame are often thought of as if they are the same, or as if they are synonyms for each other. But they are not. There are two different ways of distinguishing them that I have been introduced to by counsellors or therapists. One is that guilt is personal and internal, while shame is …

Ancient Indian spaceships and black Egyptians: how not to destroy colonialism

I recently wrote about the ‘ancient astronaut’ hypothesis. This post is a sort of follow-up to that looking at how other types of pseudohistory also (maybe inadvertently) reinforce the very ideological points they claim to be arguing against – in this case, colonialism. (This post came out a lot longer than I'd thought, so consider …

Things can only get better: ancient astronauts and progress

One of the more popular ‘paranormal conspiracy theories’ – if we can call it that – is the ‘ancient astronauts’ idea. This is the suggestion that aliens visited Earth at some point in the past, and affected human society in some major way. The 'evidence' put forward most frequently for this is the idea that …