I’ve noticed over the years that there’s always something ‘wrong’, no matter how ‘right’ things seem at first. There is a seemingly endless supply of issues to fret over. After we resolve the pressing life and death issues, you’d think we could relax and appreciate that success. Alas, no sooner one problem is solved, we find another to fret over. Continue reading ‘The Worry Gene’
Archive for the 'Observations' Category
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There is something very ‘taoist’ in the title, “Odds Are, It’s Wrong“, an article in Science News. Right off the bat it reminds me of, ‘Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty’. The patient search for truth pales next to our hunger for ‘the answer’. Science is humanity’s best attempt to balance the two, but often fails, as this article points out. This is especially true for the ’softer’ sciences, e.g., social, physiological, medical. The eye-opening information here helps remind us that we are animals first, and whatever else we think or wish we were a distant second. Continue reading ‘Odds Are, It’s Wrong’
Bathtub Tai Chi
I have found that multitasking is generally inefficient. My desire to do more and more (rather than less and less) deceives me into thinking I can actually accomplish more and more doing various tasks simultaneously. This make is almost impossible to be as careful at the end as at the beginning, no matter what I am doing. Well, I finally have learned my lesson. I’m not sure it is learning that accounts for my increased wisdom in this matter. More likely it is because I’m older and have less energy to run around chasing after desires as in my youth. Continue reading ‘Bathtub Tai Chi’
Chapter 65 begins with, ‘Of old those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them’. Initially, I thought ‘of old those‘ were people, e.g., parents, politicians, preachers. On the other hand, ‘those‘ people seem often ‘hoodwinked’ by their own hoodwink. I now consider ’of old those‘ as pointing more to Nature itself. What is more ‘of old‘ than Nature? Nature, and her co-conspirator biology, hoodwinks living things to do their living.
Fishing gives a good example of the hoodwinking process, and clues on how to avoid being hooked. We’ve all heard stories of that big old lake bass that no fisherman could hook. Isn’t that old fish, the fish who quickly ‘gets it’? Once bitten, twice shy, as they say; the fish that soon sees the bait as hoodwink learns to avoid it. The dead fish is the fish forever hopeful that its desire will be fulfilled. Continue reading ‘How the Hoodwink Hooks’
My extended family
When is comes to human nutrition, it is a struggle separating the wheat from the chaff. Each era has its red hearing and blind alleys (or worse) of nutrition. What was once thought good for health may be found bad; what was once thought bad for health may be found good. In the 70’s I got ‘nutrition religion’ and wanted to find out the ‘truth’. I spent many hours at Stockholm’s main library searching for all information I could find on nutrition, great apes and tangential issues, e.g., biology, history.(1)
Beyond words
Years ago I began to notice that I was incapable of really being in the moment when I was speaking – or even while I was thinking! In other words, when I’m speaking, I’m not reporting from an instantaneous state of knowing. Rather, I am passing on things I’ve already thought through some what. Speech references past experience, if even only a moment old. It is not of the ‘now’. ‘Now’ is all I can truly know. The rest is only a partial view, after-thoughts, of the ‘nows’ dead and gone. On the other hand… Continue reading ‘He Who Speaks Does Not Know, but…’
Modern hunting and gathering
It has been my habit for decades to eat nothing much until late afternoon. That goes against the standard ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ rule, especially seeing how I get up at 7am. Sure this may be a little stressful to my body, but that turns out to be a good thing. As with most everything, it isn’t the what that matters, it is the how much that ‘breaks the camels back’.
Consider this excerpt from Anti-aging: A little stress may keep cells youthful, a recent article in Science News.
“The study focused on individual cells, but for whole organisms the finding could shed light on a link between stress and life span. “A little bit of stress can actually prolong life,” says molecular biologist Richard Morimoto of Northwestern, a study coauthor. Mild stress activates the heat shock response but does not harm the cells, he adds. Continue reading ‘Hunger: A Natural Stimulant’
Just sitting...bzzzz...giving blood
‘Truth’? What’s truth? Okay, so this is really about what passes for truth. At least in that regard, more people are able to agree on scientific ‘truth’ than any other ‘truth’. Interestingly, science is proving (through brain imaging) that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving (1,2,3). Of course wise people have known this for ages. It is an essential pillar of most religions.
Science also lends empirical support to the spiritual view that ’self’ is illusion (e.g., the ephemeral effect of billions of neuronal connections), and that reality is Oneness (e.g., the inherent ‘non locality’ of quantum mechanics). I find a real benefit in having these ancient viewpoints confirmed in the non-religious ways that science offers. Science can be a much more impartial observer in such matters.
There are a lot of people out (mostly students now, I think) protesting against spending cuts in education. This state, California, as well as the country as a whole, is massively in debt. However, all that I hear are frantic cries for: no more spending cuts and no more new taxes. Now, just how is that suppose to work?
On top of this, when California had a massive budgetary surplus, the people spent it left and right, saving none for an economic downturn. Should I laugh or cry? My kids as toddlers had a better sense of frugality than many adults these days. I can only guess that this is due to the habits ‘taught’ in an extremely affluent culture like ours. It was different in the old pre-capitalist days of famine and serious want. Back then, people were motivated to save surpluses. Continue reading ‘Why Not Protest To Raise Taxes?’
First, consider this quote from “Slime Mold as Master Engineer” on research reported in Science News:
“The slime mold has no central brain or indeed any awareness of the overall problem it is trying to solve, but manages to produce a structure with similar properties to the real rail network…” [This behavior] “is really difficult to capture by words,”
This exemplifies the impetus to maintain self integrity I discussed in my last post on Extinguishing Self. I see this impetus as extending throughout creation; it is the driving force to be, do, and succeed, and results in feats of engineering in humans and slime molds alike. Continue reading ‘Self Integrity, Slime, and Karma’
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