This recent “Fast Draw” segment, The Truth about Lies (on CBS Sunday Morning) demonstrates why many things most people believe turn out not to be true. Also interesting are the two comments at the end. It is sobering and humbling to see how blind and deaf we can be. Oh how the power of belief walks all over clear and irrefutable evidence. What accounts for belief’s power(1)?
From a symptoms point of view, I would have to say we hold so tightly to belief because we need to. Well, duh, you say? Truth be told, drilling down into what appears obvious can be enlightening. So I ask, what hunger do we feel so deeply that belief helps satiate? Continue reading ‘The Truth About Lies’
They say, nothing is certain but death and taxes. I’d add to that spending! The current haggling over spending, taxes, and the debt problems this country faces is an interesting example of the ‘blind spot’. In the arguments I hear, each side fails to step back enough to see the problem broadly. I know that’s how nature intends it; competitive interaction fleshes out fitness and all that. Still, it helps to pull-head-out-of-sand to see where we may be headed.
Eventually science will discover most everything that is discoverable(1). Recently research, reported in the Science News’ article, Cerebral Delights, flushed out some primary neurological links between fear and need.
I have felt for a few years now that fear stood at the head waters of all emotion, including those related to need. Additionally, what fear and need mean is not as straightforward as often thought, at least as I use those words. So before getting into the meat of this issue, I should clarify my sense of these words, especially need. For starters, you might review my caveats concerning need and fear. Continue reading ‘Reward, Fear & Need’
Viewing life impartially is one of the least stimulating experiences I know. Biased views, on the other hand, are chock full of emotional tension, highs and lows, loves and hates… it’s exciting! In the same way, a good story is exciting; a ‘cold hard truth’ is often awe-full. This should be fairly evident right off the bat. Now, through correlations, I’ll take it a step further to show how it is not truth we love; it’s the story .
Mea Maxima Culpa
What exactly are biased views? Frankly, any view that points out differences should qualify. Oh shucks, that includes me right now. Paradoxically, I must resort to bias in my attempt to write about truth. I suppose this exemplifies— when cleverness emerges there is great hypocrisy—it’s downright ironic and humbling. Oh well. Continue reading ‘The Story Trumps Truth’
Last Sunday’s 60 Minutes’ segment, Tucson: Descent Into Madness, on the recent shooting in Arizona airs an interview of two friends of Jared Loughner.
Their observations offer deeper insight into Jared Loughner. I’ll quote their main recollections below in case that link above doesn’t work.
What caught my attention was when they said how “Jared literally believes in nothing, nothingness”, and that “He was obsessed with how words were meaningless”. That comes awfully close to how I’d describe a Taoist. Indeed, that describes me, albeit without that worrisome “literally believes in nothing” and “obsessed with how words were meaningless”. Continue reading ‘Belief in Nothing is Dangerous’
Soon after we met, my future to be wife said, “I love you”. That moment had all the ideal romantic overtones one could ask for… us out in the forest, a moonlit summer’s night. Being the bubble busting bum of which I’m capable, I replied with something like, “What do you mean love? What’s love?” Frankly, the word had lost its “magic”, after being dumped by my ex-wife the year before (1).
This word has piqued my curiosity again, now that my sons are dating. The word love presents a good example of the iffy nature of words, names, and language over all. There are many words that are more or less synonymous with love. Continue reading ‘Love’
This short lecture, John Cleese on creativity, shows he may be a ‘defacto taoist’ or perhaps a ‘natural taoist’. Meaning, anyone who has this contrarian point of view is a ‘taoist’, although they may never have heard the word Taoist.
The Blind Spot
This idea of backing off in order to move forward, and the humorous way he talks about the “blind spot”, parallels core Taoist principles. Continue reading ‘John Cleese, A ‘Taoist’?’
There is more to fear than meets the eye. We often associate the symptoms of fear (the reactions fear initiates) as the fear itself. This can evokes mental images of fear as a screaming and fleeing experience.
As I see it, this is a reaction to feeling fear, not fear itself. The other most common reaction to feeling fear is the opposite of fleeing; it is attack and anger. Continue reading ‘Fear Is The Bottom Line’
Noticing differences really aids survival… up the point of diminishing returns. Continuing along this path is counterproductive and eventually leads to anxiety of some sort. Of course, in the wild, such discernment would seldom turn as worrisome.
Civilization, in taming the wilderness, removes natural stresses that would otherwise counterbalance us, and before we know it, we’ve become neurotic nitpickers in one way or other. Continue reading ‘Balancing Difference With Similarity’
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’
CenterTao is The Center For Taoist Thought And Fellowship, a non-profit religious (Taoist) corporation founded in California, 1982.
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What is Taoism?
That differs among people! For me, it is about perception.
That deeply affects the life we live. Accordingly, CenterTao focuses on the how, what, and why we think what we think.
(See: The Why and What of Taoist Thought)
Speaking of thinking, the Tao Te Ching cautions us that: "One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know."Read more…
This recent “Fast Draw” segment, The Truth about Lies (on CBS Sunday Morning) demonstrates why many things most people believe turn out not to be true. Also interesting are the two comments at the end. It is sobering and humbling to see how blind and deaf we can be. Oh how the power of belief walks all over clear and irrefutable evidence. What accounts for belief’s power(1)?
Chapter 65 begins with, ‘
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