I tried to point out in my initial Who are you? post (p.504) how civilization plays a major role in educating its citizens who they are and who they should be. This contrasts sharply with the natural intuitive way that our ancestors acquired a secure sense of self. Religious stories have been central to every […]
Continue reading…children
Amazon mother
Google [CBS News From Amazon to Garden State] for a story that perfectly exemplifies observations I’ve made on civilization over the last few decades. To be clear, I’m not pro or anti civilization; I simply wish to comprehend its full impact on humanity. Despite the obvious downsides of civilization, we’re never going to turn back […]
Continue reading…Emotion Speaks… Literally
I learned to speak a number of languages during my traveling years. Learning a language in country on the job, so to speak, is an easy, quick and enjoyable way to learn. During those years, my interest was to communicate—not eloquently mind you, but just enough to get by. Several hundred words and some fearless […]
Continue reading…Science’s Baby Steps
Every now and then I’m bowled over by the “Well, duh” discoveries science finally gets around to making. My “Well, duh” relationship with science began early. As a preteen child who liked to play with fire, I discovered that putting ice or cold water on a burn worked great. However, the standard nursing / medical […]
Continue reading…A Tao of Parenting
First, Google: Bringing Up Baby – Hidden Brain and listen to this research on raising children, especially the last half, where it summarized the natural approach to parenting I discuss here. Breeding, and the parenting that follows, are the most significant things we do in life; without this, none of us would be here. Most […]
Continue reading…The Why Of It
Probing into ‘the why of it’ can feel like jumping into a bottomless well of mystery. Certainly, this qualifies as the epitome of quixotic quests. Not content to stop there, I need to share what I stumble across by posting my observations. I know these are palatable to only a very few people. The irony […]
Continue reading…It’s Simply Nature’s Way
The Pope’s reference to suffering struck me. (Google: Pope Benedict stumped by Japanese girl’s question about suffering inflicted by the Tsunami.) Briefly, a young girl asked him, “Why do children have to be so sad?” Benedict admitted: “I also have the same questions: why is it this way? Why do you have to suffer so […]
Continue reading…It’s Time We Changed Our Name
It’s time we changed our species’ name from “Homo sapiens” to something else. “Homo sociâlis”, would be my best Linnaeus guess. We are not the great “wise” or “knowing” animal that we claim to be. We are instead more profoundly social than we realize. Research reported in the Science News article, In-laws transformed early human […]
Continue reading…Change we can believe in?
Many people are disappointed with President Obama. This is a good example of how easily our expectations sow the seeds of our disappointments in life. Mature character boils down to how gracefully we can accept a reality that doesn’t match our expectations. Children get their hopes up for one outcome, and when life goes another […]
Continue reading…Children Know What Adults Forget
What in particular do children know that adults forget? For some clues, google [Kids face up to disgust surprisingly late]. Consider this excerpt from Science News: Kids viewed images on a computer screen of adults displaying the six basic emotional expressions. The kids’ task was to assign faces to boxes at the bottom of the […]
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