fairness instinct

Necessity is the Mother

If you’re unfamiliar with the neuroscience behind the illusion of freewill, this TED talk, Sam Harris on “Free Will”, is a good listen. If you are familiar, then skip ahead until it gets interesting as he addresses other related issues.

Loss Aversion Management

This NPR interview shows how we can’t help but shoot ourselves in the foot. Google: NPR Why We Care More About Losses Than Gains. When I look around, I see our aversion to loss influencing just about everything we do, albeit often in very subtle ways. The innate emotional aversion to loss, when reinforced by […]

The Harmless People

In the early 20th century, a few pioneers combed the back woods of rural Appalachia to document and record the last remnants of American roots music still unchanged by the cultural upheavals of the 20th century. This music soon evolved into the blues, rock & roll, and country music of the 20th century. Similarly, Laurence […]

Will-to-Live, Free or Otherwise

A drive to survive is common to all living things from viruses on up. In somewhat higher forms of life, we see this as the survival instinct. This survival instinct must be regarded as a fundamental emotional drive in any animal we think of as having emotion. Naturally, there are those who, ignorant of the […]

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 […]

Dumbfounding

The Science New Science Stats left me dumbfounded, so I read it again… I’m still dumbfounded. Does it really say, “… calorie intake may be the bigger contributor to Western obesity”? What are they thinking? What else causes obesity? I have noticed over the years, a growing effort to find ‘genetic’ causes for why […]

“Fixation on same same”

Recently my friend Andy teased me about my “fixation on same same”, as he put it. My habit of drawing out similarities between apparent opposites bugs him a little. “Fixation on same same” was his response to my comment, “Folks on the left use folks on the right as scapegoats, and vice versa. The underlying […]

Guilt, Shame and the Name Game

I used the experience of guilt and shame for an example in my recent post, I am foolish of human mind also? I feel our habit of naming emotional experiences deserves its own post, so here goes, beginning with a personal example… Up until thirty years ago, I had never experienced depression… or so I […]

I am foolish of human mind also?

‘I am foolish of human mind also?’ is one of my favorite lines in chapter 20. The more literal the translation, the more peculiar it can read. If it helps, D.C. Lau interprets this line more poetically as, My mind is that of a fool – how blank. I do feel the literal phrasing of […]

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fairness instinct