imagination

Science Proves Buddha Right!

Google [CBS News When low expectations achieve big results] for research that reveals how one’s expectations get in the way of happiness. This is not to say expectations aren’t useful or natural. Indeed, a kind of natural expectation, or sense of anticipation plays an integral role in survival. This impulse drives all living things to […]

Cultivating Ego

Google [Rats Experience Feelings of Regret] for research discovering that when a rat realizes it made a mistake, its body and brain show signs of regret (1). Research like this challenges the beliefs of human exceptionalism that we’ve been cultivating to support humanity’s “illusion of self” collective ego. Sure, we are different from rats, but […]

Civilized Insanity

Cults akin to ISIS and Nazism help define true human insanity. Nonetheless, the tribal instinct driving such insanity is curiously both sane and universal. This ironic blend inhabits everyone to a degree. So, what drives the ISIS or Nazi fanatic to become so obsessed? How can we remedy this? First, calling acts of insanity evil […]

Managing Our Disorders

The DSM 5 — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — now recognizes hoarding as a disorder. Google [CBS News Seeking help for hoarding] for a short report on this. Frankly, I‘d say we have more of a diagnostic disorder. In our quest to identify human problems as disorders, we are blind to the […]

Stupidly Intelligent

The Science News review, Our Final Invention, about the impending dangers of Artificial Intelligence caught my eye. (Google [Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era].) Consider this quote, “Computer systems advanced enough to act with human-level intelligence will likely be unpredictable and inscrutable all of the time.” He is worried that, “we could […]

Feeding the Worry Gene

Have you noticed how there is always something wrong? No matter how ideal circumstances are, something will go awry shortly. All this may be obvious, I suppose. What is less obvious is how the perception and experience of good fortune and misfortune are complimentary. As chapter 58 puts it, Misfortune, yet of good fortune its […]

Good Enough Is!

Good enough is good enough, and naturally so. As chapter 46 notes, Therefore, in being contented with one’s lot, enough is usually enough indeed. Besides, isn’t this how nature plays out… step by step? Surely, this is the sentiment expressed in chapter 64, A thousand mile journey begins below the feet. This is how reality […]

Will-to-Live, Free or Otherwise

The drive to survive is shared by all living things from viruses on up. In some, if not all, forms of life, this plays out as a fear vs. need mediated survival instinct. Certainly, the survival instinct is a fundamental emotional drive in any animal I think of as having emotion. Naturally, there are those […]

Placebo Effect

Google [Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect? – CBS News] for an interview with Irving Kirsch, a scientist at the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School. Kirsch, who’s been studying placebos for 36 years, says “sugar pills” can work miracles. He has found that the drugs used to treat depression for most people […]

Imagining a Better Way

Human imagination is both a valuable survival asset and the source of lingering anxieties. Ironically, imagination also promises us ways to quell these anxieties. I say promises because fulfillment can’t truly be possible. This peculiar dynamic reminds me of the Möbius like geometry of Escher’s Waterfall. We can imagine a better something and so we […]