instinct

Where does the fault lie?

“The fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves”. That bit of Shakespeare speaks to our ‘modern’ paradigm. ‘Modern’ began with the Renaissance that followed the so-called Dark Ages. Note how these labels bias the view of cultural progress right away in favor of the modern. I see such progress as a two-step forward, […]

Flow Triggers

The Rise of Superman: 17 Flow Triggers is an interesting review of essential ‘flow triggers’ as the author Steven Kotler calls them in his book The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Anyone comfortable with the Zen(1) point of view will recognize them right off. Steven rephrases them in a religiously […]

Naturally Racist

The online matchmaking site Okcupid ran a survey of its members. When they first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, they say it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. That offers some proof to what has long been obvious to me: homo sapiens are naturally […]

Managing Our Disorders

The DSM 5 — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — now recognizes hoarding as a disorder. See this short video: Seeking help for hoarding. I say we have a diagnostic disorder. In our quest to identify human problems as disorders, we are blind to the core cause of many so-called disorders. How can […]

Born Again Taoist

How many of us truly appreciate the role that instinct plays in our lives? Long ago, our ancestors dreamed up myths of self-importance that distanced our species from other living things. We are told, “Don’t be an animal” and that Mankind was created in God’s image (1). One way or another, every culture has its […]

Free Willers Anonymous

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar addiction programs begin their process of recovery by first admitting their addiction and powerlessness over it. That starts clearing away the blind spot that up until then made their life very problematic. This first step parallels Buddha’s first step of his Eight-Fold Path—Right Comprehension.

Instinctive Free Will

We easily seem to accept the idea that animals and young children don’t choose their nature; they are born with it. Consequently, society doesn’t usually hold them responsible. With the onset of adulthood, that suddenly changes, and society then deems us responsible for our actions. As adults, we somehow magically acquire the power to choose […]

Stupidly Intelligent

This little ditty in Science News, Our Final Invention, about the impending dangers of Artificial Intelligence caught my eye. 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 end up with a planet self-serving, self-replicating AI […]

Skip links

instinct