language

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 […]

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 […]

Good Enough Is!

Good enough is good enough, and naturally so. After all, this is how nature works—step by step. Surely, this is the sentiment expressed in chapter 64, A thousand mile journey begins below the feet. We now also call this evolution. Nevertheless, I constantly see people pushing a ‘perfect’ ideal of how something should be or […]

And Then There Was Fire

A favorite thought experiment of mine is pondering the how and why of the world. Alas, there are mountains of geological and archeological information to consider. Happily, a lifetime of reflection seems to be paying off. I can see outlines of the ‘big picture’ now. The constant difficulty is that mountains of detail easily obscure […]

Feeling Animal-ness

We know humans are animals, biologically speaking. Yet do we really feel we are? In reality, there is a wide gap between our abstract knowledge and our visceral experience. Catching the flu for the ‘first time’ in my life may offer an example of how thought can separate us from fully feeling our animal-ness. Assuming that […]

Is Rock Conscious?

A while ago, I attempted to pin down a friend (1) of mine on the subject of consciousness. My view that a rock could be conscious didn’t go over too well. He said, “Words are sounds that gain meaning with use. Saying that a rock is conscious is like saying a rock is alive. That might work […]

Belief in Nothing is Dangerous

The 60 Minutes documentary, Tucson: Descent Into Madness, about a shooting in Arizona offers deep insight into what drives a person to such violence. The perpetrator in Tucson was Jared Loughner. Excerpts from an interview of two friends of Jared are at the end of this post. What caught my attention was when his friends […]

Beyond Spooky

The November issue of Science News, Beyond Spooky, was dedicated to “quantum weirdness”, as they put it (1). I have long had deep affection for this side of physics. Frankly though, the weirder thing for me is how, despite nature’s bio-hoodwink, it is possible to see more than just the tip-of-the-iceberg of reality. Biology requires […]

Science, Religion, Truth

It is striking how obvious, yet subtle, the relationship between science, religion, and truth is. This could be an example of chapter 71’s, My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice. There are profound spiritual […]

The less I think, the more I know

The less I think, the more I know sounds a little odd. It parallels that equally peculiar line in chapter 56, One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know. If anything ever begged for elucidation, this does! The problem with thought lies in the preconceptions necessary to think and speak. This […]

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