COVID sucks. No doubt. But often discomfort is our best teacher and there is always something to learn from suffering. In the case of COVID we are being forced to reexamine how we shop, travel, work, and educate. We have focused hard on our needs and had to let slip…
Slavery
Here I argue that besides the common forms of slavery we are familiar with that all sorts of *slavery persist in human culture today. Gluttonous humans have just become sneakier at disguising it. (*there is probably a better term to describe the general concept of forced labor I discuss here,…
Old Beliefs
You know these things. They’re opinions and ideas that you have, but don’t really know where they came from. They tend to repeat themselves and ultimately contribute to what we call personality. We didn’t really learn them in the classic way. No one told us X and Y. Really what…
Goals, Accolades, and the Meaning of Life?
I struggle with getting praise for my accomplishments. Earning money, having a ‘good job’, winning trophies, making people like you, achieving, getting good grades – so much of life is tied to ‘chasing carrots’ to earn accolades. In my youth my accolades were mostly self-realized. I was such a loner…
Competition
I’m not a big fan of competition. I’m talking specifically about two types of competition we hear about often The first type of competition is within the construct of capitalism. People are constantly referring to how competition ‘regulates markets’ and ‘prevents monopolies’. I guess in this economic sense competition is…
Marketing and Solicitation
Aren’t you sick of advertising? Especially the ads that make no sense. How about when you can’t even tell what the product is? When I owned a brewery I saw a lot of ‘guerrilla’ advertising. Like bikini babes partying and drinking a certain beer. Wow, if I drink that beer…
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Quiet vs Distraction
All I hear lately is that mindfulness meditation is the magic cure all for human problems like anxiety, depression, and being ‘too busy’ or stressed out all the time. And I believe it. But for whatever reason, it’s hard for me to make the time to meditate. It’s kind of…
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Gaming the System
Nothing frustrates me more than seeing people taking advantage of ‘the rules’, or finding a loophole in ‘the system’ to gain an advantage over me or others. You certainly can think of examples in your own life. At the same time, if other people are going to do it, why…
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Individuals and Communities
Are we islands? What responsibility do we have to participate in our communities? During the COVID social distancing period, how do we define ‘essential’? Is there a continuum of behaviors that are acceptable? What do we ‘owe’ ourselves and our communities and how does that affect our behavior? I consider…
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Alternative facts, proof, and truth
What is the truth? What is “proof”? How is “truth” different from “facts”, or “evidence”? How do we know if we really know what we think we know? During my scientific training, I learned that we rarely “prove” anything. Science generates evidence and then we decide whether that evidence is…