The fourth of July makes me ashamed. I’m ashamed of myself because I can’t seem to match the patriotism that surrounds me. In the USA, people get almost spiritual about their fireworks, hot dogs, and freedom worship. Behind all of this, for me, is a whole lot of weirdness. The…
Tag: mind
Growing Smaller is a Worthy Goal (Part 1)
I used to own a brewery. In our rural location and with our small customer pool, we struggled to be profitable. My partners and I disagreed about how to best approach profitability. One had an MBA and swore by the neo-capitalist, Econ 101 approach to maximizing revenues. Following this popular approach,…
The Downfall of Modern Life
This episode is inspired by the idea that the USA has the world’s most expensive yet least h care. At least this has been the type of conclusion drawn from many analyses that compare things like GDP, cost of health care, and individual health. The idea is that we have…
Radical Acceptance Can Help You Progress Through Life
Knowing yourself is an important part of being a complete human. Maybe this is just my opinion based on my own values, but it seems to be a theme. Throughout history there have been thinkers proclaiming the importance of knowing oneself. To justify this conclusion we can look at the…
Degrowth vs Growth
While I don’t want to perpetuate the ‘capitalism sucks’ argument, I want to spend some time on degrowth. Pretty funny that the spell checkers keep correcting ‘degrowth’ to ‘regrowth’. See? This idea is manifested in everything. Because of capitalism, humans have become obsessed with growth. Mostly in the financial sense….
Are all Leaders Narcissists?
The words ‘leader’ and ‘narcissist’ bug me. I think these two words are overused. I also don’t think we really know what they mean anymore. Maybe we never did. Maybe the words have been usurped by the very people defined by them. Let’s start with leadership. What is this, exactly?…
Vulnerability is Your Superpower
I have been thinking a lot about the popular images of aggressive male competitors. Silverback gorillas. Wrestlemania or UFC fighters. These popular ideas feature ‘Alpha males’ bullying and pushing around ‘weaker’ males in order to get mates, habitat, or food. These toxic stereotypes probably spill over into popular culture and…
The DNA Acid Test: The Problem and The Questions
What is the question!!!???? Say you are studying the effectiveness of a vaccine against some pathogen. What is the question? Too many times we get wrapped up in the specifics. The details. The minutia. We forget WHY we are doing this in the first place. In this case, I would…
Would You Rather Be Right, or Happy?
Remember the last time you were at a real life impasse? It’s a cruddy feeling. Especially with someone you love. It’s frustrating to disagree. To reach a moment where you realize there’s no way to resolve the tension in the air. A simple conversation becomes conflict. We understand that the…
Life is Supposed to Change: The Evolution Paradox
Everything about our ‘biological-ness’ is related to change. The developmental stages are all changes. We all grow bigger through life. We go through a brief period of fast growth, then switch over to a period of reproduction. These things are true for all life forms. We share, with ALL biology,…