Would our ancestors be proud of us? When I think of the problems humans face today: suffering, anxiety, inequality, social justice issues, war, pollution . . . I try to put things in an evolutionary context. On the one hand, we have come so far. We have created many wonderful ‘science’, ‘technology’, and…
Tag: Science
Growing Smaller is a Worthy Goal (Part 2)
Here is Part 1 of this two-part series. In it, I focus mostly on the Growth part of the equation In Part 2, I want to focus on the Smaller portion. As I said, I used to be an entrepreneur. In my small town, I struggled to generate enough traffic to…
What Freedom Means to Me
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…
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…
The Flow-Based Inquiry Approach
The KEW Acid Tests ask how Nature can inform the big questions humans ask. “Why are we here?”, “Who am I?”, and “What is our purpose” have puzzled humans for years – perhaps millennia. In the past 4,000 years or so, we have employed philosophy, religion, and science as mechanisms…
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…
I Need a Tribe. Where is My Tribe?
I had a massive epiphany today. Maybe it *shouldn’t* have been so massive. I say *shouldn’t* because I hate the word ‘should’, and have podcasted extensively on this topic, and written about it on Medium. But this article is about me, and maybe also about you. So either way, the epiphany is that…
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…
How Could I Be So Wrong While Being So Confident I Was Right?
You know you do it. You think you are right about something, only to find out you were incredibly, undeniably, 180 degrees wrong. It happens. To all of us. To all of us humans, anyway. We all think we’re right. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have conviction. We’d be open….
Personal Responsibility, Consensus, and Faith in Science
For it to work we have to work together Scientific evidence directs acceptance or rejection of hypotheses. At the experimental level, this requires evidence. At the societal level, this requires faith.