How did we used to know things? Why We Need to Know Despite scarce evidence, many people speculate about what human life was like before recorded history. Archaeologists study bones and fragments of human worlds that came before. Anthropologists investigate groups, like villages or early civilizations. Geneticists examine DNA to…
Tag: society
We Have It All Wrong
Humans will never outsmart nature The Shift Ten thousand years ago, humans experienced a significant shift. Something – some things – happened that drastically altered our evolutionary path. Many believe that a shift toward lootable wealth, generated by increased proficiency in agriculture, storage of surplus, and larger community size, marked…
Reductionism, Individualism, and the Fall of the Human Species
Fellow humans, your shortsightedness is showing One of the downsides to human evolution is that we’re not very good at seeing things from outside our perspective. Simultaneously, we struggle to live in the moment, spending most of our time worrying about the past or the future. We are in our…
A Codependency Manifesto
What loving yourself really means. We’ve all heard it. To love someone else, you have to love yourself first. I can’t tell you how many times this has been said to me in therapy. I even conducted a lengthy podcast interview series, and nearly every guest said the same thing. …
Inventions Other Mother
Playfulness and curiosity in Natural Selection “Necessity is the mother of invention” While we don’t know who first said it, many people have. Surely you have heard this phrase, if not used it. This quote means that urgency induces creativity. When humans need something, we search harder for solutions. It…
How Did I Get Here?
In the bottom of this hole Has it been that long? Have you ever gotten a glimpse of reality that disagreed with whatever truth you thought was real? I feel like I have been surrounded by darkness, gaslighting myself into believing it was the weather. The climate. Where I lived….
A Stand of Trees Does Not a Forest Make
A system is more than its parts During my dissertation defense, I got into a mild argument with one of my committee members. He was a GIS remote sensing technologist, I was a tree-hugging hippie ecologist. The disagreement centered around how many 30 x 30 meter (this was the early…
What we get wrong about self-love
And how to facilitate healing You’ve probably heard it 1,000 times. You have to love yourself first. Low self-worth is holding you back. It would help if on your self-esteem. When I shared my struggles and concerns with therapists, counselors, and coaches I would hear some version of these statements….
On Being a Good Steward of Earth
Socializing the gains You don’t have to look far to find something to complain about. Climate change Inequality Suicidal ideation Malnutrition Loneliness The world is full of problems. Now, I’m no doomer. My intent is not to illuminate human suffering. Rather, I accept the Buddhist notion that there will be suffering….
Making a Good Life
The unexamined life is not worth living — Socrates Do you ever think about this quote? There are probably plenty of people who disagree with Socrates, but I, for one, do not. It seems natural, even innate, to want to make the most of one’s life. To have a good life seems…