Do you suffer? Humans have problems. It’s hard to deny. Despite many pleas for ‘looking on the bright side of life’, we live in a world full of suffering. For whatever reason, I think about these problems, the causes, and potential solutions. While it is difficult to maintain a positive mental…
Tag: society
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What Is the Matter?
Ranking importance is critical to mental health What IS the matter? Matter is an interesting word. It’s a noun and a verb. The noun means something of substance and can be physical or metaphysical. The verb means for something to be important. There’s matter, and there is the matter. I like…
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You Don’t Need My Permission to Live
Do you ever feel like what you want to do goes against what society ‘wants’ you to do? Like, maybe you want to be a painter, but your parents and your school tell you that you’ll never make any money. Maybe you want to take a gap year after high…
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What if Nature Made the Rules?
You’re probably not old enough to remember, but a commercial in the 70s reminds me of this episode. In the commercial, a woman who represented Earth informed the viewer, “‘It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” I don’t know if this ad made an impression on me, but my adult…
The Thing Capitalism Gets Wrong
Lately, I’ve been wondering about capitalism and competition. As I have mentioned in other episodes (links below), competition only occurs when resources are limited. Also, capitalism requires competition to protect consumers from monopolies. While I argue in older episodes that this protective feature often doesn’t work, the fact remains that capitalism requires…
I Don’t Know
I say it all the time. The three most powerful words in the English language are, “I Don’t Know’. When I worked at a pet store, the boss publicly humiliated me for not being able to say, “I Don’t Know’. I learned quickly that it is not only ok, it…
How to Fix What is Broken
What’s the point? Of any of it? For me, it is the unrest that comes from acknowledging what is wrong in the world. Poverty. War. Violent crime. Social justice issues. Inequality. Racism. Choose your weapon. It isn’t hard to see problems in the world. My point is not to point…
Unnatural Selection
I am currently working on a larger project that will connect my background in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with personal growth, psychology, and finding more joy and fulfillment in our lives. In this post I introduce some evolutionary evidence that every individual human is born to discover their uniqueness (despite…