Awareness

People don't like feeling guilt, shame, insecurity, helplessness, hopelessness, and other emotions that they often feel when sustainability and the environment come up. The emotions arise from what I found Abraham Lincoln said best: "Nothing is more damaging to you than to do something you believe is wrong." Doing something you believe is wrong will make you feel guilt, shame, and so on. People spend so much of their time denying and suppressing these emotions, they come to believe they aren't feeling them all the time. When someone brings up the topic, they become consciously aware of the emotions they already felt but tried to deny and suppress. They feel something like, "I didn't feel shame before this person brought up the environment. I feel…

How about a change of tone from my usual? Do you ever think about what consciousness is? Or why there's something, as in the whole universe, rather than nothing? I don't mean in some trippy way, or superficial like college freshmen talking about philosophy in the dorm hallway. These two questions, in various forms, have interested people since before history, but as best I can tell, no one has made any progress whatsoever: One question is: What is consciousness? In other forms: why do I sense thoughts that seem to have no tangible reality, yet feel as real as any physical sensation that all other humans seem to have, but I can't sense theirs in the slightest? Do animals have consciousness? Does anything else in…

We tend to think we live in the most free, healthiest, longest-living, most egalitarian, most stable culture humans have ever had. In some cases, yes, but in others, it turns out otherwise. It seems we project onto other times and cultures what will make us feel better about our own. I like feeling good about myself, but an inaccurate view keeps me from improving my situation. I want to understand where we stand more accurately so I'm compiling relevant data and sources. I'll start with a few and add more as I come across them. Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's, MIT: One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of…

First, I'm not depressed if you saw the title and felt worried. I'm taking a break from my usual topics because I read an article on depression that hypothesized it was a different state of consciousness, not just another emotion. I'm not sure what that definition means, but depressed people often describe depression as something you can't understand unless you're really, truly depressed. Blue But every description I've heard sounds like what I've experienced. I've felt profoundly depressed at times and mildly depressed many other times. I haven't felt meaningfully depressed in a while, but I've never lost the sense of what it feels like. Over the years, I've found ways to avoid it become too deep so it would be hard to get out…