One measure of something worth doing is if you would ever regret it. I’m making a list of things that no one would ever on their deathbed look back and say “I did X too much.” I doubt anyone looked back at their life and said, “I danced too much,” “I sang too much,” or “I played with my nieces and nephews too much.” Can you add to the list?[…] Keep reading →
The following statement has become a personal guideline since I first came up with it. It’s served me well. Don’t look for blame but take responsibility for making things better to the extent you can. You can always find someone to blame if you want. Blame is fundamentally about the past, which you can’t change, and judgmental, which repels people. But the main issue is that when you blame someone[…] Keep reading →
(copying my post to another board where I learned about the movie, slightly out of context) I saw the movie Gasland about fracking last night at Cooper Union and heard Josh Fox, the guy who created it, speak. I don’t recommend many movies, but I recommend this one. If you can talk to Josh Fox, all the better. I’ve since watched and read other web pages and videos. I don’t[…] Keep reading →
Want a liberating concept? Our brains and senses are limited. Our ancestors didn’t evolve minds to understand everything or senses to sense everything. They evolved them to navigate their environments enough to propagate their genes. That’s it. The ones that could had children eventually resulting in us. The ones that couldn’t didn’t. Limited senses mean we have limited access to the universe. The observable universe stretches for tens of billions[…] Keep reading →
When you think of deciding, do you think of going toward the choice you decide on? I tend to and I think most others do too. But if deciding is about going toward something we like, why can it be so hard? The –cide in decide is the same -cide as in pesticide, homicide, and suicide — from Latin, meaning cut or kill. However much we think about deciding as[…] Keep reading →
Do you or people you know get stuck “winning” arguments only to find they’ve annoyed or alienated people around them? It’s hard to do anything about it because when people aren’t arguing they tend to feel they don’t do it — that only others do. And when they are arguing they’re often least open to exiting argument mode into self-reflection mode. A scene in The Big Lebowski that illustrates the[…] Keep reading →
People use too much lingo. What do I mean by too much? I mean it when big or out-of-context words confuse more than illuminate or create meaning. Everybody knows it, we still do it more than we mean to. I’m going to examine the issue from a few perspectives. Having a background in science I see a lot of scientific sounding language where it seems people use it more to[…] Keep reading →
Everyone has something to say about the environment, the economy, and ecology. People believe in human caused global warming or they don’t, but they have something to say about it. They believe improving the environment will ruin the economy or save it or something. Everyone has something to say. One major trend I see is based on the interests of the source. If the person speaking comes from the business[…] Keep reading →
An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I’ll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. — You wrote about lying as an example of a “bad trait”. I’d like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds[…] Keep reading →