Divine transport

Divine transport

From this article. Now if we can only interpret trance states postmetaphysically. The religions that formed around trance states in the article, though evolutionarily adaptive at the time, have solidified into metaphysical dogma and are no longer adaptive to our world today. It though does beckon us to create postmetaphysical rituals with music, dance, invocation, incense etc. so that we can bond together via embodiment instead of just intellectually. “So there is a need for a new idea, and coming…

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Krakauer: The landscape of 21st century science

Krakauer: The landscape of 21st century science

Krakauer is the new President of the Santa Fe Institute. Here is his interview on the above topic. The blurb follows. There’s also a transcript at the link. “For 300 years, the dream of science was to understand the world by chopping it up into pieces. But boiling everything down to basic parts does not tell us about the way those parts behave together. Physicists found the atom, then the quark, and yet these great discoveries don’t answer age-old questions…

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Does altruism exist?

Does altruism exist?

A question posed by this round table discussion with David Sloan Wilson, Kurt Johnson, Barbara Marx Hubbard,  Richard Clugston,  Zachary Stein, David Korten, Rev. Mac Legerton, Kevin Brabazon,  Doug King, Mike Morrell, Ken Wilber.  Table of Contents – Introduction: Science in a Spiritual Key, by David Sloan Wilson and Kurt Johnson – Synopsis of Does Altruism Exist? Culture Genes and the Welfare of Others, by David Sloan Wilson – Commentary 1: The Sacred and the Secular Can Unite on Altruism, by Kurt Johnson – Commentary 2: When…

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More on Haidt

More on Haidt

Continuing this previous post: I’m looking at the section “conclusion and critique” of Haidt starting on p. 31. Gibbs appreciates that we should account for our earlier human history and more primitive brain centers in describing morality. But to limit it to these structures and history at the expense of later brain structures and evolutionary development is another thing. “The negative skew in Haidt’s descriptive work discourages study in moral psychology of higher reaches of morality such as rational moral…

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The blind spot of science

The blind spot of science

Good essay by an astrophysicist, theoretical physicist and philosopher on the nature of human experience and its relationship to science. Some excerpts: “This brings us back to the Blind Spot. When we look at the objects of scientific knowledge, we don’t tend to see the experiences that underpin them. We do not see how experience makes their presence to us possible. Because we lose sight of the necessity of experience, we erect a false idol of science as something that…

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Mental rigidity in both Parties

Mental rigidity in both Parties

Another one of those studies comparing political identification. The study is about extreme attachment to a Party. What about those who strongly identify with humanity with high cognitive complexity and flexibility who don’t identify with a Party? Are their nuanced arguments that account for numerous factors and their interplay ‘extreme?’ Is the Green New Deal extreme? If a living wage extreme? Is corporations paying their fair share extreme? Is addressing the climate crisis extreme? Is transitioning from fossil fuels to…

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Objective reality does not exist

Objective reality does not exist

From this article at MIT Technology Review: “Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: they have created different realities and compared them. Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct—these realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment. .[…] ‘This calls into question the objective status of the facts established by the two observers,’ say Proietti and…

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The dirty secret of capitalism

The dirty secret of capitalism

And the way forward. Granted it’s not full-blown collaborative commons but more like a healthy social democracy of the kind Sanders promotes and Scandinavia has. But I think it’s a necessary stepping stone on that road. The blurb: “Rising inequality and growing political instability are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory, says entrepreneur Nick Hanauer. In a visionary talk, he dismantles the mantra that ‘greed is good’ — an idea he describes as not only morally corrosive,…

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