And now, for something completely different…
If at any time in your life you have enjoyed Star Trek: The Original Series, you have to go to the Star Trek Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY
And now, for something completely different…
If at any time in your life you have enjoyed Star Trek: The Original Series, you have to go to the Star Trek Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY
I have avoided wading into the thicket of consciousness. We consider it such a central part of our identity, it is astonishing how little we understand it. As far as I can see, consciousness studies are a mess. We can’t even seem to agree on a definition of the word, much less understand how it works or what it is for. But it comes up over and over whenever you want to try to understand why humans behave the way they do. So I am wading in, even though I do not understand consciousness any better than anyone else. Continue reading “What Is Consciousness?”
I wrote these down about a decade ago and thought I would dust them off and share them once again. They don’t say everything about my perspective (leaving out especially my amazement and delight at the intelligence and creativity of the other animals and my insistence that they not be treated like commodities or “resources”). These “ways” came into view for me over the course of an extended period of solitude. A few will be familiar to Buddhists: impermanence and interdependence particularly. But I did not learn them from any religious or spiritual tradition. They are not matters of belief. You can test them against your own experience and verify their validity. Continue reading “Six Ways of Life and One Human Illusion”
This seems to me the crux of the human problem: the human mind loves its own illusions and spends every waking minute of every day attempting to interfere with reality. Ignore it, improve it, completely twist it out of shape, but never face it. The mind is exceptionally good at making stuff up and running around in a fantasy world where its illusions are real and reality is the illusion.
The ecological mess we are in is a direct consequence of civilized humans being civilized humans. We have developed in such a way that our first impulse is not to adapt to our environment but to manipulate the environment to force it to adapt to us. We alter every landscape we enter to suit our needs and preferences, and indeed we are very good at this. Most of us see this as a good thing, a sign of our intelligence and general superiority. We like the feeling of being in control.
Continue reading “The Earth Is Speaking. Are You Listening?”