Science of the SpiritS


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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: The Nature of Reality: Mindless Matter, or Universal Consciousness?

Corey Schink, Harrison Koehli, Elan Martin
Sott.net
Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
homer
© SOTT
What is the nature of reality, and why does it matter? Whether we know it or not, we all have a worldview - a set of very core beliefs and assumptions about the way the world works and our place within it. Sometimes those assumptions work, sometimes they don't, but as long as they are left unexamined, we can't say we've come any closer to actually understanding who we are and what we're doing. That's the great gift that philosophy can give us: a roadmap for meaning.

That doesn't mean it's easy, of course. The number of options on the table is daunting. Is materialism true? Are we just chunks of meat, devoid of any degree of freedom to choose? Are we disembodied minds dreaming up our own existence? Is consciousness fundamental, or an epiphenomenon of a more fundamental, senseless matter? The fact is, our beliefs will influence how we live our lives, whether we know it or not. So why not take a closer look at those beliefs?

Today on MindMatters, we do just that, taking a look at some of the offerings on the philosophical table - including the idealism presented by Bernardo Kastrup in his book, The Idea of the World. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Well, according to the dominant philosophical worldview today - physicalism - the world is still not worth living. So join us as we try to find an alternative that makes life great again - in which meaning and consciousness have a real role to play, and set the stage for the strange and mysterious adventure we call reality.


Running Time: 01:28:21

Download: MP3 — 80.9 MB

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Info

'Mystical' DMT compound found in normal brains


Eureka Alert
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 18:42 UTC
Ayahuasca retreat
© Temple of the Way of LightAyahuasca ceremony in Peru.
In the past few years, thrill-seekers from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond have been travelling to South America to take part in so-called Ayahuasca retreats. Their goal: to partake in a brewed concoction made from a vine plant Banisteriopsis caapi, traditionally used by indigenous people for sacred religious ceremonies. Drinkers of Ayahuasca experience short-term hallucinogenic episodes many describe as life-changing.

The active ingredient responsible for these psychedelic visions is a molecule called dimethyltryptamine (DMT). For the first time, a team led by Michigan Medicine has discovered the widespread presence of naturally-occurring DMT in the mammalian brain. The finding is the first step toward studying DMT-- and figuring out its role -- within the brains of humans.

"DMT is not just in plants, but also can be detected in mammals," says Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., of the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. Her interest in DMT came about accidentally. Before studying the psychedelic, her research focused on melatonin production in the pineal gland.

In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Rene Descartes claimed that the pineal gland, a small pinecone-shaped organ located deep in the center of the brain, was the seat of the soul. Since its discovery, the pineal gland, known by some as the third eye, has been shrouded in mystery. Scientists now know it controls the production of melatonin, playing an important role in modulating circadian rhythms, or the body's internal clock. However, an online search for notes to include in a course she was teaching opened Borjigin's eyes to a thriving community still convinced of the pineal gland's mystical power.
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Butterfly

The incredible link between nature and your emotions

Aaron Reuben
Outside Online
Mon, 17 Jun 2019 15:14 UTC
hiking outdoors nature
Thirty-five years ago, a young researcher at the University of Delaware conducted a remarkable study. Having spent his childhood sick with kidney disease, in and out of "gloomy, sometimes brutal" hospitals, Roger Ulrich was interested in finding ways to improve "the environments where patients are treated." So he sought to test the potential influence of an old friend that had brought him comfort as a child: a solitary pine that he could view through the window by his sickbed. "I think seeing that tree helped my emotional state," he recalled in an interview decades later.

That small study would give birth to thousands of replications and expansions - and an entire movement in architecture. Ulrich managed to find a hospital ward where, for years, patients had recovered from gallbladder surgery in identical rooms that overlooked either a small stand of deciduous trees or a brick wall. After pouring through nearly ten years' worth of ward records, Ulrich found that patients with a view of the trees fared far better than the miserable patients with nothing but a wall to look at, even if their cases were identical. Those with a view took fewer painkillers, were rated by their nurses as being in better spirits, and, on average, left the hospital nearly a day earlier than those without a view. What was going on?

Comment: See also:

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People 2

Jordan Peterson on the Psychological and Social Significance of Identity, and the Danger of 'Gender Fluidity' Indoctrination

Jordan B. Peterson
jordanbpeterson.com
Tue, 25 Jun 2019 21:28 UTC
girls
Back in September of 2016, I released three videos, expressing my concern about Bill C-16, which was then under consideration by the federal government, following the passage of similar legislation in a number of provinces. C-16 purported to merely add "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. However, it was embedded in a web of policy, much of it created by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which indicated that the bill comprised the tip of a very large iceberg. I was particularly upset with the insistence that failure to use the "preferred pronouns" chosen by individuals whose gender-related identity did not fit neatly, according to their personal judgement, into the standard categories of boy and girl or man and woman would now become an offence punishable by law.

Worse is the insistence characteristic of the bill, the policies associated with it, and the tenth-rate academic dogmas driving the entire charade that "identity" is something solely determined by the individual in question (whatever that identity might be). Even sociologists (neither the older, classical, occasionally useful type, nor the modern, appalling, and positively counterproductive type) don't believe this. They understand that identity is a social role, which means that it is by necessity socially negotiated. And there's a reason for this. An identity - a role - is not merely what you think you are, moment to moment, or year by year, but, as the Encyclopedia Britannica has it (specifically within its sociology section), "a comprehensive pattern of behavior that is socially recognized, providing a means of identifying and placing an individual in society," also serving "as a strategy for coping with recurrent situations and dealing with the roles of others (e.g., parent-child roles)."
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Footprints

The inner nature of freedom

Matt McManus
Quillette
Sat, 22 Jun 2019 09:04 UTC
Cranach the Elder Adam and Eve
All the while, that reign of desires savagely tyrannizes and batters a person's whole life and mind with storm's ranging in all directions. On this side fear, on that side desire, on this side anxiety, on that side empty spurious enjoyment, on this side torment over the loss of something loved, on the ardor to acquire something not yet possessed, on this side sorrows over injuries received, on that the burning desire to redress it. Whichever way one turns greed can pinch, extravagance squander, ambition enslave, pride puff up, envy twist, laziness overcome, stubbornness provoke, submissiveness oppress-these and countless others throng the realm of lust, having the run of it.

~St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will
In an earlier article with Ben Burgis, we argued that it was a mistake to claim that the fundamental divide between the political Left and Right was between an emphasis on equality by the former and liberty by the latter. As we put it, almost "everyone values freedom" regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum. Or, at least, they profess to do so, although things often turn out quite differently in practice. The primarily political differences, therefore, emerge over how best to realize freedom, and of course, what freedom itself means. Does it simply mean the absence of coercion by state authorities, or should we develop a more substantive conception? Professor Burgis and I defended the latter position.

Here, I want to build upon some of these earlier themes by examining a somewhat different issue. That is: to what extent can an individual be uncoerced by the state, and yet remain unfree? This is, of course, a far more speculative question than the purely political one examined earlier, and I do not intend to answer it here. Instead, I want to show how major figures in philosophy and other disciplines have long acknowledged that freedom is not simply a matter of non-coercion, but has an important inner dimension. In the conclusion, I will briefly spell out the political consequences we might infer from taking such an inner conception of freedom seriously.
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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Do You Believe In God? Jordan Peterson on Consciousness and Faith

Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink, Adam Daniels
Sott.net
Sat, 22 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
believe in god
© SOTT
"Do you believe in God?" It's the mother of all loaded questions. What does the questioner really want to know? That you're part of their tribe? Whether or not you're a superstitious simpleton? What do they mean by belief? What do they mean by God? It's not a simple question, and the answer is never so simple as yes or no.

In his recently published talk, "Who Dares Say He Believes in God?", Jordan Peterson gives his reasons for not liking the question. But he goes deeper into the question behind the question than he ever has. What does it really mean to believe in God? What implications does that have for who you must be as a person? And given those implications, who can dare to even utter the words without the fear of God reducing them to a mass of lightning-struck insignificance?

Today on MindMatters we discuss our thoughts on Peterson's talk, bringing out the connections to other streams of philosophy, psychology, and early Christian belief. It turns out that the Apostle Paul probably would have given an answer very similar to Peterson: belief without action is hollow, because a true belief will transform you completely.


Running Time: 01:04:31

Download: MP3 - 59.1 MB

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Family

How to raise mentally strong and resilient children

Jon Miltimore
Foundation For Economic Education
Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
father and child
My five-year-old was a blubbering, hot mess. He tackled kindergarten fine nine months before, but the first day of summer camp was too much for him.

"I don't want to go. I don't want to go," he moaned, sobbing fat crocodile tears.

Most parents have been in situations like this. It's one of the toughest jobs of being a parent, helping kids through situations like this. But nudging them through is important.

Resiliency - in both children and adults -is achieved by confronting and pushing through the challenges our brain and body want to shrink from. Maybe it's getting on the school bus. Maybe, for adults, it's applying for one more job after being rejected a dozen times that month. Maybe it's facing a scary test result or a bully.

Whatever the challenge is, the important thing is recognizing you can face it. And the truth is you probably can. Both history and research offer evidence of a near-infinite human capacity to endure hardship and confront obstacles, even terrifying ones.
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Brain

The mindfulness conspiracy

Ronald Purser
The Guardian
Fri, 14 Jun 2019 06:00 UTC
consumption illustration
© Illustration: Patryk Sroczyński
Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline "has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance", the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. Mindfulness, he proclaims, "may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years".

So, what exactly is this magic panacea? In 2014, Time magazine put a youthful blonde woman on its cover, blissing out above the words: "The Mindful Revolution." The accompanying feature described a signature scene from the standardised course teaching MBSR: eating a raisin very slowly. "The ability to focus for a few minutes on a single raisin isn't silly if the skills it requires are the keys to surviving and succeeding in the 21st century," the author explained.

Comment: The above point is well taken, but as always, the devil is in the details. Becoming more self-aware, recognizing the source of one's unnecessary suffering and working to resolve it doesn't necessarily make one complacent. Self-awareness is a tool that will, ideally, make one similarly aware of the outside world, together with all its injustices and disparities. Unfortunately, mindfulness has come to be a synonym for navel-gazing. Hyper-focus on the self can be detrimental if it's not paired with an equal hyper-focus on the world as it is (not how we wish it to be), and a greater awareness of how our own biases taint our ability to see the world objectively. It is only by seeing anything, on the micro or macro level, objectively that can we truly affect change.

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Rose

Science says silence is much more important to our brains than we think

Rebecca Beris
Life Hack
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:01 UTC
silence shush
In 2011, the Finnish Tourist Board ran a campaign that used silence as a marketing 'product'. They sought to entice people to visit Finland and experience the beauty of this silent land. They released a series of photographs of single figures in the nature and used the slogan "Silence, Please". A tag line was added by Simon Anholt, an international country branding consultant, "No talking, but action."

Eva Kiviranta the manager of the social media for VisitFinland.com said: "We decided, instead of saying that it's really empty and really quiet and nobody is talking about anything here, let's embrace it and make it a good thing".

Finland may be on to something very big. You could be seeing the very beginnings of using silence as a selling point as silence may be becoming more and more attractive. As the world around becomes increasingly loud and cluttered you may find yourself seeking out the reprieve that silent places and silence have to offer. This may be a wise move as studies are showing that silence is much more important to your brains than you might think.

Comment: It seems that the constant din of environmental noise is getting louder as our technological society continues to progress. The saying "silence is golden" becomes more and more applicable with each passing day. Placing a value on silence, and working to experience it periodically, could be a way to reset the brain for proper functioning.

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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: The Triumph of Irrationalism and the Death of Metaphysics

Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink, Elan Martin
Sott.net
Sat, 15 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
metaphysics
© SOTT
Between hysteria, censorship, endless war and climate catastrophe it seems the world has fallen victim to chaos and irrationality. On today's show we take a hard look at the origins of this madness and what to do about it, utilizing a work by one of our favorite philosophers, R.G. Collingwood.

Collingwood, an English philosopher, archaeologist and historian, passed away in 1943. But just three years before he passed he published An Essay on Metaphysics and left the world a rigorous defense of truth, ethics, and metaphysics, as well as a warning as to what would happen if these 'ancient sciences' were neglected or cast aside by future generations.

On today's show we utilize the work that he left behind in order to understand why the world is the way it is, and to explore what it takes to be rational in a time of complete chaos.


Running Time: 01:16:07

Download: MP3 - 69.7 MB

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