Science of the SpiritS


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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: That's the Spirit! The Stoic Philosophy of Pneuma

Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink, Carolyn MC
Sott.net
Sun, 12 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
pneuma zeno
While the ancient philosophy of Stoicism is experiencing a comeback, many are still unfamiliar with some of its more esoteric concepts, like the role of pneuma or spirit in cosmology. The primal stuff of the cosmos - informing matter and mind at different levels of tension - for the Stoics, pneuma is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of the cosmos.

Today on MindMatters, we take a look at some of the basics of Stoic cosmology, how it informs their ethics, and the role it had on early Christian theology, specifically in the letters of Paul. For Paul the Holy Spirit actually has more in common with the Stoic Divine Pneuma than you might think, and has some far-out implications for what Paul thought about things like the "resurrection", "pneumatic" bodies, and the growth of knowledge and being.


Running Time: 54:53

Download: MP3 — 50.3 MB

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Books

The story of the camel, the lion, and the child: Nietzsche's three steps to a meaningful life

Steven Gambardella
Medium
Sat, 27 Oct 2018 15:28 UTC
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche was a man who had known the depths of despair. Nietzsche had lived with a number of health problems, mental health issues, and post-traumatic stress syndrome from serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War (during which he had also contracted diphtheria and dysentery). The final straw was that the woman he loved deeply, whom he had proposed to a number of times, had abandoned him.

Nietzsche was an extraordinarily gifted young man. He had studied for a PhD while still a teenager and was awarded a tenured professorship at the remarkably young age of 24.

In the late 1860s the budding philosopher also excelled as a horseman and soldier. He was fated, it seemed, to be made a captain in the Prussian military but a riding accident and his failing eyesight (which made him almost blind) ended his soldiering career. He returned to academia where he excelled again.

Nietzsche was a gifted writer as well as an academic prodigy who developed extraordinary insight into some of the most deeply buried ideas that structure our beliefs. He had taken an intellectual wrecking ball to most moral and philosophical concepts that are taken for granted even today.

Books like Human, All Too Human, Untimely Meditations and The Joyful Science, tore down the edifice of morality, religion, reason and exposed the emptiness at the heart of modern civilization.
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Bulb

12 things I see happy people do (that unhappy people do not)

Rev. Shane L. Bishop
Rev. Shane Bishop
Mon, 22 May 2017 00:00 UTC
Happy face
I have been thinking a lot about happiness of late, partially because so many people seem unhappy. I think that was my first epiphany upon entering the world of Social Media; people are unhappy and there are a lot of them. Now don't get me wrong, we all know some people who wouldn't be happy, were they not unhappy but I am not talking about them. We will just let them be. I am also not thinking theologically here (i.e. juxtaposing happiness and joy), today I am going to err on the practical and pragmatic side of things. With that being said, let's get going.

I think most people want to be happy; they are just not quite sure how to get there from their present location. Many people honestly believe that happiness is a lucky bounce; a sunny disposition or favorable circumstances but I disagree. Happiness is a choice. I believe the best route to happiness is found by following the footsteps of those who have already arrived.

Here are my observations on the topic that have been formed by watching happy people for decades.
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Sun

Advice from Marcus Aurelius: A stoic way to start the day

Michael W. Austin Ph.D.
Psychology Today
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome and a philosopher, wrote a series of reflections in his personal journal. They were never meant for publication, but what has come to be known as his Meditations is a classic work. It has been influential among not only philosophers, but politicians, leaders, and other interested readers.

In Book 2, Marcus writes about several things that we should say to ourselves to start the day:
"...today, I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, and unsocial."
He goes on to say that it is their ignorance of the true nature of good and evil that leads them to act in these ways. But he highlights our common humanity, that human beings share "the same mind, the same fragment of divinity." He concludes this meditation as follows:
"We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work on opposition against one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition."

Comment: More wisdom from Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics:

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Star

Build your own intellectual oasis

Bill Frezza
Quillette
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 00:01 UTC
sailboat
Two years ago I started an experiment I would like to recommend to you. At the urging of my best friend, concerned not just about my happiness but my mental health, I went dark. Perhaps if enough people give this a try it could help pull our troubled culture out of its downward spiral.

What do I mean by going dark? I've enjoyed a four-decade long career as an engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capital investor working with many others to help build the digital world in which we now live. As the years passed I became more of an "activist," devoting increasing amounts of time, money, and attention to various issues and causes impacting the body politic. For 25 years I wrote regular opinion columns for publications like Network Computing and Communications Week, back in the pre-web days, transitioning to Forbes.com, the Huffington Post, RealClear Markets, the Daily Caller, and the Foundation for Economic Education in the digital age. As my tech career began winding down I spent half a dozen years as a fellow at a Washington DC policy think tank, three as a radio show host on Bloomberg Radio where I had the pleasure of interviewing Claire Lehmann when Quillette was just a gleam in her eye, a couple of years as a roving lecturer on college campuses, all seasoned with a smattering of talking head appearances on TV. I had also been deeply engaged in social media since the phenomenon first emerged.

Then in January of 2018 I abruptly shut it all down, because my best friend was right.
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Family

Cradled by therapy

Elitsa Dermendzhiyska
Aeon.co
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:03 UTC
therapy
© AeonHow attachment theory works in the therapeutic relationship
Why therapy works is still up for debate. But, when it does, its methods mimic the attachment dynamics of good parenting

In 2006, a team of Norwegian researchers set out to study how experienced psychotherapists help people to change. Led by Michael Rønnestad, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oslo, the team followed 50 therapist-patient pairs, tracking, in minute detail, what the therapists did that made them so effective. Margrethe Halvorsen, a post-doc at the time, was given the job of interviewing the patients at the end of the treatment. That's how she met Cora - a woman in her late 40s, single, childless, easy to like. As a kid, Cora (a pseudonym) had suffered repeated sexual abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother's friends. Before entering therapy, she habitually self-harmed. She'd tried to kill herself a number of times too, her body still scarred by the remnants of suicides not carried through.

'Her story was in the room,' Halvorsen tells me, then grows quiet as she stumbles to convey the strong impression that Cora left on her. Seven years after they met, it's still hard to articulate: 'Maybe presence is the right word.' It was the way that Cora spoke of the atrocities done to her - in a steady voice, with clear eyes - that made the researcher wonder how someone so scarred could seem so alive, and undiminished.
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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Breathe Deep to Reap The Benefits of a Healthy Mind: The Tao of Natural Breathing

Elan Martin, Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink
Sott.net
Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
tao of natural breathing
Correct breathing should come as natural to us as, well, breathing. But it doesn't. In fact, most of us so take the simple act of respiration for granted that we have learned to breathe shallowly and, indeed, incorrectly - allowing for a host of all sorts of detrimental knock-on effects. But what does that have to do with the world of ideas and the 'life of the mind' anyway? Well, quite a lot actually as we're coming to learn.

This week on MindMatters join us as we delve into Dennis Lewis' The Tao of Natural Breathing - where a number of crucial connections are made not only between the science of breathing and physiological well-being, but also the benefits given to cognition, our emotional life - and greater perception of our inner and outer directed states of awareness. There are some very good reasons why numerous ancient cultures saw breath as the key and gateway to gaining life force, good health and even spiritual vitality - and perhaps now is as good a time as any to learn why.


Running Time: 01:21:09

Download: MP3 — 74.3 MB

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Hearts

Giving your children experiences instead of toys boosts their intelligence and happiness

Kris Di
I Love Intelligence
Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Mom with children
Recent studies have revealed that giving your child too many things to play with can result in the opposite of the desired effect - they may actually be less happy.

Childhood development researcher, Clair Lerner, suggests that when children are showered with toys and games, they start playing less. An abundance of toys can overwhelm and distract kids, making them lose the concentration needed to learn from these toys.

Lerner's discoveries were mirrored by Michael Malone, a professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Cincinnati.

Malone's studies showed that fewer but better toys lead to increased cooperation and sharing when it comes to valuable life skills. Furthermore, too many toys push children into more solitary play while causing a type of unproductive overload.
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Control Panel

Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem

Charlotte Lieberman
New York Times
Mon, 25 Mar 2019 10:30 UTC
now later
If you've ever put off an important task by, say, alphabetizing your spice drawer, you know it wouldn't be fair to describe yourself as lazy.

After all, alphabetizing requires focus and effort — and hey, maybe you even went the extra mile to wipe down each bottle before putting it back. And it's not like you're hanging out with friends or watching Netflix. You're cleaning — something your parents would be proud of! This isn't laziness or bad time management. This is procrastination.

If procrastination isn't about laziness, then what is it about?

Etymologically, "procrastination" is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow. But it's more than just voluntarily delaying. Procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment.

"It's self-harm," said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology at the University of Calgary and the author of The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.

That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we're not only aware that we're avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.

Comment: See also,

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2 + 2 = 4

Social Nourishment + Restorative Solitude = Human Thriving

Christopher Bergland
Psychology Today
Wed, 25 Dec 2019 10:24 UTC
social interactions
Humans thrive on a smorgasbord of "social nutrition" that includes both restorative alone time and meaningful social interactions, according to a new study. The more choice people have about the social diet, the better they do.

The findings (Hall & Merolla, 2019) were published on December 6 in the journal Human Communication Research. Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas and Andy Merolla of UC Santa Barbara are the co-authors of this study.

Almost 400 people participated in this diary-based study. For 28 consecutive days, each participant documented his or her "social diet" along with feelings of subjective well-being. The researchers use the term "social biome" to describe the unique blend of social interactions and alone time that people experience in daily life.

"Your social biome can be thought of as homeostatic social system," Hall said in a news release. "Some interactions are required, like ones you have to do for your job, and some are habitual or routine. But some are intentional, personal and meaningful in ways that strongly link us to one another. We're working to identify the patterns of interactions that reflect a well-functioning social system."

Most people's "social biome" includes hanging out with friends or family, casual small talk with random strangers, occasional heart-to-heart conversations, periods of solitude, and more. Taken together, the diary entries from this study resulted in 10,368 snapshots of everyday sociability patterns and how people felt during various types of social engagement and during periods of solitude.
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