Science of the SpiritS


Magic Wand

Resilience is a skill that can be cultivated, a psychologist explains

man climbing mountain
© mihtiander/iStock via Getty Images PlusSimilar to building up the skills needed to climb a mountain or perform another physical task, resilience can be learned over time, an expert argues.
The word resilience can be perplexing. Does it mean remaining calm when faced with stress? Bouncing back quickly? Growing from adversity? Is resilience an attitude, a character trait or a skill set? And can misperceptions about resilience hurt people, rather than help?

To sum it up in a sentence: Resilience is the ability to manage stress in effective ways. It's not a static quality or attribute you're born with, or a choice of attitude. Instead, it's a set of skills that can be developed by repeating specific behaviors. As a clinical psychologist, researcher and educator specializing in training people to cope with stress more effectively, I know that resilience can be developed.

But as with physical fitness, you can't get stronger abs by just wanting them. Instead, you have to repeat specific exercises that make your abs stronger; intention alone just won't do it.

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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: From Archons to the Matrix: Understanding American Gnosis with Arthur Versluis

versluis
The ancient idea of spiritual gnosis has evolved and branched to reflect the time and place in which we live. Nowhere is this development more evident than in the writings and scholarship of author Arthur Versluis. In his groundbreaking new book American Gnosis: Political Religion and Transcendence, Versluis takes an in-depth look at the varieties of modern 'neo-gnosticism.' These include cosmological gnosticism - the worldly effort to escape from archons of darkness or hostile beings that would seek to subjugate the world through politics and other power structures. Another is metaphysical gnosis, or transcendence that is less a reaction to the perception of evil overlords than movement towards divine knowledge for its own sake.

Join us this week on MindMatters as we delve into the realm of cosmological gnosis with Arthur Versluis, and look at the plethora of ways in which some really old ideas have been reinvigorated (alongside some newer ones). How do these ideas present themselves in literature, TV and movies? Is there is a crossover between 'political awakening' and 'spiritual awakening'? And what, if anything, may this have to do with some developments we've been seeing with the so-called 'dissident right' in the US?


Running Time: 01:26:16

Download: MP3 — 118 MB



Calendar

The time traveling mistake we make when we procrastinate

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Mozart, the great and enduring musical genius, doesn't conform to our stereotypical notion of a musical prodigy.

Did he practice for hours per day? Nope. Was he well intentioned with his plans? Also no.

More of a partier than a conscientious adult, Mozart, as biographers have described him, was someone who was "much addicted to trifling amusement."

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that he also wasn't known for finishing compositions promptly. In fact, in late October of 1787, after having all but wrapped up the score for Don Giovanni, he decided to go out for a night of drinking with buddies. Toward the end of the evening, one friend nervously turned to Mozart and remarked that with the opera due to be performed for the first time the next day, he couldn't believe that the overture hadn't been written yet!

Mozart hurriedly returned home to start — and hopefully finish — this missing piece. But, because he kept nodding off due to the alcohol and the late hour, he asked his wife, Constanze, to help him stay awake by telling him stories.

Brain

Research shows that sniffing women's tears reduces aggressive behavior in men

tears old image
© CC0, creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
New research, published in PLOS Biology, shows that tears from women contain chemicals that block aggression in men. The study led by Shani Agron at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, finds that sniffing tears leads to reduced brain activity related to aggression, which results in less aggressive behavior.

Male aggression in rodents is known to be blocked when they smell female tears. This is an example of social chemosignaling, a process that is common in animals but less common — or less understood — in humans.

To determine whether tears have the same effect in people, the researchers exposed a group of men to either women's emotional tears or saline while they played a two-person game. The game was designed to elicit aggressive behavior against the other player, whom the men were led to believe was cheating.

Comment: Crying generally triggers feelings of sympathy and concern so it's interesting to see that it has a physiological effect too. Some instinctively recognize this and cry to manipulate or control others. That's not to say all crying is manipulative, sometimes it can be due to despair or frustration. It would be interesting to see if the males in the study had the same response to tears from a child or another male.

As a side note, the study was conducted in Israel, one wonders if things would be any different if their male citizens could smell Palestinian women's tears...


Cassiopaea

Gladness and silence amid chaos and violence

shadows at night
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.

... The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth.

- Revelation 17:1-5
I had been emotionally involved a few times with women with enough of a record of promiscuity to make me vaguely uneasy. It is difficult to put much value on something the lady has distributed all too generously. I have the feeling there is some mysterious quota, which varies with each woman. And whether she gives herself or sells herself, once she reaches her own number, once X pairs of hungry hands have been clamped rightly upon her rounded undersides, she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death.

― MacDonald, John D. (1966). "Darker Than Amber", Travis McGee series, Random House LLC, 2013, pgs 56-57
We live in an age of wizards and whores where souls are sold in the pursuit of material pleasures. Time-honored principles have been traded for profit and power as lawlessness intensifies.

Black Magic

Best of the Web: How scientific materialism begot woke ideology

lawrence krauss
Physicist Lawrence Krauss, die-hard materialist
Last week, I received the following email from the National Association of Scholars (NAS):
Join the National Association of Scholars on Friday, December 8, at 3 pm ET for "Restoring the Sciences: Science Under Attack."

Free inquiry, open debate, and skeptical questioning are the cornerstones of healthy science. But does that describe science today? Arguably, no — those cornerstones are currently being eroded at universities and scientific institutions around the county.

Can scientists pretend that science is immune to the ideologies that have conquered the humanities and are now sweeping through a broad range of disciplines in the science ecosystem? "No," says Dr. Lawrence Krauss. Science is imperiled, and without scientists standing up for core principles, the vibrancy of scientific discovery and scholarship is in danger of following the liberal arts to a post-truth future.

This event will feature Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist, theoretical physicist, author, and winner of numerous international awards for his scientific research and his writing. He is a passionate advocate of science, and for enlightening the public on the value of science to society, and the importance of defending science's core principles. He is president of The Origins Project Foundation.

To learn more about the event, click here.
The NAS here is attempting to stand against the subversion of the academy, and science in particular, from the assaults on freedom of thought and expression by woke ideology. Increasingly, I'm seeing people like Krauss (and Pinker and Dawkins) assume the role as champions of traditional academic values (reason, merit, free discourse) against the barbarian hordes.

Attention

Leading biologist explains why you can so often sense when someone is looking at you even if your back is turned

Sherlock
© Kathleen Hankins'Sherlock Holmes'
Have you ever felt you were being watched? Almost everybody has. It's a scientific phenomenon that is universal.

More than 80 per cent of women, and nearly three-quarters of men, questioned in Britain, the U.S. and Scandinavia, say they have experienced it — turning around to find someone staring at them, or looking at someone from behind who turned and looked back.

Numerous studies have proved that the sensation can be reproduced under rigorous laboratory conditions. Those who watch people for a living, such as private detectives and celebrity photographers, have no doubt it's real. Professionals who use long-range lenses, including paparazzi and snipers, know the moment when the target senses their gaze and looks straight at them.

It's well documented in literature. Here is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, describing it:
"At breakfast this morning I suddenly had that vague feeling of uneasiness which overcomes some people when closely stared at, and, quickly looking up, I met his eyes bent upon me with an intensity which amounted to ferocity."
I have even interviewed people who believe they owe their life to it. William Carter, leading a patrol of Gurkhas on an anti-terrorist operation in Malaya in 1951, said:
"I had an uncanny feeling that someone was watching me ... the sensation of something almost gripping me at the back of the neck. I turned around and there, about 20 yards away, was a chap in uniform with a red star on his cap, gazing hard at me. He was bringing his rifle up and I knew one of us was going to be killed. I shot him before he shot me."
The ability can improve with practice. Some teachers of martial arts train their students to become more sensitive to looks from behind and to discern their direction.

Bullseye

Truth-speaking and the technocratic cabal

mask and shadow
Truth-speaking (or truth-telling) is not the same as truth. At least not in the familiar sense of a correspondence between what is stated and the state of affairs to which it corresponds - the so-called correspondence theory of truth. Or, for that matter, the coherence theory of truth, which judges the truth of statements by the criterion of whether it coheres with the body of statements within which it functions.

There are several other such theories of truth, for example the pragmatic theory of truth, which assesses truth in the light of what supposedly true statements do, or by their consequences for action (ancient Greek 'pragma': 'thing done'; 'act'; 'deed').

Truth-telling, or in ancient Greek, parrhesia, is something different. It is what one does when you tell or speak the truth exactly as you experience or perceive it, with no punches pulled. You don't have to call the proverbial spade a shovel (unless this is what it takes to get through to your interlocutor), but you have to speak truthfully without holding back. This is particularly relevant for speaking (or writing) in public, where you run the risk of exposing yourself to harsh criticism.

People

Scientists revisit Solomon Asch's classic conformity experiments with surprising results

brain head
In a compelling revival of a classic social psychology experiment, a new study has found that group pressure significantly influences individual decisions, not just in simple tasks but also in expressing political opinions. This modern replication and extension of Solomon Asch's famed experiments of the 1950s provides new insights into human behavior. The findings appear in the journal PLOS One.

Over 70 years ago, Solomon Asch conducted a series of groundbreaking experiments that fundamentally changed our understanding of conformity. Asch's experiment was straightforward but powerful. He invited individuals to participate in a group task where they had to match line lengths.

Unbeknownst to the main participant, the rest of the group were confederates — people in on the experiment. These confederates gave deliberately wrong answers to see if the participant would conform to the group's incorrect consensus or trust their own judgment. Astonishingly, Asch found that a significant number of people chose to conform to the obviously wrong group decision rather than rely on their own perceptions.

Fast forward to the present, and researchers at the University of Bern decided to revisit and expand upon Asch's seminal work. Their motivation was twofold. Firstly, they wanted to see if Asch's findings, primarily conducted with American students, still held true in a different cultural and temporal context. Secondly, they were curious to explore the impact of monetary incentives on decisions and how this dynamic plays out in more complex decision-making areas like political opinions.

Caesar

The attack of the pseudo-men

man working out
I went to the local mall this weekend and seeing all the pseudo-men and pseudo-women walking around and seeing all the glittering products attempting to appeal to these people, I thought that I had to write an article about it.

I chose the pseudo-man to focus on because I am a man myself. (I have my man-faults, but attempting to be a pseudo-man I don't think is one of them.) I also am not convinced being a pseudo-woman is all that prevalent in the culture. Although girls that appear to be pseudo-girls are common, that, in my humble opinion, is an entirely different thing.

"Pseudo" in this context implies "trying to be something you should be, but aren't."

What I see going on with young pubescent girls shows no attempt to be something they should be, they don't seem to have any desire to be healthy, well integrated "girls." It is more like they are trying, and for the most part succeeding, to be something the culture is defining for them. Which isn't very pretty (literally and metaphorically).

I don't feel there are many pseudo-women because women who are trying to be mature women generally succeed. Some don't, I realize that, but I don't see it as being as major of a problem as what I see happening with men.

Comment: Don't miss: Tonic Masculinity