Science of the Spirit

Who wants to play the status game?

Agnes Callard
The Point
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:01 UTC

When you first meet someone, you "feel each other out" to see where your lives might connect — where are you from, what do you do, what music/art/books do you like, etc. You are looking for common ground on the basis of which your conversation might proceed. Call this the Basic Game; I'd like to contrast it with two more advanced games that can be played in its stead, or alongside it.

In the Importance Game, participants jockey for position. This usually works by way of casual references to wealth, talent, accomplishment or connections, but there are many variants. I can, for instance, play this game by pretending to eschew it: "Let's get straight down to business" can telegraph my being much too important to waste time with such games; or your being so unimportant as to render the game otiose.

The other game is the Leveling Game, and it uses empathy to equalize the players. So I might performatively share feelings of stress, inadequacy or weakness; or express discontent with the Powers that Be; or home in on a source of communal outrage, frustration or oppression.

Comment: See also:

MindMatters: Living the Good Life - The Stoic Way

Corey Schink, Harrison Koehli, Carolyn MC
Sott.net
Sat, 18 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

What good is philosophy? For the Stoics, among other schools, philosophy is dead if it is not fully lived. That's why the Stoics presented not just a system of logic and cosmology, but also a way of living - to put into practice the principles on which the system is built. But while the Stoic schools that taught this way of life died out many years ago, that doesn't mean that Stoicism is no longer an option for people today. Stoicism has experienced a revival in recent years.

Today on MindMatters we take a look at one modern presentation of practical Stoicism, laid out in William B. Irvine's Guide to the Good Life, as well as complementary methods and practices from other systems, like G. I. Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way." Whether you go "full Stoic", like Irvine, or merely adopt some of their practices to integrate into your daily life, there's a lot to learn from the Stoic sages of old, and their modern interpreters.

Running Time: 00:59:16

Download: MP3 — 54.3 MB

Writing science fiction not reports provided greater understanding of concepts - study

Russ Colson
Earth Science Issues
Tue, 07 Jan 2020 12:00 UTC

Abstract: Students in an introductory college geology course engaged in one of two exercises to learn more about the concept of cross cutting relationships, a major principle in stratigraphy. One exercise involved writing a report on the concept, the other involved writing a science fiction story based on the concept. Preliminary results suggest that students who engaged with the material within the context of science fiction writing gained a deeper understanding.

As a professor of geology and a science fiction writer, I became curious this past academic term about how science fiction writing might influence students' perceptions of science or their understanding of science ideas. Science fiction is fiction of course, and not intended to be real science. However I thought that science fiction writing might engage students in thinking about science concepts and perhaps provide an educational tool comparable to other science learning methods.

Comment: See also:

Learning is consolation for sorrow: What to do when the world gets you down

Maria Popova
BrainPickings
Mon, 13 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

In his wonderful contribution to A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, Yo-Yo Ma tells children about how books helped him survive his own childhood, listing King Arthur among his three great heroes; as a young boy born in France to Chinese parents, trying to find his mooring as an immigrant in America, he reaped great consolation and inspiration from the tales of the legendary medieval leader — stories of "adventure, heroism, human frailty and accidental destiny" that emboldened him to believe in the power of the quest for holy grails and improbable dreams — dreams as improbable as a small boy with no homeland growing up to be the world's greatest cellist.

And, indeed, buried inside the adventure-thrill of these Arthurian tales are treasure troves of wisdom on fortitude, courage, and the art of honorable living, nowhere richer than in the novels by T.H. White (May 29, 1906-January 17, 1964), one particular passage in which offers a meta-testament to the potency of reading in the character-formation of King Arthur himself.

The Power of Bad: How to overcome your brain's 'negativity bias'

Jill Suttie
Greater Good Magazine
Mon, 13 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

Why can't we pull our attention away from a traffic accident or stop watching news about the latest viral outbreak? Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend?

That's our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go right — so much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness.

Overcoming our negativity bias is not easy to do. But a new book, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, coauthored by social psychologist Roy Baumeister and New York Times writer John Tierney, inspires hope. The book not only covers the fascinating science behind this stubborn bias, but also gives readers practical tips to work around it in effective — and sometimes counterintuitive — ways. If we know that "bad" is stronger than "good," the authors argue, we can use that knowledge to improve not only our own lives, but society at large.

Recently, I spoke with the authors about their book and what we can learn from it. Below is an edited version of our interview.

Comment: See also:

Mysteries of the human heart: The communication between heart and brain

Gaia
Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:01 UTC

“The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.” — Charlotte Brontë

The human heart, the size of two adult fists, is mysterious, intelligent, powerful, and sometimes inexplicable. The Egyptians believed that Anubis, the god of the underworld and judge of the dead, weighed the hearts of the recently deceased against a feather — if the two balanced, the heart would be returned to owner. If the heart was heavier, it was weighted by bad deeds and fed to a monster.

Heart as Ruler of the Brain

Aristotle considered the heart as the center of reason, thought, and emotion, senior to the brain in importance. Ninth century Arabic philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi believed that, "The ruling organ in the human body is the heart; the brain is a secondary ruling organ subordinated to the heart." Auguste Comte, a 19th century French philosopher declared that the brain should be servant to the heart.

"The most common denominator in all religions is that the heart is the seat of wisdom," said Rollin McCraty Ph.D, director of research at the groundbreaking HeartMath Institute in Santa Cruz, CA. Twelfth century Christian mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, would agree. She wrote, "The soul sits at the center of the heart, as though in a house."

Comment: As with all the findings coming out of the HeartMath Institute, it's difficult to assess where the science stops and the wild speculation begins. That the work they are doing is very interesting isn't really at question. But one has to wonder what their methods and techniques are trying to accomplish.

See also:

Question everything: The one habit that changed my life

DariusForoux.com
Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

It's 2020, you don't need a blogger, YouTuber, or social media person to tell you that reading, exercising, meditating, eating nutrient-dense food, journaling, and drinking enough water are good habits.

I've written those types of articles as well. But society is slowly changing. People are waking up. We're more aware of what we do, what we put in our bodies, and how we live.

There's a lot of personal growth advice everywhere you go. For the past few years, it seems like everyone is obsessed with self-improvement. You can tell that by the amount of self-help advice that you can get from mainstream media.

Even traditional outlets like The WSJ feature articles about overcoming procrastination, personal finance, and healthy living. It's everywhere. You can't open Netflix without being bombarded with the latest health documentaries.

But while this advice might look good on the surface, there are a few issues if you think about it more deeply:

What advice is true? There's a lot of contradicting advice out there.
Why do people defend their beliefs so firmly? Have you ever had a discussion with a vegan? You can't. They are not open to other ideas.
Why do give people advice? What are people's interests? Why do they invest time and resources in convincing people that certain things are true?

Comment: More food for thought:

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

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

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

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.

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

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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Science of the Spirit

Who wants to play the status game?

MindMatters: Living the Good Life - The Stoic Way

Writing science fiction not reports provided greater understanding of concepts - study

Learning is consolation for sorrow: What to do when the world gets you down

The Power of Bad: How to overcome your brain's 'negativity bias'

Mysteries of the human heart: The communication between heart and brain

Question everything: The one habit that changed my life

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

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

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

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