Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick…
Category
Philosophy
Authority, power, domination & intimidation is what dictators, kings & emperors have used to subjugate & oppress their people for centuries. So why do parents do the same thing?
Authoritarian leadership–whether at home or in the classroom–means that the control is in the hands of the adult leader. It has been researched and proven for decades how ineffective maintaining control through power is. Authoritarianism often creates fearful and subservient children and/or rebellion. … I have come to the conclusion that parents over the years…
To Think Is To Forget: Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein
Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, “It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world we must filter it. To think,” Borgese writes, “is to forget.” I am currently enjoying Joshua Foer’s book Moonwalking with Einstein. It is a book about memory, specifically…
Kierkegaard: Love is the works of love.
…To the Christian love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristan conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ’s love was…
The Principalities and Powers are Legion: William Stringfellow and The Idolatrous Life Taking Things
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits… And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and…
What is the real me?
What is the real me? It is certainly more than the matter of my body, because that it changing all the time. The atoms are always changing – but in some sense it is the pattern of how the atoms are formed. That, I think, is what the soul is (agreeing with Thomas Aquinas). It…
Aliens Haven’t Invaded Because They’re Busy Playing Video Games
In a movie theater we all stare straight ahead And wait for something to happen. Some need to be fulfilled, Others just want to be accepted. I think we’ve all seen this one before. It stars that insatiable hunger for what is yet to come, Directed by that unintelligible twitch in our brain Which says…
Glimpsing the Invisible
Tentatively enduring each agonizing gasp, you force your lungs to work but your eyes don’t blink. They finally called your name and you did the very thing you told yourself you wouldn’t do. Two steps ago you were safe in your chair. Now you’re that much closer to that fast approaching future you thought you’d…
I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days: Steve Martin, Rob Bell, Aions and Aions
[Speaking to Marie in bed while she sleeps] Navin R. Johnson: I know we’ve only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like…
Why I like Hardcore Music: Art, Morality and Catharsis
The philosophical debate over the moral effects of the arts is hardly new; we can trace it back at least as far as the writings of Plato (ca.428–ca.348 bce) and his most famous student, Aristotle (384–322 bce). Plato argues that we should be suspicious of the so-called “imitative arts,” because they arouse our passions—“Frantic tick…