If one acquires insight and loses attachment in conjunction with years of meditative practice, how much credit goes to the awareness and how much to the teachings that promote a specific worldview?
Growth in global GDP increases energy consumption in the near term but reduces GHG emissions over the longer term. Economic growth promotes urbanization, education of women, delay of childbearing, lower fertility rates, improved agricultural productivity, and technological innovation. ...
I would imagine that many people who commit criminal acts are victims of abusive caregiving, awful environments, or at least genetically-influenced traits that facilitate criminal behavior (e.g., impulsiveness, mental illness, substance abuse, cognitive impairments). As victims, should these offenders get special treatment in the criminal justice system?
In several posts I have supported a modest Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), with the proviso that it be sufficiently miserly not to disincentivize work or add to the federal budget.
Global population growth is not slowing down fast enough.
In a recent post I wrote how Vietnam’s stronger land tenure rights have contributed to reforestation in the countryside by giving smallholders a greater stake in maintaining their woodlands, which have economic value. But context is all: Secure property rights is not a cure-all for environmental degradation.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center does research on the costs and benefits of various policy approaches to global problems and provides information on which policy targets will do the most social good relative to their costs – acknowledging that factors other than cost/benefit ratios are also important.
How can we increase reforestation on this poor benighted planet? A good start is to see what lessons we can draw from places where reforestation has already happened naturally rather than as an intended result of deforestation policy.
Ideal # 4: Everyone has a right to 16 years of education Let the questions begin! Is there an age limit to this right? For instance, 30, 50, 70? How is the “right” realized? Through free tuition? Through a stipend? Is there a course/training load required to activate the right? Are there performance requirements to maintain the right? ...
Implicit beliefs are assumptions. To assume is not the same thing as believing something is the case. To assume is to take for granted. When I walk, I assume my feet will encounter resistance.
Beliefs are confident opinions about something. To feel confident about a belief requires that one entertain the belief. To entertain a belief is to entertain the possibility of it being untrue.
Here I am thinking about the type of beliefs much discussed in clinical psychology, such as the following “irrational” beliefs identified by Albert Ellis: It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in their community. One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person....
... anxiety and fear are more responses to the absence of comforting beliefs than the presence of uncomfortable beliefs.
What lets fear in is the uncertainty, not the belief. Uncertainty without the compensation of belief - that ultimately it will work out, that there is a secure harbor, despite the present confusion – creates a vacuum that is filled by alarm.
There is a time to give into temptations and a time to resist them. Whenever there’s a tug-of-war among competing goals, and you have to override one behavior or goal in favor of another, self-regulation is involved. Enjoying what the moment has to offer is a worthy goal. When to honor that goal is the question.
Self-regulation is a internal goal management process where we override or preempt one goal in favor of another. By ‘goal’ I mean an outcome and the forces marshaled by that outcome: behaviors, emotions, and attention. Don’t do that, calm down, look the other way, think of something else.
Self-regulation is often defined as a homeostatic process: you’ve got the set point (goal, standard, value, or ideal); you detect a discrepancy in your “system” (e.g., goal-incongruent behavior, goal-undermining internal state – like feeling rage when you’re trying to be nice); and then you take corrective action (e.g., shut the fuck up, take a deep breath, walk away). Just like how a thermostat works. According to one time-sampling study, we are self-regulating about half our waking hours.
We want witnesses to our witnessing. Most of the time, eyes glaze over. You had to be there. Except for the blessed: those who are good story tellers. They gather witnesses. And so their worlds live on a little longer.
How do people become climate change skeptics? Was it through manipulation by the Forces of Evil and/or Stupidity (e.g., Corporations, Republicans, Religion)? Did exposure to skeptical messages by these Forces lead them down the path of Doubt and Ignorance? Or was it simple group identification – my friends are skeptics, ergo…? As it turns out, a lot of skeptics say they used to be more concerned about climate change...
Linguistic conventions keep tripping me up when I write about thoughts and thinking. It sounds like there is a little homunculus in the head listening to thoughts, encouraging them to proceed, or directing them to more worthwhile topics.