Global Peace Index
July 30th, 2007
Life
July 29th, 2007
“Death Is Our Wedding With Eternity”
July 28th, 2007
There exists a fundamental desire to avoid death is in all living lifeforms. In many cultures, humans avoid the idea, and only struggle with it late in life when it looms close, when they become desperate to justify their life as worthy. In some Buddhist and Hindu practices, followers are encouraged to visualize their rotting bodies and embrace death as simply a transition of life from one form to another. Other cultures like the ancient Egyptians and countless empires past and present seek immortality through conquest and death of others. In modern news, body counts are used as a measure of how the species is doing in it’s struggle against death. Here’s a interesting trailer of a documentary that explores this idea, and the consequences of the human capability to attempt to escape the grasp of death:
Flight From Death - The Quest for Immortality (available as a rental on DVD)
The mystery of the afterlife leaves it upon the imagination what to believe. Carl Jung spoke of death as a conundrum of the psyche:
Time May Not Exist!
July 27th, 2007
Interesting to read this after the article a few posts back about the Ten Dimensions
The Paradox of Choice
July 24th, 2007
Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860)
Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the landscape takes a different view from that which it presented at first, and changes again, as we come nearer. This is just what happens–especially with our wishes. We often find something else, nay, something better than what we were looking for; and what we look for, we often find on a very different path from that on which we began a vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure, happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge–a real and permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and illusory one.
“Freedom” is a double-edged sword! Following on this thought:
Below are just the first part of these series - for other parts, search “century of self” “power of nightmares” and “the trap freedom what happened” on Google or YouTube. Adam Curtis of the BBC shares his cynical vision on how the concept of freedom has been distorted by government elites to control the masses:
No End In Sight
July 22nd, 2007
Rationalizing The Meaning of Life
July 22nd, 2007
The human brain has a amazing tendency to rationalize to keep the notion of one’s identity afloat when faced with contrary evidence or truths. If you ask a murderer or a dictator who commits crimes against humanity, they will usually see themselves as doing the “right thing.” The same goes for political and corporate leaders who become corrupted by power or greed. Many soldiers only deal with the mental horrors of their actions on duty, only after the fight. Even spirituality is not immune, from priests who sexually molest, to religious fanatics that commit bombings, to those who portray themselves as holy to gain power or money.
The mind’s rationalizing power no doubt developed as a biological mechanism to grease the gears of tribal life for our ancestors, so that they may live a less stressful life and justify actions in a social setting. But can we modern humans transcend this tendency that gets our species into so much trouble?
An interesting study was performed in the 70’s that exposes the human tendency to distort reality under social pressure:
All meaning is extracted from experience, culture, identity. Inherently, it has no truth to it. Here is an interesting map of how different people around the world have extracted their meaning of life based on their location or cultural influence:
