Difficulties with behaving responsibly and with achieving confidence in our executive functioning produces disappointment, disenchantment and more.
The Center Can Hold
What is different about life now? The ability of newly minted social and older media to spread, via the Internet, inflammatory rhetoric to billions of people 24/7.
Responsible autonomy is a creative feat, a moral obligation, and an independent accomplishment because we must be in control from the lower order.
Crunch Time
The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates. It’s not worth living because it leaves us without access to the elevated joys of wonder, creativity, gratitude, fulfillment and satisfaction.
Until it is the artificial intelligence of robots that tells us what “it’s all about,” human beings provide our information about the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Without such information, we are, in large part, reflexive entities, driven forward and set back by forces we can’t see and don’t understand. Without such information, we live much of
Filtering Your Anger
We choose how we will behave — responsibly, morally, lawfully and productively.
We know from experience that controlling our anger and antagonism is difficult, not least so because our naked-primate, first-responder instincts are fierce and hard-wired into our brains. But it is also difficult because many of us who are habitually resentful, vindictive or cruel do not want to get over our anger. The harsh response is warranted, we believe, because (fill
Wake up and Smell the Coffee
We who study autonomy and life recognize that we need to be bound to be free.
In the 1960s and 1970s the phrase, “Wake up and smell the coffee” was widely used by those in groups whose said purpose was an increased awareness of social phenomena about which they had been clueless and, as well, by those who used the concept as an excuse to get high. What “high” meant to some was a release from
The Matrix Redux
We, too, are subjects deeply rooted in a matrix—an enculturating matrix—and understanding how it works is critical to our ability to manage the enterprise of our autonomy.
The Matrix released in 1999 depicts a dystopian future, degraded and miserable. In the film, reality, as perceived by most humans, is actually a simulated reality. This alternate cybernetic world was created by conscious machines* to subjugate the human population. For humans unaware of their condition, their autonomy is an illusion. We, too, are subjects deeply rooted in a matrix —
When We Are at Our Best
When we put our ego-function to use authentically, we are free to create a life of our own design and able to enjoy it.
Being at our best is far from easy. We’ve much to do to fulfill this intention. There are cognitive and pragmatic tools to acquire, discipline to develop, principles to stand for, nerve and heart to put to the test, sympathetic consideration to extend and love and kindness to bestow. Excluding dire circumstances, what gets in the way of the accomplishment
Finding Your True North
In our transcendent watch over the ego function ... we find our belonging, meaning, relevance and peace of mind.
Finding our true north is hardly doable when with two voices we conduct our search for meaning and purpose and for fulfillment, satisfaction and equanimity. Two voices do not make sense. It makes sense to conduct the search with the voice of the concrete character in the playing out of our lives. This voice was shaped by and is intrinsic
Freedom is Power
Freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom is another word for everything to gain.
Freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom is another word for everything to gain because freedom is the transformative power to determine your destiny, whether it be in contemplation, in dialogue, in discourse or in action. Freedom is the power to voice, and to be, who you say you are, to voice what you stand
Feeling Moody Again?
Moodiness is a conditional suffering that does not have to continue.
Are the moody blues a gateway to profundity? A romantic explanation for anger? A sign that we’re mysterious and deeper than the average individual? A depressing response to a far-from-perfect world? No. Moodiness is a conditional suffering that does not have to continue. Human beings subjectively experience their feelings in their immediacy. Some subjective experience feels decidedly felt in the
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