Introduction Aesthetic distance is the ability to consciously remember that the murder scene in a performance we are watching is not “real” even though we are emotionally caught up in the drama. That way, we don’t yell “Watch out!” when our favorite character is about to be shot in the back. Our emotions do not […]
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them.”—George Bernard Shaw I was driving home when I saw a dead deer lying in the grass on the side of the road. Oklahoma City covers a lot of ground with enough room to be the “home” of […]
What does it tell us about the meaning of life when we can now say that for the first time in the known history of biology, we are witnessing the evolution of human beings with a concern not only for the suffering and dying of their own kind, but also for the suffering and dying […]
Recently, Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and talked at length about his thoughts on science in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of his energy was spent entertainingly arguing for the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory. However, what caught my attention and made me think Jon really gets why our current […]
Consciousness is the perception of the purpose of life. Intelligence is the ability to successfully fulfill that purpose. Introduction The quadrune mind model states that the human brain is able to produce four distinctly different minds. Each mind has a different level of consciousness. The purpose of life is dramatically different for each mind’s level of consciousness. The […]
Speed and Efficiency Two values that American culture (officially) holds in high esteem are speed and efficiency. We agree that speed and efficiency are vitally important goals to have for the hospital emergency room, the fire department, and other first responders. But how do they work for the rest of us in our everyday lives? […]
(Or, Metamorphoses of Mind) Introduction Quadrune mind is a secular, evolutionary model of spiritual consciousness. Until the 21st century, consciousness has “naturally” expanded on earth without active, intentional human intervention, but that is rapidly changing. With emerging neurotechnologies, neuroscientists and neuroengineers are capable of making radical changes to what the human brain is and what kind of mind(s) […]
If we look at the conflicts between people reported today in the news and recorded in world history books, we might be able to create a fairly long list of causes. Interestingly, for every cause there is an opposite and equal “re-cause.” Like the song Everyday People says, many people will always look for an […]
(We Make the World Better) There is an essential point that may sometimes get lost in our many examples of the harm caused by behaving from a pre-Human mind: throughout evolution and human history, we are moving toward becoming more loving and better people; i.e., more Human-minded. The quadrune mind model is a melioristic model, […]
The Reptilian Mind For the infant, disruption of its biological homeostatic balance needed to sustain life is “felt” at a physiological level as life-threatening, which it is. Similarly, for the infantile reptilian-minded “adult,” anything experienced as a threat to the status quo can also be “felt” as life-threatening, as much as asphyxiation would be for […]