NOTE: Acting Like Adults is in an awkward place for readers. General readers are not usually drawn to a book with endnotes, not to mention ones as extensive as in this book. On the other hand, professional and scholarly readers are not usually drawn to books with endnotes that are not written by other professionals and scholars. I […]
There is no Christian church with a more direct, intimate relationship with the life of Jesus of Nazareth than the one I was born into: the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. Its roots lie in the same ground that Jesus walked on, and are deeper than the written Gospels. The church, my cultural heritage, and […]
I love aphorisms. Below are aphorisms I have written to help express the values of the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness. Aphorisms that originally appeared in blog posts are hyperlinked to their respective post. I have also used aphorisms with the “30 Habits of the Human Mind” to describe characteristics of human consciousness in […]
How to Use Humanizing Habits of Mind to Create a Spiritual Consciousness More men become good through practice than by nature. —Democritus Background A basic principle of the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness is that people are not born either spiritually enlightened or spiritually fallen. Also, being spiritually conscious does not mean having a holier-than-thou attitude […]
Introduction If you were to ask a human being and a bat, “What is it like to have a mind?,” you would expect to get unimaginably different answers. What is less expected is that if you asked four different people the same question, you could receive four unimaginably different answers. In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked […]
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped,and the insight to know the one from the other.—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1937 Introduction In the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness, we state that the purpose of a Human life is to reduce suffering and increase healing, but what does that […]
(Looking for black and white answers in a kaleidoscopic world) “All we want are the facts, ma’am,” the television police detective Joe Friday used to demand from witnesses of crimes. He just wanted the facts to get at the truth about a crime he was investigating. We’ve all seen television shows in which a lawyer is pressing […]
Background When I was about 9 years old growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, I remember stating my opinion to a grown-up man. It started out with “I think…” about some forgotten topic. However, I do remember his response: “Do you think or do you know?” Well, I doubt if I really knew what I was talking about, but […]
The Differences among Automaticity, Solemn Rituals, Spiritual Rituals, and Awe Recent posts have described incidents of unusually silent behaviors of people: Sacred Spaciousness in a Physically Tiny Montreal Restaurant suggested that a Human mentality was dominant in the vignette presented, while Automaticity: Humans Behaving Like Machines described examples of speechlessness when a reptilian mind was dominant. In this post […]
(Including Driving, Meals, Sex, and Work) automaton n.1. a machine that simulates human functions (e.g., a mechanized installation device on a conveyor belt) via preprogramed coded instructions. 2. a human acting in an autonomous and routine manner, seemingly without an external driving force. APA Dictionary of Psychology. automaticity n. the quality of a behavior or mental process that can be carried […]