Spiritual Endeavour: Dark Night of the Soul – 4
[Exploring Life] When we receive an education we are placed into a system of prerequisites that have been determined by an amorphous agency. By definition, education is an experience that is predetermined, imposed, rigidly structured, and bound to a self-reinforcing system of evaluation. The essence of the education system originates in automation, mechanization, generalization, and [...]
Nature of Belief: Escaping Cultural Confinement
[Exploring Life] Culture may be viewed as a universal tendency for people within stable geographic populations to create sets of beliefs, values and expectations that serve to create a sense of social coherence. It may be that culture is an offspring of the innate human need to belong. Perhaps culture originated as groups of people [...]
Nature of Belief: The Realm of Evidence
We interpret our experiences in life through a complex and often hidden network of beliefs. The human brain is a belief engine; beliefs are the apparatus and raw materials of the mind. They lie at the core of our emotions, determine our subsequent behaviour, and shape the course of our lives. In a basic sense, [...]
Ecopsychology: Release from Spiritual Confinement
[Exploring Life] Ecopsychology embraces three vital concepts, relationship, interaction, and belonging. Psychology has had an incestuous history, one in which it constantly looked for solutions to the problems it was responsible for creating in the first place. In this sense, psychology created its own market by infecting people with false assumptions about behaviour, emotions, and [...]
Mental Degradation: Multitasking
[Exploring Life] Multitasking is a Delusion: The extent to which we can sometimes become a victim of our own delusions can be quite surprising. A delusion is a false belief that has been accepted as fact, and is quite resistant to reason or common sense. In other words, delusions are remarkably resilient and durable. They [...]
Time: Dreaming Time
[Exploring Life] Defining time is an immensely difficult task. We superimpose clocks and calendars as a means to orient ourselves to the natural cycles of the earth. Both clocks and calendars are ideas that serve to create presuppositions about how we relate to the movement and flow of our lives. A “new year” is a [...]
Education: Losing Your Element
Do schools kill creativity? This is the opening question of an interesting interview with Sir Ken Robinson, an “expert” on creativity and innovation. The answer is deceptively simple: “Yes, of course they do.” Though this may sound somewhat sarcastic, the reality of schooling is the systematic obliteration of the individual including their creativity, and their [...]