The Two Mind Hypothesis
Simplifies an understanding of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, language, religion, self-awareness, free will, and the experience of being human for the last three million years.
Simplifies an understanding of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, language, religion, self-awareness, free will, and the experience of being human for the last three million years.
The motivation for self-display, which is part of virtually all aspects of modern human striving by individuals, throws a different light on the role of ego. Freud cast the ego in modern humans as a mediator between the superego, representing the inhibitions demanded by society, and the antisocial impulses of the (primate) id. To me, …
BACK COVER OF THE BOOK The Ascension of the Human Spirit (excerpt) The remarkable aspect of evolution by sexual selection, which Darwin so courageously proposed, is that it is driven merely by the desire for a trait, in this case the desire for justice. I had realized that sexual selection is not only driven by …
The New York Times ran a story last week about “going flat” after breast surgery. With no idea of how it relates to such a decision, I thought it might be useful to frame-out one aspect of the evolution of human breasts according to the Blog’s two-mind paradigm. This one aspect concerns the fact that …
From Old Mind, New Mind: Emotional Fossils and the Evolution of the Human Spirit Being conscious is one thing, but being conscious of being conscious is quite another . . . . I had been thinking about thinking from the very beginning of my journey as a philosopher. My original notion, drawn from my observations …
George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life has never felt that his altruistic, group-oriented behavior is really part of “him” (he’s the one who feels trapped and wants the bigger life); and the revelation that he has been existing in this other spiritual, old-mind realm all along is a wondrous surprise to him—so much so that he now doesn’t care whether he goes to jail or not!
Our vulnerability to mental illness is similar to our vulnerability to lower back, hip, and knee pathology, which is the price we pay for the adaptive advantages of upright posture. Mental illness is similarly the price we pay for our mental capacities for large-group bonding, reflective self-awareness, and the complexity of linguistic syntax.
Jill was in turmoil. She knew that Jack had been jealous of the dog he nicknamed Sissy
A biological dimension to David Brooks’ “The Social Animal” & “The Road to Character.”
Although not really caring about truth, the bullshit artist requires a sensitivity to the variable tensile strength (stretchability) of truth (particularly about oneself) with each and every audience.
This alternative view of human nature is a deeper, richer, and far more noble narrative of our exclusively human legacy: that of an indomitable spirit possessed of a will for justice and sustained through the millennia by the bounty that it fosters.
How the mentally ill tell us who we are
Although there are limitations on how much can be known scientifically about the evolution of emotional experience through deep time, other methods of knowing can penetrate the origin of our emotions and thus reveal the core of human nature.
How E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins introduced me to the spiritual dimensions of evolution.
Studies in China reveal that the well-known Asian communal mind set compared to the more individualistic West is attributed to the interdependence necessary for farming rice compared to wheat.
Thoughts about the Native American Hopewell Culture, Stonehenge, modern religion and the fear of death.
The 3 acts of human evolution are 1)from primates formed groups; 2) The 6 million year pre-human hominid period; 3) Homo sapiens
How E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins introduced me to the spiritual dimensions of evolution.
The mystery and complexity of many aspects of human language can be simplified by considering the emotional dynamics that underlies it.
being conscious about being conscious I had been thinking about thinking from the very beginning. My original notion, drawn from my observations of prisoners, was that the internal dialogue of human thought consists of an internalized interaction between dominant and submissive mentalities. I continue to believe that thought is fundamentally the interaction between two different …
