mindfulness

Hardcore scientists, as Richard Dawkins, thinks that we don't need them. But it may depend on what we mean with a myth. If we mean a  story, like the ones about Zeus or Indra, it may seem like fantasy. Even the stories in the Bible may look like fiction. But Christian people don't seesv it that way. Why? Because it gives them meaning. I can guess that science gives meaning to Dawkins. Yuval Harari looks at humanism and capitalism as myths and stories. We have to believe in them to make them true. The idea that all people  has the same value, is also an idea, although a good one. The value of a dollar is also fiction that becomes real because we all have the same idea. Myth helps us to distinguish between god and bad. Science can't do that. So it may be good to believe in some myth. Some say that science and the idea of its progress is a kind of religion, that nowadays seem to promise longer life or even eternal life as Ray Kurzweil seems to wish for. H

Christian de Duve, a Nobel prize winner, speaks about evolution and inevitability. It may be that it's not pure chance that guides evolution. Why did  life and we humans occur here? De Duve opens up for that it was inevitable that we would occur after some billion years of life on earth. In that case, it may be that creatures similar to us lives on other planets far away. But it may also mean that they have destroyed their own civilization. Anyway de Duve tells us that evolution will go on, and disasters as the hurricane Katrina, may push us to go forward. Perhaps will our brains be bigger. Or maybe we will use biotechnology to make us smarter. As de Duve means, evolution has made us smarter in the past, but not more wise.  Maybe we didn't need that in the past. But nowadays phronesis, practical wisdom, is really needed. We are still a quite young race. And we may change a lot. If the brain changes we may see "reality" in very different way. And we for su

Adam Frank in an interesting figure. Professor of physics and astrobiology at the University of Washington. He  has set up a blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture   where he and others write about science and culture phenomena as spirituality. He emphasises that we need things like values, sacredness and mythology to guide us and science. He has practised Buddhist meditation for many years, and maybe because of that he is open for questions a bit outside of mainstream scie He says he is an atheist but interested in spirituality. He has even been an adviser for the film "Doctor Strange".  "You wonder what I see in your future?", asks the woman in Nepal to Dr Strange and she answers; "possibility". of course, that is inspired of the wave function in quantum physics. An electron seems to be real until it is measured.  Before that it's a wave of possibilities. In a way that can is like when you in daily life becomes like the people around you look

What is that? We better ask Jeremy Lent. He has written a book called "The pattern instinct" which has had good reviews. The Western thought, which started with Platon, is the web of meaning that we in west live in now. Plato wrote about the word of ideas. The material world is just a pale copy of the ideal world. Christianity continued on that path: God is above everything, but the immaterial soul connects us with heaven. Descartes described animals as machines. Richard Dawkins does it too, anyway regarding bats. The mind, or our  thought and intellect is the key to humanism and that's what differs us from  nature and animals. We humans with souls are one thing and the nature another, so why not exploit it? Lent want us to understand the age that we are living  in; Anthropocene. An age that search solutions for everything within technology and science: If the bees starts to disappear, why not make robot bies? But of course Lent prefer living bees. (even if they