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 ...

I read in Wikipedia: "Currently, the Earth is in an icehouse climate state. About 34 million years ago, ice sheets began to form in  Antarctica ; the ice sheets in the  Arctic  did not start forming until 2 million years ago. [5]  Some processes that may have led to our current icehouse may be connected to the development of the Himalayan Mountains and the opening of the  Drake Passage  between  South America  and Antarctica. Scientists have been attempting to compare the past transitions between icehouse and greenhouse, and vice versa to understand where our planet is now heading. Without the human influence on the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a  glacial  period. Predicted changes in  orbital forcing  suggest that in absence of human-made  global warming  the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now [  (see  Milankovitch cycles ). But due ...

This a is a big question  and of course no one has an answer that suits all of us. Let's start with the problem that some of us see, but the most of us seem to not grip. Climate change may be an existential question. Why? Is it not the solution political and technical? If whe more and more produce energy with solar and wind power and drive electric cars we will stop climate change.... Sustainable development is just a some words without meaning. There no such thing. Yes, people that ate selling things, like Elon Musk, wants it to be true. What will the mining for the ingredients in the batteries mean for nature?  And is the e-cares just an excuse for to go on with economic growth? Some says this is a question how to relate to death. Both the death of the individual and of our civilization How to relate to the fast that everything comes to an end. But the same persons that use to say that we are in real danger also use to say that our world may be very rare. F...

Have you seen one? Anyway, I haven´t. And in the Diamond Sutra Buddha express that even himself is not enlightened. What, you may be ask. Was Buddha not enlightened? Well that depends if there once was a Buddha walking on this earth. What, is the Buddha just a fantasy figure in a story? Yes, maybe.... Here is what what Buddha asks a monk in the Diamond Sutra:                                             Tell me, Subhuti. Does a monk say to himself 'I have                                            obtained Perfect Enlightenment´ ?                                           No, Lord. There are no such thing as Perfect Enlightenment      ...