It’s been a while since I’ve reflected on what makes grownups act like children, but with the US presidential campaigns kicking into high gear, this seems like a good time. Our conventional idea of an “adult” is a person who is rational and reasonable, reflective and responsible, who is emotionally centered, well-adjusted, and gets alongContinue reading “And So It Goes”
Tag Archives: feeling-needs
A Nation of Children
I see and hear comments in the media, about how we have elected “a toddler” to the White House. Obviously what they mean to say is that our president behaves like a child – not imaginative and playful and innocent, but reactive and manipulative and narcissistic; not so much childlike as childish. It does strikeContinue reading “A Nation of Children”
A New Hierarchy of Needs
Back when Abraham Maslow formulated his hierarchy of human needs, the science of psychology hadn’t yet clarified what I have come to name our subjective or “feeling-needs.” At that time the concept of need was still equated with a dependency on something external to the individual which is required for healthy development. As we moveContinue reading “A New Hierarchy of Needs”
Against Our Nature
In The Final Recession I described what I think is fundamentally at issue in our contemporary breakdown of democracy in America. It’s not the various issues that parties and individuals can’t seem to agree on, or that government has gotten too large for our own good. Instead, I argued, the current crisis – brought toContinue reading “Against Our Nature”
Who Do You Think You Are?
The modern paradigm of medical and mental health has a built-in bias for diagnosis, due in large part to its historical interest in isolating and treating pathology of various kinds in the body and mind. A consequence of this bias is that while we can zero in on what’s wrong or not working properly, ourContinue reading “Who Do You Think You Are?”
The Filters of Illusion
Constructivism is a philosophy that regards the mind as not merely active in our experience of reality (as opposed to some early modern theories which regarded it as a ‘blank slate’ written upon by experience), but creatively active in the way it constructs the mental models we take as our reality. In the course of ordinaryContinue reading “The Filters of Illusion”
The Illusion of Who You Are
Post-theism doesn’t deny our need for salvation, only that we should expect it from elsewhere. Moreover, it’s not about getting rescued or delivered to a better place, free of enemies or bodies to drag us down. Such themes are common in so-called popular religion, particularly its theistic varieties, where believers are conditioned to anticipate theContinue reading “The Illusion of Who You Are”
Tracts of Revolution 