In popular religion and culture ‘apocalypse’ refers to an end-of-the-world scenario where the order and stability of life as we know it breaks down, stars fall from the sky, evil powers are unleashed, and zombie herds ravage the few unlucky survivors. Even in ancient religions we can find this dystopian picture of catastrophic destruction and world-collapse, signallingContinue reading “Thoughts on the Apocalypse”
Tag Archives: meaning
The Supreme Paradox
I’ve written before on what I call the Matrix of Meaning, referring to a deep code of primary concerns and narrative motifs that generates the very fabric of our worldview. A sense of self and reality is the central construct in our personal myth, orienting us on the pressing challenges and emerging opportunities in our journey through life. TheContinue reading “The Supreme Paradox”
Liberated to Serve
I promised myself that I would pick up where I left off in my last post, which was at the point of having broken through the consensus trance that holds individuals under the spell of groupthink. As I explained, consensus trances are seductive forces in your life because they provide the (feeling of) security that you’veContinue reading “Liberated to Serve”
Life Outside the Consensus Trance
The psychologist Charles Tart coined the term consensus trance in reference to the shared assumptions and agreements that hold social organizations inside the rules of groupthink (Irving Janus, 1972). As an aspect of what he named a consensus reality orientation (CRO), it reflects the tendency we all have in adjusting our perspective and aspirations toContinue reading “Life Outside the Consensus Trance”
Get Over Yourself
While all the other creatures on this planet, so far as we know, develop their full potential and achieve ‘self-actualization’ in a single lifetime (given the opportunity and provident conditions), only we human beings have managed to undermine our own evolutionary progress. Why and how we do this has been a fascination of mine for someContinue reading “Get Over Yourself”
The Rhetoric of Democracy
In fifth-century BCE Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy, the political scene was an ongoing contest between the ‘rule of a few’ (oligarchy) and the ‘power of the people’ (democracy). By Plato’s time democracy had generated more problems than it could resolve, motivating the philosopher to reject it outright as a viable model for government.Continue reading “The Rhetoric of Democracy”
What’s Your QIP?
One of my innovations in the field of human psychology is the notion of Quadratic Intelligence. Expanding on recent theory and research has helped us beyond the early 20th-century notion of intelligence as only our (IQ) competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic – the so-called academic set. Opening the definition of intelligence so as toContinue reading “What’s Your QIP?”
Journey Back to Reality
Just as soon as I make a case for the necessity of religion, it’s time to insist on our need to transcend it. If my atheist friends squirm at my insistence that we all have a religion – a system of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices that links the separate ego back to reality – my friends whoContinue reading “Journey Back to Reality”
Does Your Religion Work?
The question is not whether religion will one day be only a memory of our brutal and superstitious past as a species, or else singularly responsible for our future catastrophic self-destruction. A lot of people feel that we would be better off without it. In their perspective religion is unnecessary baggage crowding the mental spaceContinue reading “Does Your Religion Work?”
Unfinished Business
I guess I write a lot about what I feel is most urgently needing our attention these days. Current events are interesting because they’re in the news and on our minds, but popular engagement with the news of the day tends to skim the surface of what’s really going on. It’s not nuclear proliferation, terroristContinue reading “Unfinished Business”
Tracts of Revolution 