The paradox of loneliness
To dine alone or bowl alone are events that blend strangeness and familiarity. Yet, they, too, are entirely social. The export of one human mind...
Tag: philosophy
To the moon
So little it’s immeasurable — that’s how improvement works. Effort is compounding. To remain elastic means to remain wide awake. The template for true consistency...
Under the trained eye
The eye works as a paintbrush, coloring the world with a palette of vitality. Unfortunately, the constant bombardment of external stimuli torpedoes our attention, bankrupting...
Inseparable opposites
We’re always in the middle of fictional thinking — vacillating between what we’d like to do versus what we’re scared to do. Utopia and dystopia...
The spotlight of attention
Willpower rests on the brain’s set point for pleasure. Get used to indulging doses of dopamine, and the mind goes numb to any lack of...
The invention of things
Most creativity depends on building on top of what’s already there. Novelty exploits and aggregates preexisting stems to manufacture new and different, which is all...
Swallowing the elements
Deliberately bad, mashed up, distorted like a Francis Bacon painting. Ugly art brings the worst of our subconscious to the fore as a means of...
Tackling the brain’s anxiety bias
We take out the wind of anxiety by going toward the fear. The nerves left alone in anticipation, attrit our resistance with cruel swiftness. Uncertainty...
Strength through struggle
Everything we know we learn from our handicaps. They are far better teachers than strengths. As the author Bernard Malamud quipped, “if you haven’t struggled,...
Passion project be damned
The banality of doing what we’re told gets bottle-necked at the top of free will. Eventually, one balks at the factory of someone else’s to-do...
Hope is a hedge against reality
We live in anticipation. The worker who looks forward to a vacation is probably far happier and more productive than one who toils away without...
The shared intimacy of the individual
Behavior operates at the amygdala level. Without conscious interpretation, we either fight or run away. Instead, what we seek is more constructive: long-term serotonin levels...