Convince yourself you're not a self? Choose determinism? Love is the answer? These self-contradictions can inspire a better understanding of who you are.
Though unrealistic, moralizing is tempting but comes at a cost. Some people beat themselves up with it and some just use it to beat other people up. Here's the saner alternative.
A Personal Perspective: Though hope and realism are both touted as virtues, they often conflict. We would be wiser if we could admit to our ambivalent relationship with both.
The free will debate goes around in circles because it ignores explaining what will really is, starting with the "struggle for existence," which Darwin assumed and didn't explain.
Science suggests the universe is heavily biased toward connection, but that we are much more selective about it, trying to connect with what's good, not bad for us.
To track reality's reversals – lifes' winding, switchback roads, cultivate the words and wisdom by which to notice the differences that make a difference.
Stop worrying that you're failing to maximize some popular virtue as though one always should? Virtue maximizing is extremely popular nonsense that will dumb you down.
We all know wisdom is good. We quest for it and sometimes claim to have it. But what the heck is wisdom anyway? Without a science of wisdom, it's anyone's guess.
There are two sides to every coin. More of something is less of other things. This simple insight has led to many scientific breakthroughs and could explain life itself.
We feel and think about ourselves a lot. And we tend to overlook our vegetative sentience, our silent selfhood, unconscious and unfelt even though it's what keeps us alive.
When barked at, conscientious people tend to back down and back off. That's a great reflex for dealing with other conscientious people but terrible when dealing with total jerks.
The four traits universal to all organisms become the four traits we idealize as infinite in our understanding of God—and then become the four traits essential to the Dark Triad personality (yes, four).
Some say love is undefinable. Here's a definition grounded in scientific understanding of the emergence and nature of living beings at the origins of life.
It's polite, convenient, and dangerous to assume people believe what they insist upon most passionately. To guard your gourd, distinguish between "belief" and "relief."
Ambigamists embrace the tension between opposites, faith and doubt, romance and skepticism, being partial and impartial, loving and tough, yin and yang. They don't try to reconcile opposites with some middle ground universal solution. For example, ambigamists know that tough love isn't the answer but the chronic question--when to be tough?; when to be loving? They seek the wisdom to know the difference between situations that call for the tough courage to try to change things, and the loving serenity to accept things as they are.
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