For those who haven’t been following closely, I will repost the table containing the several behaviors associated with the right-hemisphere. I have rearranged the rows in the order in which I discuss them in this series of blog posts. * Russell Ackoff’s ways to deal with messes. Right-hemisphere-dominant behavior types Caring is an especially important category because it has existential implications and is also partly constitutive of flourishing. Caring acts incorporate inputs from the contextual world presented to the right hemisphere. Empathy, sensing what is going on with another person and acting in accordance, guides much caring. But not all… Read More
Continue ReadingSay No to Virtual Reality
The promises of virtual reality are coming slower than expected. Even Metaverse (formerly Facebook) has reported poorer than expected progress. As well it should because we are not at all ready for such new technologies. We have yet to learn how to cope with real reality, much less something beyond it. If new technology could ever be the answer to dealing with large and significant social/environmental problems, it must first enable us to see the world and ourselves as they really are. What we really need is a clearer understanding about how we humans perceive and act within the world… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins (Part 6)
God Does Not Dwell in Religion’s Quarters. Ross Douthat’s column, “A Guide to Finding Faith” in the NYTimes today (8/15/2021) is basically a plea to find and hold onto faith in a transcendent God. I found the column difficult and very confusing to read and take in. And I believe that there is a very good reason for that. Douthat, like most others, mistakes faith in God for the experience of transcendence, which belongs in a different category and arises from a different side of the brain. In this post, I will argue that faith in God is a form… Read More
Continue ReadingFraming a Flourishing Future
This post is a version of a message I posted on the SCORAI list serve recently, but also make good sense as a standalone message. SCORAI is a global coalition of academics and others drawn together by the idea of “sustainable consumption” and related subjects. I was responding to a post focused on World Transformation Movements that began with this sentence: “The Transnational Institute, Oscar Reyes’ Change Finance Not the Climate, suggests that in order to get the needed change we need to change what Lakoff calls, the frame.” My response follows. The first sentence in Tom’s message is absolutely… Read More
Continue ReadingLooking at Critical Race Theory
Arguments against teaching anything that smacks of critical race theory (CRT) are largely based on a misunderstanding. Perhaps this short primer will help calm the waters. Critical theory, in general, argues that behavior within institutions is shaped by structural elements that are not immediately conscious to the actors, and leads to harmful unintentional consequences. For CRT, the argument focuses on the continuing “enslavement” of Blacks by the activities of many social institutions, such as criminal justice, labor markets, housing, health care, etc. Critics of teaching CRT argue basically, that the acceptance of the systemic features of CRT points the finger… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins Part 5
The Real Me The last few posts have been concerned with the routine ways we behave within and without institutions when our actions are controlled by the left brain. In this post, I shift to the other side as the master, which change also affects the basic nature of our behaviors. Again I include the table of behaviors for comparison purposes. I am using the word, real, in the sense of the existential use of authentic, but as the table and this series of posts have indicated our various modes of behavior suggest that we have multiple personas, each related… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins (Part 3)
Routines, Institutions, and Unintended Consequences Much of our time is spent acting within institutions without even thinking that our actions are being driven by a lot of rules and resources. From the moment of our birth, we are embedded within the structures of many intersecting institutions, and much of our time awake we act according to the peculiar structures that constitute them. The first of such institutions virtually all of us encounter from birth onward is family. Institutions are human creations. We create them by establishing their structure and keep them in place by re-embedding the structure through the actions… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins (Part 2)
Different Worlds—Different Human Beings Humans are different from all other species in many ways, but one that has been singled out is that we seek meaning. A corollary to this is Socrates’s warning that, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Heidegger wrote that only human beings make an issue about being, itself. Only we ask questions about what it is to be? This could be interpreted, again, as seeking the meaning of existence. We are also unique in our ability to create and use language in our quest for meaning and generally to express our intentions and feelings, and… Read More
Continue ReadingFraternal Twins (Part 1): Introduction (Reposted May 10)
Fraternal Twins Are you aware that there are two of you? Two different people live inside your skin. One, cool and controlling – rational, too; T’other, empathetic, unlike its twin. The left brain offers a world, abstracted, Defined by dead reductions from the past. Because all meaning has been subtracted, You’re run by rules memory has amassed. The right brain connects you to the present Where the real you acts in the here and now. Unlike the rule-bound left, you can invent; Now, the creative, caring you can show. Our modern culture has suppressed the right. That means there’s little… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Election Nobody Won
I was sitting at my computer the morning after the election, not unexpectedly, awaiting the vote counting to end. It looked like Biden would be the next President. Now we know he will be, but it will be short of a victory. It will return truth to the White House, but little else. And even that will not matter much so long as the body politic has lost the basic civility on which democracy depends. Civility is at heart an acknowledgment that the burdens of governance are shared by all the people, and that requires an even more basic condition.… Read More
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