on humanism and environmental crisis

Posts tagged ‘philozophy.com’

Big Question #1: How did the universe begin?

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” — attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Subquestions and everyday relevance

  • Where does it all come from? Does the World seem very old?How does Your World begin?
  • Do things in your life begin all the time? Popping out from nowhere?
  • Do things in your life, in the World , as you see it, just circle round and round?
  • The scientists think the new things are “emergent”. Are they really?

Since the beginning of life, we are constructed, the genes and the beliefs, to organize the things around the birth and death, beginning and the end, the days, the seasons, the projects and the cosmos. Every time you breathe deeply, every time you reflect,  automatically you position yourself, according to your gut feeling, somewhere along these beginnings and ends.

In our version of the set of Big Questions, four of them deal with the beginning, the change, and the trend. The three of them explore the beginning of the Universe (#1), the fate of the mankind (#13) and the business of dying (#11) and they are old and primeval as the mankind itself. We always bury and mourn the dead, gaze the stars and worry about the future.  Heraclitus of Ephesus  said famously: “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”. After he thought for a while he added: “there is nothing permanent except change”. The fourth one is (surprise!) about the role of evolution.

Jacob Bronowski about the beginnings (a paraphrase) :” The science is a systematic attempt to establish the closed system, one after another. The scientific discovery opens the system again.

Every act of imagination (new connections, new symbolism, new language, new formulae) is the discovery of likeness between two things which were thought unlike- like Newton’s apple and the Moon.”

How to work on the answer to the Question #1

When confronted with the task of answering these Big Questions, I was not sure if I should try to find some deep truth of Universe ( like Heraclitus?) or say something that would be personal, uniquely mine, important to me. One can also answer ”Big Bang” and be done with…(still much better than “how the Hell I would know?”, which is again better than not being here with us at all)

 This is my advice, but as it is your worldview, take it or leave it. If some universal truth feels interesting and helpful, go for it, but if the personal insight sounds more like you to you, that will be more beneficial. As it happens, I believe, that both worlds-  the Big One out there and my personal world are the same, but most people do not. So here you are.

View answers on Philozophy.com

An example: (my answer) “My Universe began with my conception. As I am learning from others and my experiences, my world shifts, gets bigger and more complex.  Where my understanding ends, on that edge, reversing the arrow of time, there and then the Universe begins.”

Psychotherapy

Working with the Question #1 is especially useful for anxiety, depression and procrastination, that include just about all of us. It sounds like the excerpts from the Dr. Bach’s Herbal Remedies :“Mustard- good for the unexplained dark cloud”, but you will be surprised by the effectiveness of the process. Remember, the benefits increase exponentially with the every edit, starting after the third one.

An Essay

For me, the question of the beginning is absolutely associated with my mother. Biologically I obviously grew in her belly according to her and my father’s genetic blueprint. Then, as an infant, I began to build my world, with the identity still merged with my mom. The baby’s initial world is created with the very little activity of the prefrontal lobes, mostly it is sensory combined directly with the emotional and instinctual behaviors. It is wired in the old, mammalian parts of the brain, the humanness present mainly as a capacity, possibility, and preferences. These were the emotional and the personality beginnings that stayed with me until today. Then I learned , mostly from my mother and the family (aunt Mary, the Granny, there was not much of the father) the human ways of the world. I was curious and more curious, and trying to understand, I was cautious, but ambitious explorer, I was selfish, but I was shown how to love and cooperate.

 Now, 72 years old, during the meditation I talk to my Mom often. I asked her about her beginning.

I: “ You bore three sons. Each one was a beginning, wasn’t it?”

Mom: “ Not really. Every beginning is nothing more, than the phase of the process, when the situation requires a switch of the dimension, or as you say in America nowadays “the conversation”, when the old way of seeing just would not do… With my first son Christopher, it was as always – the struggle to extend the relationship with Edwin, your father. He was a strange genius, complex and far away, in his own world, the poet, and the philosopher… and a healer. He was tormented by the generations- long inability to commit and love- I was trying to help him, help us, go deeper into love…

And we succeeded and failed to sustain the success, as always, and with Peter, my second son, it was the beginning… of the end. Then it was the war.  It ruined our lives, the families, and careers. But I would not give up, against all odds, you, Tommy, were conceived and born. When the communication failed, when the raw sense cried “no!”, the biology and, I guess, subconscious commitment did the job. It was the most strange beginning in my life….

I: “the end of beginnings?”

Mom: “Yes, now I see it, as an investment.”

I: “Mom, but we in Poland did know anything about the investments”.

Mom:”No, Tomeczku, this beginning was not an investment in the material things, like in America. I had to invest fiercely in my life principles. It was a terrible choice between reinventing myself to follow the love to the very imperfect man, against  my family and the faith or to throw away the love. I did the later and now it is the ” Dr. Zofia’s Myth of Beginning”.

I: “And you followed Jesus. I remember you in the mornings, up before anybody else, busy in the kitchen, already back from the shop with the fresh bread,  before going to the Clinic and visiting the Church on the way.”

Mom: “yes, I loved these mornings.. and the evenings,  kneeling at the bed  and thanking Jesus for the another day with God.”

I: ” Thank you,  Mom, thank you for the myth, thank you for the lesson, I will talk to you soon.

Same Time, same Space.”

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, Humanism, Meditation, The Worldview Internet Game, Worldview Owner's Manual

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Using Philozophy.com

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

At that moment, this is going to be a very short chapter, the membership is being slowly created, the etiquette is practically in diapers.

We hope to create a community of like-minded, curious explorers of the last frontier- of the self, in the best Socratic tradition of having your life examined. We hope that this group will grow, will enjoy the benefits of working on the worldview and contribute to the progress in the building a prosperous, democratic and free society. I am worrying that this idea’s time has not yet come, but the future of the mankind is in the individuality, education and freedom of expression, all of them are promoted by the Philozophy.com. Conversely, I believe, if we won’t do it ( I mean if we don’t change our wicked ways and do not befriend each other), we all, or most of us, die in about 30-40 years.

Work on your worldview, share, comment on the others’ work, have fun.

If you’re ready to work on your worldview now click here

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, Humanism, The Worldview Internet Game, What will happen to the mankind, Worldview Owner's Manual

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How to Build your Personal Worldview

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

This is the first chapter in which I’ll discuss the process of working on your personal, unique worldview. I promise that this process will be interesting and rewarding and will make you a better person and the world a better place. It might appear that the two distinct parts of the process can be distinguished: the making of your worldview, conceiving it, and writing down the answers into philozophy.com web site. But it is much more complicated, and you will see it as soon as you begin.

First, you are not creating it, you are teasing it out from your subconsciousness, from your past, from your image (or rather images) of yourself. Like going to hell and back.

The writing it down requires some skills and some courage and some freedoms, and one doesn’t know , really can’t know whether one has them. And when you find them you are a different person from the one you have started with… The writing is the creative process and the form can not really be separated from the content.

Secondly, as I mentioned before, one usually goes through the phases of the working on it:

      1 Browsing

  1. Writing “placement” answers (like “I will tell you as soon as I know” or “human cognition is not yet equipped to handle this question” etc.)
  2. The jokes and/or expressing the dislike towards the site, the questions, us, etc.
  3. The answers where you start to see a glimpse of you.

The benefits are visible from the level 1, the first answer you browse through, but naturally they accumulate and accelerate as you are walking the walk.

Thirdly, there are two sites to work on, the present one  and the future one, the one I am hoping for.

We ( Sophia , our friendly developer and I) are planning to remake and uplift the site.

  1. so , how to do it. No hurry , step by step. Remember , you are the human, the Curious One.

The questions will stay there, and that or this way, you will be trying to understand them to the last day of your life.

I suggest these steps:

  1. Read the Manual (or a part of it). This will slow you down, allow for the reflection and the introspection. Enjoy and repeat. Make notes, how exciting you are doing something completely new, this is rare in our secure lives, and the other rare thing , you completely  do not know the end result. It is like going to a sport event and the rules change every 10 minutes. And it is a bit like a mortal combat (unlike “Mortal Combat”), the results will be with you at the deathbed.
  2. Browse, this is again a shifting target: the more people participating , the richer and more interesting will be browsing. See how silly-heroic-insecure and brilliant people are. There is no ”party line”, each answer comes from the real person like you.
  3. Browse the “famous philosophers” collection which is slowly growing. Even these “giants” had a hard time with the succinct answer to the big questions.
  4. Respond, click and note the answer which can be useful for you, wise or just beautiful.
  5. You may find an answer (or answers) which you really like- “reuse” it, make it yours for now. This would be your first, ginger start of the budding personal worldview.
  6. Pick the first question, out of 14, which you are going to work on. I suggest an area which you are familiar with, thought a lot of it, like it a lot. To choose easier, read the beginning of the Part Two chapters. The philosophical questions become more practical, everyday things, may be related to your very personal story.
  7. Write this story, or a joke or an insight. This is your answer. For now, no hurry.

If the story is too long, put it as the “comment” (the future version will have separate “laboratory” space) and it will help you to formulate the  answer condensed to 250 characters. We wanted the answer to be long enough to show unique opinion, but short enough to be read, understood and commented on.

  1. This point is the most important. Return and edit the answers. Like “real” writers, they edit and edit and edit, they have hundreds of pages to edit, you – 3 or 4 lines…

Then, return after several months, knock yourself on the head, does it sound like metal? you are not a robot, you are not dead, you changed. You’ll be surprised unless you are still on the “early answers”, they reflect not who you are, but your “issues”. And those tend to persist…

 

Move slowly, answer more and more questions: notice that later questions, those you did not like, are more difficult. They correspond with your hang ups and figuring them out will bring the most personal benefits.

If you’re ready to work on your worldview now, click here.

 

Category:

Explicit and implicit worldview, Humanism, The Worldview Internet Game, What will happen to the mankind, Worldview Owner's Manual

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Why invest time and effort in working on your Personal Worldview?

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

     “You are a hero!” I repeat this several times a day. It is what I say in my office to a mother who brings her new baby and tell me that she is breastfeeding. Many of them will quit in few days, some will breastfeed for weeks or months. But she is a hero, and in the same way you are a hero. You are attempting to work on your worldview. This statement urgently needs two clarifications( so urgently, that I will proceed at the peril of mistake of not starting with the thesis of the chapter.)

First, I have to remind you that you are not going to reveal any Truth about the Universe. If you are, you are going to get the Nobel Prize, become a prophet or be invited by Oprah. But it is a test, a test of you being unique, individual thinking being. The dogs, cats, the robots, the mob members should not apply. We are going to work on the essence of your experience, of your story. We are going to work on our personal worldview.  

Second, I need to say something about the term “to work on”. And it is more difficult than it looks from the distance. Because you are my hero, you are already working on it. Actually, nolens-volens everybody is working on it. Our every action is an attempt to understand our world and ourselves. And we have been working on it since birth, and our species has been absolutely famous of working on it since we jumped down from the branch. So, our work here is just an “accelerated method” or “advanced course”. We will be transferring our gut feelings and deep instinctual worries and hopes into written, short, crisp thoughts.

 

     In this chapter, I will discuss the dilemma of “why to do it”. And it is a real dilemma. Billions of people never have done it and they go their more or less happy way. Initially, we thought (really!) that the fun of working on it would be so great that no elaborate cajoling would be necessary.

Be advised: this work is arduous and takes longer than expected. Many famous philosophers never did it. If you’ve been to counseling, you know about spilling your guts – and justly so, this metaphor doesn’t sound very inviting.

But it is worth it.

      The most obvious benefit of this work is of course , personal. The personal growth that is.

The term of the personal growth may seem rather vague, but not for a worldview owner. You go from the question to question, you write down your answers and you’re learning about yourself at the every step. Usually, you start with the questions which are most familiar and finding this out very often is  in itself a revelation. Like “am I really worry about the death?” “Is material more important than spiritual?”. You go through several answers and the picture of a human emerges.

Is it you? Or no picture emerges. Oh -oh… You might find yourself in the unfamiliar “territory”. Look, this is great! And you can stop and review and edit.

It is similar to the psychotherapy but more interesting and profound. As you go further and further, you’ll observe that these “late” questions are harder and more revealing. If it is difficult to condense your answer, I suggest that you write a longer version in “comments” and come back other day and finish the job. I have never revisited my worldview without an insight and editing. The most beneficial times to work on it is during the crisis- you’ll be surprised how much it helps to get clarity of the feelings.

There are professional philosophers who would work on big questions with you for a fee, as some sort of therapy. They claim to make you happier and more resilient. I agree, but having it written may be people liking it or commenting on your answers, has for me an additional element of building your own intellectual and emotional castle. You can just hide there if needed, or you can add another tower!

Think also that working on the personal worldview may and should “branch” into the conversations about personal freedoms and personal values. They also deserve to be transferred from implicit to explicit.

Of course, there is always the anxiety that the worldview that emerges from your writing might be incompatible with what you do, who you are. Well, there you are and it is good thing that you got confronted, isn’t it?

     These goodies are all personal, but I believe that this work can have an impact on the society. Does everybody need the personal, unique worldview? In the same way in which everybody needs good education- yes, everybody does. And then people can choose- to be a savage, easterner or westerner , are they any other options? I believe that the people who did the worldview are not only more successful but also easier to talk and negotiate with, they know where they stand. Creating one’s personal worldview can be beneficial for the society, especially if people in charge, people with power will do it and bravely share it with the rest of citizens.

Lastly, participating in the growing community of the worldview owners adds to our knowledge about the society and its values.


     At the end just a hypothesis: The more one works on transferring one’s implicit worldview into the explicit form, the more one become a humanist. And this, by itself, is beneficial for this person and for all humans. Now, I mean the humanist as a person who explores and promotes and holds dear the human values and it includes both religious and non-religious people like Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, my Mom or Kurt Johnson, a prominent force in the Interspirituality Movement.

Category:

Explicit and implicit worldview, Humanism, The Worldview Internet Game, What will happen to the mankind, Worldview Owner's Manual

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How to Use this Manual

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

This manual has two parts. In the short part one, we talk about general problems and pleasures of creating your personal worldview. Working on this project for the last two years we learned a lot and I will share with you insights and tricks. Part two consists of 13 chapters, one for each question.

When you want to work on the particular question, you go to this chapter and you find tons of support.  Every chapter has the similar organization.

First, I’ll quote a famous philosopher.  

Then, the pompous philosophical question is softened by the number of “subquestions”.

We were trying to figure out the relationship between the problem representing by the question with your decisions in the everyday life.

Working on the particular question will address specific worries, problems  or even psychological weaknesses- I will point that out.

I will also quote my favorite answer published on Philozophy.com. You will get a working version, maybe a story related to the question, rather than the abbreviated, condensed “end product”.

I will encourage you to study the question by reading “suggested readings” and links to the history of the particular question.

 

   Everybody has a Worldview, but our worldview is mostly implicit. If you, my reader, are like the most of us, humans, this set of personal principles and values lives inside of you in the form of memories, stories, fears, hopes or instincts. A mixed emotional bag, most of which you are even not aware of.  And yet, you function somewhat, you make decisions, choices, you make plans, you can even attach some reasons or explanations to them.

 

   The other part of my thesis is that if you work on building a personal, written down, Worldview, this work creates substantial benefits.

I strongly believe that this work would make you smarter, happier and more resilient in the crisis. Secondly, it would make you more productive, efficient and successful whatever are your projects.

But the third is the most important: it would make you better, I mean “gooder”, more compassionate, non-violent, tolerant and cooperative.

This claim is pretty risky and big isn’t it? I know but look, it is our only hope. The smartest people on the planet, the mystics, the intellectuals and wise men unanimously say that digging into the core of the human nature, brings good, levels boundaries and makes peace.

And it is what you and I embark on.  And not a second too early, I say….

 

I hope we are going to work on this project of the personal worldview together. Of course, I would like that this manual was exciting, captivating, and beautiful. But I am not a writer, and if I’d worry about that, I would never write this thing. I am a pediatrician and I care about children. Naturally, my concern is the most clear and emotional when I think about my own children and grandchildren and the children I know personally.

 

    There are lots of books about the Worldview, most of them, at least in English, about Christian Worldview. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is labeling, is boxing yourself in, is the desperate search for the name of your worldview, preferably with the “-ism” ending.

“Oh, it is who I am!” Noooo, you are you, critically and mystically thinking individual human of the 21st century.    The World is trying to define itself. We witness the paroxysms of the violence of the heroism, the faith, and nihilism. But all of that is nothing else but the sum of each human personal struggle. People define themselves by living their lives, and desperately trying to make sense of it. For millennia, some of them attempt to express this in literature, art, and music. For yourself, for your children and for my children, I am going to work with you on building a personal explicit worldview. Yours.

 

    The philosophers distilled the concept of ‘Worldview’ to several basic categories, represented by the infamous “Big Questions”. This is the worldview. It is how you see the World, your opinions, your attitude and your guts. In the innate, experiential form, or implicit form- it is in the everybody’s bones.

In modern times, as more and more people, are educated, reflective, even obsessed with mindfulness and examining your own mind, the explicit (written down) worldview has become more popular. The domain of philosophers, religious doctrines, and scientific theories has become the object of TED talks, self-improvement books and even party conversation.

In Philozophy.com we are trying to encourage and help an ordinary thinking person to work on his or hers worldview. We think that the answer, or as Vidal call it, ”position”, should be short enough to be easily digested and compared with others, but long enough to be meaningful and personal- yours. We arbitrarily decided on the wording of each question, but we included alternative wording or “sub-questions”.

These statements, if they feel yours and true, we believe, can be the very important signposts in your journey to living full and good life.

 

      In our site, we combined personal exploration, almost a “self-improvement” thing, with a game and a social experiment. You will be invited to answer 13 “big questions” with the very condensed answer – 250 characters max. As the philosophers grappled with the answers to these questions for millennia, so how can you or I add anything interesting?

Yes, we can. Every  decision we make is related to our “take on the life”, our attitude, our belief system. They are related to big questions, even you do not think that the way you talk to your friend depends on your opinion of “the nature of the mind” – question #6.

Or does it? How about “origins of evil and good” – #3 and 4, and of course:” how do you find the truth?” – #8.

You pack for vacation, throwing socks and underwear into the suitcase.  But somewhere in the back of your mind, it is the travel, unknown, beginning and ending, and even death – #11, the meaning of life – #9 – and how do you find happiness – #7.

Scrambled in the subconscious puzzle these questions are all there.

 

In books about worldviews, it is always reduced down to 6 to 10 questions, with different exact wording, but they are the same questions, “the buck stops there” questions.

Nobody can change them into “lighter, less philosophical”. They are the concentrated, distilled problems of the human mind and of our civilization.

Look at the questions and start with the one your heart resonate with. Write the answer with the idea that it should be changed and improved and refined many times.

It does not need to be the exact answer, the truth, the definition. This is for you, not for me.

On my hook, please hang your own coat… or hat, or umbrella.  Browse and score the answers of other people, they are all real people, like me and you — some try to be funny, some pompous, some academic or religious.  But they have this in common. They had the courage to answer these questions and share these answers with us.This the sign of courage, of the open mind, of course, but also of freedom. They will read and comment on yours if you’re lucky; otherwise, they will ignore them.

Compose your answer….and edit and edit and edit until when you look at it, you will be able to say: “yes, this is me”. I bet you will be surprised. I was.

 

Then if you have time, pick another one, browse, discuss, score. It is your own brave journey inside your brain and heart – maybe the last frontier.

 

  This text can be interesting in itself, but it is meant to work the best with your browsing and your activity on our website: philozophy.com. The name of the domain is catchy, but it might mislead you. This site not much of the philosophy, most philosophers are very ponderous and not practical. This site is the place where different worldviews live together, they mingle, the participants comment on them, borrow them from each other, discuss whatever they want.

So, this manual has four main separate goals:

  1. Invite you to go with your work to Philozophy.com, browse, express your opinions about others’ work, comment and discuss. .
  2. Assist you and lead you by the hand in this arduous task of creating your personal explicit, written-down worldview, distilled to a philosophical Haiku, 250 characters max.
  3. Encourage you to join others and publish your answers in this abbreviated form, allow others to benefit from your hard work, see what they say, respond to comments and most importantly keep editing your answers.  
  4. Build a social experiment. See if creating your worldview can be interactive. Explore the fears and inhibitions in the society. Can we learn something about us, can the participation be fun?

In case you skipped the “invitation for cooperation”, I will repeat:

Both Manual and the Philozophy.com are completely ideology-neutral. This is the place where different worldviews mingle, all are welcome, their only defense consists of the human values and benefits for humanity. But we have preferences; we are for individualism, for cooperation and for the freedom of expression. We are against mob mentality, mindlessness, and stupidity. We are against the fear of being yourself, against the fear of exploring and against the fear of individual thinking.

 

 

Category:

Explicit and implicit worldview, The Worldview Internet Game, Uncategorized

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What we need to unlearn

What do we need to unlearn

By 2050 and maybe sooner the humans need to unlearn a few things:

  1. some people are yours and others are different kind
  2. if things are unfair you can try use force
  3. money makes you safer
  4. poor people are dangerous
  5. people of your kind make you safer, the more of them the better
  6. dying is always sad and bad
  7. conversation about quality of life is a taboo
  8. we are free to have any weapon we want
  9. we are free to teach children anything we want
  10. we are free to buy whatever we want
  11. the more you play the happier you are
  12. in danger you can always call your God and you feel better
  13. if an experience is deeply personal and moving you call it religious

and learn few things:

  1. how to share our worlds, what we know and what we have and what we do.
  2. how to teach children about families and learning
  3. how to create strong families
  4. that the friendship produces cooperation , but not other way around
  5. how to create strong friendships
  6. how to create democracies, local and global

If we are ok by 2050- think of this as a Houdini escape.

Early Hominids, Hunter-gatherers, I think they are the inventors of the friendship. This new type of the relationship was beyond the power structure of the wolves’ pack. It was a skill highly beneficial for the group’s well being, learned during the childhood and the adolescence, sinking in the genetic code during the last million years. The friendship is the kind of love which is non kinship related, non- sexual, and non- spiritual, but it rewards the participants with most of pleasures, the gratification and fulfilments of love . It is centered on the cooperation.

The cooperation make friendship fun and the friendship makes cooperation fun. We need a renaissance of the friendship- the only way out.

My friend and teacher, Dr. Guo thinks there is no crisis- the same circular history in 5000 year history of China.

It seems that 3 billions of people in Far East believe in the circular history, so there is no worry, 1 billion Muslim believe that they will conquer the rest, so there is no worry, 1 billion Westerners believe that, if the Disaster comes, they will survive because of money and technology, so there is no worry, others are weak and poor and few so their opinion does not count.

I think there is crisis. I think it was always there together with the solution.

Early hominids started proto-civilisation with the development of the complexity of the nervous system reflecting the complexity of the society, with the metaphors, language and technology.

It took many civilizations to grow and fold, many cultures to flourish, and die, involving more and more of the population and resources.

Kurt Johnson believes that in the core of the deepest mystical exploration all religions are the same. With his idea of the Interspirituality all boundaries will fall away : religions, nationalism, racism, maybe others? It is good that these guys, the enlightened mystics, the monks, the meditators are there, better few dozen than nobody, but what about the rest of us?

Also it is amazing and wonderful if to these guys , each appropriate god is saying the same thing. It is interesting from the neuroscience point of view. But for this revelation they still rely on the message from god. We are relieved that the message for them is “love, love, blah blah, no violence, compassion, etc”, but why, and for how long? We do not understand god, can not guess him, so anytime and anyplace,  maybe tomorrow , or to other guys he or she will say “what would Jesus bomb?”.

Turn on your TV and see if my idea is purely theoretical….

So the religions, by following and relying on the god’s message, are intrinsically toxic and evil.

All these wonderful, best people, my brother Piotrus, my late Mom, Andrew Harvey and Dalai Lama, they all build walls. They allow the bombing (God bless USA) and beheading (Allah Akbar), because- “we just do what our god tells us to do” and “ it is clearly written”, and “ we swear on the scriptures, we are right”. And we can not tell them, “you are wrong, you uncouth primitives”, because these wonderful people, together with Kurt Johnson, are saying exactly the same thing!

Our only chance is that the last million years have build-in the critical thinking, the reflective thinking and the ability to be friend, in our core nature ( the kinship and cooperation are in our genes, that’s for sure, the ants and E.O. Wilson confirm it ). Or, I am wrong, an optimist and utopian, one million years is pretty short time for the evolution and other “survival” traits of fear and greed and seeking power and mate are stronger….

And, frightening as it is, all these latter traits are the base for the development of spirituality and religions!

Category:

What will happen to the mankind

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TER (towards evolutionary reality) and free will

Our beloved science describes the world better and better. Every day this or that puzzle is solved and the mechanism underlying world’s workings explained.

This includes human behavior- which means our actions.

If science explained it- were our decisions just an illusion of the free will?

Maybe not completely, science doesn’t know everything… yet. But, the smarter we get,  is the amount of the free will shrinking?

Or, while subjectively, we feel like we decide, but really, really- is it not all determined by the complex world machinery? Or some other Omnipotence?

TER, with the mechanisms of the evolution as the underlying principles, is not a new science. It is difficult to call it philosophy- it is too simple, it is kind of attitude or mental trick. But it is very dramatic and counterintuitive, it actually shatters basic common sense.

According to TER, every animal, including humans, with birth , starts building its own universe. It uses its genetics,  instincts, the perception and  the interaction with other animals to build its world. It is the only reality the nervous system can build- with evolutionary constrains- solid and reliable- best for survival.

In human , which is a hypersocial species, the input of others is immense and tightly woven with personal learning. My universe is mine but also my parents’, brothers, friends,

ancestors, teachers, leaders, artists, also monkeys, fish and sponges.

What’s dramatic and truly mind-boggling is, that there is no Nobody’s Universe.

Just mine and yours, and yours and yours- everybody’s Universes  mixed.


There is no division into subjectivity and objectivity. My Universe is real, scientific and built by me. There is no free will questions and problems. I keep building it to be happy and to make you happy, this is my pride and responsibility and concern. In the evolutionary objectivity the free will exist by definition, no matter how much will be “explained’ by science.

The foreboding world-machinery with its predeterminism is snugly tucked inside my worldview and my actions and my figuring things out continuously shift my reality.

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, free will, nature of reality

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Veritas Institute, Worldview Internet Game

Dear Board Member,

 

I wanted my friends and family to play my Veritas Worldview Game, but nobody seemed to want to, until cajoled mercilessly.

To play one needs to answer 14 questions, by doing so creating your personal worldview.

The questions you are answering to build your worldview are somewhat philosophical and by that they are surprisingly “safe”.

It is not easy to openly mess with received opinions and conventional wisdom of the people around you, your family and friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Do not anger gods, bosses and social opinion.

But when you deal more abstractly in terms of your world view, expressed in your own words, you somehow get around these constraints.

You exercise your thinking and creativity, while keeping safe your spiritual values and social position.

 

The intellectual inquiry into your philosophical worldview, while not so easy , in the same time is so natural and safe and accepted. It is almost like figuring out what this shape of a cloud reminds you of.

You can argue and argue but your “elephant” is still the best for you…. And in two minutes it may be “a bear”.

The answering these questions turned out to be much less fun than I expected , and many people did not want other people to know what they think…

 

So I thought that they need to be on the advisory board , so they couldn’t refuse…

But advisory board of what? A LLC? , may be a corporation or a “center’ for something? Eureka!

Veritas Institute.

It started as as joke, but after more talking and thinking it  became an idea on its own.

The idea that everybody deserves to experience his/her individuality as an essential part of freedom. This way “my own worldview” should be a way to inquire about your own truth – opinions, emotions, your own self.

 

So, “long live”, for the Institute, there is so many forces which can be focused and cooperating there. The people for “critical thinking”,”worldview” philosophers, like Vidal , Heylighen and others,  the Bowen Center from DC, the Evolutionaries from California, the world peacemakers, the mindfulness promoting people, all kind of thinkers and dreamers etc, etc…

You are invited to be the board member.

Responsibility? Plan to attend the Board Party once a year, breathe deeply, do the good work, stop when you’re done.

 

Please create your explicit worldview by answering the questions below.

Answer should be between 20 to 200 characters long .

There is the spreadsheet with the existing answers on my Google Drive, if you are ready to add your answers, please let me know. I will share with you this spreadsheet and you will be able to browse and write your stuff in.

Very soon the game goes live on internet, and anybody will be able to play.

Veritas Institute

Tomasz and Sophia Voychehovski- co-founders and co-directors

Financial adviser – David Levis

The Board:

Linda Voychehovski literary adviser

Lucas Prater- art adviser

Peter Brown- customer’s psychology adviser

Dosia Boron- European philosophy specialist

Richard Barrali – mindfulness and sales

Jan Sabbo – friendships and surgery

Leslie Bloom – feminism and multicultural adviser

Zibin Guo- Eastern anthropology

Luke Lea and Pat Lea- American Culture and Landscape

Andrew Warner- physical wellbeing

Tom Cable- medical wellbeing

Craig Kronenberg- architecture

James Friedli – real estate

Ron Whitmire- marketing and business adviser

Jann Sullivan – Center for Mindful Living liaison

William Dwyer – Bowen Center liaison.

Witold Kapuscinski- vision adviser

Tommy Boron- youth liaison (East)

Robert Kronenberg – youth liaison (West)

 

Veritas Institute Spiritual Council

Piotrus Wojciechowski- film and Christianity (east), also liaison with the Podhale Wisdom Academy

Gregg Sullivan- legal and Christianity(west)

Kaukab Naseer- Islam adviser

Jonathan Cohen- Judaic adviser

tom kunesh- atheism and shamanism

Lenny Rubin- yogic adviser

Kittisaro and Thanissara –  Buddhist advisers

 

New , proposed, order of questions:

 

I. How do you find happiness?

II. Is there a free will? Can you make a difference?

III. What is the meaning of life?

IV. How do you find truth?

V. What is an origin of good, beauty and truth?

VI. What is an origin of evil?

VII. What is the role of the evolution?

VIII. How did the Universe begin?

IX. What is going to happen to humankind?

X. What will happen after you die?

XI. What about Extraterrestial Intelligence?

XII. What is the nature of the mind?

XIII. What is the Universe made of?

XIV. What question is missing?

12.27.13

I underestimated the difficulty of the creating and writing down a condensed (so others can compare) , but the personal, meaningful, interesting worldview.

Only few could do it.

Now I know that you need to study the psychology and the techniques of how to create a worldview and then you need to attempt to teach the “creating your worldview 101”.

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Uncategorized

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My answers

My answers:V13, Tom Voychehovski

I.The stuff changes (sic!) as our language/metaphors and the understanding expands. A mixture of physics, matemathics, probability and the mind?

II.   Its nature, the neurons, their connections, their biochemistry is the same as the rest of the world. We use it to create our experience.

III.  When we’d understand better the concept of Time, the concept of beginning will become less paradoxical. Something like the space between birth and death?

IV.  Miraculously we’ll understand our unity, stop fighting, stop overpopulating, stop wasting resources. We’ll see the Love as the thing between me and you. Then we’ll build better world- piece of cake.

V. Evolution explains how live organisms including humans have become so complex. The evolutionary algorythm includes the evolution of the functions and content of our brain,i.e. our experience.

VI. Hunter-gatherers invented and genetically encoded altruism. Drive to survive evolved into drive to understand. The wisdom (understanding) translates socially into good, true and beautiful.

VII.Animal survival behaviors is natural and sexual selection are parts of nature. Laziness/ignorance (i.e. lack of understanding)  manifest as greed and fear.

VIII. Free will is an attribute of the mind, developed evolutionary for the ethical system to function. My actions matter, so do yours.

IX. Meaning of life is individual and depends on the worldview. For me it is to practice to be able to be happy, be curious and do good.

X. Truth is relative,  “what works”, and the civilisation dependent. It follows evolution and survival, therefore appears to be objective/scientific.

XI.With effort and intention of love, curiosity and gratitude, the results exceed expectations. It is transient, subjective, trainable.

XII. There isn’t any. Intelligence is created, defined and working within evolution on Earth, our evolution. Except for The Little Prince.

XIII.  I plan to train how to know that I am ready and how to happily (for me and for the others) disconnect subjectivity from objectivity.

XIV.I made this list so I think it’s perfect. But… you guys have at it!

Category:

The Worldview Internet Game

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