thinktoomuch.net

I spotted this on TED (autoplays) this morning: Viktor Frankl is a holocaust survivor and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. Positive psychology ftw?

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Approximately September last year I stumbled upon a particular app in the Android market: a Tao Te Ching app by Barclay Osborn. It contains the original Chinese and three public domain translations (specifically: a translation from 1891 by James Legges, D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus’ 1913 translation and Dwight Goddard and Henri Borels’ 1919 [...]

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We are a story telling species. Our culture and our minds developed around the stories we told, the narratives we weaved. And they weren’t just narratives on some big screen that we watched for two hours, and then walked out and continued with “real life”. Our narratives were woven into our lives. And still are. [...]

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Words are interesting in their nuance and their power. Languages are interesting with regards to how they differ in what they can express. I remember seeing my favourite pastor back home using the English word “community” in an Afrikaans sermon/talk/whatever-it-was, because the Afrikaans words available simply don’t catch the idea that well. (Suggestions welcome! What [...]

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Joss Whedon (the guy behind Dr Horrible and Firefly, and recently Dollhouse) on Humanists as “True Believers”: This clip is relevant to the recent discussion as he talks about “faith” and points out that it isn’t the enemy. In fact, “faith” is important, faith is something we have to embrace he says in a wonderful [...]

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A month ago I wrote the post There’s No Such Thing as “Faith”. This intended to challenge the “contemporary fundamentalist” or conservative-literalist definition of “faith” in order to talk about the more human, non-rational, emotional or psychological meanings of the word, or concepts the word could refer to, and does refer to for a particular [...]

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Today we consider a more realistic moral quandary, one that we actually run into quite often in various forms. We’ll discuss but one instance of it right now: Dubai. While this blog post may be short, the article I’m suggesting you read is rather long: The dark side of Dubai — Johann Hari, published in [...]

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There are a number of clichés I just can’t handle. This is especially true in the realm of religion, on both ends of the spectrum, fundie and “new atheist”. Today I’m griping about the “New Atheists’ definition of faith“. Faith is merely belief without evidence; a process of active non-thinking. That definition is nonsense. Religious [...]

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Let’s continue with the meaning theme I started with The Pursuit of Meaning and illustrated with an Australian example, Spearing Pay Back: Retribution for Peace? Some of the providers of the most profound sense of meaning are some cults, providing their members with a very powerful sense of purpose or identity not easily found outside [...]

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Yesterday I had another of those “Should I import into Facebook? Should I not import into Facebook?” moments. I chose “no, don’t import”, as part of the general idea of separating and unlinking the “identities” I have on the ‘net. So I unimported my notes, then promptly, or not so promptly, manually deleted each of [...]

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