Friday, November 6, 2020

Thoughts for the Day: Friday 6 November 2020

 


Despite the right hemisphere's overwhelmingly important role in emotion, the popular stereotype that the left hemisphere has a monopoly on reason, like the view that it has a monopoly on language, is mistaken. As always it is a question not of ‘what’, but of ‘in what way’

But the term “ingenuity,” I decided, served my purposes better than “ideas.” On one hand, it was narrower: I wasn’t interested in all ideas—after all, they can range from Stephen King plotlines to chemical formulae for anti- cancer drugs—but only in the subset of practical ideas that we apply to our practical problems.

[E]conomic optimists usually downplay events and facts that raise serious questions about their worldview. Problems like global climate change are dismissed as scientifically groundless or, at worst, minor inconveniences that can and will be surmounted by human creativity.

When his [Abraham Maslow's] students began to talk to one another about their peak experiences, they began having peak experiences all the time. It is as if reminding yourself of their existence is enough to make them happen.

 Zen practitioners recite: Innumerable labors brought us this food, We should recall how it came to us.