Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Thought habits

Events get caught in the brain in the form of memories. Connections are formed between neurons. When a memory has been stored in long-term memory it is very difficult to get rid of. You can forget about what happened but the memory is still there somewhere and can resurface whenever, maybe even decades later.

In the same way, beliefs, ideas and quirks get wired into the brain fabric. Once you have become convinced of something, it is very difficult to change that conviction.

Somehow you may have got the idea that you are stupid, or that nothing really matters in life except money. Maybe you still believe in evil spirits.

All habits are difficult to change: thought habits, smoking habits, eating habits...   It is also difficult to change hard wired political opinions and religious ideas. However, it is possible.

Heavy smokers can give up smoking and alcoholics can give up drinking.

It is possible to leave a religious sect or abandon a political ideology.

It is possible to disentangle oneself from thought patterns.




Saturday, September 17, 2016

Psychotherapy

Psychologists have developed methods to help people with low self-esteem,
depression, anxiety and phobias.
How come they have never developed methods to treat greed, complacency,
hypocrisy and career obsession?

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Get real?

“Only the now is real”, is a popular slogan. However, slogans are mental creations. The Now is also a mental construct, just like memories and plans for the future. What you can see with your own two eyes are images that are created in your visual center and the sounds you hear are created in your auditory center.

Right-wingers, left-wingers, religious people and atheists have completely different ideas about what it means to be realistic. Not even the best scientists in the world can agree on how reality really works. How can this be? They have fantastic instruments. How come they arrive at different conclusions? Well, conclusions are also made of mental stuff, like dreams and fantasies.

Is this world made of matter, spirit or energy? What is matter, really? What is spirit made of? What is energy? We're all in the dark.

Relativism is also an outdated worldview, like materialism and idealism. We're all lost. We're lost in space. No one knows for sure why we are here. How ridiculous to argue about things that we don't know anything about. We're like drunks, quarreling about whether Einstein was right or wrong about time.

So, stop arguing. Give up the fight. Stop defending your worldview. Ignore worldviews altogether. It's time to wake up now!