Category: Personality & the Ego
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Nature, Nurture, and the Rhythm of Our Relationships | When Strengths Become Overused Skills
This content challenges the notion that all relational patterns stem from childhood experiences, emphasizing the importance of both nature and nurture. It highlights how certain behaviors can be strengths or natural aptitudes instead of merely reactions to past trauma. Understanding this distinction allows for healthier self-interpretation and intentional behavior.
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The Observer and the Observed
Detaching from identity through acceptance of our contradictions Hello. Let’s use the observer to notice our attachments to identity. When I was in college, I really wanted to have a fire in the backyard, but I didn’t want to burn the grass. So I built a fire on top of a flagstone — and it…
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Do the Ends Justify the Means?
This content emphasizes the importance of aligning our actions with personal values while pursuing goals. It argues that compromising values can lead to internal dissonance, shame, and a distorted sense of self, ultimately affecting relationships and ethical standards. Integrity and congruence are presented as essential for personal fulfillment and harmony.
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The difference between good intentions and good actions = understanding, humility, and empathy
There are many saying about how many “evil actions” have been the result of good intentions. So how are we to know if our actions are good? Are there actions which are indisputably wrong and indisputably right? Instead of going into a heady philosophical investigation as to why good and bad are infinitely one, inseparable,…
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Placebo effect – an underrated healer
Quick summary: I am going to suggest that we might be able to use mindfulness to gain control over the ‘placebo effect’ thereby positively influencing recovery of physical and mental disturbances. In scientific investigation it is always important to rule out the placebo effect when studying the effects of an intervention. To do so, researchers…
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Vengeance and the Ego
Quick summary: Vengeance is a tool which creates instability in an attempt to create a stable ego.
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Past goals driving current choices? – Overcoming your inner teenager
Quick summary: What drives your choices, ambitions and behaviors? I am going to suggest that many (if not most) of us still carry values, goals, wants, wishes, desires etc that we forgot to let go of when we grew into adults. Being a teenager is truly difficult… you believe that you are an adult though…
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Why are people Defensive? Reducing the anxiety of change
Defensiveness is a behavior that people consciously and unconsciously engage in to avoid the anxiety which inevitably arrives with change. Change requires us to drop our perceptions of permanence… this means that when we change we are offered an experienced example of how our concept of self is ever transient… it can feel uncomfortable to…
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Fear of Snakes is from the fear of snakes
Quick summary: A fear of snakes is one of the most common fears held by humans… why? Many would answer, “they are poisonous and can kill you,” but many things kill significantly more humans than snakes (especially in the US). I am going to offer a hypothesis that I have been thinking about. The fear…
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Ignorance is Bliss?
Quick summary – Applying a ‘lack of knowledge or beliefs’ onto your perceptions so as to intentionally use ‘ignorance’ as a means of attaining ‘bliss’. ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ is a very common saying that is interpreted many different ways. I intend to offer one explanation as to why ‘ignorance’ can lead to bliss… I will…
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Anti-dogmatic types have a dogma themselves
Quick summary: for this post I am reporting on the following study – Bartlett. j. psychological underpinnings of philosophy. metaphilosophy. vol. 20 1989 – As I consider myself somewhat of a philosopher I am using this post for humor… the joke is essentially on me. the study examins the personality traits which are suggested to…