 THE UNDEFEATED MIND Fall 2012 |
 Photo: mrsdkrebs America is a symbol of freedom all over the world, enjoying as it does freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. Our ancestors prized these political freedoms so much that many of them were willing to die defending them. And though many of us are often accused today of taking them for granted, we continue to see people rising up to fight for them when they’re threatened (when someone else’s freedoms are threatened, too). Continue reading…  Photo: MikeBlogs I’ve always wanted to know the answers: What creates consciousness? How did the cosmos come to be? What happens when we die? Why are we here? From a certain perspective, my life has consisted of a series of investigations into ways of discovering the answers to these kinds of questions. In college, I became interested in philosophy. In medical school, I became fascinated by neurology and simultaneously began my experiment with Buddhism. I’ve learned a lot along the way and have settled at least the answer to the last question to my satisfaction (which, for interested readers, I detail in my forthcoming book The Undefeated Mind), but as to the others, a recent conversation with one of my brothers sparked an unhappy thought: perhaps our brains are built in such a way that they can’t even properly conceive the answers. Continue reading…  Photo: oskay I often wish I could snap my fingers and make people do what I want. I wish I could speed up the pace at which I achieve my goals and slow down the pace at which pleasant things fade. I wish I could write blog posts and books that everyone loves, that I could have solitude and company whenever I want and not when they’re thrust upon me, and that when I’m in a bad mood I could simply decide not to be. What I wish for, in short, is absolute control over my life. Continue reading…  Photo: DVIDSHUB The abhorrence we feel when encountering beliefs that contradict our own is so universal and so powerful that it’s hard to imagine it’s the result of anything other than natural selection, programmed into us by evolution because it gives us some kind of survival advantage. Even if we’re able to tolerate beliefs that are different than our own, remaining so creates a tension from which we can never quite become free. Continue reading…  Photo: mclephan People sometimes argue about which scientific discovery or advance ranks as the greatest, as the most significant in the history of humankind. Popular answers include electricity, computers, immunizations, and antibiotics. Yet I would argue it’s none of these, but rather the scientific method of inquiry itself. The scientific method only came into being relatively recently in human history as people began to become interested in proving all the things that other people believed (for example, that the sun rotates around the Earth, the Earth is flat, and the Earth is only 5,000 or so years old). Continue reading…  Photo: karindalziel People who know me know I like to think. Few things in life give me as much pleasure as coming across a new idea—a good new idea—and examining it from every angle, seeing how it links to other ideas and to what interesting use I can put it. I also like to think about thinking itself—a uniquely human ability that’s led to all sorts of consequences: self-awareness as well as awareness of our mortality, to name just two. Awareness of our mortality is as terrible as our self-awareness is wonderful (leading, as the latter does, to the ability to live happily and well until we die). Without the ability to self-reflect we couldn’t challenge our weaknesses, gain wisdom, and improve ourselves. Continue reading…  Photo: TerryJohnston The world is an unimaginably complex place, made all the more so by the incredible things we human beings have learned to do: build skyscrapers and space shuttles, clear clogged heart arteries and blocked intestines, make cell phones nearly as thin as credit cards, and modulate the immune system just enough to prevent it from rejecting a transplanted organ but not so much that it leaves its host too susceptible to infection. Continue reading…  Photo: pichado photography Years ago, I was having lunch with a friend who’d developed a reputation for being difficult. He complained frequently and bitterly, often about things no one else found bothersome. In general, he was perceived as negative and over-entitled. I thought most of the time the points he made were valid but that the way he expressed them was off-putting and prevented others from being open to his ideas. After thinking about it for a while, I decided, for his sake, I should let him know. Continue reading…  Photo: stevendepolo As long as I can remember, I’ve been burdened with a desire for perfection in all my creative endeavors. No new sentence can be written until the previous one is just right. No garment painted can be abandoned until its texture seems utterly real, as if touching it wouldn’t yield the sensation of oil paint but of velvet, silk, or cotton. But my dogged pursuit of this verisimilitude has often proven itself to be the greatest obstacle to my achieving it. Continue reading…
For me, the tragedy of 9/11 was perhaps slightly more personal than for many as I knew someone who was in the first plane that struck the World Trade Center. Continue reading… |
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