 THE UNDEFEATED MIND Fall 2012 |
 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: jinterwas Could any commodity be more precious than time? Is there anything any of us want more—or more of—that at the same time seems to be more beyond our control to increase? Who among us wouldn’t strike the most Faustian of bargains for an extra year of life? Or an extra decade? We certainly can all adapt habits that have been shown to increase the likelihood of our living longer: moderate our alcohol intake, avoid smoking, exercise, and so on. But such measures won’t give us what we really want: an increase in the amount of time we have each day. Continue reading…  Photo: Wonderlane In Nichiren Buddhism, the mentor-disciple relationship—the relationship between teacher and student—is considered essential for attaining happiness. How does Nichiren Buddhism envision this relationship works? First, in a true mentor-disciple relationship, the mentor, contrary to what many believe, is not intrinsically superior to the disciple. 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…  Image: RavensHeart Web Studio As long as I can remember (so the cliche goes), I’ve wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first short story when I was five. It was called “Horse’s Birthday Party” and was, you won’t be surprised to learn, about a horse having a birthday party. I drew a cover (with a horse on it), taped the pages together, and handed it to my parents. They praised it to the skies, and I was hooked. Since then, no matter what I was doing (going to college and then medical school, trying to survive a medical residency, practicing medicine as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago), I’ve always thought of myself first and foremost as a writer—even though all throughout those years nothing of mine was ever published. Continue reading…  Photo: beatplusmelody Human beings are the only living creatures endowed with a full awareness of their mortality, a wound so painful that they’re driven to pull every cognitive trick in the book to deny it. As with any skill, some of us are far better at this than others, yielding a wide range of conscious reactions to the notion of personal non-being. Continue reading…  Photo: amyelyse How often do you become irrationally angry, and even though you fully recognize you’re overreacting, still find yourself unable to stop? Do you find yourself hurt by a careless word or gesture and find yourself acting petulantly in hopes the person who hurt you will recognize the damage they’ve done without you having to tell them how you feel? How about feeling jealous or insecure and showing off for someone you want to impress or make like you? Continue reading…  Photo: George Eastman House Do you ever long to take a break from your life? Are you sometimes so tired of managing its daily stressors that you find yourself wanting to pitch your entire existence, move somewhere else, and start your life again? Do certain relationships sometimes cause you such distress that you fantasize about running away from them and never coming back? Would that running away permanently was a viable solution. Unfortunately, no life we would ever create somewhere else for ourselves would be free of stress, and nowhere we go can we ever escape ourselves (that is, our way of reacting to stress). Continue reading…  Photo: SuperFantastic Two weeks ago, my son came home from nursery school with a splinter in his palm. It was so small, though, I wasn’t sure if it was really there. “It’s there,” my wife said. She’d tried to squeeze it out before I’d come home but had only succeeded in hurting him terribly. He’d shrieked and cried and tears had poured down his face. Continue reading…  Photo: rjhuttondfw The notion that dying is a right seems nonsensical to argue: death is given to all of us equally without the need of anyone’s sanction. The right to die well, on the other hand—well, that’s another matter entirely. A good death is, in many cases, something our fellow human beings have great power to grant or deny, and is therefore, sadly, a right for which we must indeed fight. Continue reading… |
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