Most of us seem to possess an underlying essence that makes us who we are — a constant that remains with us throughout our lives.  This essence has different names according to various spiritual or philosophical traditions. Buddhists call it the "self," but reject the idea that we all have a unique self that sticks around throughout our lifetimes. Other monotheistic religions might call this essence a "soul" that outlasts our physical bodies and is judged based on our worldly deeds after death. Other philosophical traditions might refer to this as our "ego."

Who We Are

While people have pondered these concepts for millennia, neuroscientists and psychologists are just starting to unravel many of the neurological and environmental mechanisms that combine to create this perception of integrated selfhood. Most people feel that at a certain point, their body ends and the rest of the world begins. This sensation is known as the embodied self.

The Embodied Self

The perspectival self allows us to experience the world from a first-person point of view. But there are also certain contexts where this perspective can be disrupted. There are even cases in which our point of view, or the mind’s eye, can appear as if it is operating outside of us.

The Perspectival Self

A <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21087873/">depersonalization disorder</a> is a condition in which people feel they are watching themselves go about their lives. Individuals with this disorder often say they feel disconnected from reality and are moving through life on autopilot. Depersonalization experiences usually co-occur with traumatic events, or prolonged severe stress.

Depersonalization Disorder

The volitional self is related to feelings of agency and free will. Human beings, like any other organisms, have to interact with their environment in a way that <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/HOHTPM-2">ensures</a> their ongoing survival. While human beings cannot consciously control the internal states of their body (i.e. heartbeat, bowel movements, adrenaline levels), they can control which actions they take to ensure their survival. Theorists <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235648263_The_free-energy_self_A_predictive_coding_account_of_self-recognition">suggest</a> this inherited ability may be inextricably linked to our feelings of agency.

The Volitional Self

The narrative self is associated with the autobiographical nature of our memories. Scientists have observed that <a href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-is-dementia">dementia</a> and other neurodegenerative conditions can have significant effects on our narrative notions of selfhood. As these diseases advance, memory and other cognitive functions can decline. Patients commonly forget careers, family members and meaningful life events. In some cases, people even experience drastic personality changes.

The Narrative Self

The social self relates to the roles we play in different social contexts and how we perceive others perceiving us. As deeply social creatures, most people spend a lot of time considering others’ opinions of us. We crave connection and validation among our peers. Some <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1982982">researchers</a> might even argue that without other people around us, we couldn’t form a concept of self.

The Social Self

Researchers think our inner identities are composed of several layers, though it isn't yet clear how exactly they operate.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

The Multi-Faceted Nature of Selfhood

Scale is the relation of size from one object compared to another. You can utilize this by creating an emphasis on the objects or pieces you want to stand outIt can also help guide your user through your designs, scale helps create rhythm

Use Scale to create emphasis and rhythm 

<ul><li> Negative space can help you create stunning logos that draw your costumers in</li><li>By utilizing negative space you can help your logo stick in the head of your customers and because it takes time and creativity to create it will stick in their heads.</li><li>Using negative space also draws your users to the brand message</li></ul>

Use Negative Space to Create effective Logos

Simulate depths in your designs by adding shadows, whether hard shadows or soft shadows.They help enhance the usability of your designs and create a nice visual appeal.

Simulate Depth In Ui Designs

Visual hierarchy is one of the most important ways to create an effective useful design that is both learnable and memorable. Some ways that you can accomplish it is as follows<ol><li>Size</li><li>Color</li><li>Contrast</li><li>Scale</li><li>Repetition</li><li>Negative Space</li></ol>

Use Visual Hierarchy To Establish Importance 

Here are some must learn tips to increase the impact of your designs.

Available on any device anywhere in the world, Uxcel is the best way to improve and learn UX design online in just 5 minutes per day.

product

Product & Design

Where design careers are built

The Frankfurt School had the luxury and misfortunate privilege of existing in unique times. During the Interwar Period (1918-1939) in the heart of rising Fascism an incredible group of academics and scholars found each other in Germany with a like-minded goal: to provide societal research and reach greater understanding. These are the goals of philosophy in a nutshell. Erich Fromm was part of this group.

What Was The Frankfurt School?

A little perspective is required to understand Fromm’s pursuit and interest in Love. Erich Fromm grew up and got a Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in Germany in 1922. He wrote his final dissertation, “On Jewish Law”, as a nod to his Jewish parents and roots.Those aware of history know that this time of the Interwar period is one of the single worst examples of persecution in recorded history. Erich Fromm dealt with this hatred over the next 20 years of his life, and his experiences are key to the fundamental premise of his work entitled The Art of Loving, published in 1956.

Erich Fromm - The Art Of Loving

Erich Fromm was forced to flee Germany during the Fascist takeover in the 1930s. He first went to Geneva, ultimately finding residency at Columbia University in New York.During this time Fromm began wondering about what was wrong with humanity.The fundamental problem of humanity, according to what Fromm learned from his colleagues at The Frankfurt School, is divisiveness. More importantly, as conscious and rational creatures we notice that we are fundamentally separate. As a result, we face a deep existential loneliness, which is behind many of humanities’ problems in contemporary times.

The Fundamental Separateness

This existential loneliness that affects humanity comes from our ability to judge and be aware of our own actions. Our search for a tribe or a group often finds us excluding those not in that tribe. Some of the time the tribe we want to belong to excludes us or perhaps we are within the tribe but do not feel the inclusion we thought we would find there.

The Search For A Tribe

Yet, Fromm noticed something unexpected while working on the problem facing humanity. Everybody was already searching for Love. People were obsessed with the idea. Books on Love were being taken off all the shelves in every book store. Singles clubs were rapidly becoming popular and romantic ads filled newspapers.So, what was wrong? Why were people not finding the Love necessary to combat this feeling of separateness? Like realizing that fire can not fight a fire, Fromm realized feelings could not stop feelings. Fromm concluded that Love had to be a type of practice.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

<h4>“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.”</h4>What Erich Fromm means by immature love is love generated from a point of narcissism. The most narcissistic facet of this type of love is a transactional relationship. This is exemplified by turning the loved one and relationship itself into a commodity.

Mature and Immature Love

Our contemporary understanding of love and how we find love falls into this category, as illustrated by our use of dating app sites that specifically limit the number of matches that you can have or profiles that you can see based on the level of income and other filters. Fromm would see this commodification as an institutionalization of Immature Love, a path that surely drives existential loneliness to new extremes.

The Commodification And Institutionalization Of Immature Love

The answers to these issues with love and loneliness are found in The Frankfurt School and Erich Fromm’s other major work, Escape from Freedom (1941). In this work, Fromm describes a problem we can still see in contemporary society: Individuation. This individualization that occurs leads society right back to that problem of love and separateness. Our existential loneliness leads us to make decisions that temporarily remove that existential loneliness. We strive to be free of loneliness, even if only for a while.

Erich Fromm - Escape From Freedom

Negative Freedom according to Erich Fromm is the “freedom from”. This type of freedom has been gradually increasing within society ever since the time of hunter-gatherer tribes, where humanity started. It represents the removal of things that can control us entirely: freedom from hunger, freedom from preventable diseases. These types of things that our society has given us are all negative freedoms.

Negative Freedom - Freedom *From*

Positive Freedom, on the other hand, is a sort of “freedom to”. For example, we have the opportunity to choose what things we pursue. If we have “freedom to” then we are not restricted to a life of needs; we are not limited to a caste we may be born into. We have a reasonable amount of goods to get us through life – food, water, shelter, and other basic things we need to possess. Having covered our basic needs, society now provides near endless opportunities to people in a society that has positive freedoms. Yet, we still have a problem.

Positive Freedom - Freedom *To*

Those who find this “freedom to” in front of them may have a negative response to opportunity. They may see all that opportunity and freedom and wish for a more rigid way of life, a life where choice is limited in advance instead of the weight of endless possibilities they can choose for themselves. Fromm believed that these people are sadomasochists.

Positive Freedom Has Opponents

Sadomasochists wish for there to be an order or hierarchy that limits the access to positive freedom; they are more comfortable when there is an order and ranks within society. In agreeing to this rank they submit themselves to hierarchy and restrictions in life. This is the masochist in them. The sadist in them is the part that uses their position in this hierarchy to control those beneath them with less “freedom to”.

Freedom From, Freedom To, And Sadomasochists

Here, it’s easy to see the correlation between the philosophy Erich Fromm developed and the life he lived in Germany. Seeing his country tear itself apart with authoritarian principles and people willfully submitting to and using the power of hierarchical society to feel less existential loneliness for themselves was jarring to all the scholars of The Frankfurt School.

Shying Away From Freedom, To Submission And Abuse

This submission to social hierarchy is easy to see in retrospect, but during the time Fromm was living in it was much harder. Erich Fromm put forward this idea of people shying away from freedom and leaning toward authoritarian principles in the late 1920s. The original argument by The Frankfurt School was that if 15% of the population were adamantly democratic and only 10% of the population was adamantly authoritarian, then the country would be fine, as there would be 75% of people in the center to lean in favor of democratic principles.

Seeing the Problem Ahead of Time

Erich Fromm argued that if the people in society that are part of the 75% – the neutral, majority party – had a fundamental misunderstanding of Love and Freedom, which they did, then the 75% would be more likely to fall into authoritarianism. This is because authoritarianism pushes you into a group or at least into a group role. Being part of a group always feels better than the loneliness you face when you’re alone, unless you are comfortable with loneliness.

Authoritarianism Pushes Us Into Tribes 

Erich Fromm believed that the solution to this behavior in society and to our existential loneliness that causes it is one the same thing: it is to Love effectively. Shockingly, Fromm’s idea for this solution started ironically: Love should begin with being comfortable with loneliness. Being comfortable with loneliness means being comfortable with yourself. This is a sign of personal strength according to the thinkers of the Frankfurt School.

The Solution: To Love Effectively

This comfort with loneliness and ourselves helps us see that everyone is struggling with the same things. Every race, sex, gender, and all peoples live in a society.Everyone within society struggles with loneliness and finding a place to fit in. Noticing this truth is the first step to real love.

To Love Effectively Is To Be Comfortable With Loneliness

When we have humility we can avoid the egoism that plagues most relationships, romantic or otherwise. We should avoid the commodification of both ourselves and the other person by seeing that they do not need to justify themselves and prove their worth to remove your loneliness. This is because your loneliness is part of you and their loneliness is part of them. This is the first, and most important, aspect of Love to Erich Fromm.

The First Aspect Of Love - Humility

The next two aspects of love that are required to change our understanding go hand in hand: they are courage and faith. Courage to Fromm is by far the most difficult of the aspects to achieve. Most likely you and all of us are part of the neutral group of society that simply does not wish to be affected by ideological principles of the extremes in society. If you then try to change your understanding of love and begin to see people for who they are you will begin to give out love selflessly to everyone that you meet.

The Next Two Aspects Of Love - Courage And Faith

No one needs to justify themselves to you and this creates an atmosphere of sincerity; and sincerity is love. More importantly, that is where the faith aspect comes in for Fromm. Anyone who gives out love to everyone they meet does not commodify their fellow members of society and trusts that this understanding will spread and benefit everyone who understands and partakes in it.The fourth aspect of Love is diligence and this is the aspect that keeps love going and changes the individual’s life as well as the society they live in.

Loving: Good Faith, Fair Dealing, Due Diligence

This understanding and practice though will inevitably face backlash. People will fight against it because it is scary. Our society, and the society that The Frankfurt School was a part of in the 1930s, have institutionalized the commodification of the people within themselves. Fighting against that institutionalization requires the courage to continue even when you face extreme hatred, as Erich Fromm did when he was labeled a political dissident and forced to flee his nation.

The Persecution Of Bona Fides Love

Many of the descriptions used by Fromm have parallels to our society today. We are feeling more and more lonely in a world that is more and more interconnected. We are seeing into each other’s lives in ways that are inherently commodified. We subscribe to a “grind” mindset that tells us things are either assets or liabilities, defining everyone around us by what they can provide to us and how we can use them. This mindset creates a hierarchical system of values that we apply to people and results in larger and larger groups of people that suffer from existential loneliness.

Erich Fromm: Love in Our Modern Age - Assets And Liabilities

Getting away from this mindset by treating Love not as a feeling and commodity but as an art is the key. Pursuing an art requires courage to continue, humility to understand that you are just beginning in this practice and faith that if you practice with diligence you will become a master of the craft. Becoming a master in the craft of Love will make being in love all the more worth it.

Love As Art - Something To Pursue, To Practice, To Master

Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult...Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

One of the main scholars of the Frankfurt School was Erich Fromm, an intellectual who, faced with hatred and being labeled a political dissident, chose to study the opposite of what he saw as the main problem facing all of humanity: hate, segregation, and divisiveness. He chose to study Love. 

Erich Fromm was a scholar who fled Germany during the Fascist takeover. This experience gave him a whole new perspective on love.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

communication

Communication

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

The Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm’s Perspective on Love

Music often feels like it is part of our subconscious. It is constantly playing in the background, at the coffee shop, in the elevator, and working from home. In 2017, Nielsen estimated that Americans spend over 32 hours a week on average listening to music. It's then not a surprise that we remember music and can easily recall lyrics and melodies.

Why we can recall music 

Many of us can hear music in our minds, named musical or auditory imagery. It can happen voluntarily, such as thinking about a song, or it can happen involuntarily - when the song pops into your mind without you trying to recall any music, called an earworm. About 90% of people have an earworm once a week and a third of people have an earworm once a day. Those who engage with music more often experience more earworms.

Earworms

<ul><li>One reason why music has become so intertwined with how we express and comfort ourselves is because listening to music releases dopamine in the brain.</li><li>Music awakens our memory. When we can identify pieces of music, we can bring back memories associated with the music.</li><li>Music can also have an emotional impact. Even if you identify a short piece of music, you have a musical imagery experience that triggers the memory of the whole piece of music and its associated memories. </li></ul>

Music represents who we are, how we feel, and what we remember

Psychologists say it's no surprise that we have such a strong memory for music and can easily recall lyrics and melodies, even if we haven’t heard them in years.

music

Music

Why We Remember Music and Forget Everything Else

It states that people tend not to change the things that already exist and are happening in their lives. Many companies use this to their advantage, for instance, having zombie customers (people who pay but don't use the software)

Status Quo Bias

Don't use unjustified discounts because it creates distrust in your users. It makes them cautious of the orginal price and trains them to always look for the cheaper option

The Dark Side Of Discounts

It is an effect that states when brands show nobelity and show they genuinely care for their costumers brand loyalty goes up and they receive better PR.

What is the Nobel Edge Effect

Try and avoid Friction when someone is offboarding on your platform, it will make them dislike your product.

Friction

Growth Design is awesome to learn about UX Design In a fun comic way 

Discover the user offboarding tactics used by Adobe, and how to design a great subscription cancellation flows without relying on unethical dark patterns.

Adobe: The Psychology of User Offboarding

Meditation is your birthright. It's your natural state. It requires no one, needs no thing, and has no technique.If something requires a guru, a mantra, or a teaching, it isn't universal, and it won't free you.

We say that we want peace of mind but what we really want is peace from mind.

“No technique of the mind will free you from the mind.”

All chases, whether flow, drugs, beauty, thrills, orgasm, or devotion, are attempts to escape from the mind. Meditation is the direct path.

In an age of mental gluttony, meditation is fasting for the mind. Before paying a therapist to listen to you, listen to yourself. Before clearing your inbox, clear your mind.

Just as the sky rains when the clouds are heavy, and the body sleeps when the limbs are tired, meditation arrives when the mind is calm.

Prepare for meditation by sitting quietly in the morning, with eyes closed and back upright, in any comfortable position that will minimize movement.

Sixty minutes are easier than thirty, as it takes time for the mind to settle down. Sixty consecutive days are needed, just as it takes time for the body to go from unfit to fit.

Realize that at this moment, you are the only person in the world and there is no one to instruct you, praise you, or judge you.

Make no effort for or against anything. Whatever happens, happens. Surrender to yourself in the moment. Resist nothing and reject nothing, including the urge to resist and reject.

Meditation is not going through thoughts but rather letting thoughts go through you. The thought “I am meditating” is also a thought.

Meditation isn’t holy or spiritual or magical. It’s literally nothing.

No focus, no mantra, no dharma, no chakras, no Buddhas, no gurus, no gratitude, no scripture, no temple, no music, no gadgets, no apps are required. Some may be helpful, but eventually all will have to be left behind. Start simply, because that's where this all ends.

There are many meditation methods, but "no effort" is the universal method. Every creature at all times can choose to do nothing.

There's no need to get up to record a thought. If the idea was good, it’ll come back. If it doesn’t come back, it wasn’t that good.

Meditation is a single player game. There is no point in comparing to other meditators or to even your own previous meditations.

If meditation was easy, you’d do nothing else.

The point of meditation is not to become "a meditator" - in reality, there's no such thing. If it doesn’t bring lasting and effortless change, drop it, before it becomes another struggle and another chase.

There is nothing to say and nothing on offer. No one is taking you anywhere, selling you anything, or making you promises. Reading or talking about meditation will do nothing for you.

Ignore all advice on meditation, including this thread. “Meditation is good for nothing. That's why you do it.” - @amirmotlagh

The closer you get to the truth, the more silent you become inside.

The ability to be content and at peace, by yourself, is freedom.

I like naval's approach to meditation a lot, its very practical.

philosophy

Philosophy

health

Health

habits

Habits

meditation

Meditation

Meditation - The Art of Doing Nothing: Naval Ravikant

Have you ever tried to relax, only to find yourself overwhelmed with feeling stressed and having negative thoughts? Turns out a lot of us experience this—which is why some have coined it “stresslaxing.”Even though stresslaxation is a new term, it describes relaxation-induced anxiety, which has been studied for years. This is shown to happen to between 30% and 50% of people when they try to do relaxing things, causing symptoms of stress (such as rapid heartbeat or sweating).

Relaxation Causing Stress

Pretending that a problem doesn’t exist—also known as denial—is one of the least effective coping strategies for stress. In the case of stresslaxing, this might be denying you’re stressed to begin with.Short periods of denial can actually help us adapt to change. For example, denial can help a person cope with their emotions after experiencing the death of someone close. But when denial is used frequently to deal with daily stressors, it can leave people feeling perpetually stuck in a rut.

Reason For Stresslaxation: you’re Denying You’re Stressed

Acknowledge that the stress symptoms can be helpful. Your body is trying to alert you that a problem needs fixing, so it’s activating all its physiological resources to help you do this.Write down your deepest thoughts and feelings associated with your stress. This will help you understand the source of your stress so you can tackle it. Think outside the box. When we’re stressed, we might think only certain activities (such as meditation or exercise) can help us relax.

How To Fix Stresslaxation Denial

Most of us have something we’re passionate about—whether that’s our work or even a hobby. But the reason you’re motivated to do these things is important.Some people pursue their passion because they want to—whether it’s to improve themselves or learn a new skill. But others may only pursue their passion because they want recognition from other people. People with certain personality types may be more prone to obsessing over their passion. Others may simply follow a certain pursuit to get praise from their colleagues or even to prove their worth to friends or family.

Reason For Stresslaxation: Worrying About Others

When making a decision, some people can’t help but explore all possible options available to them—known as maximizing thoughts. This can even happen when trying to pick something relaxing to do. Even after picking something, you may instead think about the other options, wondering if something else would’ve helped you feel more relaxed. So instead of relaxing your mind, you’re stressing yourself even more.Unfortunately, maximizing leads to self-blame regret, no matter what option we choose. It’s also sometimes associated with lower well-being.

Reason For Stresslaxation: You Can’t Make up Your Mind

Limit the number of decisions you need to make on the day you want to do something relaxing. Or even plan when you’re going to do something relaxing (such as watching a movie or meditating) and how long you’re going to do it for. This may make it easier to relax when the time comes as you’ll know you aren’t putting other things off.Remember why you’re trying to relax. Your health is important, so remembering this may help you feel less stressed while trying to do a relaxing activity.

How To Make Up Your Mind

Relaxation-induced anxiety is shown to happen to between 30% and 50% of people when they try to do relaxing things. This is a practical guide to help deal with it.


career

Career

entertainment

Entertainment

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

‘Stresslaxation’ is real. Science explains why it happens and how to get past it

People think stupidity is the opposite of intelligence. In fact, stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment.
Stupidity can be defined as overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information.
It’s crucial information: You better pay attention to it. It’s conspicuous: It’s right in front of your nose and yet you either overlook it or you dismiss it.

Defining Stupidity

<ul><li>Being outside your normal environment or changing your routines.</li><li>Being in the presence of a group(social pressure).</li><li>Being in the presence of an expert or if you, yourself, are an expert.</li><li>Doing any task that requires intense focus, or fixating on a particular outcome.</li><li>Information overload. </li><li>Physical or emotional stress, fatigue. </li><li>Rushing or urgency.</li></ul>The probability of missing key information (stupidity) increases the more the above factors are present.

Seven Factors that Lead to Stupidity

Most of the factors are ubiquitous in modern-day life such as stress, rushing, and information overload. Therefore, our modern life is already susceptible to missing key information and making stupid mistakes.All factors are present in US hospitals. Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Modern Life And Stupidity

<ul><li>Recognize and know that you are in ”the stupid zone”</li><li>Pause. Just sit. Stop, before leaving your environment. If you can’t sit still for a minute, you don’t have the time not to!</li><li>Have a buddy whose job is to watch us. That is their only task, and can’t have the same responsibility as us. Have your own “pit crew”.</li><li>Don’t make decisions or do anything when in the stupid zone. For example, don’t sign a contract or drive.</li></ul>

The Solution

Stupidity is not the opposite of intelligence.

Stupidity is overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information. Here are seven situational factors that compromise your cognitive ability and result in increased odds of stupidity.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

How Not to Be Stupid - Farnam Street

Across the globe, millions of people believe the Earth — that whirling blue sphere, spinning through space — is, in fact, a flat plane. They think we all live beneath a dome that floats through space, or perhaps, hovers above primordial waters.
It’s unclear how many people believe some version of Flat Earth theory. Tens of thousands of people belong to social media accounts dedicated to these theories, and popular videos explaining the theory have hundreds of thousands of views.

Many People Believe The Earth Is Flat

A lot of Flat Earth’s modern resurgence has to do with the internet. Flat Earth was always around in some capacity through the 20th century, but it really began anew around 2014, 2015, when people realized that videos about Flat Earth perform really well on YouTube. Flat Earth is a fascinating topic. It inspires people to click because it’s just so outlandish. So, these videos were doing very well on the YouTube recommendation algorithm. What was always a fairly small and obscure ideology was able to pick up a lot more steam this time around.

Blame It On The Youtube Algorithm

Flat Earth is so outlandish and so wrong on its face, that, unlike some other conspiracy theories, it doesn’t have as much of a kernel of truth in the objective sense. There’s an emotional truth to Flat Earth. People come to it when they feel like the world is very broadly wrong. They feel as if the explanations they’ve been given just don’t align in any sense with the universe that they inhabit.

People Find The Flat Earth Theory A Security Blanket

Flat Earth doesn’t necessarily [purport] to be a religious belief. You can adopt it purely as an alt-geographical model. But most people  are quite religious, and it’s always been that way. Samuel Rowbotham, the theory’s inventor, used a lot of biblical tools in his writing, saying that the globe model conflicted with a round Earth. A lot of modern Flat Earthers will use the theory to get into other alternative Christian beliefs. A lot of them are creationists.

Flat Earth And Religion

There’s a tendency to think of conspiracy theorists as tinfoil hatters, as crazy people. But the processes are really ones that we’re all susceptible to. Everybody does have a conspiratorial streak. It’s something that we turn to when we feel like we don’t have enough information, or we don’t want to believe the information in front of us. When we try to get people out of conspiracy theories, to go into it with the understanding that this is a normal thought process. Maybe we can bring that empathy to those conversations and use that as a basis for bringing people back to reality.

The Bottom Line

“Flat Earth enables people to cast out all previous information that they didn't want to believe and rebuild the world from scratch."

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

What we can learn from people who take the Flat Earth theory seriously

Like all animals, we know what we need. Nourishment, safety, sex. Our needs are limited. Instinctual. Natural. And in today’s world – almost guaranteed.Our wants, on the other hand, are more complex. Whimsical. Time-consuming. We create them by choosing from a menu of possibilities that changes along with our environment. And boy, has our environment changed. For millennia, we foraged in the wild. Today, we’re being suffocated by abundance.This abundance makes it fair to expect individual desires within a modern tribe to be totally random. Unique, even.But they aren’t.

Our Needs And Wants

Everywhere you look, you’ll see groups of people who want the same things. The newest iPhone. Gucci handbags. Yeezys. Expensive degrees. And lately ­– pixelated JPEGS.Like a bunch of neighbouring metronomes that spontaneously synchronize, our desires coalesce with those of our social group. We desire what other humans desire. In other words, our desires are mimetic.

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Like all animals, we know what we need. Nourishment, safety, sex. Our needs are limited. Instinctual. Natural. And in today’s world – almost guaranteed. Our wants, on the other hand, are more complex. Whimsical. Time-consuming. We create them by choosing from a menu of possibilities that changes along with our environment. And boy, has our environment changed. For millennia, we foraged in the wild. Today, we’re being suffocated by abundance.

Mimetic Desire explained in exactly 500 words

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