Stories Made Us Human
Language allowed us to meet people we never came face to face with, to learn about events that happened far away in time and space. Written stories expanded that capacity exponentially. Stories made us human.
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How Stories are Born
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All We Need
All we need is good health and good relationships. At the end of the day, all we really need from life is good health and healthy relationships with people we love. Good health is not a given for humans. To be healthy, we need good nutrition, we need safe and comfortable housing, we need access
The Imagery of Language
I left Russia for America when I was thirteen that’s a difficult age to make cultural and language adjustments. Others in my family are amazing at translating from one language to another; but I’m not particularly good at it. I find learning a new language and a novel way of thinking very hard. If
The Impact That Words Make
Words help us remember. Words sharpen our senses and help us give shape and texture to everything we observe. Words have interesting sounds and mouth feel. The word “zebra” doesn’t only conjure up a striped ungulate, it pleasantly vibrates on our lips and tongue. It’s fun to say. The word “power” pushes out with force.
Mathematical Landscapes Of My Childhood And Their Loss
When I was a kid, I slept in my grandparents’ bedroom. First in a crib, then on a little couch in the corner of their room. My grandfather taught me math every night before I fell asleep. He drilled me on addition, subtraction, then multiplication. He used large numbers; and I always got the right
Natural Selection of Manmade Objects
Can natural selection and evolution work on man-made objects and structures? Can it work on the stories we tell ourselves as a society? Products, architecture, and stories are continually evolving and selecting for traits that we and our influencers find more useful and appealing. Unfortunately, lots of interesting designs and solutions get overlooked along the way. Like evolution, luck is a major…
Generational Wealth in the Animal Kingdom
What other species of animals accumulate wealth over several generations? The other day, my husband and I were watching birds and squirrels dig around in our garden. “They are just trying to make a living,” my husband said. And it got me thinking squirrels and birds have to find food and shelter everyday to
We Are The Heroes
We are the heroes of our own journey through life. That’s true whether or not we are basically good. No matter what kind of actions they took, Hitler, Putin, Jack the Ripper, or the Unabomber always viewed those actions as heroic nationalist, political, or social necessities done for the glory of “their” people. Their life choices were, in their minds, necessities of the moment. Even if people…
Finding Happiness in Someone Else’s Happiness
The Dutch have a word for a feeling that encapsulates “finding happiness in someone else’s happiness:” gunnen. This would be the opposite of a German word: schadenfreude a pleasure derived from another’s misfortune. Slapstick comedy depends upon schadenfreude. Two-year-old children have been observed to enjoy the mishaps of others. Tom and Jerry, The Road
Thanksgiving and College Applications Stress
Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It is always a stressful time too much travel, too much food, too many people in one room, too much family. But it is also a time for forming memories. There will be moments, good and bad, that will become part of family lore, retold long after everyone goes
Epigenetics of the Soul
I know I'm being provocative with the title. Epigenetics is the study of the influence of environment on the expression of our genes. Epi is the Greek word for ON or ABOVE. And I am using soul to designate the essence of who we truly are. Thus I want talk about the environmental conditions that shape up, that makes us into us. If I was born into a different economic, cultural, or/and social…
Reverse Aging
I’ve heard it said that if we just hang on for 10 to 15 years more, science will be able to reverse our body’s age to that of a 20-year-old. That’s quite a claim. But what are the implications of living indefinitely? I’ve read many science fiction stories that discuss immortality, always in some distant
Human Limitations
We live in a vast universe that spans enormous scapes of time and space. But humans evolved to understand information in relatable quantities at a human scale. We conceive landscapes mostly in chunks we can easily walk, connected loosely by strands of distances we can comfortably drive. We live in the now, but relate to
Extravagant
The Latin root of the word extravagant means “to wander outside or beyond.” Clearly the meaning changed somewhat over the years, but wandering in unfamiliar places exposes our senses, and thus our brains, to new experiences. Our senses are hit with novel sights, sounds, and scents. We are getting something “extra” out of life when
In-the-Moment Experience Versus Memory of Time
Time really does fly. It marches like an unstoppable force. But our memories of the past events and our perception of time are not so immutable. In-the-moment experience and the memory of such are so very different. Our memories are problematic, at best, and completely fictional at worst. But we can choose what we remember; we can shape our own history.
Living Dance — Inhabiting Forms Habits
The most interesting things happen (good and bad) during times of flux. That’s when possibilities open up, and we feel free to act different and make unfamiliar choices. That is why so many stories start with the hero or protagonist arriving at a new location. Things happen when unfamiliarity is abound.
Imaginary Children
Tamagotchis, AI companions, cars, and even rumbas have people that are heavily emotionally invested in these inanimate and abstract things, giving them pet names and interacting with them as if they were invested with souls. Perhaps humans jump to anthropomorphism inanimate objects faster than other species. But we are not alone in attributing life in this way. I wonder if intelligent life that…
Learning to Understand Reality
We live in a bizzar age when fantastical dissembling is presented as truth. It is left up to us as people to figure out what is real and what is not. And it is a very hard skill to master.
Amazon Book Sale
For many many years, I ve been a sales associate at Amazon. I ve started just as they ve started, when selling books over the Internet was a novel and cool thing. I haven t written back then (but soon after). And for as many years, Amazon has been trying to get me to promote things. But that s just
Quest for Immortality
Whenever it comes, death seems very unfair, and humans have been hard at work on combating this scourge for as long as we can remember. After decades of self-investment via education, relationships, employment, children, hobbies, travel and experiences, who wants to just give it all up? We hate death when it comes at an old age, when it cuts short life in its prime, and perhaps particularly when…