Tag Archives: the self

Alan Watts Sings

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Do You Think You Have Free Will?

If you answer yes, watching the below video might give you second thoughts. Serious second thoughts. __________ What I take from this clip is that my intentions and actions are things for which the ground has already been prepared, unconscious … Continue reading

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Dance With Me (In The Interpretation Of Lines From Yeats)

When reading something, guessing about an author’s exact state of mind is sometimes tricky, but it’s still fun to play. Take for instance William Butler Yeats’s poem, “Among School Children.” The Yale literary critic Paul de Man once noted that … Continue reading

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Cyborg Lobster Watch: A Remote-Controlled Plane as a Tool for Vision

Some questions: Is an extension of man, man? Where does the self end and our tools begin? And when we look-in on the “flights” of another person’s consciousness, extended and carried via a remote-controlled plane, does that become us as well? Or … Continue reading

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Thinking about Memory: Kimberly Clark Sharp Shares Her Near Death Experience from 1970

Before watching the below video, allow me to set the scene a bit. It’s 2008 in a run-of-the-mill 1980s decor hotel conference room in Durham, North Carolina. Attached to the cream cloth wall is a light hovering like an angel … Continue reading

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Consciousness Explained: Spatial Awareness, Time Awareness, Self Awareness, Death Awareness, and Free Will

Below is an excellent BBC documentary on the self and free will. I especially like what Gordon Gallup says at the 11:48 mark: Death awareness is the price we pay for self awareness. If you only have time for a … Continue reading

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The Seven Atheist Denials: God, the Self, the Soul, Immortality, Free Will, the Good, and You’re Never Really Alone

It’s often said that atheism is no more than the rejection of belief in gods, and, on a strict definition, this is true. But there are six other things that also tend to go with this rejection, and they ought to … Continue reading

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And These Two are One: Two Little Craniopagus Girls—or One? Will They Grow Up with Insights on the Nature of the Trinity?

Macleans/Ca. has a feature on conjoined twins who are craniopagus (joined at the head), and the twins appear to be sharing brain functions central to the self:  There is evidence that they can see through each other’s eyes and perhaps share each other’s unspoken … Continue reading

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Neil Young and the Discontinuities of Life and the Self

Neil Young as a wise man: Neil Young as a young man: The second video doesn’t embed. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWovzUEe4l8

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The Higher Self and the Lower Self: Theseus and the Minotaur

An 1843 sculpture, by Antoine-Louis Barye, of Theseus slaying the Minotaur: Theseus’s entering the center of the Labyrinth at Knossos and slaying the Minotaur has sometimes been associated with Apollonian order and culture overcoming the bestial elements of body and psyche. And in … Continue reading

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A Very Short Quiz to Help You Figure Out Where You Are at Right Now

Read each question slowly, and respond honestly. 1) If it is in fact the case that you are, right at this moment, occupying a very definite volume of space, then why is it that you do not know, without first taking a moment to … Continue reading

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