Author Archives: rsree
A Play Without A Script
Shakespeare once wrote: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; Sometimes I think that we humans behave like actors in a self-directed play that seemed to have lost track of its script, and that … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture, Philosophy, Science & Religion
Comments Off on A Play Without A Script
The Night of Broken Glass
This November it will be exactly 80 years ago that a wave of anti-Jewish savagery and destruction broke out across Nazi occupied Europe on November 9 and 10 in 1938. Known as the Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, after the shards … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture
Tagged Adolf Hitler, genocide, herd instinct, instinct versus reason, Kristallnacht, mass violence, mass-manipulation, Spinoza, state-sponsored violence
Comments Off on The Night of Broken Glass
Can Something Come From Nothing?
For some folks the question whether something can come from nothing might appear meaningful in discussions around the creation of the world. For instance, how did the world come into being, and what was there before it came into being: … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Comments Off on Can Something Come From Nothing?
Why The World Is At War
A recent March 2018 Guardian article by Jason Burke titled “Why Is the World at War” makes the point that “The harsh reality may be that we should not be wondering why wars seem so intractable today, but why our … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture
Tagged empathy and compassion, evolutionary objectives, human beings, human potential, instinct versus reason, Law of the Jungle, Might is Right, regional conflict, war, what it means to be human
Comments Off on Why The World Is At War
Mind Over Matter
In a recent Scientific American article dated April 19 titled “Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?” Bernardo Kastrup muses over the fact that inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm. … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged Bernardo Kastrup, Kant, mental realm, objective knowledge, Paradigm Shift, physical realm, Quantum Anomalies, Schopenhauer, scientific observation, Spinoza, subjective knowledge, Thomas Kuhn
Comments Off on Mind Over Matter
Enlightenment – How?
In response to Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress – to repeat something I stated in an earlier post – who can begin to enumerate the number and variety of social economic, health and environmental issues … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture
Tagged apocalyptic consumerism, Elon Musk, Enlightenment Now, extiction, Mars, non-renewable resources, pollution, predatory capitalism, starvation, Steven Pinker
Comments Off on Enlightenment – How?
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a lot lately, mainly because more and more people at all levels of society are starting to recognize its potential, in whatever area of human activity. From a briefing paper published by the … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged Artificial Intelligence, evolution, homo sapiens, what it means to be human
Comments Off on Artificial Intelligence
A Tale of Two Selves
Why is the human race, with its superior intellectual capacity when compared to its most recent primate ancestry on the phylogenetic tree, at the same time so unstable, so unpredictable, and so neurotic, and so often acting against its own … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture
Tagged abstraction and conceptualization, AI, Artificial Intelligence, cortex, evolution, human cortex, human endeavour, instinctive self, Knowledge Doubling Curve, neocortex, neuroanatomy, phylogenetic tree, rational self, self-destructive behaviour
Comments Off on A Tale of Two Selves
Evolution in Transition
Neuroscientists have described the human brain as the most complex biological structure in the known universe, containing hundreds of billions of cells, and trillions of connections controlling every thought, feeling, movement and function of our bodies. If this proves anything, … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion, Uncategorized
Tagged evolution, evolutionary objectives, organizational complexity, teleological process, the human brain
Comments Off on Evolution in Transition
The World is Larger than the Sum of its Parts
As I stated up front – in so many words – I’m writing this primarily for myself in the attempt to figure out what the world is all about beyond the twists and turns that life can throw our way, … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture, Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged evolution, religion, the future, the larger context, the meaning of life, the state of the world
Comments Off on The World is Larger than the Sum of its Parts