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“This just blew my mind!” – Travis W.
Recent Newsletters
Here are a few selected works from my most recent newsletters.
World’s deadliest plant takes out the most controversial man in all of Athens
Before his death in 399 B.C.
Socrates went around terrorizing all the so-called keepers of knowledge…
The nobility, the educators, the politicians…
With a line of clever questioning, known today, as the Socratic method.
Which is basically the philosophical equivalent of a four year old asking “why” every time you propose a reasonably appropriate answer to their question.
And what Socrates found is that no one really seemed to have any legitimate basis for knowing any of the things they purported to know.
And this made a number of powerful and wise men look terribly foolish.
So they killed him.
I don’t have children, but I imagine those that do can empathize, on occasion, with the Grecian court’s decision.
Nevertheless, while there are entities in existence who will go to great lengths to prevent anyone from questioning their authority…
Socrates, in true philosophical martyrdom…
Did not run, and he did not flee…
He accepted the poison with his final protest…
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Until next time,
Kevin
Are your metaphors masking your potential?
We’re bodies, you and I…
And the way we make meaning of the world around that body is through metaphor.
And so it’s no surprise that we tend to refer to the body as a reference point. It’s an experience that we all know too well, yet, as it turns out, is often very difficult to describe.
That’s why:
Ted is a stand-up guy…
And Sally puts one foot in front of the other…
But sometimes the metaphors we’re accustomed to can mask other potential aspects of our experience.
If an argument is a battle that must be won or lost…
Then your ideas will be attacked, and you must defend…
But if an argument is a dance…
Where our ideas can meld and become one as they move in the moment…
Then we might get a better understanding of some of the metaphors we live by.
It takes two to tango, as they say…
Until next time,
Kevin
The need to over-explain everything
Some of the most stressful things in life are socially evaluative…
And regardless of how it came about…
If you’re like me and were ever diagnosed with ADHD…
You were one of the “bad kids” in some way or another…
You weren’t good enough…
Weren’t trying hard enough…
Always acting up around peers, or in class…
And this is a self-perpetuating cycle…
Because the child with ADHD is simply expressing the fact that they have certain needs that aren’t being met. And they’re expressing it the only way they know how, because they don’t have words for it. All they know is “something isn’t right.”
And this “odd” behavior is met with rejection…
Again and again…
The child learns not to trust himself, his bodily sensations must be misleading him if what all the adults are saying is true…
Thus, the need to over-explain everything…
Out of fear of being rejected, yet again.
And once we understand how these things have come about, we can begin to let them go…
They no longer need to be a part of our identity…
They no longer need to have any control over the outcomes of our lives.
Until next time,
Kevin