The way things are. I am and have been curious for decades about understanding the world around me—especially human behavior. I want to know the way things ARE not the way others believe them to be or want them to be. Eventually this led me to lose confidence in the assertions of others who didn’t have or understand scientific discovery. I’m less interested in opinions and beliefs than in data and evidence. For years I lived more “outside-in” listening to and being influenced by parents and others who were diligent in imprinting me with their beliefs. Late in life, (about age 50) I realized that much of what they had told me just wasn’t true. I despise lies and liars.
Eagleman’s book, The Brain, You, points out how our brains are encased in a box in darkness with no outside information except what comes in through our neural networks. Learning how to screen that data for what is accurate and consistent WHILE dealing with the more than 300 hormones floating around in there is a real challenge. I’ve moved from “In God We Trust” to “In Truth We Trust.”
Early childhood development has a huge impact on our lives. Freud once noted that we spend our adult lives dealing with the residue of our childhoods. Those first 1–10 years involve physical neural-neural and neural-muscular networks that are difficult to change. Imagine if you or I had been born in a different region and culture of the globe—our worldviews would be dramatically different.
Faith, emotions, spiritual feelings are, I’ve discovered, every bit as strong, zealous and deeply held in one region as the next. And ultimately are undependable and capricious. Hard evidence might be re-interpreted over time, and it’s hard, repeatable, “there.”
So my favorite subject is “how are things really?” To that end, I collected data for 20 years (50–70) and after retiring wrote A Song of Humanity: A Science-based Alternative to the World’s Scriptures to counter the mountains of mythological rubbish that is perpetuated all over the world. See Getting Below the Surface and A Song of Humanity
This is an eclectic “subject.” To me, the study of any academic subject in isolation is doomed to an incomplete view of the way things are. Behavioral Economists recently got Nobel Prizes for the insight that people make decisions based on their VABEs over data and logic. For most people, VABEs trump data. Cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and childhood development psychologists understood this long since. (VABEs are Values, Assumptions, Beliefs and Expectations about the way the world is or should be). Consider the “field” of leadership. “Leadership” begs the question “to what end?” Which is the “strategy” question. Where are we going? Which in turn implies the “change” question. If we go from here to there, we must change. So “leadership” is really “leading strategic change.” To separate the three into different subjects as many (most) schools and several of my clients have is, to me, folly. We can study the heart but truthfully only in connection with the circulatory system and the other 12 systems in the human body.
So, the way things ARE. It’s been a fascinating, life-long search that is far from complete. (btw, see Berger & Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality for more.)
Eagleman’s book, The Brain, You, points out how our brains are encased in a box in darkness with no outside information except what comes in through our neural networks. Learning how to screen that data for what is accurate and consistent WHILE dealing with the more than 300 hormones floating around in there is a real challenge. I’ve moved from “In God We Trust” to “In Truth We Trust.”
Early childhood development has a huge impact on our lives. Freud once noted that we spend our adult lives dealing with the residue of our childhoods. Those first 1–10 years involve physical neural-neural and neural-muscular networks that are difficult to change. Imagine if you or I had been born in a different region and culture of the globe—our worldviews would be dramatically different.
Faith, emotions, spiritual feelings are, I’ve discovered, every bit as strong, zealous and deeply held in one region as the next. And ultimately are undependable and capricious. Hard evidence might be re-interpreted over time, and it’s hard, repeatable, “there.”
So my favorite subject is “how are things really?” To that end, I collected data for 20 years (50–70) and after retiring wrote A Song of Humanity: A Science-based Alternative to the World’s Scriptures to counter the mountains of mythological rubbish that is perpetuated all over the world. See Getting Below the Surface and A Song of Humanity
This is an eclectic “subject.” To me, the study of any academic subject in isolation is doomed to an incomplete view of the way things are. Behavioral Economists recently got Nobel Prizes for the insight that people make decisions based on their VABEs over data and logic. For most people, VABEs trump data. Cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and childhood development psychologists understood this long since. (VABEs are Values, Assumptions, Beliefs and Expectations about the way the world is or should be). Consider the “field” of leadership. “Leadership” begs the question “to what end?” Which is the “strategy” question. Where are we going? Which in turn implies the “change” question. If we go from here to there, we must change. So “leadership” is really “leading strategic change.” To separate the three into different subjects as many (most) schools and several of my clients have is, to me, folly. We can study the heart but truthfully only in connection with the circulatory system and the other 12 systems in the human body.
So, the way things ARE. It’s been a fascinating, life-long search that is far from complete. (btw, see Berger & Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality for more.)
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