In business and stress less , to get an ugly dress and impresss,
Get Free and And be Enlightened.
•DAVID GIOVANNI SCHWARZKOP FITZGERALD RAUGH LOMBARDI KAROUM.
- The world and humans evolution is in harmony with influence, we really need great Influencers-
•Special THANKS to My mentors and teachers, friends, people who helped me in general.
•My parents, Dad and Mom, Manana my sister and Shelby , and my whole Family.
•My friends ( both sex ) AND in general OF COURSE, who made me laugh and vibed together TO THE ones who gave me free LIFE lessons.
•THEY SAY AFTER WAR PEACE COMES.
A BIG BIG BIG DEDATION TO THE 30% OF THE BRIALLIANT PEOPLE WHO ARE IMPROVING LIFE, ( THE EXPLORERS ) ( THE BRAIN OF HUMANITY,LEADERS, ARTISTS,
• ( THE HELPERS AND THE COURAGEOUS, THE FREE SOULS, THE FREE THINKERS, OUR INSPIRATION). THANK YOU ALL
•(THE SCHOLARS ), Y’ALL ARE BEAUTIFUL , KEEP ON SHINNING, I’M GONNA MENTION SOME OF THEM, and I THANK THEM FROM THE DEPTH OF MY HEART AND MIND.
•This 30% is the true humanity, the real Brains, you may be one of them withoout knowing perhaps.
•Think it over.
As a pianist I confirm you that life is like piano, white keys are the happy moments,
•The black keys are the sad moments,
•But remember, Both key are played together to give sweet music.
•I start my words with the sayings of Socrates, Speak so that i may see you,I only know a little, know yourself first of all and get rid of your false beliefs, I am neither Athenian nor Greek but a citizen of the world
•and finish it with « Woe to a person whose mind has preceded its time. »
Intro :
•Dear reader/listenner, I’m glad to take a psychological and a philosophical journey with you, but promise me to continue this novel to the end to get the real good understanding .
•I know some of us have defficulties to accept their reality, maybe even the ideas of this Novel…….
•I’m here to tell you the truth about the most important things to grow and shine, just stay strong and open your mind carefully, try to get the real message and analyse and make your own conclusion.
•This book contains things or information that can some people have difficulties to understand it or maybe they get shocked, just take it easy beacause the main subject
•is important but simple, take it easy and simple, because these information give you power and a high self esteem,to be strong and an enlightened person, and after all we all fear the truth, our nature,our negative points,the unknown, if you stay like that then you are stucked,you have to accept everything happened to you, good or bad and forgive, that’s all for yourself and your subconscious, and there’s something special about you, you are looking for the truth, tynna wake up, to achieve your goals, to get a good knowledge, you are doing an effort to improve yourself,
•Your curiosity is a great power if you put it in the right direction,
•Step by step, Believe in you always, because good knowledge heals you and makes you a strong person and much stronger.
•Now let’s start working in this style because Words and Ideas boost your capacities to a high, level of wisdom and good thinking, and it can destroy you.
•some truths can be taugh but we build on a strong base, and also imagine havinga surgery then you wake up, you gonna start feel the pain, but the wound will be cured, I can’t give you honey only, sometimes we need a bee’s sting.
•Now let’s get ready and start the journey of a good knowledge and a natural treatment together, you gonna wake up the Hulk inside you but this doesn’t mean to be toxic or narcissistic or evil, Control is a wisdom.
•Now we gonna integrate programs and chapters.
•Subjects : (1) A reminder and it’s importance , subjects AND Chapters you’ll get to now through your amazing journey , and a final conclusion, summary :
•The first and the most imoprtant idea of reminding.
•The beggining of the universe.
•The solar system.
•Luca.
•The human evolution.
•Quick review of mental issues.
•Psychological success.
•Quick review of life.
•Business and money.
•To know yourself and the human nature , Intellectual petetions.
•getting enlightened.
•Power of time .
•Raising a great generation.
•Philosophy.
•What Karma really Is ? ( is it inside us or outside? )
•How to live a joyful life ?
•How to git rid of odd beliefs, getting free, getting enlightened.
•A hisorical journey.
•Chemistry , Physics , AND SCIENCE AND SOME SIMPLE Cool Experiments.
•Some facts about the world
•Stress and cancer’s relationship and any bad health, and how to relieve it.
•Judging and generalizing.
•My opinion from my point of view about life in general, Conclusion, summary , simple duties and planing. I want you to make plans, work in progress, analyse, be a warrior never give up, and let me give you a small information, summary : Do what you’ve found a good thing in this Novel and work smartly and in progress.
•‘good thinking and love plus Actions and patience ’ are the keys of success.
oPS : THIS SERIE OF NOVELS CONTAINS SOME HEADNOTES AND SOME ANALYSES, Books and Internet sources, and OWN LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS AND IDEAS THE MOST IMPORTANTLY ! SO YEA
oWHAT I WANT YOU TO DO IS GO CHECK THE DETAILS BY UR OWN AND GET FREE.
Chapter 1 :
•THE IMPORTANCE OF REMINDERS (AND HOW TO MAKE A REMINDER WORK)
•No matter how well you set up your todo list and calendar, you aren’t going to get things done unless you have a reliable way of reminding yourself to actually DO them.
•Anyone who’s spent an hour writing up the perfect grocery list only to realize at the store that they forgot to BRING the list understands the importance of reminders.
•Reminders of some sort or another are what turn a collection of paper goods or web services into what David Allen calls a “trusted system.”
•A lot of people resist getting better organized. No matter what kind of chaotic mess, their lives are on a day-to-day basis because they know themselves well enough to know that there’s after all that work they’ll probably forget to take their lists with them when it matters most.
•Fortunately, there are ways to make sure we remember to check our lists — and to remember to do the things we need to do, whether they’re on a list or not.
•In most cases, we need a lot of pushing at first, for example by making a reminder, but eventually we build up enough momentum that doing what needs doing becomes a HABIT — not an EXCEPTION.
•TABLE OF CONTENTS
•From Creating Reminders to Building Habits
•The Wonderful Thing About Triggers—Reminders
•How to Make a Reminder Works for You
•More on Building Habits
•FROM CREATING REMINDERS TO BUILDING HABITS
•A habit is any act we engage in automatically without thinking about it.
•For example, when you brush your teeth, you don’t have to think about every single step from start to finish; once you stagger up to the sink, habit takes over (and, really, habit got you to the sink in the first place) and you find yourself putting toothpaste on your toothbrush, putting the toothbrush in your mouth (and never your ear!), spitting, rinsing, and so on without any conscious effort at all.
•This is a good thing because if you’re anything like me, you’re not even CAPABLE of conscious thought when you’re brushing your teeth.
•The good news is you already have a whole set of productivity habits you’ve built up over the course of your life. The bad news is, a lot of them aren’t very GOOD habits.
•That quick game FROGGER to “loosen you up” before you get working, that always ends up being 6 HOURS of FROGGER—that’s a habit. And as you know, habits like that can be hard to break — which is one of the reasons why habits are so important in the first place.
•Once you’ve replaced an unproductive habit with a more productive one, the new habit will be just as hard to break as the old one was. Getting there, though, can be a chore!
•The old saw about anything you do for 21 days becoming a habithas been pretty much discredited, but there is a kernel of truth there — anything you do long enough becomes an ingrained behavior, a habit. Some people pick up habits quickly, others over a longer time span, but eventually, the behaviors become automatic.
•Building productive habits, then, is a matter of repeating a desired behavior over a long enough period of time that you start doing it without thinking.
•But how do you remember to do that? And what about the things that don’t need to be habits — the one-off events, like taking your paycheck stubs to your mortgage banker or making a particular phone call?
•The trick to reminding yourself often enough for something to become a habit, or just that one time that you NEED to do something, is to interrupt yourself in some way in a way that TRIGGERS the desired behavior.
•THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT TRIGGERS — REMINDERS
•A trigger is anything that you put “in your way” to remind you to do something. The best triggers are related in some way to the behavior you want to produce.
•For instance, if you want to remember to take something to work that you wouldn’t normally take, you might place it in front of the door so you have to pick it up to get out of your house.
•But anything that catches your attention and reminds you to do something can be a trigger. An alarm clock or kitchen timer is a perfect example — when the bell rings, you know to wake up or take the quiche out of the oven. (Hopefully you remember which trigger goes with which behavior!)
•If you want to instill a habit, the thing to do is to place a trigger in your path to remind you to do whatever it is you’re trying to make into a habit — and keep it there until you realize that you’ve already done the thing it’s supposed to remind you of.
•For instance, a post-it saying “count your calories” placed on the refrigerator door (or maybe on your favorite sugary snack itself) can help you remember that you’re supposed to be cutting back — until one day you realize that you don’t need to be reminded anymore.
•These triggers all require a lot of forethought, though — you have to remember that you need to remember something in the first place.
•For a lot of tasks, the best reminder is one that’s completely AUTOMATED — you set it up and then forget about it, trusting the trigger to pop up when you need it.
•HOW TO MAKE A REMINDER WORKS FOR YOU
•Computers and ubiquity of mobile Internet-connected devices make it possible to set up automatic triggers for just about anything.
•Desktop software like Outlook will pop up reminders on your desktop screen, and most online services go an extra step and send reminders via email or SMS text message — just the thing to keep you on track.
•Automated reminders can help you build habits — but it can also help you remember things that are TOO IMPORTANT to be trusted even to habit. Diabetics who need to take their insulin, HIV patients whose medication must be taken at an exact time in a precise order, phone calls that have to be made exactly on time, and other crucial events require triggers even when the habit is already in place.
•My advice is to set reminders for just about everything— have them sent to your mobile phone in some way (either through a built-in calendar or an online service that sends updates) so you never have to think about it — and never have to worry about forgetting.
•Your weekly review is a good time to enter new reminders for the coming weeks or months. I simply don’t want to think about what I’m supposed to be doing; I want to be reminded so I can think just about actually DOING it.
•I tend to use my calendar for reminders.
WHAT IS THE BIG BANG THEORY?
The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation about how the universe began. At its simplest, it says the universe as we know it started with a small singularity, then inflated over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today.
Because current instruments don't allow astronomers to peer back at the universe's birth, much of what we understand about the Big Bang Theory comes from mathematical formulas and models. Astronomers can, however, see the "echo" of the expansion through a phenomenon known as the cosmic microwave background.
While the majority of the astronomical community accepts the theory, there are some theorists who have alternative explanations besides the Big Bang — such as eternal inflation or an oscillating universe.
The phrase "Big Bang Theory" has been popular among astrophysicists for decades, but it hit the mainstream in 2007 when a comedy show with the same name premiered on CBS. The show follows the home and academic life of several researchers (including an astrophysicist).
THE FIRST SECOND, AND THE BIRTH OF LIGHT
In the first second after the universe began, the surrounding temperature was about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion Celsius), according to NASA. The cosmos contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. These decayed or combined as the universe got cooler.
This early soup would have been impossible to look at, because light could not carry inside of it. "The free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds," NASA stated. Over time, however, the free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms. This allowed light to shine through about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
This early light — sometimes called the "afterglow" of the Big Bang — is more properly known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It was first predicted by Ralph Alpher and other scientists in 1948, but was found only by accident almost 20 years later.
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, both of Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, were building a radio receiver in 1965 and picking up higher-than-expected temperatures, according to NASA. At first, they thought the anomaly was due to pigeons and their dung, but even after cleaning up the mess and killing pigeons that tried to roost inside the antenna, the anomaly persisted.
Simultaneously, a Princeton University team (led by Robert Dicke) was trying to find evidence of the CMB, and realized that Penzias and Wilson had stumbled upon it. The teams each published papers in the Astrophysical Journal in 1965.
DETERMINING THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE
The cosmic microwave background has been observed on many missions. One of the most famous space-faring missions was NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which mapped the sky in the 1990s.
Several other missions have followed in COBE's footsteps, such as the BOOMERanG experiment (Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics), NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
Planck's observations, first released in 2013, mapped the background in unprecedented detail and revealed that the universe was older than previously thought: 13.82 billion years old, rather than 13.7 billion years old.
The maps give rise to new mysteries, however, such as why the Southern Hemisphere appears slightly redder (warmer) than the Northern Hemisphere. The Big Bang Theory says that the CMB would be mostly the same, no matter where you look.
Examining the CMB also gives astronomers clues as to the composition of the universe. Researchers think most of the cosmos is made up of matter and energy that cannot be "sensed" with conventional instruments, leading to the names dark matter and dark energy. Only 5 percent of the universe is made up of matter such as planets, stars and galaxies.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES CONTROVERSY
While astronomers could see the universe's beginnings, they've also been seeking out proof of its rapid inflation. Theory says that in the first second after the universe was born, our cosmos ballooned faster than the speed of light. That, by the way, does not violate Albert Einstein's speed limit since he said that light is the maximum anything can travel within the universe. That did not apply to the inflation of the universe itself.
In 2014, astronomers said they had found evidence in the CMB concerning "B-modes," a sort of polarization generated as the universe got bigger and created gravitational waves. The team spotted evidence of this using an Antarctic telescope called "Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization", or BICEP2.
"We're very confident that the signal that we're seeing is real, and it's on the sky," lead researcher John Kovac, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Space.com in March 2014.
But by June, the same team said that their findings could have been altered by galactic dust getting in the way of their field of view.
"The basic takeaway has not changed; we have high confidence in our results," Kovac said in a press conference reported by the New York Times. "New information from Planck makes it look like pre-Planckian predictions of dust were too low," he added.
The results from Planck were put online in pre-published form in September. By January 2015, researchers from both teams working together "confirmed that the Bicep signal was mostly, if not all, stardust," the New York Times said in another article.
Separately, gravitational waves have been confirmed when talking about the movements and collisions of black holes that are a few tens of masses larger than our sun. These waves have been detected multiple times by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) since 2016. As LIGO becomes more sensitive, it is anticipated that discovering black hole-related gravitational waves will be a fairly frequent event.
FASTER INFLATION, MULTIVERSES AND CHARTING THE START
The universe is not only expanding, but getting faster as it inflates. This means that with time, nobody will be able to spot other galaxies from Earth, or any other vantage point within our galaxy.
"We will see distant galaxies moving away from us, but their speed is increasing with time," Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb said in a March 2014 Space.com article.
"So, if you wait long enough, eventually, a distant galaxy will reach the speed of light. What that means is that even light won't be able to bridge the gap that's being opened between that galaxy and us. There's no way for extraterrestrials on that galaxy to communicate with us, to send any signals that will reach us, once their galaxy is moving faster than light relative to us."
Some physicists also suggest that the universe we experience is just one of many. In the "multiverse" model, different universes would coexist with each other like bubbles lying side by side. The theory suggests that in that first big push of inflation, different parts of space-time grew at different rates. This could have carved off different sections — different universes — with potentially different laws of physics.
"It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse," Alan Guth, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a news conference in March 2014 concerning the gravitational waves discovery. (Guth is not affiliated with that study.)
"It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously."
While we can understand how the universe we see came to be, it's possible that the Big Bang was not the first inflationary period the universe experienced. Some scientists believe we live in a cosmos that goes through regular cycles of inflation and deflation, and that we just happen to be living in one of these phases.
The solar system
The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity — the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, dwarf planets such as Pluto, dozens of moons and millions of asteroids, comets and meteoroids.
Beyond our own solar system, there are more planets than stars in night sky. So far, we have discovered thousands of planetary systems orbiting other stars in the Milky Way, with more planets being found all the time. Most of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy are thought to have planets of their own, and the Milky Way is but one of perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
While our planet is in some ways a mere speck in the vast cosmos, we have a lot of company out there. It seems that we live in a universe packed with planets — a web of countless stars accompanied by families of objects, perhaps some with life of their own.
SIZE AND DISTANCE
Our solar system extends much farther than the eight planets that orbit the Sun. The solar system also includes the Kuiper Belt that lies past Neptune's orbit. This is a sparsely occupied ring of icy bodies, almost all smaller than the most popular Kuiper Belt Object, dwarf planet Pluto.
Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles (768,000 kilometers) from the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
And beyond the fringes of the Kuiper belt is the Oort Cloud. This giant spherical shell surrounds our solar system. It has never been directly observed, but its existence is predicted based on mathematical models and observations of comets that likely originate there.
The Oort Cloud is made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes larger, orbiting our Sun as far as 1.6 light years away. This shell of material is thick, extending from 5,000 astronomical units to 100,000 astronomical units. One astronomical unit (or AU) is the distance from the Sun to Earth, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). The Oort Cloud is the boundary of the Sun's gravitational influence, where orbiting objects can turn around and return closer to our Sun.
The Sun's heliosphere doesn't extend quite as far. The heliosphere is the bubble created by the solar wind—a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The boundary where the solar wind is abruptly slowed by pressure from interstellar gases is called the termination shock. This edge occurs between 80-100 astronomical units.
Two NASA spacecraft, launched in 1977, have crossed the termination shock: Voyager 1 in 2004 and Voyager 2 in 2007. But it will be many thousands of years before the two Voyagers exit the Oort Cloud.
FORMATION
Our solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. The cloud collapsed, possibly due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, called a supernova. When this dust cloud collapsed, it formed a solar nebula—a spinning, swirling disk of material.
At the center, gravity pulled more and more material in. Eventually the pressure in the core was so great that hydrogen atoms began to combine and form helium, releasing a tremendous amount of energy. With that, our Sun was born, and it eventually amassed more than 99 percent of the available matter.
Matter farther out in the disk was also clumping together. These clumps smashed into one another, forming larger and larger objects. Some of them grew big enough for their gravity to shape them into spheres, becoming planets, dwarf planets and large moons. In other cases, planets did not form: the asteroid belt is made of bits and pieces of the early solar system that could never quite come together into a planet. Other smaller leftover pieces became asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and small, irregular moons.
STRUCTURE
The order and arrangement of the planets and other bodies in our solar system is due to the way the solar system formed. Nearest the Sun, only rocky material could withstand the heat when the solar system was young. For this reason, the first four planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are terrestrial planets. They're small with solid, rocky surfaces.
Meanwhile, materials we are used to seeing as ice, liquid or gas settled in the outer regions of the young solar system. Gravity pulled these materials together, and that is where we find gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
POTENTIAL FOR LIFE
Our solar system is the only place we know of that harbors life, but the farther we explore the more we find potential for life in other places. Both Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have global saltwater oceans under thick, icy shells.
MOONS
There are more than 150 known moons in our solar system and several more awaiting confirmation of discovery. Of the eight planets, Mercury and Venus are the only ones with no moons. The giant planets grab the most moons. Jupiter and Saturn have long lead our solar system’s moon counts. In some ways, the swarms of moons around these worlds resemble mini versions of our solar system. Pluto, smaller than our own moon, has five moons in its orbit, including the Charon, a moon so large it makes Pluto wobble. Even tiny asteroids can have moons. In 2017, scientists found asteroid 3122 Florence had two tiny moons.
LUCA, THE ANCESTOR OF ALL LIVING THINGS
•July 25, 2016
A surprisingly specific genetic portrait of the ancestor of all living things has been generated by scientists who say that the likeness sheds considerable light on the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth.
This venerable ancestor was a single-cell, bacterium-like organism. But it has a grand name, or at least an acronym. It is known as Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, and is estimated to have lived some four billion years ago, when Earth was a mere 560 million years old.
The new finding sharpens the debate between those who believe life began in some extreme environment, such as in deep sea vents or the flanks of volcanoes, and others who favor more normal settings, such as the “warm little pond” proposed by Darwin.
The nature of the earliest ancestor of all living things has long been uncertain because the three great domains of life seemed to have no common point of origin. The domains are those of the bacteria, the archaea and the eukaryotes. Archaea are bacteria-like organisms but with a different metabolism, and the eukaryotes include all plants and animals.
Specialists have recently come to believe that the bacteria and archaea were the two earliest domains, with the eukaryotes emerging later. That opened the way for a group of evolutionary biologists, led by William F. Martin of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, to try to discern the nature of the organism from which the bacterial and archaeal domains emerged.
Their starting point was the known protein-coding genes of bacteria and archaea. Some six million such genes have accumulated over the last 20 years in DNA databanks as scientists with the new decoding machines have deposited gene sequences from thousands of microbes.
Genes that do the same thing in a human and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal. So by comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families. Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.
Genes are adapted to an organism’s environment. So Dr. Martin hoped that by pinpointing the genes likely to have been present in Luca, he would also get a glimpse of where and how Luca lived. “I was flabbergasted at the result, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
The 355 genes pointed quite precisely to an organism that lived in the conditions found in deep sea vents, the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor.
Deep sea vents are surrounded by exotic life-forms and, with their extreme chemistry, have long seemed places where life might have originated. The 355 genes ascribable to Luca include some that metabolize hydrogen as a source of energy as well as a gene for an enzyme called reverse gyrase, found only in microbes that live at extremely high temperatures, Dr. Martin and colleagues reported Monday in Nature Microbiology.
The finding has “significantly advanced our understanding of what Luca did for a living,” James O. McInerney of the University of Manchester wrote in a commentary, and provides “a very intriguing insight into life four billion years ago.”
Dr. Martin’s portrait of Luca seems likely to be widely admired. But he has taken a further step that has provoked considerable controversy. He argues that Luca is very close to the origin of life itself. The organism is missing so many genes necessary for life that it must still have been relying on chemical components from its environment. Hence it was only “half alive,” he writes.
The fact that Luca depended on hydrogen and metals favors a deep sea vent environment for the origin of life, Dr. Martin concludes, rather than the land environment posited in a leading rival theory proposed by the chemist John Sutherland of the University of Cambridge in England.
Others believe that the Luca that Dr. Martin describes was already a highly sophisticated organism that had evolved far beyond the origin of life, meaning the formation of living systems from the chemicals present on the early Earth.
Luca and the origin of life are “events separated by a vast distance of evolutionary innovation,” said Jack Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital, who has studied how the first cell membranes might have evolved.
From Dr. Martin’s data, it is clear that Luca could manage the complicated task of synthesizing proteins. So it seems unlikely that it could not also synthesize simpler components, even though the genes for doing so have not yet been detected, said Steven A. Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. “It’s like saying you can build a 747 but can’t refine iron.”
Dr. Sutherland too gave little credence to the argument that Luca might lie in some gray transition zone between nonlife and life just because it depended on its environment for some essential components. “It’s like saying I’m half alive because I depend on my local supermarket.”
Dr. Sutherland and others have no quarrel with Luca’s being traced back to deep sea vents. But that does not mean life originated there, they say. Life could have originated anywhere and later been confined to a deep sea environment because of some catastrophic event like the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred 4 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This was a rain of meteorites that crashed into Earth with such force that the oceans were boiled off into an incandescent mist.
Life is so complex it seems to need many millions of years to evolve. Yet evidence for the earliest life dates to 3.8 billion years ago, as if it emerged almost the minute the bombardment ceased. A refuge in the deep ocean during the bombardment would allow a longer period in which life could have evolved. But chemists like Dr. Sutherland say they are uneasy about getting prebiotic chemistry to work in an ocean, which powerfully dilutes chemical components before they can assemble into the complex molecules of life.
Dr. Sutherland, working from basic principles of chemistry, has found that ultraviolet light from the sun is an essential energy source to get the right reactions underway, and therefore that land-based pools, not the ocean, are the most likely environment in which life began.
“We didn’t set out with a preferred scenario; we deduced the scenario from the chemistry,” he said, chiding Dr. Martin for not having done any chemical simulations to support the deep sea vent scenario.
Dr. Martin’s portrait of Luca “is all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the actual origin of life,” Dr. Sutherland said.
of of the similarities and differences between humans and other species in their genes, body form, physiology, and behavior. Paleoanthropologists search for the roots of human physical traits and
as new genetic variations in
particular genes are expressed – that is, how they influence the body or behavior of an organism -- can also change. Genes affect how the body and behavior of an organism develop during its life, and this is why genetically inherited characteristics can influence the likelihood of an organism’s survival and reproduction.
S FAVOOVERVIEW OF HOMININ EVOLUTION
How did humans evolve into the big-brained, bipedal ape that we are today? This article examines the fossil evidence of our 6 million year evolution.
red new abilities to adapt to environmenDarwin's great insight, and the unifying principle of biology today, is that all species are related to one another like sisters, cousins, and distant kin in a vast family tree of life. The implications are breathtaking; if we could travel back far enough in time, we would find common ancestors between ourselves and every other living organism, from porcupines to flamingoes to cactuses. Our immediate evolutionary family is comprised of the hominoids, the group of primates that includes the "lesser apes" (siamangs and gibbons) as well as the "great apes" (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans). Among the great apes, our closest relatives are the chimpanzees and bonobos (Figure 1). The fossil record, along with studies of human and ape DNA, indicate that humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos sometime around 6 million years ago (mya). We begin this discussion of our species' evolution in Africa, near the end of the geological time period known as the Miocene, just before our lineage diverged from that of chimpanzees and bonobos.
TAMIOCENE ORIGINS OF THE HOMININ LINEAGE
In order to understand the evolution of any species, we must first establish its ancestral state: what sort of animal did it evolve from? For our lineage, this requires that we try and reconstruct the Last Common Ancestor of humans and chimpanzees (marked "A" in Figure 1). The Human-Chimpanzee Last Common Ancestor (HC-LCA) is the species from which the hominin lineage and the chimpanzee & bonobo lineage diverged. Hominins are species on our branch of the hominoid tree after the split with the chimpanzee & bonobo line, including all of the extinct species and evolutionary side branches (Figure 1).
There was a great diversity of ape species in the Miocene, with dozens of species known from the fossil record across Africa, Europe, and Asia. These species varied in their anatomy and ecology, and it is not clear which, if any, of the fossil species discovered thus far represent the HC-LCA (Kunimatsu et al. 2007; Young and MacLatchy, 2004). Nonetheless, we know from fossil and comparative evidence that it was much more similar to living apes than to living humans. The HC-LCA would have had an ape-sized brain and body, with relatively long arms and fingers and a grasping foot that allowed it to forage in the trees. The canine teeth were probably large and sharp, as seen in several Miocene hominoids. Moreover, the canines were probably sexually dimorphic, with males having much larger canines than females, as seen among the living great apes and Miocene fossils. Like living apes it would have walked quadrupedally (on all fours) when on the ground, and its diet would have consisted almost entirely of plant foods, primarily fruit and leaves.
EARLY HOMININS
Changes from an ape-like anatomy are discernible in hominoid fossils from the late Miocene in Africa. Some hominoid species from this period exhibit traits that are typical of humans but are not seen in the other living apes, leading paleoanthropologists to infer that these fossils represent early members of the hominin lineage. The first human-like traits to appear in the hominin fossil record are bipedal walking and smaller, blunt canines.
The oldest hominins currently known are Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad (Brunet et al. 2005) and Orrorin tugenensis from Kenya (Senut et al. 2001). Sahelanthropus, dated to between 6 and 7 mya, is known from a largely complete skull and some other fragmentary remains. Its brain size, 360cc, is within the range seen in chimpanzees, and the skull has a massive brow ridge, similar in thickness to male gorillas (Brunet et al. 2005). However, the position and orientation of the foramen magnum, the hole in the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes, suggests that Sahelanthropus stood and walked bipedally, with its spinal column held vertically as in modern humans rather than horizontally as in apes and other quadrupeds (Zollikofer et al. 2005). Orrorin is known primarily from postcranial fossils, including a partial femur. The proximal portion of the femur shows similarities to those of modern humans, suggesting the species was bipedal (Pickford et al. 2002). No skulls of Orrorin have been recovered, and so its cranial morphology and brain size are uncertain. In both Orrorin and Sahelanthropus the canine teeth of males are larger and more pointed than in modern humans, but are small and blunt compared to the canines of male apes. This suggests that canine sexual dimorphism — and by extension, competition among males for mating access to females — was diminished in these early hominins compared to the great apes.
By far the best known early hominin is Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million year old species from Ethiopia, which is known from a nearly complete skeleton as well as numerous other dental and skeletal remains (White et al. 2009). Ar. ramidus and an older, related species known from fragmentary remains, Ar. kadabba (5.8–5.2 mya), have reduced canines similar to those of Orrorin and Sahelanthropus. The skull of Ar. ramidus is rather ape-like and broadly similar to that of Sahelanthropus, with a small chimpanzee-sized brain of 300–350cc (Figure 2). The Ardipithecus postcranial skeleton is intriguing. Although badly fragmented, the pelvis recovered reveals a morphology quite different from that of living apes, with a shorter, more bowl-like shape that strongly suggests Ardipithecus walked bipedally; this is consistent with the foramen magnum position, which suggests an upright posture. However, its long forelimbs and fingers and its divergent, grasping first toe (hallux) suggest Ardipithecus spent much of its time in the trees. The overall impression is of a largely arboreal species that walked bipedally whenever it ventured to the ground.
L CHANGE AND SO ALTERED THE HUMAN WAY OF LIFE. AUSTRALOPITHECUS
Around 4mya we find the earliest members of the genus Australopithecus, hominins which were adept terrestrial bipeds but continued to use the trees for food and protection. The first specimens of Australopithecus were discovered in South Africa in 1924 (Dart, 1925), and research efforts over the subsequent eight decades have produced hundreds of fossils from several species at sites all across East and Southern Africa. We now know that Australopithecus was a highly successful genus that persisted for nearly three million years (Figure 1).
The best-known Australopithecus species are A. afarensis (3.6–2.9 mya) from East Africa and A. africanus (3.2–2.0mya) from South Africa. The pelvis and lower limb of these species clearly indicates that they were fully bipedal: the pelvis is short and bowl-shaped, bringing the gluteal muscles around to the side of the body, as in modern humans, for trunk stabilization during bipedalism, and the first toe is in line with the other toes (Ward, 2002; Harcourt-Smith and Aiello, 2004). The Australopithecus foot may even have had a human-like arch, based on analysis of the metatarsals and the fossilized Laetoli footprints (Ward et al. 2011). Nonetheless, compared to modern humans, the forearms were long and the fingers and toes were long and somewhat curved, suggesting that Australopithecus regularly used the trees to forage and perhaps as a refuge from predators at night. This mixed terrestrial & arboreal strategy would have served these species well in the mixed woodland and savannah environments they inhabited.
Brain size in Australopithecus ranged between 390 and 515cc, similar to chimpanzees and gorillas (Falk et al. 2000), suggesting cognitive abilities were broadly similar to living apes (Figure 2). Body size in Australopithecus was rather small and sexually dimorphic, about 30kg for females and 40kg for males (McHenry, 1992). This level of dimorphism is not reflected in the canines, which were small, blunt, and monomorphic as in earlier hominins.
Unlike the canines, molar teeth in Australopithecus were much larger than those of earlier hominins, and had thicker enamel. This suggests their diet included hard, low quality plant foods that required powerful chewing to process. A subgroup of Australopithecus, known as the "robust" australopiths (often labeled by a separate genus Paranthropus) because of their enormous teeth and chewing muscles, took this adaptation to the extreme. Most Australopithecus species were extinct by 2 mya, but some robust forms persisted until about 1.2 mya in East and South Africa.
THE GENUS HOMO
The earliest fossils of our own genus, Homo, are found in East Africa and dated to 2.3 mya (Kimbel et al. 1997). These early specimens are similar in brain and body size to Australopithecus, but show differences in their molar teeth, suggesting a change in diet. Indeed, by at least 1.8 mya, early members of our genus were using primitive stone tools to butcher animal carcasses, adding energy-rich meat and bone marrow to their plant-based diet.
The oldest member of the genus Homo, H. habilis (2.3–1.4 mya) is found in East Africa and is associated with butchered animal bones and simple stone tools (Blumenschine et al. 2003). Its more formidable and widespread descendant, H. erectus, is found throughout Africa and Eurasia and persisted from 1.9 mya to 100 kya, and perhaps even later (Anton, 2003). Like modern humans, H. erectus lacked the forelimb adaptations for climbing seen in Australopithecus (Figure 2). Its global expansion suggests H. erectus was ecologically flexible, with the cognitive capacity to adapt and thrive in vastly different environments. Not surprisingly, it is with H. erectus that we begin to see a major increase in brain size, up to 1,250cc for later Asian specimens (Anton, 2003). Molar size is reduced in H. erectus relative to Australopithecus, reflecting its softer, richer diet.
Around 700 kya, and perhaps earlier, H. erectus in Africa gave rise to H. heidelbergensis, a species very much like us in terms of body proportions, dental adaptations, and cognitive ability (Rightmire, 2009). H. heidelbergensis, often referred to as an "archaic" Homo sapiens, was an active big-game hunter, produced sophisticated Levallois style tools, and by at least 400 kya had learned to control fire (Roebroeks and Villa, 2011). Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis), cold-adapted hominins with stout physiques, complex behaviors, and brains similar in size to ours, are thought to have evolved from H. heidelbergensis populations in Europe by at least 250 kya (Rightmire, 2008; Hublin, 2009).
Fossil and DNA evidence suggest our own species, H. sapiens, evolved in Africa 200 kya (Relethford, 2008; Rightmire, 2009), probably from H. heidelbergensis. The increased behavioral sophistication of H. sapiens, as indicated by our large brains (1,400cc) and archeological evidence of a broader tool set and clever hunting techniques, allowed our species to flourish and grow on the African continent. By 100kya, our species spilled into Eurasia, eventually expanding across the entire globe into Australia and the Americas (DiGiorgio et al. 2009). Along the way our species displaced other hominins they encountered, including Neanderthals in Europe and similar forms in Asia. (Note that not all agree with this interpretation of the data, see Tryon and Bailey). Studies of ancient DNA extracted from Neanderthal fossils suggest our species may have occasionally interbred with them (Green et al., 2010). Our increasing global impact continues today, as cultural innovations such as agriculture and urbanization shape the landscape and species around us.
SUMMARY
The evolution of our species from an ape-like Miocene ancestor was a complex process. Our lineage is full of side branches and evolutionary dead ends, with species like the robust australopiths that persisted for over a million years before fading away. Some human traits, like bipedalism, evolved very early, while others, like large brains, did not evolve until relatively recently. Still other traits, like molar size, evolved in one direction only to be pushed back later by changing ecological pressures. Rather than a powerful ship charting a straight course toward some pre-determined destination, the evolution of our lineage — indeed, of any species' lineage — fits the image of a lifeboat tossed about by the shifting seas of environmental change, genetic luck, and geological chance. One wonders where the next six million years might take us.
oThe psychological success :
an overloaded of intelligence not in its place leads to craziness,
Men and Women equality :
Physically they’re not, but mentally it’s obvious, they’re equal, even the middle sexe, when it comes to intelligence , we’re all equal.
Also, each one of us, has his unique way of thinking and living ( with a partner or without ) , we complete each other, loneliness is every creature’s enemy.
After all, the message of humanity is to live together.
-yesterday, the most precious things like sex ( love ) , playing an instrument, have different taste, nowadays we’re too blinded by technology and the bad use of it ,
-love and real talents are not easy to find nowadays, this creates an emotional inhibition.
what kind of motivation you’re looking for ?
not simple as this,
life can be like this novel, resumed and well understood in less than 1 hour, wanna be brave and faster ? challenge me I suggest you ,
and you gonna notice a difference, just put your brain in a very good use.
Every thought is a door to awhole world inside your mind, be really careful of the door you gonna open, as you can see life can also be described as a samurai sword, straight but not easy to be crossed.
oChapter 2 :
oThe most important skill you need to improve.
oThe most important skill to change your life, your connections and your future business, the most important skill to master and start to invest all your focus in,to reach the highest level of empowering this skill, do you wanna know what is this skill ?
oIt’s the Emotional Flexibility, or in other words, ‘Resilience’
oWhat does emotional resilience mean ?
oReselience means the amount of time when an outer event shakes you out of your center,the amount of time that requires to get back to your natural state, the amount of time that it takes you to get back to your calmness, the time that takes you to get back to your inner clarity, time to go back to your wisdom, your awareness which is your original state.
oMost people when something impacts them, it doesn’t take them minutes to get back to their natural stat, sometimes it could require hours or even days, months,years,and they’re still talking about the same subject,saying I got into that experience and I got broken because of it, because they’re unable to get back to their natural state. This type of mentality won’t allow you to evolve especiallyin the next era, because in the next era, you’ll have to handle a lot of inputs as well as hard challenges that are facing humanity, So if you lack the ability of going back to your heart, quickly and instantly, everything will push you away from your center and you won’t be able to improve quickly.
oYou might think ‘‘what you’re saying is so important Raugh, but there are more important things’’ !
oI agree with this discussion but I don’t wanna say ‘’prove’’ , instead, I want to explain why resilience is the most important skill in the world let me give you a hypothetical example,
oImagine : that you’re attending an interview, and this interviewhas a lot on stake, this interview can transform you to a new level in life, it might change your life, So you woke up in the morning, got dressed and sprayed on some perfume, Done some Meditation or Yoga envisioning the situation, you’re ready mentally and emotionally, everything is perfect and you are ready to go,
oYou’re about to hop in the car when you realize that you have a flat tire in all 4 wheels, to make the situation worse, Imagine : you are located in a place away from the city, here you will know the importance of Resilience.
oIf this situation impacts you like it impacts any other person, and you were unable to retrieve calmness, you will remain in a state of anxiety, and you won’t be able to see the solutions, you won’t be able to use this situation for your own benefit, you won’t be able to use it in order to expand your consciousness, you will remain in a state of anxiety even if you found a ride to your interview, you will arrive to the interview still carrying the energy of anxiety with you and your energy enters before you, i twill open the door and speak on your behalf before giving you the chance to speak for yourself.
oPeoplecan literally smell this type of energy.
oSo because you weren’t able to go back to your center, you have ruined the most important thing in your life.
oAnd imagine : many things here and there can impact us negatively not going back to our center will carry on this negative energy to the next situation and onto the next situation, For example, something happens at work, and afterwards, when you try to talk to your partner or soulmate because you are carrying the old energy,and without going back to your center without detaching yourself from it, you won’t be totally present with that person, you won’t view them out of love.
oSo it’s important to know to go back to your center, and the scale of mental mastery, you measure it by how fast you’re able to get back to your center,
oNotice I didn’t mention not being impacted at all, no one in this world cannot be impacted or affected, but it’s all about how fast you can get back to your center, And if you want the quickest way to get back to your center, you must understand your mental mechanism
oThe mind is created, designed and engineered to automatically go back to it’s natural state which is ‘’clarity, abundance, love and peace’’
oThe min dis designed to go back to this natural state IF you don’t Stand in it’s way, if you don’t keep on thinking, if you don’t stop holding on to the subject that is occupying and irritating you and it’s not the subject that irritates you , it is only your thoughts that irritate you,
oIf you don’t learn how to let go and allow your mind to go back into calmness, you will stay distant from your mental clarity
oTake cutting yourself as an example, when your body gets cut, how does it retrieve to its natural state ?
oIt goes back on its own , without you interfering in this process,
oIf every minute you look at the cut and say why am I cut ? and start picking on it and try to fix it every single minute… You’re then interfering with the process of healing, you are interfering with your body’s ability of retrieving into its natural state,
oYour mind is the same.
oIf you don’t interfere with it , i twill go back to its natural state, but because sometimes we get emotionally impacted severely, which is hard to let go , that’s why, it’s important to learn Spiritual technologies,
oStrategies and techniques, Spiritual technologies that will help you in going back to your natural state,go back to your heart and just breathe, let me suggest you something may help you, google ‘’ HeartMath’’ – Howard Martin.
oIt will teach you how to breathe back into the heart’s intelligence, into the natural state.
oWhat is the most important quality in someone to start mastering it in order to help them live through their heart, help them live their message, their inner legend, Mr,Howard said Emotional resilience, the time that takes to go back to the natural state, which is what they teach at HeartMath.
oI will ask you to start using any situation that impacts you As a practice to go back to your natural state, and that’s how you’ll start to master it,
oAnd when you start mastering going back to your natural state which is all about practice like anything else in this world practice, so when you start mastering it , you’ll energetically start to embody the energy of a leader,
oBecause what’s the energy of a leader ?
oThe leader is the person when an impact takes place that can stay solid, or can instantly go back to solidity, and people can energetically feel that state and they start inclining towards that person, simply because this person has mental clarity, this person will be able to guide them into the next step, So when you witness yourself going back to its inner calmness quickly energetically, people will start considering you as their Leader.
oYou’ll be surprised , people will start asking for your opinion on stuff, what do you think we should do here ?
oPeople will start assigning you into the position of a Leader without you asking for it.
oStart retrieving yourself back into your natural state, using everything around you to help you practice going back into that state,
oWhen you start living through that place that beholds inner calmness, the place that radiates wisdom and pours out the true self, here’s when you will start experiencing the highest possible expression.
oChapter 3 :
•Is manhood a mask of fear?
•I’m very keen on the subject that we’ll start, and the reason is that we will be going over subjects that usually haven’t been covered before, we will be discussing subjects that are perceived shameful, things that are connected with charged emotions,I’m not doing this to prove you how courageous I am, but because these areas where the awakening takes place, these are the areas that witness development, As well as change.
•And unfortunately these areas where not looking into by human development or the classical psychology didn’t touche it.
•We will start with manhood, the energy of manhood, and how our inherited minds set look at the definition manhood, the inherited prejudice of what does it mean to be a Man in a toxic environment, How all is standing in the way of our evolution as well as the awakening that every person in witnessing on earth these days.
•Let’s take a look at this image.
•What is the general image of a Man ?
•Is it the person who isn’t sensitive ?
•The person who doesn’t have feelings ?
•The person who’s always too stubborn ? whom doesn’t listen to anyone ?
•This is the stereotype that some TV shows hold, the prejudice that has been implanted in our minds, and I know the effects behind this image, because I’ve been through the journey of sterilizing from it , been through the journey of getting rid of it, and maybe you’re reading this book or listening to thi audiobook and wondering ‘Raugh who are you to tell me about manhood ? when you have nothing to do with being one’hahaha.
•I respect your opinion, I want to remind you that I’ve been through a journey of perception, Most people prefer to die rather than facing that phase.
•The trip I went on, has allowed me to break through areas of fear that are buried deep inside the human’s perception as a goal for me to deliver you these information, I am not telling you this to prove how great of Man I am, but in order to open up your perception that everything you’re receiving right now, is generated from somewhere buried deep inside as well as a result from the process of sterilizing. Those aren’t just words I say in this book, this is something that I am living and experiencing.
•Throughout my life, I’ve noticed that the major factors that have caused obstruction in the overall evolution was the stereotypical image of manhood,
•Once I started getting over it,
•The explicit nature of talent started to reveal itself, it started gifts inside me started to unwrap themselves, Change started to take place.
•Do you want to know what parts of these gifts are ?
•The sensitivity.
•Sensitivity doesn’t mean being overly emotional and delicate, or I must cry whenever I watch something,
•This is not the concept.
•Sensitivity means your ability to feel the energy, to be present, based on that level of sensitivity,
•You can juggle around with energy , you will be able to download new information, and I guarantee this sensitivity is inside you and also you have buried talents behind the wall of manhood,
•How can you start sanitizing yourself from this image ?
•I want you to start paying attention this image of manhood that you are carrying, is it really manhood? Or Insecurity ?
•Because there’s a vast difference between both of these words,
•It is what we call ‘covering yourself up’ or walking behind traditions and convetions holding on to your thoughts and repeating them on and on , also being constantly frustrated or whatever, you have to overcome things without looking into the inner pain, this is what we call Manhood, but this is insecurity, when you start differentiating between manhood and insecurity, the real manhood inside you will finally witness awakening, the Enlightened Man inside you will wake up because at the end of the day manhood is the ability to give, in order for you to be giving you have to be yourself, because you are the biggest giving tender in this universe, you are the giving of love, it’s the love through action the YOU that I am talking about, could be an artist, a chef, a leader, a president, a doctor, a pilot, a dancer ,a teacher, an athlete……
•These images or phrases usually don’t fit in with the box or boarded manhood where we are placing ourselves in, and this box and thoughts are inside you, not out of you.
•Manhood isn’t about rejecting and denying your talents as well as denying your passion.
•The real Manhood is about feeling secure to let the man out,
•You feel safe about yourself to sing, you believe and feel safe to dance if this is your passion , Why ?
•Because the way to passion is the same way to your message, your message, the codes of your true self is in the way to passion, you will need complete courage in order to let out your true self, you know why ? it’s because you might be afraid people won’t accept your true self, and this is something I’ve experienced in my life.
•Do you think that to express my ideas and the experiences and the thing I write I won’t be scared ? ofcourse I am !
•Along all the insecurities as well before I write any single text or whatever , I experience insecurity, But I know that this feeling of insecurity will not stop in the way of being myself, On the contrary, I share it in order for it to help me out, this is the same reason I am sharing with you the feeling of insecurity, that’s why I tell people when we are at a course you know what ? I feel scared, ‘I’ve been feeling scared when it comes to this subject‘
•When I share this subject or the areas inside me that have insecurities without hiding it away , exposing out in the open here’s when the connection finds its place, here’s when compassion and change can be found and here’s where your true strength blossoms.
•My goal for you is to wake up fromthis image that we’re so deluded in, if you are already then congrats, this stereotypical imaget that has ruined people and drifted them apart from the emotional intelligence, because the image that we hold is fear.
•Now I’ll challenge you and ask you : can you manipulate a new image regarding manhood ?
•Manhood defines as boldness, it’s when you feel pain, DON’T HIDE IT,
•Go deep inside it, deal with it and sterilize it, go through it extensively in order to change it into wisdom, here’s when you become an alchemist, Do you have the strength to bring out all the areas that you fear and place them outside ? Do you have the confidence to be as you are ? DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO EXPRESS LOVE ?
•I KNOW how Hard it is because I remember when my consciousness first got enlightened, the Manhood means expressing love I recall it as if I am recalling now, I was having my morning meditation which I always do, I received a message from the inner guidance, it said ‘ Raugh do you know what does the real manhood mean ?
•The answer was exposed’ the real Manhood means the ability to express love’
•I went and looked at all the areas where I don’t express love and I witnessed the lack of expressing love with my friend, although we both know that we love each other,I decided to call him and express my brotherly love, it was such a hard moment in my life, then I called my father and told him ‘Dad, I love you’it was hard also, this is the real Manhood, these areas that you witness insecurities in, you can use it to express love through it,and this will get you to your message and passion unlike the stereotypcal image, know yourself and improve it and be yourself always and fly in the sky like a free Eagle,
•Show people who you really are, and this is how you’ll start living a true life.
•Chapter 4 :
•How to start living your Dream ?
•I wanna talk about how people can live their dreams, personally this is considered to be one of my passions, a passion to help you live your dream, this dream that you envision during day and night , this dream that haunts you everywhere even if you don’t know what it is, it’s the soul that wants to express itself through you,
•So the question is – How can you start to live your dream ?
•We could talk about this subject for around 10 years, in order to live your dream you must do this and that and we could argue on and on, but in the end, if we could go back to the one thing that matters,
•What makes the difference between someone who’s currently living their dream and a person who isn’t ? it’s the Action.
•My goal isn’t to convince you to just keep on doing any action and forget everything else, my goal is to encourage you, PUT ONE ACTION TOWARD YOUR DREAM,one step, one action towards your dream, and when you start walking towards your dream, the CREATIVE IMPULSE, this spirit or dream that wants you to express itself through you, once you start heading towards this impulse, you are placing yourself in a whole new direction, you start to experience the hero’s journey, you start walking through the forest of unknown, that no one has entered before.
•You start living your heart’s plan, in the end the one thing that makes all the difference is THE ACTION, and the most impotant point is to find the place inside you/me that has a flame, the spirit speaks throught it, that energy,
•This is the space that I seek, I don’t look for mental goals or what are your smart goals,
•I look for the place that moves you, because this is the place where MAGIC happens, this place produces wonders, but can you identify and know how to express this energy ? and here the the emotional challenge takes place, the moment you start walking towards your dream, the part that says ‘ don’t chase your dream ‘ will get activated in you, what is this part ? it’s the fear-based system that we have, it’s the ego that has only one agenda which is to stay exactly where you are,you know why ? because the agenda of the fear-based system is to stay safe ! therefore, staying safe means repeating what you’re used to,also means, not welcoming new inputs into your life without approaching an unknown world and repeating what is already familiar, but somethings familiar are what kill your spirit,your mental health, the routine is what keeps you captivated in a mental prison that you have created for yourself.
•The time has come to make an Action towards that direction.
•How would you deal with this fear-based system ?
•It’s pretty easy and simple,
•The fear-based system has one strategy, it keeps on pointing outside ( I CAN’T BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW, I DON’T HAVE SKILLS,NO MONEY, I AM SCARED , I DON’T HAVE ENERGY….. ) JUST Remember that all these excuses are eventually from within and they’re only there to prevent you from living your dream, So in the end , the real enemy that you think is outside is YOU.
•The only thing that stands in your way is YOU, not people, not the government or money or skills, perhaps you’re wondering right now ‘ but Raugh, I really don’t have the required skills’ but this is not the obstacle, it’s the thought that follows ( I don’t have a skill, therefore I stop ) , what can I do in order for me to learn ? and now you can learn anything, coaches and mentors , internet , books, anything is available, and for my opinion universities aren’t the right places to learn something practical, University is a pleasent social experience and the begginnig of the flame of knowledge but not a place where you can learn life skills, just do a plan and start , throw yourself , do something you love and love what you do,analyse and make conclusions, everything has consequences ( fruits ), the solution of your fear isn’t to defeat it or to think positive nor change your perspective , because if you think positively you are giving that fear more than it deserves, the solution is to look at it and tell the fear ‘ thank you for sharing’ and proceed with a real Action towards your dream, even if it doesn’t feel emotionally comfortable IT DOESN’T MATTER, And believe me , once you start heading towards the dream , the creative impulse and taking the first step into that direction , you’ll witness an acceleration in your life , you’ll see orchestrated synchronicity start happening to you and they start taking place in your life, The right people start approaching you at the right time and place, Doors and opportunities will start opening up like never before, this is what the genius Joseph Campbell that created the Hero’s Journey, He says when you follow your bliss ( which is you dream, or the thing that gets your heart moving ) doors will openin in places where there were only walls, this is the secret of life, follow your dream, your dream is what will give you aliveness , so never abandon your dream because if you do , what will you stand up for ? personally I can’t trust someone who has abandoned their dream, if they they left it , they will leave anything else.
•Dreams are the hope for humanity,
•And dreams aren’t goals , goals are born from dreams, Goals support dreams.
•Ignore self-limiting beliefs and negative people. Along the journey to your dream life, you’ll encounter doubt, fear, and self-limiting beliefs. There will be people in your life who don’t get it and will make their opinion known. If you listen to any negativeness, it will convince you what you want is impossible, and you won’t take the necessary steps to make your dream life a reality.
•I’m gonna ask you from a part of love, can you make a plan and make a nice dream and what is the first step towards what you want ?
•Right it and and look at it everyday and think of it and make actions.
•Choose to live life every day. You can miss so much that life has to offer with the chaos and busyness of life. It’s easy to get caught in routines and what feels comfortable. The problem is that all anyone is guaranteed is this moment. It’s important to live each day as if it were the last because it very well may be.
•It bothers me to see so many people who are not waking up every day and experiencing freedom in their life. I realize this is a short article among thousands you’ll probably read, but my hope is that this is a starting point. It will be hard, and it will take time. There will be many times along the way that you’ll feel like giving up — don’t.
•Your dream life is attainable, but more than that, it’s important. Life is short, and each of us only gets one life to live. Choose to believe in yourself. Choose to believe in what’s possible, and then do something about it. Start today and don’t give up until you wake up experiencing true freedom in every area of your life.
•Do you wanna live or just existing ?
oChapter 5 :
oThe dangers of positive thinking :
•In 1939, the phrase « Keep Calm and Carry On » was invented by the British government to boost morale before the Second World War. Seventy-one years later, two bookshop owners rediscovered an original « Keep Calm… » poster in an old box, hung it up in their store, and it attracted so much attention that they began producing and selling posters of their own. Other companies followed suit, and today, « keep calm » and other glass-half-full sentiments have become not only popular Pinterest fodder but also a requisite for human behavior. In the United States, a cultural obsession with positive thinking is reflected in everything from the success of self-help books to the widespread trend of « adult coloring. » But according to psychologists, there is a healthy threshold for positivity, and as a culture, we have gone way, way passed it.
•« How happy we are—or appear to be—is one of the ways that we define success in our culture, almost as if it were a commodity, » explains research psychologist John Williams, Ph.D., co-founder of California Anxiety. « Just look at how we put on a smile for photographs, even if we’re not having a good time. » As Quartz reported earlier this year, happiness, genuine or not, has become mandatory everywhere from the grocery store aisle to the workplace. « Many companies spend huge sums of money trying to ensure employee happiness, and not out of altruism, » Quartz says, referencing the « dark side of positivity, » where feelings become products to exploit over organic human experiences.
•Of course, it’s natural to want happiness in life. « Happiness feels good to us, » offers Matthew Hefferon, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist and family therapist in Chicago. « It feels good in the same way that … delicious food, a cozy warm fire, or a hug from a loved one [feel good]. » However, genuine positivity and the pressure to be positive all the time are two different things. And psychologists agree that in our society, that pressure is mounting.
•« All this ‘think positive’ business makes it seem that a person’s happiness is completely in their control, » explains Peg O’Connor, Ph.D., an expert contributor for Pro Talk on Rehabs.com « It seems as if the underlying belief is, ‘Just change your attitude, put a smile on your face and everything will be fine.’ » But as O’Connor states—and other experts agree—perpetual happiness is not a reasonable expectation. « We live in a world where there is rampant racial, sexual, religious, and other forms of oppression. These structural realities wear people down in all sorts of ways, » she says. « For many people, sustained happiness will be elusive. »
•So where did this obsession with positivity come from, how is it secretly affecting us, and how can we rectify it? Keep reading to learn more from psychologists about the trouble with positive thinking.
•All this ‘think positive’ business makes it seem that a person’s happiness is completely in their control.
•The Commodification of Positivity
•To gain a healthier view of happiness, we must first understand how the American approach to positivity got so cockeyed. Unsurprisingly, Hefferon says we have capitalism to blame. « There has been a push socially and corporately toward insisting on happiness as the highest value, since it does, technically, increase productivity and health, » he says. The research on this is cogent. « Happier workers, happier family members, and happier people tend to be more productive, more loving, more peaceful, and more law-abiding, » Hefferon asserts. But because American culture thrives on monetary gain, corporations took this knowledge and sold it back to us in the form of self-help books, meditation classes, and « keep calm » posters. In other words, over the past three decades or so, happiness has become a for-profit enterprise.
•But big business isn’t the only factor. According to Helen Odessky, PsyD, psychologist and author of Stop Anxiety From Stopping You, mental health research itself has also contributed to our cultural quest for positivity (though not on purpose). « As a field, psychology went from studying depression to studying happiness. Along with this progression, we began to feel pressure to be happy and to compare our happiness levels, » she says. Complex but true, scientific research, commodification, and societal pressures have all played a role in America’s fetish for happiness.
•Unrealistic Expectations
•The trouble with positive thinking goes deeper than too many cheer-promoting coffee cozies. « As a society, we have become increasingly intolerant of negative feelings, » says psychiatrist Samantha Boardman, MD, of Positive Prescription. « We pathologize heartbreak, sadness, loss, and have forgotten that it is natural and part of the human experience to feel bad sometimes. » As licensed psychologist Nancy Sachar Sidhu, Ph.D., explains, this habit goes back hundreds of years. « The U.S. culture is heavily influenced by its Puritan history of holding in our feelings and not discussing them, » she says.
•« We … have forgotten that it is natural and part of the human experience to feel bad sometimes. »
•Add today’s oppressively joyful television advertisements and sparkling social media posts, and our phobia of negativity only magnifies. « [It] has set up unrealistic expectations and a denial of the … complexity of our emotions, » says Sidhu. At the first sign of sadness, our impulse is to suppress it, medicate it, or feign positivity on social media to convince everyone else (and ourselves) that it’s not happening. « I think this goes hand in hand with the quick fix world we now live in, » says Boardman. « We demand immediate gratification in all domains, including mental health. »
•That’s not to say we shouldn’t strive for happiness. But psychologists encourage us to reconsider the idea that achieving a 100% blissed-out state—and staying that way—is a reasonable goal. « When one alters the ‘pursuit of happiness’ toward the ‘insistence of happiness’ things can change dramatically, » says Hefferon. « Any person will inherently become emotionally worsened by chasing what cannot be caught. »
•Accepting What We Cannot Control
•The reality of the human condition, melancholy as it may be, is that we’re just not built to sustain the level of positivity promoted by our merchandise and mood boards. « It is not healthy to force one’s self into trying to feel anything at all, and happiness is no exception, » says Hefferon. « Attempting to be happy or force others to be happy constantly is to oppose our biological, neurological construction. This will no doubt inevitably cause further despair. »
•As Hefferon explains, our natural emotions are going to « drive right along » as they do; since feelings are technically a result of chemical and hormonal reactions in the body that aren’t always rational, they cannot be inherently controlled. In addition, many psychologists agree that individuals’ natural tendencies toward positivity or negativity fall along a spectrum. « Some people incline toward more happiness and optimism … while others tend more to pessimism and a darker view. Within these two categories, there are gradations, » O’Connor explains. For people who are more pessimistic by nature, society’s enormous pressure to « think positive » can feel like « trying to make a left-handed adult suddenly use only their right hand, » she says. « Now blame them for not being able to write well while they blame themselves too. » It simply isn’t reasonable.
•A Better Approach to Negative Emotions
•While one cannot flip a switch on their emotions, no matter how many inspirational quotes they re-pin, what can be altered is « the intensity, meaning, and duration of those feelings, » says Hefferon. In other words, it’s crucial to acknowledge your true emotions, and once you do, you can be strategic about how you react to them.
•« One of the myths about emotionally healthy people is that they don’t experience negative emotions like sadness or anger, » says Boardman. « The key difference is that emotionally healthy people don’t dwell on negative emotions or allow them to take over. On the contrary, they use them to their advantage—to provide perspective and help them cope with a given situation in order to move forward. » For example, a person might choose to view getting laid off from their job as « an opportunity rather than a personal failure, » Williams offers.
•All of this is to say that negative emotions aren’t as bad as we’re led to believe—they serve a purpose that pure happiness cannot. « They remind us to ask questions, revisit motivation, and embrace new goals, » says Boardman. They help us make important life changes, walk away from bad influences, and are overall important for survival. « Indeed, using negative emotions wisely can create hope and new possibilities, » Boardman concludes.
oSo, next time you feel a twinge of sadness, stress, or insecurity, don’t buy yourself another « keep calm » journal and hope for the best. Instead, « walk around in the emotion and poke into its corners—think of it as emotional spelunking, » says O’Connor. If you think you’re feeling something serious, like clinical depression, O’Connor recommends using a source like MentalHelp.net to determine if treatment is needed. Even if the outside system doesn’t support you, professional psychologists and yourself definitely do.
•2- The benefits of positive thinking :
•You have probably had someone tell you to « look on the bright side » or to « see the cup as half full. » Chances are good that the people who make these comments are positive thinkers. Researchers are finding more and more evidence pointing to the many benefits of optimism and positive thinking.
•Such findings suggest that not only are positive thinkers healthier and less stressed, they also have greater overall well-being. According to positive psychology researcher Suzanne Segerstrom, « Setbacks are inherent to almost every worthwhile human activity, and a number of studies show that optimists are in general both psychologically and physiologically healthier. »
•BENEFITS OF POSITIVE THINKING
•Even if positive thinking does not come naturally to you, there are plenty of great reasons to start cultivating affirmative thoughts and minimizing negative self-talk.
•STRESS RELIEF
•When faced with stressful situations, positive thinkers cope more effectively than pessimists. In one study, researchers found that when optimistsencounter a disappointment (such as not getting a job or promotion) they are more likely to focus on things they can do to resolve the situation.
•Rather than dwelling on their frustrations or things that they cannot change, they will devise a plan of action and ask others for assistance and advice. Pessimists, on the other hand, simply assume that the situation is out of their control and there is nothing they can do to change it.
•INCREASED IMMUNITY
•In recent years, researchers have found that your mind can have a powerful effect on your body. Immunity is one area where your thoughts and attitudes can have a particularly powerful influence. In one study, researchers found that activation in brain areas associated with negative emotions led to a weaker immune response to a flu vaccine.
•Researchers Segerstrom and Sephton found that people who were optimistic about a specific and important part of their lives, such as how well they were doing in school, exhibited a stronger immune response than those who had a more negative view of the situation.
•IMPROVED WELLNESS
•Not only can positive thinking impact your ability to cope with stress and your immunity, it also has an impact on your overall well-being.
•While researchers are not entirely clear on why positive thinking benefits health, some suggest that positive people might lead healthier lifestyles. By coping better with stress and avoiding unhealthy behaviors, they are able to improve their health and well-being.
•BETTER RESILIENCE
•Resilience refers to our ability to cope with problems. Resilient people are able to face a crisis or trauma with strength and resolve. Rather than falling apart in the face of such stress, they have the ability to carry on and eventually overcome such adversity. It may come as no surprise to learn that positive thinking can play a major role in resilience. When dealing with a challenge, optimists typically look at what they can do to fix the problem. Instead of giving up hope, they marshal their resources and are willing to ask others for help.
•Researchers have also found that in the wake of a crisis, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, positive thoughts and emotions encourage thriving and provide a sort of buffer against depression among resilient people.
••Fortunately, experts also believe that such positivism and resilience can be cultivated. By nurturing positive emotions, even in the face of terrible events, people can reap both short-term and long-term rewards, including managing stress levels, lessening depression, and building coping skills that will serve them well in the future.
•A WORD FROM VERYWELL
•Before you put on those rose-colored glasses, it is important to note that positive thinking is not about taking a « Pollyanna » approach to life. In fact, researchers have found that in some instances, optimism might not serve you well. For example, people who are excessively optimistic might overestimate their own abilities and take on more than they can handle, ultimately leading to more stress and anxiety.
•Instead of ignoring reality in favor of the silver lining, psychologists suggest that positive thinking centers on such things as a belief in your abilities, a positive approach to challenges, and trying to make the most of the bad situations. Bad things will happen. Sometimes you will be disappointed or hurt by the actions of others. This does not mean that the world is out to get you or that all people will let you down. Instead, positive thinkers will look at the situation realistically, search for ways that they can improve the situation, and try to learn from their experiences.
•Wake up and think logically and train your brain, your subconscious has a freaking power you can’t imagine it, let me share some information and solutions from the book ( the power of your subconscious mind ) by Joseph murphy , it’s a really awesome Book By a genius manone of the men whom are helping the human’s evolution, let’t get started,
•Repetition Can Train Your Subconscious Mind.
•Learning a new skill initially takes considerable conscious effort. For example, the first time you learned to ride a bike, it would have been challenging. However, repetition meant that riding a bike started to require less conscious effort. Your subconscious mind then began to grasp the task better, and riding a bike became automatic.
•This repetition can be used to overcome personal challenges. Joseph Murphy provides the example of Enrico Caruso, who was an Italian opera singer in the late nineteenth century. Enrico was incredibly nervous before shows and would subsequently suffer from throat spasms before performances. This nervousness was his conscious mind impairing a skill that had become subconscious for him. Joseph Murphy explains that the conscious mind took over as he was bogged down with negative thoughts. He was worried about the performance going badly and the crowd reacting in a hostile manner. Despite this, he was able to conquer these physical reactions by repeatedly telling his conscious mind to stop interfering with his subconscious mind. This meditative practice allowed him to reduce his fears and perform naturally and automatically.
•2. POSITIVE THINKING AND VISUALIZATION ARE INTEGRAL TO ACHIEVING YOUR DREAMS.
•Positive thinking and visualization can heal. In the eighteenth century, priests would heal the sick by persuading them to believe God would make them better. Some would attribute the success of this practice to the existence of God. However, it is more likely that these practices recruited the subconscious mind.
•In this book, Murphy gives an anecdote about his own life. When one of Murphy’s relatives developed tuberculosis, the relative’s son was determined to help him get better. His relative’s son picked up a piece of wood off a sidewalk and gave it to his father. The son explained that this was a cross bought from a monk who had recently worked at a healing shrine. He also stated that the cross had been used to heal many people. The father held onto the piece of wood tightly overnight, and the next morning he was completely healed. Principally, if you visualize or imagine what you hope to be true, sometimes it does come true. Importantly, you should not then break the illusion for the healed person. Breaking the illusion can cause the disease to resurface.
•This ‘miracle’ is not a unique circumstance. Joseph Murphy taught the subconscious mind’s power to millions of listeners on a weekly radio show called the Church of Divine Science. On this radio show, he described the mental movie method. This method involves creating a mental image that you desire. Then, you hold it in your mind until your subconscious makes it a reality. Many listeners used this approach to sell their property for the right price and to the right buyer. Several listeners sent in thank you letters to the author since this technique worked so well for selling their homes.
•3. UTILIZE YOUR NATURAL ABILITY TO SELF-HEAL.
•You can activate your subconscious mind by allowing your body to self-heal. One of the most effective self-healing approaches is to sleep over things when you cannot decide which choice to pick.
•Joseph Murphy provides an example of how giving your brain time to consider options can allow your subconscious mind to communicate the best option. Joseph introduced readers to a woman who was given a job opportunity on the other side of the country. Although the salary was double what she was currently earning, she was unsure whether it was worth the money. Therefore, instead of making a rash decision, this woman went to bed early and slept on the decision. Subsequently, she was letting her subconscious mind influence her decisions. In the morning, her sixth sense told her that she should not accept the offer. She listened to her subconscious mind and rejected the offer. Three months later, she came to realize that she had made the correct decision as the other company had filed for bankruptcy. Sometimes we need to give our subconscious room to improve our lives.
•Joseph explains that the subconscious mind processes data faster and through different methods than the conscious self. Therefore, letting your gut work overnight will help you think clearly and with more confidence the following day. Also, we need to rely on belief. The unconscious realm feeds off of belief. Therefore, if you believe you are in good health, this will activate your unconscious’ ability to self-heal. Joseph also talks about a universal process of self-healing, which is called faith. All sickness, ailments, and traumatic events can be healed by placing healing thoughts into our unconscious realm. Joseph does not discount the importance of science. Instead, he explains that our unconscious mind can complement medicine and science. For example, even pseudoscientific historical approaches, like healing through touch, have healed multiple people. In these instances, it is not the healers who are healing. Instead, it is the individual’s unconscious mind.
•Self-healing is also how placebo effects are established. Placebos occur when an individual gets better or feels better after being given a substance that is not a real treatment. The most famous example is giving participants sugar tablets rather than real medication. However, placebos often work as well as the genuine medication. Even though taking placebos is not a real treatment, doctors have found that this effect has various physical and psychological benefits. Several placebo experiments have produced better results for heart rate, blood pressure, and other aspects of health. The main thing is that our mind in health and well-being is stable. Joseph Murphy would attribute this effect to our unconscious mind.
•Joseph Murphy also explains that you do not even have to believe in the genuineness of a treatment for it to work. Instead, if we allow our subconscious field to be open to questioning and challenging standard views, then this is enough. When you are in a drowsy state, you allow your subconscious mind to have a more significant influence over your faith in a treatment. This drowsiness is how praying to God can sometimes help individuals be healed. Praying shuts out your conscious realm and allows the irrational, subconscious mind to work properly.
•4. Let Go of All Negative Thoughts.
•“What the other person says or does cannot really annoy or irritate you except you permit him to disturb you. The only way he can annoy you is through your own thought. For example, if you get angry, you have to go through four stages in your mind: You begin to think about what he said. You decide to get angry and generate an emotion of rage. Then, you decide to act. Perhaps, you talk back and react in kind. You see that the thought, emotion, reaction, and action all take place in your mind. When you become emotionally mature, you do not respond negatively to the criticism and resentment of others.”
•Joseph Murphy
•Our natural reaction is to adopt negative thoughts about circumstances. Instead, we should be attempting to choose happiness.
•Negative thoughts are highly detrimental. Not only do they impact on your emotions, but they also prevent you from succeeding. Joseph Murphy gives another personal anecdote for this section. One of Joseph Murphy’s associates worked day in and day out. Working those long hours lead to him neglecting his family and increasing his blood pressure to an unhealthy level. However, Murphy’s associate had a negative viewpoint on why he worked so much. The associate accepted that he felt guilty about not doing the right thing by his deceased brother, who had passed away years before. The remorse he felt came from a place of negativity. These negative thoughts then pushed him to behaviors that punished himself, his wife, and children. Plus, it prevented him from realizing that these long hours were not his boss’ fault; they were the fault of his negative thoughts.
•5. FEARS ARE JUST FALSE THOUGHTS.
•“You grow old when you lose interest in life, when you cease to dream, to hunger after new truths, and to search for new worlds to conquer. When your mind is open to new ideas, new interests, and when you raise the curtain and let in the sunshine and inspiration of new truths of life and the universe, you will be young and vital.”
•Joseph Murphy
•Fear is an emotion that troubles us throughout our lives. When we were young, we were fearful of monsters under our beds. As we grow up, we continue to have fears in the shape of worrying about money. Both these fears are based on false thoughts, and we challenge these fears by challenging these thoughts.
•Joseph Murphy also describes aging as a widespread fear for adults. However, we can also overcome this fear by changing the way we think about aging. Aging only happens when we stop learning new skills. Staying young isn’t about age but about remaining active and doing the things we enjoy. Joseph provides an anecdote of an executive that lived near him and retired at 65. The man had spent almost all of his life learning. He did not view retirement as something to be afraid of, but yet another opportunity to learn. He started learning new skills, such as photography. Plus, he sought out opportunities to travel the world. Finally, this man became a lecturer on how to age well. In this book, Joseph also talks about his father. At 65, Joseph’s father set out to learn French. Five years later, he was a specialist. He then started to study Gaelic. Again, he reached a level that meant he was teaching it until his death at 99 years. If we keep positivity and learning at the forefront of our minds, we will feel younger and, it seems, live longer.
•6. COMBINING VISUALIZATION AND PERSONAL PASSIONS CAN CONSIDERABLY IMPROVE YOUR LIFE.
•As well as helping people sell their houses and potentially heal illnesses, visualization can also help you attract money. Specifically, if you combine visualization and your passions, you can attract money. Joseph Murphy recommends picturing your desired end goal in life. This will feed your subconscious, which will help you reach this goal.
•Joseph Murphy gives an example of a young Australian boy. He wanted to become a doctor and surgeon. However, the boy did not have the money to start his journey toward doing so. Every night before he fell asleep, he would envision a medical diploma hanging on his wall. Eventually, he got a break when a doctor saw his potential and taught him how to sterilize instruments and give injections. The doctor paid him for this work, and the boy used this money for his medical school tuition. This is a perfect example of combining your passions with positive visualization, leading to initial success and motivating you to excel even further.
•7. YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS CAN HELP YOU FIND THE IDEAL ROMANTIC PARTNER !
•Joseph Murphy explained that positive visualization could even be used to find the perfect romantic partner. From his personal experience, he describes how a teacher he knew used visualization for this purpose. This teacher had three ex-husbands. Each of these ex-husbands was weak and passive. These were not the qualities that she desired in a partner. She was a relatively masculine woman with a dominant personality. She was attracting men with the opposite character to what she desired. However, she then used her subconscious to construct an image of her ideal partner mentally. She would do this every night before falling asleep. She then accepted a job as a secretary in a doctor’s office and found the strong man of her dreams. The physician was a healthy, successful man. They quickly married and have been happily married ever since.
•8. THE THREE STEPS TO SUCCESS :
•LOVE YOUR WORK
•It might be hard sometimes, but loving your work will hugely improve your quality of life. If you are doing a job you genuinely love, it won’t feel like work. You will be ingrained in your craft and completely motivated to continue working. You might be struggling to find a job that you genuinely love. If so, Joseph Murphy recommends asking for guidance from career experts. However, you must also proceed with faith and confidence that you will find the job that you love.
•SPECIALIZE
•If you manage to find a job that you love, you should look to specialize in particular areas. Perfecting a craft is a thoroughly rewarding pursuit. It allows you to become a leader in your field. Mastering your work will help make you feel more fulfilled, and economic success will follow.
•ALTRUISM
•Joseph Murphy describes this as the most crucial step to happiness. Your love of work cannot be associated with selfish desires. Instead, you gain the most happiness from your motivations being tied to a cause beyond yourself. A cause that serves humanity.
•DESIRE HAPPINESS
•“You must choose happiness. Happiness is a habit. It is a good habit to ponder often.”
•Joseph Murphy
•Joseph Murphy believes that happiness is just a mental construct. This is not a negative thing, though. It means that we can foster a feeling of happiness if we truly desire it. However, the majority of people have a disposition for unhappiness. Those who have a disposition for unhappiness will search for what is wrong in their environment. It is always possible to find negatives in our environment. When we find these negatives, we are only attracting more negative experiences.
•9. WHAT FACTORS PREVENT YOU FROM USING YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND?
•Some circumstances can prevent the unconscious realm from having a significant impact on your life. Critics will often use these examples as evidence of the method not working. Still, the reality is that the environment was not optimal for the subconscious mind to excel.
•Joseph Murphy outlines two factors that can make our unconscious realms fail. The first factor is a lack of confidence, and the second factor is putting too much effort into making it work.
•It is essential to understand that your unconscious mind will carry out an idea as soon as it accepts this idea. Hence, the unconscious mind will carry out any action planted in it, whether it is good or bad. Similarly, if we start having doubts about something, then these hesitations will become rooted in the unconscious realm. Murphy provides an example of money. Suppose you try and imagine being rich in the future. Even if you manage to imagine being rich, it is likely that you still won’t believe that you will one day be rich. In this instance, your unconscious realm is creating a reality where you have no money. Therefore, you are not using the unconscious mind for your benefit. The only reason for this ineffectiveness of the unconscious realm is a lack of self-confidence.
•Although it is important to let the unconscious realm influence your life, it is also crucial you do not force the unconscious realm to help you. If you force the unconscious mind too much, then you will fail. Rather than utilizing forced beliefs, utilizing real beliefs allows the unconscious mind to turn these beliefs into a reality. Forcing things to happen only works within the conscious realm. Hence, Joseph Murphy recommends relaxing and putting faith in the notion that the unconscious mind will work for you. You must maintain this relaxed approach even when you are not obtaining instant results.
•Chapter 6 : Leadership Influence: See Inspiration not Manipulation
•I was surprised when some professionals at a conference reacted negatively to the word influence. They associated it with politicians who try to sway opinions their way. They saw influence as manipulation and even lying. That’s quite a departure from the often held view that “leadership is influence.” ~ John C. Maxwell
•How do you see leadership influence — positive or negative?
•LEADERSHIP INFLUENCE VS. MANIPULATION
•Each person is an influence for good or bad. Great leadership influence isn’t about convincing people to think their way. Leadership influence creates a picture and invites others to see it through their own eyes. As everyone shares their views, they influence.
•Manipulation …
•Disregards other’s views and talents.
•Is opportunistic and driven by selfish gain.
•Hints/tells vs. discovers.
•Spins and skews the truth their way.
•Withholds information to further their angle and purpose.
•Focuses on people who can serve them; ignores those who can’t.
•Leadership influence …
•Love
•Discovers and seeks to understand not to convince.
•Stimulates other’s influence.
•Asks and listens vs. tells.
•Honors emotions doesn’t play on them.
•Respects people for who they are.
•Awakens a vision so everyone can influence the results with their talents.
•Ignites diverse views and opens minds for mega collaboration.
•Transcends the moment and echoes resilience far and wide.
•Draws on professional people skills to balance communication and care.
•Uses honesty AND restraint so people can come to a decision vs. being told what to do.
•Instead of labeling all leadership influence as manipulation, see what true influence is. It honors and inspires. It connects and creates. Then embrace it. Model it. Participate in it!
•Positive influence is the impact you have on another person (AND yourself) by pointing out strengths and virtues. It is how you are, what you do, and the power you have on others to value what is best within themselves. Positive influence helps a person be better today than they were yesterday.
•Influence lives at the intersection of open minds.
•KATE NASSER
oChapter 7 :
oHow to train your brain to get wealthy ?
oBusiness and wealthiness , I know y’all like it deep down.
oIt’s a great thing,
•Business, Money, Power, you have to control your money but not the other way around ,otherwise, you’re a slave in a maze.
•-Definitions of wealthiness : noun. the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money and being a powerful person.
oMy opinion and conclusions of books and my experiences.
•= TOWARDS SUCCESS CONSCIOUSNESS
•In any field I always remember what did the Poet William Ernest Henley say :
•‘’ I’m the master of my fate And I am the captain of my soul ’’ it really fascinated me, not only me.
•Even the wisdom of Napoleon Hill in the book ‘think and grow rich’ one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, now let’s analyse this wonderful idea and get started.
•The Mathematical form :
•Desire + Ideas + Plans + Action = Success
•Start with your goal. What do you really want? A better job? To succeed in your current career? To work for a business leader who inspires you?
•To achieve that goal, shifting your thinking from failure consciousness to success consciousness is the key. For this to happen, the question ‘how do I get a job?’ needs to change into ‘what can I give to a job?’, and ‘how do I get more dollars per hour?’ into ‘how do I give more energy, desire, focus?’
•To get from where you are to where you want to be, the author highlights:
•“NEVER QUIT. NEVER GIVE UP. FOCUS. SEEK HELP. MAKE NEW CONNECTIONS. TAKE DIFFERENT APPROACHES. SEEK ADDITIONAL RESOURCES TO HELP YOU IMPROVE YOUR JOB SEARCH SKILLS. PERSIST AND FIND PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP YOU TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS.”
•DESIRE
•THE TURNING POINT OF ACHIEVEMENT
•What do you desire above everything else? A powerful desire towards achieving a goal uses a combination of two types of motivation:
•Pull motivations (the outcome of the goal is so favourable, that it pulls you towards the goal)
•Push motivations (you are pushed to action because of the negative consequences of not taking action)
•The author provides the mindset for 5 key areas of Desire:
•CAREER
•Going from ‘what do I get?’ to ‘how will I grow?’ requires shifting from ego-driven concerns (title, salary, benefits etc.) to growth opportunities within the company and position.
•LEADING
•To lead, first, you need to follow and learn from an existing leader. How would it affect your career if you became an apprentice to someone at the top of your field that you admire?
•MONEY
•This is a series of steps that the author suggests for money-based desires.
•Be definite as to the amount of money or type of job.
•Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire.
•Establish a definite date when you intend to attain the money you desire.
•Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once.
•Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit, state what you intend to give in return, and describe the plan through which you plan to accumulate it.
•Read your written statement aloud, twice daily.
•FAILURE
•Look for lessons within failure and examine them without the emotional attachment of why something has failed. Use failure as a growth opportunity towards greater accomplishments, “Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.”
•OTHERS PEOPLE’S DESIRES
•By helping the owner of a company or a manager achieve their goals (as an employee or freelancer), you also advance your own goals, because you progressively start excelling at the area of interest (provided this area is aligned with your own goals).
•2. FAITH
•VISUALISATION & BELIEF IN ATTAINMENT OF DESIRE
•“Your own success or failure is based largely on your self-belief, and a mind-set of positive expectancy is the foundation of which your success can be achieved.”
•Faith is the starting point of success and the glue that holds it all together. As a state of mind, faith can be induced or created through affirmations or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind. By encouraging positive emotions and eliminating negative emotions (such as doubt, denial, and fear), faith can be a useful tool in various ways:
•It is an antidote for failure.
•By believing in yourself, others will believe in you, too.
•Employers seek successful, confident people who can make a positive impact.
•To summon faith in the form of self-confidence, the author suggests that you sign your name to a statement, which you should be repeating daily towards subconsciously influencing your thoughts and actions. This statement should include affirmations that acknowledge certain things about yourself:
•That you have the ability to achieve your purpose.
•That you promise to take action.
•That you understand that your thoughts will gradually transform into a physical reality.
•That you promise to dedicate time to ensuring that these thoughts become real.
•That you understand the importance of self-confidence and promise to spend 10 minutes a day working on this.
•That you will never stop trying to achieve your goals.
•That you are willing to serve others, and in turn will get others to serve you.
•Find examples of people who are where you want to be (career-, money-, influence-wise, you name it), use their examples as a way to keep your faith strong, and remind yourself that your desire is possible to attain.
•3. AUTO-SUGGESTION
•THE MEDIUM FOR INFLUENCING THE SUBCONSCIOUS
•The principle of auto-suggestion communicates our desires directly to the subconscious mind in a spirit of unshakable faith.
•Through routine repetition of our conscious thoughts and desires (as mentioned in the ritual of the “Faith” section above) to ourselves, we can regain absolute control over the material which reaches our subconscious mind, exercising control over our decisions, feelings, and actions.
•4. SPECIALISED KNOWLEDGE
•PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OR OBSERVATIONS
•For our desires to translate into monetary, career, or another kind of success (which we’ve picked in the “Desire” step), we are first required to have specialised knowledge of the service, product, or profession of which we intend to offer in return for fortune.
•Notably, this specialised knowledge doesn’t have to be in your possession already. Knowing how to purchase or rent knowledge is a popular way of fulfilling this step. Courses, seminars, books (or summaries!), industry conferences, they all improve your odds of acquiring the much-needed specialised knowledge for yourself.
•Working with knowledgeable people (“renting knowledge”) is the other – equally powerful – side of the spectrum. Lifelong learning is obviously necessary for an ambitious person to keep up with all the latest developments in their field.
•5. IMAGINATION
•THE WORKSHOP OF THE MIND
•Ideas are products of and given a shape or form through imagination.
•“HUMANS CAN CREATE ANYTHING THEY CAN IMAGINE.”
•The author mentions two types of imagination. Synthetic imagination:
•this faculty includes arranging old concepts, ideas or plans into new combinations. And creative imagination: this faculty is where ideas come from (“infinite intelligence”) and “hunches” and “inspirations are received.
•To make the best use of your imagination towards achieving your big goal, come up with a list of ideas that will both inspire you and allow you to best utilise your talents.
•6. ORGANISED PLANNING
•THE CRYSTALLISATION OF DESIRE INTO ACTION
•Simply hoping to succeed at your goal is not the answer. Every achievement starts with a strong desire, workshopped to reality through imagination, followed by an organised plan.
•No plan is perfect. When you execute your plan, you will likely experience a temporary defeat. The best way to approach defeat is to simply accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound. Rebuild your plans and keep pursuing your goal, armed with the knowledge of your previous failures.
•Don’t give up before you reach your goal, because quitters do not get to see their long-term plans come to fruition.
•7. DECISION
•THE MASTERY OF PROCRASTINATION
•“TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO, BUT FIRST SHOW IT FREEDOM OR DEATH ON A DECISION.”
•People who fail to succeed, without exception, reach decisions, if at all, very slowly, and change their minds quickly and often. Successful people reach decisions promptly and definitely, changing their mind slowly. They know what they want and, generally, get it. Definiteness of decision always requires courage. Procrastination, the opposite of decision, is a common enemy which practically every person must conquer.
•8. PERSISTENCE
•THE SUSTAINED EFFORT NECESSARY TO INDUCE FAITH
•Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure. It can be conquered but this depends entirely upon the intensity of one’s desire – weak desires bring weak results. The basis of persistence is the power of will, and it’s also influenced by other factors, such as:
•Definiteness of purpose
•Self-reliance
•Definiteness of plans
•Accurate knowledge
•Co-operation
•Habits
•Which of the aforementioned factors are you lacking, which might be hindering your persistence? On the contrary, lack of persistence begets the following symptoms:
•Procrastination
•Lack of interest
•Indecision
•Self-satisfaction
•Indifference
•Weakness of desire
•Willingness to quit
•Lack of organised plans
•Wishing instead of willing
•Searching for shortcuts
•Fear of criticism
•So, how does one develop persistence?
•The author suggests the following 4 steps:
•Develop a definite purpose, backed by a burning desire for its fulfillment.
•Build a definite plan, expressed in continuous action.
•Keep out all negative and discouraging influences.
•Stay accountable to people who will encourage you to follow through your plan and purpose.
•9. POWER OF THE MASTERMIND
•THE DRIVING FORCE
•A mastermind is having a team of people in place, whose job it is to help you succeed and carry out your plans. Who could be in your team and how could you form one in the next 30 days? Nobody can acquire great power and succeed without the power of a mastermind. According to the author:
•“NO TWO MINDS EVER COME TOGETHER WITHOUT, THEREBY, CREATING A THIRD, INVISIBLE, INTANGIBLE FORCE WHICH MAY BE LIKENED TO A THIRD MIND”.
•The goal of a mastermind is to convert knowledge into power, by organising it into definite plans, and then translating plans into action.
•10. TRANSMUTATION OF SEX
•CONVERTING SEX INTO A HIGHLY CREATIVE OUTLET
•Sex has three constructive potentialities:
•Perpetuation of mankind
•Maintenance of health
•Transformation of mediocrity into genius through transmuting
•The desire for sex is the most powerful of human desires. Its motivating force brings keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence and creative ability unknown to people at other times.
•Sexual drive (the thoughts of physical expression) can be transmuted into highly creative and productive outlets, used as a powerful force for success, or, of course, the accumulation of riches. It requires the exercise of will-power, but the reward is worth the effort.
•11. SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
•THE CONNECTING LINK
•The subconscious mind is the connecting link between the finite mind of a human and infinite intelligence.
•The subconscious mind can be used as a medium for transmuting your desires into their physical or monetary equivalent. However, if you fail to plant your own desires into it, as a result of your neglect, it will feed upon any thoughts that reach it.
•To gain control over your subconscious mind, form the habit of applying and using to your advantage the following 7 major positive emotions: Desire, Faith, Love, Sex, Enthusiasm, Romance, Hope.
•The mere presence of a single negative emotion in your conscious mind might be sufficient to destroy all chances of constructive aid from your subconscious mind. The 7 major negative emotions to avoid are; Fear, Jealousy, Hatred, Revenge, Greed, Superstition, Anger.
•Eventually, the positive emotions will dominate your mind completely, so that the negative ones cannot enter.
•12. THE BRAIN
•A BROADCASTING AND RECEIVING STATION FOR THOUGHT
•Every human brain is both a broadcasting and receiving station for the vibration of thought.
•The subconscious mind is the “sending station” of the brain, through which vibrations of thought are broadcast.
•The creative imagination is the “receiving set,” through which the vibrations of thought are picked up from the ether.
•When stimulated (“stepped up”) to a high rate of vibration, the mind becomes more receptive to the vibration of thought. This “stepping up” takes place through positive or negative emotions.
•Vibrations of an exceedingly high rate are the only vibrations picked up and carried, by the ether, from one brain to another.
•13. THE SIXTH SENSE
•THE DOOR TO THE TEMPLE OF WISDOM
•The understanding of the sixth sense comes only by meditation, through mind development from within.
•Once you’ve mastered the sixth sense, you will be able to receive warnings about impending dangers in time to avoid them and get notified of opportunities in time to embrace them.
•However, the sixth sense will never function if indecision, doubt, and fear remain in your mind. They are closely related: indecision crystallises into doubt, and the two blend to become the end result, fear.
•The 6 basic fears are; Poverty, Criticism, Ill Health, Loss of love, Old age, Death. However, there’s also a 7th ‘enemy’: susceptibility to negative influences.
•To shield yourself from this enemy, like all people who accumulate great riches, you have to:
•Put your willpower into constant use, until you build immunity against negative influences in your own mind,
•Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act from a positive standpoint, and
•Use your willpower to gain control over your thoughts and influence your subconscious mind.
•Fear is just a state of mind. It is subject to control and direction. Use this knowledge to your advantage.
•“MAN’S THOUGHT IMPULSES BEGIN IMMEDIATELY TO TRANSLATE THEMSELVES INTO THEIR PHYSICAL EQUIVALENT, WHETHER THOSE THOUGHTS ARE VOLUNTARY OR INVOLUNTARY.”
•CONCLUSION
•The idea exploits the power of thought to manifest strong desires and a definite purpose into reality.
•Faith is the glue that holds it all together.
•Every achievement starts with a strong desire, workshopped to reality through imagination, followed by an organised plan.
•Successful people reach decisions promptly and definitely, changing their mind slowly.
•Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure.
•To acquire great power & succeed, you need the help of a mastermind.
•Sexual drive, transmuted into creative and productive outlets, can be a powerful force for success.
•Fear is just a state of mind. It is subject to control and direction.
•FURTHER READING
•Make a list of rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.
•ACTION STEPS
•Think about your burning desire you seek to accomplish.
•Create a definite plan to carry out and set a deadline for it.
•Form a mastermind of people to hold you accountable.
•study and invest and make a chain of investments.
•Don’t limit your success.
•FACT OR MYTH: THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DEBT COLLECTION CALLS
•
•With 25+ years of collecting debt, I have heard it all when it comes to attempting to collect a debt. Many debtors are intimidated by the whole debt collection process, and believe that collectors are all powerful entities that are out to wreck your way of life. This is just a myth, Most legitimate collectors are just trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability and want to help you resolve the cloud hanging over your head, called debt. I’m not saying that there are not bad apples in the business, that give all of us a bad rap. The reality is that most of the time the collector is more scared calling a stranger asking for the debt to be paid then the debtor is receiving the call. Over the years I don’t know how many time I have lost collectors that just can’t do the job.
•Which now brings me to my point, what is myth and what is fact? Just like in sales, in collections when a debtor give a reason why he/she cannot pay, this is called an objection. It is the collectors job to overcome that objection and get the debtor to pay the debt. This interaction is where the myths take place most. So lets get to the facts of the matter, or the myths.
•Myth 1
•THE DEBT WILL JUST GO AWAY OVER TIME, IF YOU IGNORE IT LONG ENOUGH.
•Fact
•Honestly that might be true in some aspects, but the fact is that it will never just go away. Yes it has a statute of limitations that pertains to the amount of time that a person can legally be sued for the debt. Not to say that an agency will not sue after that allotted time, but all you have to do is prove that the statutes is up and it will be thrown out of court. Even after that time, which varies from state to state , it will still be on your credit report. Even after all those things expire the debt is still owed to the original creditor and will have to be paid before you can get services from them again, in most cases.
•Myth 2
•IF YOU SEND A CEASE AND DESIST LETTER TO A COLLECTION AGENCY THE DEBT GOES AWAY.
•Fact
•A Cease and Desist letter does tell the agency to cease all communication with you in regards to the collection of the debt. The debt doesn’t go away just because the collection agency can’t call you, send you a letter, or communicate with you in any way. Once a Cease and Desist letter is received the agency may contact you one more time to acknowledge the receipt of the notice and to notify you of the agencies intent to further collect the debt. The right for litigation is still there and is the most obvious choice if there is now other means of collecting the debt.
•Myth 3
•IF YOU PAY A DEBT COLLECTION IT WILL REMOVE IT FROM YOUR CREDIT OR RAISE YOUR CREDIT SCORE.
•Fact
•The fact is paying a collection is the best thing in that situation that you can do is you truly owe the debt. The collection is not required to be removed from your credit report until the time limit of the account is up. That time limit is 7 years from the original date of delinquency according to the FCRA. Although I would suggest that if you have the money to pay the account in full that you request that the item be removed after payment is made. Get it in writing that the account will be removed. Most likely that payment of the debt will not help your credit significantly because it shows that it was charged off to collections. Eventually it might raise your score but possibly not, but it is always better to show as a paid charge off than a delinquent one.
•Myth 4
•DEBT COLLECTORS HAVE TO STOP CALLING YOU IF YOU TELL THEM TO STOP.
•Fact
•This is presumed that if I tell someone to stop calling they have to stop calling. Truly the only way to stop a debt collector from calling you is to send it in writing which is known as a Cease and Desist letter. Now there are stipulations to that, if a debt collector calls you at work and you tell them not to call you there then they cannot call your job again. Another chink in the armor, is that if you say that it is not a good time they cannot call at that time again. Now if the collector is calling with a ATDS then you can request that the collector no longer calls your cellphone with a ATDS. It is actually illegal to call a cellphone without authorization to do so by the cellphone owner. That permission is usually obtained by the original creditor at the time of services.
•Myth 5
•MAKING A PARTIAL PAYMENT WILL GET THE DEBT COLLECTOR OFF YOUR BACK.
•Fact
•The full balance is due when turned to collections. Making a partial payment although will get the debt paid off, but does not stop collection efforts. Now setting up an arrangement to pay the accounts of through the debt collection agency will hold off the agency as long as you keep the arrangement. Once they have agreed to an arrangement and you have agreed to the same arrangement then they are bound by that arrangement unless you break the arrangement.
•Myth 5
•DEBT COLLECTORS CAN PUT YOU IN JAIL IF YOU DON’T PAY YOUR COLLECTION.
•Fact
•This is totally absurd. Debtor Jail was abolished in 1833 and then affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1983, they stated that incarcerating indigent debtors was was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. Any collector that implies or threatens jail is in violation of the law.
•Myth 6
•YOU CAN BYPASS THE DEBT COLLECTOR AND PAY THE ORIGINAL CREDITOR.
•Fact
•Although some people would rather pay the original creditor than a collection agency in most cases the creditor and the agency are under contract and the creditor cannot take payment for the debt. There are instances that the debt was purchased by the agency and the creditor no longer owns the debt. Even if the creditor allows you to pay them it doesn’t circumvent the agency which still gets the commission owed them and the payment is reported to them as collected.
•Myth 7
•DEBT COLLECTORS CANNOT GARNISH YOUR WAGES IF YOU DON’T PAY.
•Fact
•The fact is that you can be sued and a judgement can be obtained on a valid debt. Now depending on the state that you live in determines if the agency can garnish to collect that judgement. Most states allow garnishment for debt. A collector can not threaten garnishment when a judgement has not been obtained and you live in a non-garnishment state such as Texas. There are too many variables to guess at weather a collector could garnish on a debt, but some agencies do sue and obtain judgement with the sole purpose of garnishing to collect the debt.
•Tips to a Good Collector
•Have you ever worked in a collection agency and been the low man/woman on the board? Have you been frustrated by that result because you just don’t know how they have so much success and you don’t? Good collectors are good because they use the tips I am about to share with you. Every collector should have a plan to collect from the debtor before they call. Obviously, a lot of modern agencies use a dialer system to call in the modern collection world. You still must be able to multitask your efforts. As a collector when I had to work the dialer I still used all these methods I am about to share with you. I have 25+ experience using these techniques and they work.
•Gather Information, Know the debtor, where they work, how much they make, what area do they live in, size of house, what its worth, the cars they drive, credit score, credit trends. All information is good information. Learning the assets of a debtor is super important.
•Know your debtors personality and financial personality type, if you learn how to master this piece of information alone it will increase your closes. Every debtor has a personality that he/she calls their own and each debtor has a spending personality as well. Read my article at the link above where I describe them and give you tips using them.
•Listen to the Debtor, don’t just let the information go in one ear and out the other so you can say what you want to say. The debtor will give you clues on how to close if you listen. As a collection manager, I don’t know how many time I took a supervisor call and all the debtor want was to be heard before he/she paid.
•Make good notes of the conversation take notes as you talk so that you don’t forget important information, don’t be afraid to ask questions about information that you were unable to gather yourself.
•Buddy calls — This one is my favorite if you can’t close the deal have a buddy that you take turns closing each other’s deals, you would be surprised how many time just hearing a new voice make the debtor willing to pay. Make sure you buddy knows the stipulations that you are willing to make to get the account paid.
•This rule is one of the most important — always keep the conversation going in the direction of how this is going to be paid. I don’t say this lightly either, the debtor will get you off on another topic completely and sometimes that is fine depending on the personality type but always steer the debtor back to the issue at hand and that is paying the debt.
•Unless obtaining information, never ask an open-ended question. Use your pauses, when you are waiting for a response pause the first one to speak loses.
•Always, and let me say this again always, be respectful. You as a collector need to be firm but that is not saying that you must be disrespectful as well. Never loose your cool when taking to a debtor, if you do they have won.
•This tip is controversial in the collection world, set a minimum result you are willing to resolve the debt for. The reason that I say it is controversial is because some agencies make you take what ever you can get but I think my time is worth more that a $25 payment that I must maintain every month for years. On the other side of the spectrum you build a base with payments no mater what they are and eventually you get to a place where quota is made before you ever start. I just set my payments higher than most.
•Negotiate — always start with PIF or payment in full -> then Settlement -> then ½ an ½ -> if it must be lower than that ask them what realistically they can pay don’t offer a payment ever. You might offer $150.00 a month and they would have paid $300.00, you cut yourself short. Negotiate from there usually they will offer about half of what they can afford.
•Remember these trick and tip are a resource, a tool, a way to help you get to the end, when used properly you will succeed in the collection world. Hope this helps you be the best that you can be.
•CONSUMER PERSONALITY TYPES: HOW TO EFFECTIVELY COLLECT A DEBT FROM THEM
•In the modern collection world we develop strategies to be an effective collector. One of those strategies are based on effectively determining the personality type and collecting according to that type. These types are based on cultural tradition, race, and social status. Each one of these basis are how our consumers determine financial decisions in the collection industry. In this industry it is important to know how to spot the types and to cater to the needs of each type.
•There are 4 types of personalities of consumers that are easy to spot when you know what you are looking for. There are 6 financial spending types that when combined with the 4 personality types, you as a collector have a powerful collection tool. As any good collector will tell you, knowledge is the most powerful tool in collections.
•The Analytical
•The analytical consumer in collections and sales look for facts and figures. People with this personality type are known to research the agency before contact. They are not someone that is going to make a split-decision to pay the debt, most likely they will want to first verify with the client or their insurance that the debt is owed. They will focus on verification of the information and what their options are before making any decision or even discussing a decision.
•HOW-TO-HANDLE
•Try to present facts, your knowledge about the debt, like date of service, if the insurance was billed, and what it is the provider does. If the consumer needs more information refer the consumer to the insurance company. In non-medical debt give the consumer information about the services. If they need more information offer to get the consumer the information they need. Remember, this type of consumer will not just pay this debt, without first analyzing the information first.
•The Amiable
•Have you ever had a consumer that only wanted to talk to you when they called in? The amiable consumer is respectful, sociable, and trustworthy. They are more interested in building rapport and establishing trust with other professionals. The success of collecting a debt with this personality type depends on how you value their interest in relationship-building. Without this interest, this type of personality will give you the cold shoulder quickly, and most likely not pay the debt.
•HOW-TO-HANDLE
•Address their need of building rapport with you, as well as being honest, respectful, and sociable. This consumer needs to know that you are trustworthy before they will make a deal with you to handle their account. Ask questions that include a personal touch to them, this makes them feel important in the scenario. Allow them to share personal experiences to build that extra relationship with them. You will win them over and close the deal.
•Thexpressive
•Have you ever had a consumer that when presented with facts, they’d prefer to share their own perspective rather than ask for additional information. This type of personality uses most of their creative side to voice out their opinions on a particular topic. Similar to those with an amiable personality, they give importance to relationships. They value the welfare of the people who can be affected by their choices. The difference is that they will make fast decisions. Another difference their ability to make everything about them. Watch out they will control the conversation and you may not get the information out as quickly as it needs to be delivered.
•HOW-TO-HANDLE
•Tell your own stories relevant to the subject to help them understand an issue related to the collection of a debt. Focus on what you as a collector can do to help the consumer and what they will gain from the transaction. Connect with them by establishing a deeper level of relationship by tapping into their emotions. These are the consumers that sense of pride will tip the conversation in the right direction. Use positive pokes at their pride not negative pokes. For example, “I know that you are a responsible financial person that always pays their bills, and I am sure this was just a mistake that happens, let us help you fix this wrong so you can go back to your good standing.” Do you know anyone of this type that would point out to you that they make this mistake all the time and not feel the need to correct this mistake just out of pride?
•The Driver
•Have you ever had a consumer that tries to control the conversation and the direction that the conversation is going, by manipulation or other means? The driver finds pleasure in manipulating a pitch that identifies them as reasonable and authoritative. The driver wants immediate answers and expects the answers to be delivered in the fastest way possible. The driver personality is self-centered and opinionated.
•HOW-TO-HANDLE
•Get to the point, tell them exactly what the debt is about with only the basic required information. If objection arises give clean crisp responses and return to the matter at hand how to handle the debt. Always direct this type of consumer back to the matter at heart. Highlight what benefits they stand to get by taking care of it now. Do not introduce anything more that what is need, remember speed is key.
•Types of Financial Spending
•As mentioned above there are 6 types of financial spenders that you can spot and give you more information and cues to work with in collections. Knowing both the personality type and the financial type will greatly improve your ability to effectively collect the debt. The personality types help us learn the debtor so we can make it to the closing of the debt, which is the reason for calling, to get the debt paid. The financial type is used to determine the ways to get the debt paid.
•The Anxious Investor
•The anxious investor type is someone that is extremely generous, not necessarily wealthy but must have some sort of status anxiety. They are the ones that always offer to pickup the check when out dinning. They are also the ones that constantly check their accounts i.e. bank or investment. As a collector these are the people that look for the bargains, the people that will settle a debt because they do not want to look bad and can’t resist a bargain. They will spend money on things they don’t need just because they are on sale. The anxious investor will give clues in the conversation as you try and negotiate the debt. If you offer a settlement and they ask questions about that bargain you are talking to one of these type. You peaked their interest because of their spending disorder.
•The Hoarder
•The hoarder is a tough nut to crack. Just as the term sounds hoarders stash cash away and money is security. In order to get the debt paid by this type you have to make it urgent. There must be importance established for them to let go of their security stock pile. Maybe that importance is their credit, an offer to keep it from their credit or to remove it depending on the type of debt. Make sure you set a time limit cause they will want to plan this embargo well into the future rather then give up part of their stash now.
•The Social Value Spender
•The social value spender is a person that loves to shop to make someone else happy. They are the people that by stuff for people just because or always go over budget at Christmas or other holidays. This type of spender you have to make them feel good about paying the debt appeal to their sense of pride and how good it make them feel about themselves to finally have it taken care of.
•The Cash Splasher
•The cash splasher are individuals that use spending as a way to make other think more highly of them. The splasher’s are motivated by a desire to be admired. This type of consumer should be appealed by targeting self worth in a positive manner. Appeal to the consumers sense of pride and how admired he would be if he was rid of this debt the shadow of completely debt free. You can locate these people by their open better than thou attitude on the call.
•The Fitbit Financier
•The fitbit financier check their online bank balance and track their spending as often as someone training for an extreme sporting event measures their calorie intake, resting heart rate and sleep quality. They obsessing over credit card points, they probably like to use comparison sites and download apps that track their budget or remind them when to remortgage. These are the type pf people that will want to work out a budget of payments that fit within their budget in their eyes.
•The Ostrich
•This consumer is one that would rather bury their head in the sand than deal with the debt. They are the ones that ignore calls and if you get them on the phone they will hang up. At times though they call in about the debt to find out information. If you get them on the phone and want to resolve the account do not apply pressure ask them to tell you how they would like to take care of the matter.
•The Bottom Line
oNow that you know the 4 personality type and the 6 financial types you have a strong background knowledge of the consumer that can help you understand whats going on in their mind to give you the resourced needed to collect the debt. When you master the personality types and are able to determine them on the fly you will become a better collector for sure
•FACEBOOK’S BEGINNING OF THE END?
•The Scandal
•If you don’t know the scandal around Facebook by now, with the hearings, the questions, and articles posted all over the internet then you have been living under a rock. Let’s just give a refresher for the ones that don’t know…
•In 2015, there was a data breach by a company named Cambridge Analytica, in which introduced an app that obtained information from Facebook Users and all the users Facebook friends. This data breech was estimated at not above 87 million users. Which there were only 270,000 people had downloaded the notorious ‘thisisyourdigitallife’ app used by Cambridge Analytica to gather user data.
•Mark Zuckerberg, instead of announcing that the breech occurred, told the company to erase the data from their databases, and took them at their word that the deed was done. Which seems a little naive to me for the 2nd riches man in the world to believe. Considering that the company maliciously took advantage of a system in place to harvest the data in the first place. To view if your information was acquired by the app you can go to this link and the page will tell you if your information was shared.
•So how was this ‘data’ used to sway political campaigns. So, the data that was stolen or ‘obtained from Facebook’ was able to be put together comprehensive profiles of voters and then use them in Ad Campaigning, using campaigning tool that Facebook has made available for years. One of the most important pieces of information that campaigns get is the identity of influencers’. Algorithms see which individuals are influential among their social groups, and those people are targeted for advertising. Sway the influencer, the thought goes, and they’ll sway their friends. In 2018 the announcement was made that the Trump Campaigned had hired none other than Cambridge Analytica.
•Who is Cambridge Analytica, they are a voter-profiling company that boast to have “conducted behavioral change programs in over 60 countries”. So, for them to have stolen profile information from at least 87 million people that could be used to change the outcome of an election, is not so preposterous is it?
•The Trial — Congress Questionnaire
•The Congress questions to the CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg in the questioning of the breech and how the CEO will prevent this from happening in the future was comical at best. These are people that are trusted with the responsibility to protect our privacy and well being on the net. If they were a little bit more knowledgeable about what it is that Facebook does maybe they could have asked the right questions of the CEO. Here are just a few examples of questions that were asked of Mr. Zuckerberg:
•South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham ® asked, “Is Twitter the same as what you do?”
•Zuckerberg’s response was it overlaps some of what we do.
•This question was asked to inquire if Facebook was a monopoly in its industry.
•2. Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz (D) asked, “If I’m emailing within WhatsApp…does that inform your advertisers?”
•The Senator seems unaware that WhatsApp is a chat platform not an email platform. Zuckerberg held back the temptation to correct him and stated, “CONTENT ON WHATSAPP WOULD NOT LEAD TO RELATED ADS.”
•3. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch ® asked, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”
•Zuckerberg kept a straight face and said, “SENATOR WE RUN ADS.”
•4. Florida Senator Bill Nelson (D) asked, “What if I don’t want to receive [ads for chocolate]?”
•Zuckerberg responded with, USERS CAN TURN OFF THIRD-PARTY INFORMATION WITHIN FACEBOOK IF THEY DON’T WANT THAT INFO USED TO SELECT ADS FOR THEM. But, he added, “EVEN THOUGH SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE ADS, PEOPLE REALLY DON’T LIKE ADS THAT AREN’T RELEVANT.”
•There were so many more useless questions that were ask of the CEO, the questioning lasted for 5 hours. One of the Senators asked if internet would be brought to their community that doesn’t have internet because it is a rural area. Through it all the CEO kept his composer and answered the questions like a champ.
•Is This the Beginning of the End?
•Despite the scandal and the trial Facebook as of now seems to be handling the whole thing quite well with stocks skyrocketing even though a campaign has ignited called #DeleteFacebook. Was Facebooks’ cover up of the data breach a sign of ethical deception to its customers? I believe that it was not as innocent as the CEO makes it out to be, but will we ever know the truths of that event, not with the current knowledge of our government on the subject.
•Facebook was hit hard by these events with Facebook’s Stock still down from marches high of 185.61 to today’s price 166.98, that is an 18.63-point difference that needs to be made up. This is billions of dollars in market capitalization. Not to mention the $14 billion dollars in person loss to the CEO who is now worth $61 billion. Analyst Brent Thill claims that time spent on the platform is up by 15% on average in March 2018. It looks like Facebook isn’t going anywhere soon, for sure not going to be another myspace.com.
•IS IT LEGAL TO ISSUE A WARRANT IN A CIVIL CASE FOR DEBT?
•In 1833 federal law abolished debtor prison. In 1978 the Federal Debt Collection Practice Act was created by Congress to protect the Consumer and the Collector. There is much debate, about modern day judges issuing warrants on civil debt cases for failure to appear. On one hand you have the right of the creditor to collect moneys owed and the other the rights of the consumer to not face the creditor in court and let them obtain a judgement by default. Now in most cases the warrant is issued for failing to provide information to the courts after judgement has been rendered.
•The most common instance is the “Hearing of Assets” in which the judge orders the consumer to appear to prove assets and determine if the consumer can afford to pay the judgement or not. If the consumer refuses to appear and provide that information, then a warrant is submitted to bring the consumer to court for that refusal. Now is this a violation of our rights, that is the debate that we are focusing this article on? Do the consumers’ rights to not be arrested outweigh the rights of the courts to enforce a judgement? Or even more so, Do the consumers’ rights out weigh the rights of the services provider to seek compensation for the services provided.
•Now not in all cases, do the consumers fail to appear because they are dodging the “Hearing of Assets”, there are cases when the consumer doesn’t even know they have been summoned to appear in court. Like in the case where a woman had moved away to another state fell sick and when she returned to the state was arrested. If proper notice is not given to the consumer to appear should they be held liable and a warrant issued? Is the consumer held responsible because they knew that this matter was out there and should have followed up on the matter? Or, does this burden fall on the petitioner, making sure that the consumer is properly served?
•The ACLU stands on the matter is black and white, that a consumer should never go to jail for a civil debt or ignoring the civil courts authority, by the article posted, Debt Collection Companies Have Hijacked the Justice System by Jennifer Turner of the ACLU. This article seems a little one sided and missing a lot of the facts on the issue. In this article, the ACLU and Jennifer Turner expressed that people are being jailed for not being able to pay the debt. This is just not the facts, if the women would have appeared and proved that she couldn’t pay the debt the warrant would have never been issued.
•Chapter 8 : the human nature
•Now let’s take a look about the human nature
•I’ve read a great book by Mr. Robert Greene
•And he mentioned a very impotant information and laws to help humanity and human’s evolution in general, let’s see the analyse and the solutions and the subject in general.
•The Laws of Human Nature delves deep into what drives and motivations humans. These motivations can be conscious or unconscious. Importantly, we all can utilize these motivations to better ourselves and those around us. This book utilizes guidance and examples from some of the most influential people in history, from Martin Luther King Jr to Queen Elizabeth I. These insights are pulled together to provide guidance that applies to everyone.
•IRRATIONALITY IS PART OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
•“You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”
•Robert Greene
•It is often claimed that modern society is based on rationality and reason. However, the reality is that we make a large proportion of our decisions based on emotional reactions. These emotional reactions have no association with logic. Hence, as humans, we are highly prone to making irrational choices.
•This dilemma of seeking rationality and failing dates back to the fifth century BC. Robert Greene describes an Athenian statesman, Pericles, who is supposedly one of the first people to encourage rational behavior. During this time, there were rumors that the Spartans were set to attack Athens. Pericles encouraged the leaders of Athens to show restraint rather than making the first attack. If the leaders acted on their emotions, they could have started a full-blown war. Soon after, Pericles passed away from the plague. Without his rational insight, Athens based its decisions on emotions. Athens fought the Spartans, and it nearly destroyed Athens.
•We can learn a lot from Pericles. Pericles showed patience. Patience is fundamental to making decisions based on rationality rather than making quick decisions based on emotions. Pericles would also consider every option when making decisions. He would pull all the information together and make informed decisions. This sometimes meant disagreeing with the majority of people and those in power. However, it is more important that your decisions are based on logic and reason rather than being popular.
•In addition to this, even when humans take time to make a rational decision, there are still several biases that humans are prone to when deciding:
•Confirmation bias – Seeking out information that supports ideas that you already hold
•Conviction bias – Believing that our ideas are more likely to be true because we have stronger emotions regarding the topic
•Appearance bias – People who look appealing, whether that be based on looks or wealth, are automatically a good person
•Group bias – Automatically believing things that our in-group believes
•Robert does not recommend being emotionless. Instead, try to balance your thoughts with your emotions and give yourself time to make informed decisions that are mainly based on evidence.
•ACCEPT PEOPLE AS THEY ARE
•“Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection. With their constant presence, we have less and less mental space to step back and think.”
•Robert Greene
•As humans, we have a fetish for changing other people. We are the biggest reason for trauma in other humans. We are always judging people and wishing they’ll become something that they are not. However, the sooner we accept that we cannot change other people, the happier we will be. Robert provides the example of parents who threaten their child with punishment so their child will comply. Punishment and threats do not change the troublemaking child. Instead, they will teach the child how to better avoid being caught.
•If we accept that we are all different, we will be far less frustrated. Try to understand and accept people rather than trying to change them. Attempt to understand their motives and what makes them who they are. Genuinely listen to them when you ask them about their motives, gathering as much information as possible. People love talking about themselves, so this shouldn’t be difficult. After acquiring this information, you should stop to analyze this information. Adopting these approaches will help you better understand who this person is and how you can help them prosper.
•Additionally, we should seek to use our empathy to obtain a greater recognition of others’ characters. Utilizing our empathy will help us understand when people are wearing a mask in life. This is an important skill, as you can then aim to help this individual genuinely express themselves. We can better understand a person’s true character by observing how this person reacts to adversity.
•STRIVE TO BE A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF
•Robert explains that we all go through life wearing a mask. We are always seeking to show the best of ourselves to the world, even if what we are presenting isn’t accurate. This approach is encouraged from a young age, as we do what our parents say so we can gain certain benefits. This is how society works. Our society promotes teamwork and kindness. Therefore, presenting strong feelings about an individual or being selfish is frowned upon. Thus, these behaviors are not engaged with even if we dislike another individual or just want what is best for ourselves.
•Social media has made it even easier to craft your persona. Robert says that we should wear masks displaying our best persona. If we all displayed our true selves, the world would be a worse place. On top of this, putting on a persona helps protect ourselves from our insecurities. It helps us feel like we already have what we want, and believing this means you will soon become that person.
•WE ARE SHORT-SIGHTED
•Humans tend to react to obvious problems rather than those that have less impact on their daily lives. For example, more money and attention is being spent on fighting terrorism than climate change. This tendency has evolutionary origins. Historically, humans had to focus on immediate threats rather than those that had the potential for greater impact.
•Robert Greene recommends that we adopt a farsighted perceptive rather than our current short-sighted nature. We should take a step back and look at the potential options, as well as what the consequences of neglecting a less obvious problem might be. One way to understand this is that our current problems are often the result of previous short-sightedness. If we can understand this point, then we can more effectively prioritize the most critical problems.
•ARROGANCE AFTER SUCCESS HOLDS US BACK
•We tend to be self-absorbed. Robert describes humans as being naturally narcissistic. People span from healthy levels of narcissism to deep narcissism. Those who are profoundly narcissistic view others as extensions of themselves. Robert attributes this type of narcissism to parents being too involved with a child or not enough attention. The former prevents the child from developing an individual identity while the latter leads to low self-esteem. Interestingly, deep narcissists lack the self-love that is usually associated with narcissism. Hence, Robert Greene suggests that creating a sense of self you can love is a useful tool for creating healthier narcissism levels.
•Robert Greene describes how success often goes to people’s heads. This effect is called the Law of Grandiosity. A great example of the Law of Grandiosity is the career of Michael Eisner. Eisner became Disney’s CEO in the 1980s. During this time, he released fourteen hit movies. These movies ended up reviving the struggling Disney brand. The way Eisner saw it, everything he touched turned to gold. However, when he turned his attention toward theme parks instead and building Euro Disney in France, this endeavor was less successful. Instead of accepting any blame, Eisner looked to blame other people. This is because his ego had grown too large. In 1994, he shocked the industry by firing his underling Jeffrey Katzenberg. Jeffrey had been mostly responsible for many recent hits, including The Lion King. In September of 2005, board members voted out Eisner after Disney’s stock prices began to dwindle.
•Often people experience success and then forget how they attained that success. Success requires support from others and mentors. Plus, a degree of luck. Reminding ourselves of these features helps us remain realistic.
•WE SHOULD NOT LET OUR GENDERS DEFINE WHAT WE CAN AND CAN’T DO
•We all have a masculine and feminine side. Robert Greene suggests that we should learn to indulge both sides so we can become strong figures. Examples of influential celebrities such as David Bowie adopted a more feminine side to utilize all of his strengths. A similar approach was taken by Caterina Sforza, an example that Robert Greene gives in this book. Caterina was born into a powerful Italian dynasty back in 1463. She enjoyed combat training, as well as fashion and the arts. Her ability to adopt both traditionally masculine and feminine hobbies meant she was considered a strong figure.
•Robert Greene explains in The Laws of Human Nature that our views of masculinity and femininity are a product of our genes and environment. However, if we can learn to embrace both of these views, we can improve our relationships. Specifically, Robert explains how a man embracing his feminine side will be better able to empathize with women.
•Robert claims that we should aim to acquire the strengths of both men and women. Men tend to categorize things, while women search for patterns and connections. A combination of these two approaches is ideal for problem-solving.
•DON’T CONFORM TO A GROUP MENTALITY IF IT’S DRAGGING YOU DOWN
•Humans tend to identify themselves in relation to others. We spend a large proportion of our time worrying about what others think and whether we fit into certain groups. A group mentality can be highly beneficial, as teamwork helps keep everyone focused on a common goal.
•Despite the strengths associated with working as a group, there are also multiple risks associated with groups. Firstly, when we are among others, we behave differently. Our principles are lost in the group; these principles start to mimic those in the group. Hence, we lose what makes us unique, including our ability to think independently. Additionally, Robert explains that being part of a group can lead to us making more irrational decisions than we usually would. The primary reason for this is that we often do things just because others are, instead of thinking logically about decisions.
•Subsequently, we must aim to avoid being dragged down by the group. Individuals with a weak character will struggle more with getting out of the grip of the group. Here are the main ways Robert Greene suggests that we can avoid being dragged down by the group:
oRetain independence and rationality regardless of what others tell you. 2- Develop self-awareness.
oEnsure you are concentrated in the present moment every time you’re in a group.
•USE YOUR ‘WEAKNESSES’ IN A POSITIVE WAY
•One trait that is often seen as a weakness is aggression. Robert Greene claims that we should channel our aggression in a positive way. To do this, he provides the example of John D. Rockefeller from the 19th century. Rockefeller was in business with a man named Maurice Clark, but Maurice found Rockefeller irritating. Rockefeller would always pressure Maurice to expand the business. Maurice found this so irritating that he sold his shares of the business at auction. Rockefeller bought these shares and turned their small business into the Standard Oil Company. This would become of the most powerful companies ever created. The only way Rockefeller could turn this small business into a business that is still impactful today is through being a sophisticated aggressor.
•Our aggression is what made us the most dominant species on the planet. Hence, we should not repress this aggression. Repression leads to passive aggression. Instead, we should accept our aggression, and where it stems from, and use it for our benefit. For example, we can use this aggressive energy to be tenacious and fearless.
•THE 18 LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE
•The fundamental backbone of this book is the 18 laws that Robert Greene has identified. We have already considered the essential laws above, but now we will provide you with a concise outline of all 18 laws.
•IRRATIONALITY
•Irrationality is one of the most significant flaws in humans. Irrationality is often driven by our emotions and makes us see and look for evidence that fits our narrative. This disconnect from the world’s reality around us can lead to us making a variety of bad decisions. Robert provided the example of Pericles, spoken of earlier. As a rational man, Athens prospered.
•OVERCOMING IRRATIONALITY
•We must recognize our biases and the triggers that lead to us making decisions based on emotions. Additionally, we must take a step back and give ourselves time to calm down before making important decisions. Energy, combined with rational thought, is the ideal balance.
•NARCISSISM
•We are all focused on ourselves, and we crave attention and approval from others. Robert gives the example of Stalin. Stalin was charming at first, but he was ruthless to anybody who challenged him. He was riddled with insecurities. Insecurities are what underpin narcissism.
•OVERCOMING NARCISSISM
•Cultivate empathy for other people and avoid making snap judgments without putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Learn as much as you can about others. Robert gives the example of Ernest Shackleton as a healthy narcissist. When his team was trapped for months in Antarctica in late 1915, Shackleton figured out that their attitude would be the difference between life and death. He paid attention to individuals as well as the group as a whole. This approach developed confidence within the group, and they all survived.
•ROLE-PLAYING
•People are always portraying emotions that are different than they feel. We must understand how to identify people’s genuine emotions. Plus, we learn how to present the best version of ourselves.
•HOW TO ROLE-PLAY AND UNDERSTAND OTHERS’ ROLE-PLAYING
•Try and be more like Milton Erickson. Milton was a pioneer in hypnotherapy. After months of physical paralysis due to polio, Milton learned how to read physical cues better. Physical cues are the best indicators of people’s genuine feelings. Therefore, focus more on hand gestures, voice pitches, and minor facial expressions. Plus, learn how to role-play yourself by practicing displaying the correct emotions in different circumstances.
•CHARACTER
•People will have specific reputations or surface images. However, these reputations are never a true reflection of this person’s character. Robert uses the example of businessman Howard Hughes. Howard appeared highly successful and happy, but he actually struggled from deep anxiety and control issues. He then became addicted to pain medication.
•COVETOUSNESS
•We have to embrace our circumstances and identify clear visions for the future. It is easy for humans to think that the grass is always greener on the other side. Only a connection with your reality will bring you calmness and focus. Robert provides the example of Coco Chanel. This French fashion designer became successful because she understood that people desire what they don’t have. Therefore, she developed a degree of mystery surrounding her work and products.
•SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS
•We are animals, which means we are most impressed by what we see and feel. We often forget to think about the consequences of our actions or the bigger picture. However, a lack of perspective can lead to negative repercussions. For example, individuals investing in housing lost millions of dollars during the housing bubble when it finally burst. This applies to the example Robert provides, which is the South Sea Company. The company did not have long-term viability, but this did not stop people from investing in shares and the South Sea Bubble finally bursting.
•HOW TO OVERCOME SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS
•Try not to be overwhelmed by information about the future. Consider essential information so you can make decisions that will reap long-term benefits. If you are truly overwhelmed by the amount of information regarding the future, you could always delegate work.
•DEFENSIVENESS
•We are all defensive about certain things. This approach limits our creative nature. Hence, we should always be open to new ideas and thoughts. If we are given a piece of constructive criticism, we should use it as an opportunity to think differently. Robert provides the example of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States. He did not gain power by overpowering people; instead, he gained it by letting others do the talking and be the stars of the show.
•SELF-SABOTAGE
•Humans have a habit of making their biggest fears a reality through self-sabotage. If we are fearful about the future, we will see the negative in everything. This will unconsciously impact on our decisions and lead to self-sabotage. Robert provides the example of Anton Chekhov. Anton was a Russian playwright who had a particularly tough childhood. Despite this, he avoided self-sabotage and instead decided to always turn a negative into a positive.
•HOW TO PREVENT SELF-SABOTAGE
•Adopting a hostile attitude will only lead to you seeing everything as a threat. You need to try and develop an expansive attitude where you see yourself as an explorer. View adversity as a challenge and acknowledge that you have the skills and capabilities to determine your response.
•REPRESSION
•We all repress our insecurities, aggression, and selfish impulses. You can learn to control this dark side of yourself and prevent it from leaking out. Identify and accept your tendency to project emotions or bad qualities onto people that you know. Express these dark thoughts through a harmless avenue e.g., art. Robert provides the example of Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States. Although he always had a positive image in public, he repressed his angry tendencies and his real personality was revealed after the Watergate scandal.
•ENVY
•Humans naturally compare themselves to others. However, envy is not socially acceptable. We must notice our envy before it becomes dangerous. Envy is natural, and this means we cannot completely eradicate it. However, we can turn it into something more positive. Turn envy into emulation: use your envy to motivate yourself to improve. Robert provides the example of Mary Shelley. Mary was the author of Frankenstein; however, she was betrayed by her envious friend.
•GRANDIOSITY
•Extreme grandiosity can mean we lose our concept of reality. You can identify grandiosity in yourself or others by observing behaviors like overstated certainty of success, excessive touchiness when criticized, and disdain for authority. We can turn our grandiosity into practical grandiosity. Practical grandiosity involves channeling our energy into problem-solving and improving relationships. As aforementioned, Robert uses the example of Michael Eisner when talking about grandiosity. The previous CEO of Walt Disney attributed all Disney’s previous success to himself, and this eventually led to him isolating himself and ultimately failing.
•GENDER RIGIDITY
•There are strengths of feminine and masculine characteristics for different circumstances. Therefore, we should try and make use of both our masculine and feminine sides. Again, the example Robert provides for gender rigidity has already been spoken about. Caterina Sforza was a noblewoman who was admired for utilizing both her feminine and masculine qualities.
•AIMLESSNESS
•We can be pulled in many directions by our emotions and the opinions of others. This can lead to a lack of direction in our lives. Some people love change, while others are frightened by chaos. However, we should all develop a sense of purpose and use it to flourish throughout our lives, irrespective of change. Martin Luther King Jr. is a fine example of somebody who used very direct action to help him overcome failures. He utilized nonviolence and civil disobedience to advance civil rights.
•CONFORMITY
•We all want to fit in. However, this can lead to us behaving in ways we do not necessarily agree with. To overcome this, we have to develop a sense of self-awareness. Robert describes how Gao Yuan’s book, Born Red, showcases how people behave emotionally. Therefore, people generally lack the nuanced thinking and analysis required to excel.
•FICKLENESS
•We all look to follow powerful people. However, this means that we tend to turn our backs on people as soon as they become weak. Therefore, to lead effectively, we have to give off a feeling of power, legitimacy, and fairness. Doing this will help people to trust you more. Robert provides the example of Elizabeth I as somebody who was not fickle. She had to constantly prove herself as leader of the country, so she did not rely on her royal blood to do so. Instead, she led by example.
•AGGRESSION
•We all have stressors and frustrations in our daily lives. Occasionally these can become too much, and we display aggressive behaviors. We have to learn the signs that indicate aggressive individuals. There are a few ways to overcome aggression. Firstly, you can mirror their behavior. Alternatively, if the individual is consistently aggressive towards you, it is sometimes better to separate yourself from this person. This might involve quitting your job if the aggressive person is your boss. Robert provides the example of John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller became one of the most wealthy people in US history based on his aggressive strategies to gain power and control. However, he used his aggression in a productive rather than destructive way.
•GENERATIONAL BLINDNESS
•“Right now, you are living off the fruits of millions of people in the past
who have made your life incomparably easier through their struggles
and inventions. You have benefited from an education that embodies
the wisdom of thousands of years of experience. It is so easy to take
this all for granted, to imagine that it all just came about naturally and
that you are entitled to have all of these powers. That is the view of
spoiled children, and you must see any signs of such an attitude within
you as shameful. This world needs constant improvement and renewal.
You are here not merely to gratify your impulses and consume what
others have made but to make and contribute as well, to serve a higher
purpose.”
•Robert Greene
•Generations always want to separate themselves from the generation before them. Each new generation wants to change the world. Try and be more aware of the common features that you share with other generations. Plus, try and think about things from other generations’ perspectives. Robert provides the example of King Louis XVI of France. He was out of tune with his generation and this ultimately led to him falling victim to the French Revolution.
•DENYING MORTALITY
•We try to avoid thinking about death. However, we should be thinking about death. Awareness of our mortality gives our life goals a greater purpose. Robert provides the example of Mary Flannery O’Connor. Mary was an American Novelist who was diagnosed with lupus at the age of 27. This diagnosis gave her a sense of urgency that helped her overcome squabbles she had in life and deepen her understanding of the world.
•WHAT IS THE EGO, AND WHY IS IT SO INVOLVED IN MY LIFE?
•THE CONCEPT OF « EGO » IS AMONG THE MOST CONFUSING IN PSYCHOLOGY.
•The term EGO is as confusing as any in psychology. Not only is the word itself used to refer to several distinct psychological constructs and processes, but the psychological landscape is littered with concepts that include “ego” in one way or another—egotism, ego-defense, egocentrism, superego, ego-involved, and so on. But what does ego actually mean? What are we talking about when we refer to the ego? And what is the difference among all of the terms in which the term EGO is embedded?
•Put simply, the English word « ego » is the Latin word for “I.” Literally translated, ego means “I.” (If you were writing “I love you” in Latin, you’d write EGO AMO TE.)
•Use of “ego” crept into psychology mostly through the work of Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s theory, the ego is the part of the personality that arbitrates between the animalistic desires of the “id” and the moral and social standards of the “superego.” But, interestingly, the word, “ego” does not appear anywhere in Freud’s extensive writings. He never used it. Rather, ego was a translation of what Freud, writing in German, called « das Ich »—literally “the I. » In essence, Freud was referring to that conscious, decision-making part of you that you regard as “I,” as when you say “I dislike my mother” or « I decided to change jobs » or “I dreamt that my house was on fire last night.” That is your I, your ego.
•So, most terms that include “ego” involve processes or reactions in which I, ME, or MINE figure prominently. Consider EGOISM, the motive to act in one’s self-interest. Someone who is behaving egoistically is simply pursuing his or her own goals, as we all do. A motive is egoistic when it’s focused on what “I” want.
•Or, consider egocentrism. Egocentrism has also been used in a number of ways over the years, but it comes down to perceiving the world and interpreting events from your personal vantage point. We are all inherently egocentric in that we can never break free from either our physical vantage point (I can perceive the world only from my physical location in space) or our personal, psychological perspective that is influenced by our experiences, goals, beliefs, identities, preferences, and biases. People differ in the degree to which they can step outside their own perspective to see things from others’ viewpoints, but we’re all locked into our own egocentric viewpoint because there’s no way for us to process information except from our personal frame of reference.
•Egotism is another common ego-word in psychology. Egotism involves evaluating oneself more favorably than is objectively warranted. Just as we are all egoistic and egocentric, we also tend to be egotistical as well. Thousands of studies show that people are biased to view themselves too positively.
•Perhaps the broadest ego-based term, egoic, is also the least common, although it is coming into vogue. Egoic simply means “pertaining to ego” or “pertaining to I.” Egoic thoughts, motives, emotions, and behaviors are reactions in which I, me, and mine take center stage. An egoic reaction is one in which I am centrally involved. Much of the time, people’s thoughts, motives, emotions, and behaviors are infused with themselves, with their I. They are thinking consciously about what they want, what they are doing, who they are, what other people think about them, and how things are going for them. In these situations, people are being egoic; they are highly self-absorbed, and their reactions are all about them.
•At other times, people’s thoughts, motives, emotions, and behaviors don’t involve much ego, not much I. When you’re engrossed in a good book, working on an engaging task, having a comfortable conversation, or are in a flow experience, your “I” has receded into the background. You are responding automatically without much conscious self-related thought, and you are not currently concerned about who you are, what you want, or the implications of events for your personal interests and well-being. In these kinds of situations, your responses are not dominated by I or about thoughts of me or mine. We might say that you are being low in egoicism or “hypo-egoic.”
•Note that egoic has nothing to do with being egotistical. Egotistical people may certainly be egoic, but highly self-critical people may be egoic as well. People who view themselves very negatively, as highly depressedpeople often do, are often highly focused on themselves and, thus, quite egoic.
•These terms—egoism, egocentrism, egotism, and egoicism (and their adjectival forms: egoistic, egocentric, egotistical, and egoic)—are easy to confuse. But they refer to different, though sometimes related, ways in which our ego (our focus on « I ») can influence our thoughts, motives, emotions, and behaviors.
•3 EGO TYPES OF EVERY PERSONALITY TYPE AND HOW TO USE THEM IN COLLECTIONS
•Knowing the personality type of the consumer you are on the phone with is half the battle in collections. It is so important that it could increase your odds of collecting the debt greatly. In debt collections I am a firm believer that knowledge is advantage. The more that you know about the consumer the more advantage you have in bargaining for the debt to be resolved. As a recap from my previous article there are 4 types of personalities that a consumer has, as well as 6 financial types. That being said, there is an easier way to narrow the personality types down to three types of egos that every consumer has and how to handle them so that they get to a certain ego state to have the best results.
•The three ego states are defined in a psychology method called Transactional Analysis which was founded by a psychologist named Eric Berne in the 1950’s for the purpose of communicating with the different personality types. In his theory there are 3 states in any given personality. Those states are child, adult, and parent. The use of these points in collections is simple. First let me explain how they work…
•The Child State in a persons personality CONSISTS OF PARTS OF OURSELVES WHICH HARK BACK TO OUR CHILDHOOD. IT IS CHILDLIKE BUT NOT CHILDISH. IN THIS STATE “RESIDE INTUITION, CREATIVE AND SPONTANEOUS DRIVE AND ENJOYMENT”.
•The Adult State IS WHERE WE HOPE TO BE AS ADULTS. IT IS OUR ADULT SELVES, DEALING WITH THE VICISSITUDES OF EVERYDAY LIFE. IT ALSO HAS THE FUNCTION OF REGULATING THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PARENT AND CHILD, AND MEDIATING BETWEEN THEM.
•The Parent State REFLECTS THE ABSORPTION OVER THE YEARS OF THE INFLUENCES OF OUR ACTUAL PARENTS AND OF PARENT AND AUTHORITY FIGURES SUCH AS TEACHERS, BOSSES AND SO ON. IT HAS TWO FUNCTIONS. ONE IS TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO BE BETTER ACTUAL PARENTS OF THEIR CHILDREN. THE OTHER IS TO ENABLE MANY RESPONSES TO LIFE TO BE MADE AUTOMATICALLY — “THAT’S THE WAY IT’S DONE” — THEREBY FREEING THE ADULT FROM MAKING INNUMERABLE TRIVIAL DECISIONS.
•Understanding the state of their personality can greatly increase your ability to handle the communication with the consumer. As a collector you want to avoid being in the Parent Ego state, you must learn to ask information gathering questions, who, what, how, etc., and not be judgmental. These are areas where a conversation could begin to slip and the customer could become defensive. By being aware of the customers Ego State you can get the conversation back on track and deal with resolving the account.
•By using the Adult Ego state during collection calls, the collector can refer back to the signed credit and financial agreements and reason with the customer with what was set up and the importance of following through on their obligations. They can use negotiation and mediation techniques that will allow them to work out some sort of arrangement with the customer. Being professional and objective in a collection call will leave your staff feeling comfortable with the intimidating task of calling people for money. The collections will no longer go on the back burner, they will become a daily priority. This is necessary for the success of any business.
•If the consumer is in the Child Ego state you faced with a challenging conversation think of them as being like a child throwing a tantrum, can you reason with a child while they are throwing a tantrum? In this scenario, a consumer becomes irate the best results would be to terminate the conversation with the consumer and pass the account to a buddy that can get the conversation back on a Adult Ego standing. I have found that passing the call over to someone else in this fashion elevates the outcome of the consumer hanging up mad. Having the fresh voice that is sympathetic to the consumers’ cause will elevate that Child Ego and possibly get the consumer back on track to paying the account.
•The Adult Ego state is where we want to the consumer to be as well as ourselves in any business transaction. When the consumer has been in the Child Ego state and is passed to another collector to resolve the issue most generally they have calmed themselves down and are ready to reason with someone. This is when they are in the Adult Ego state and can be reasoned with. Being in the Adult Ego state as a collector is just as important as a collector as well. If we as collectors slip into either other state we normally will force the consumer into the child state. By the collector being in the Adult Ego state and asking informational questions of the consumer, without judgement, you are gathering the information need to solve the problem.
•The Parent Ego State is where I see most collection calls fail. The collector tries to be judgmental and controlling. They usually get the customer into the Child Ego State. The customer then lies and is generally on the defense. You get a lot of broken payment arrangements because the customer said whatever he had to, to get the collector off of the telephone. If the consumer is in the Parent Ego state remember to stay in the Adult Ego state and ask informational question to get them focusing on answering the questions rather that controlling the conversation. By answering the questions and telling you the problems they shift back into the business mode and solutions can be reasoned.
•Always validate the debt make sure they admit that they owe the amount. Find out why the account has not been paid up til now, without judgement. This will further help you with resolving the account by giving a foundation of the financial situation available to come to a resolution. Remember it is just as important for you as the collector to remain in the Adult Ego state as it is for the consumer. Always drive the state back to the Adult state with informational questions and validation questions. If you use this technique you will succeed as a collector.
•NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
•KNOW SOMEONE WHO EXPECTS CONSTANT ADMIRATION, WHO THINKS THEY’RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, BUT FLIES OFF THE HANDLE AT THE SLIGHTEST CRITICISM? THESE TIPS CAN HELP YOU RECOGNIZE AND COPE WITH A NARCISSIST.
•Fun fact : we’re all narcisstic, but the difference is in the percentage.
•WHAT IS NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER (NPD)?
•The word narcissism gets tossed around a lot in our selfie-obsessed, celebrity-driven culture, often to describe someone who seems excessively vain or full of themselves. But in psychological terms, narcissism doesn’t mean self-love—at least not of a genuine sort. It’s more accurate to say that people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are in love with an idealized, grandiose image of themselves. And they’re in love with this inflated self-image precisely because it allows them to avoid deep feelings of insecurity. But propping up their delusions of grandeur takes a lot of work—and that’s where the dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors come in.
•Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist’s life: from work and friendships to family and love relationships.
•People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others. What’s more, they are extremely sensitive and react badly to even the slightest criticisms, disagreements, or perceived slights, which they view as personal attacks. For the people in the narcissist’s life, it’s often easier just to go along with their demands to avoid the coldness and rages. However, by understanding more about narcissistic personality disorder, you can spot the narcissists in your life, protect yourself from their power plays, and establish healthier boundaries.
•SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
•GRANDIOSE SENSE OF SELF-IMPORTANCE
•Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.
•Narcissists also believe that they’re better than everyone else and expect recognition as such—even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. They will often exaggerate or outright lie about their achievements and talents. And when they talk about work or relationships, all you’ll hear is how much they contribute, how great they are, and how lucky the people in their lives are to have them. They are the undisputed star and everyone else is at best a bit player.
•LIVES IN A FANTASY WORLD THAT SUPPORTS THEIR DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
•Since reality doesn’t support their grandiose view of themselves, narcissists live in a fantasy world propped up by distortion, self-deception, and magical thinking. They spin self-glorifying fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, attractiveness, and ideal love that make them feel special and in control. These fantasies protect them from feelings of inner emptiness and shame, so facts and opinions that contradict them are ignored or rationalized away. Anything that threatens to burst the fantasy bubble is met with extreme defensiveness and even rage, so those around the narcissist learn to tread carefully around their denial of reality.
•NEEDS CONSTANT PRAISE AND ADMIRATION
•A narcissist’s sense of superiority is like a balloon that gradually loses air without a steady stream of applause and recognition to keep it inflated. The occasional compliment is not enough. Narcissists need constant food for their ego, so they surround themselves with people who are willing to cater to their obsessive craving for affirmation. These relationships are very one-sided. It’s all about what the admirer can do for the narcissist, never the other way around. And if there is ever an interruption or diminishment in the admirer’s attention and praise, the narcissist treats it as a betrayal.
•SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
•Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.
•EXPLOITS OTHERS WITHOUT GUILT OR SHAME
•Narcissists never develop the ability to identify with the feelings of others—to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In other words, they lack empathy. In many ways, they view the people in their lives as objects—there to serve their needs. As a consequence, they don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Sometimes this interpersonal exploitation is malicious, but often it is simply oblivious. Narcissists simply don’t think about how their behavior affects others. And if you point it out, they still won’t truly get it. The only thing they understand is their own needs.
•FREQUENTLY DEMEANS, INTIMIDATES, BULLIES, OR BELITTLES OTHERS
•Narcissists feel threatened whenever they encounter someone who appears to have something they lack—especially those who are confident and popular. They’re also threatened by people who don’t kowtow to them or who challenge them in any way. Their defense mechanism is contempt. The only way to neutralize the threat and prop up their own sagging ego is to put those people down. They may do it in a patronizing or dismissive way as if to demonstrate how little the other person means to them. Or they may go on the attack with insults, name-calling, bullying, and threats to force the other person back into line.
•DON’T FALL FOR THE FANTASY
•Narcissists can be very magnetic and charming. They are very good at creating a fantastical, flattering self-image that draw us in. We’re attracted to their apparent confidence and lofty dreams—and the shakier our own self-esteem, the more seductive the allure. It’s easy to get caught up in their web, thinking that they will fulfill our longing to feel more important, more alive. But it’s just a fantasy, and a costly one at that.
•Your needs won’t be fulfilled (or even recognized). It’s important to remember that narcissists aren’t looking for partners; they’re looking for obedient admirers. Your sole value to the narcissist is as someone who can tell them how great they are to prop up their insatiable ego. Your desires and feelings don’t count.
•Look at the way the narcissist treats others. If the narcissist lies, manipulates, hurts, and disrespects others, he or she will eventually treat you the same way. Don’t fall for the fantasy that you’re different and will be spared.
•Take off the rose-colored glasses. It’s important to see the narcissist in your life for who they really are, not who you want them to be. Stop making excuses for bad behavior or minimizing the hurt it’s causing you. Denial will not make it go away. The reality is that narcissists are very resistant to change, so the true question you must ask yourself is whether you can live like this indefinitely.
•Focus on your own dreams. Instead of losing yourself in the narcissist’s delusions, focus on the things you want for yourself. What do you want to change in your life? What gifts would you like to develop? What fantasies do you need to give up in order to create a more fulfilling reality?
•SET HEALTHY BOUNDARIES
•Healthy relationships are based on mutual respect and caring. But narcissists aren’t capable of true reciprocity in their relationships. It isn’t just that they’re not willing; they truly aren’t able. They don’t see you. They don’t hear you. They don’t recognize you as someone who exists outside of their own needs. Because of this, narcissists regularly violate the boundaries of others. What’s more, they do so with an absolute sense of entitlement.
•Narcissists think nothing of going through or borrowing your possessions without asking, snooping through your mail and personal correspondence, eavesdropping on conversations, barging in without an invitation, stealing your ideas, and giving you unwanted opinions and advice. They may even tell you what to think and feel. It’s important to recognize these violations for what they are, so you can begin to create healthier boundaries where your needs are respected.
•Make a plan. If you have a long-standing pattern of letting others violate your boundaries, it’s not easy to take back control. Set yourself up for success by carefully considering your goals and the potential obstacles. What are the most important changes you hope to achieve? Is there anything you’ve tried in the past with the narcissist that worked? Anything that hasn’t? What is the balance of power between you and how will that impact your plan? How will you enforce your new boundaries? Answering these questions will help you evaluate your options and develop a realistic plan.
•Consider a gentle approach. If preserving your relationship with the narcissist is important to you, you will have to tread softly. By pointing out their hurtful or dysfunctional behavior, you are damaging their self-image of perfection. Try to deliver your message calmly, respectfully, and as gently as possible. Focus on how their behavior makes you feel, rather than on their motivations and intentions. If they respond with anger and defensiveness, try to remain calm. Walk away if need be and revisit the conversation later.
•Don’t set a boundary unless you’re willing to keep it. You can count on the narcissist to rebel against new boundaries and test your limits, so be prepared. Follow up with any consequences specified. If you back down, you’re sending the message that you don’t need to be taken seriously.
•Be prepared for other changes in the relationship. The narcissist will feel threatened and upset by your attempts to take control of your life. They are used to calling the shots. To compensate, they may step up their demands in other aspects of the relationship, distance themselves to punish you, or attempt to manipulate or charm you into giving up the new boundaries. It’s up to you to stand firm.
•DON’T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY
•To protect themselves from feelings of inferiority and shame, narcissists must always deny their shortcomings, cruelties, and mistakes. Often, they will do so by projecting their own faults on to others. It’s very upsetting to get blamed for something that’s not your fault or be characterized with negative traits you don’t possess. But as difficult as it may be, try not to take it personally. It really isn’t about you.
•Don’t buy into the narcissist’s version of who you are. Narcissists don’t live in reality, and that includes their views of other people. Don’t let their shame and blame game undermine your self-esteem. Refuse to accept undeserved responsibility, blame, or criticism. That negativity is the narcissist’s to keep.
•Don’t argue with a narcissist. When attacked, the natural instinct is to defend yourself and prove the narcissist wrong. But no matter how rational you are or how sound your argument, they are unlikely to hear you. And arguing the point may escalate the situation in a very unpleasant way. Don’t waste your breath. Simply tell the narcissist you disagree with their assessment, then move on.
•Know yourself. The best defense against the insults and projections of the narcissist is a strong sense of self. When you know your own strengths and weaknesses, it’s easier to reject any unfair criticisms leveled against you.
•Let go of the need for approval. It’s important to detach from the narcissist’s opinion and any desire to please or appease them at the expense of yourself. You need to be okay with knowing the truth about yourself, even if the narcissist sees the situation differently.
•LOOK FOR SUPPORT AND PURPOSE ELSEWHERE
•If you’re going to stay in a relationship with a narcissist, be honest with yourself about what you can—and can’t—expect. A narcissist isn’t going to change into someone who truly values you, so you’ll need to look elsewhere for emotional support and personal fulfillment.
•Learn what healthy relationships look and feel like. If you come from a narcissistic family, you may not have a very good sense of what a healthy give-and-take relationship is. The narcissistic pattern of dysfunction may feel comfortable to you. Just remind yourself that as familiar as it feels, it also makes you feel bad. In a reciprocal relationship, you will feel respected, listened to, and free to be yourself.
•Spend time with people who give you an honest reflection of who you are. In order to maintain perspective and avoid buying into the narcissist’s distortions, it’s important to spend time with people who know you as you really are and validate your thoughts and feelings.
•Make new friendships, if necessary, outside the narcissist’s orbit. Some narcissists isolate the people in their lives in order to better control them. If this is your situation, you’ll need to invest time into rebuilding lapsed friendships or cultivating new relationships.
•Look for meaning and purpose in work, volunteering, and hobbies. Instead of looking to the narcissist to make you feel good about yourself, pursue meaningful activities that make use of your talents and allow you to contribute.
•HOW TO LEAVE A NARCISSIST
•Ending an abusive relationship is never easy. Ending one with a narcissist can be especially difficult as they can be so charming and charismatic—at least at the start of the relationship or if you threaten to leave. It’s easy to become disoriented by the narcissist’s manipulative behavior, caught up in the need to seek their approval, or even to feel “gaslighted” and doubt your own judgement. If you’re codependent, your desire to be loyal may trump even your need to preserve your safety and sense of self. But it’s important to remember that no one deserves to be bullied, threatened, or verbally and emotionally abused in a relationship. There are ways to escape the narcissist—and the guilt and self-blame—and begin the process of healing.
•Educate yourself about narcissistic personality disorder. The more you understand, the better you’ll be able to recognize the techniques a narcissist may use to keep you in the relationship. When you threaten to leave, a narcissist will often resurrect the flattery and adoration (“love bombing”) that caused you to be interested in them in the first place. Or they’ll make grand promises about changing their behavior that they have no intention of keeping.
•Write down the reasons why you’re leaving. Being clear on why you need to end the relationship can help prevent you from being sucked back in. Keep your list somewhere handy, such as on your phone, and refer to it when you’re starting to have self-doubts or the narcissist is laying on the charm or making outlandish promises.
•Seek support. During your time together, the narcissist may have damaged your relationships with friends and family or limited your social life. But whatever your circumstances, you’re not alone. Even if you can’t reach out to old friends, you can find help from support groups or domestic violence helplines and shelters.
•Don’t make empty threats. It’s a better tactic to accept that the narcissist won’t change and when you’re ready, simply leave. Making threats or pronouncements will only forewarn the narcissist and enable them to make it more difficult for you to get away.
•Seek immediate help if you’re physically threatened or abused. Call 911 in the U.S. or your country’s local emergency service.
•For more tips on leaving, read How to Get Out of an Abusive Relationship.
•AFTER YOU’VE LEFT
•Leaving a narcissist can be a huge blow to their sense of entitlement and self-importance. Their huge ego still needs to be fed, so they’ll often continue trying to exert control over you. If charm and “love bombing” doesn’t work, they may resort to threats, denigrating you to mutual friends and acquaintances, or stalking you, on social media or in person.
•Cut off all contact with the narcissist. The more contact you have with them, the more hope you’ll give them that they can reel you back in. It’s safer to block their calls, texts, and emails, and disconnect from them on social media. If you have children together, have others with you for any scheduled custody handovers.
•Allow yourself to grieve. Breakups can be extremely painful, whatever the circumstances. Even ending a toxic relationship can leave you feeling sad, angry, confused, and grieving the loss of shared dreams and commitments. Healing can take time, so go easy on yourself and turn to family and friends for support.
•Don’t expect the narcissist to share your grief. Once the message sinks in that you will no longer be feeding their ego, the narcissist will likely soon move on to exploit someone else. They won’t feel loss or guilt, just that never-ending need for praise and admiration. This is no reflection on you, but rather an illustration of how very one-sided their relationships always are.
•IF YOU NEED HELP FOR NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
•Due to the very nature of the disorder, most people with NPD are reluctant to admit they have a problem—and even more reluctant to seek help, there’s no shame checking a psychologist.
•chapter 9 :
•facts about your body.
•FACTS ABOUT THE HUMAN BODY, AND LET’S SEE WHAT DO THEY DO THOSE GIFTS FROM THE CREATOR. LET’S START WITH SOME FUN FACTS THEN WE GO A LITTLE BIT DEEPER, HOPE YOU GONNA ENJOY THE JOURNEY !
oThe human body is one of the most complicated and fascinating living forms on Earth. Here are some interesting features that make it special, which you can share with your kids.
•Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day, 365,00,000 times a year and over a billion times if you live beyond 30.
•Grouping human blood types can be a difficult process and there are currently around 30 recognised blood types (or blood groups). You might be familiar with the more simplified “ABO” system which categorises blood types under O, A, B and AB.
•When listening to music, your heartbeat will sync with the rhythm.
•An healthy adult human heart beats about 75 times on average in a minute.
•In one year, a human heart would pump enough blood to fill an Olympic size pool.
•If all the blood vessels in the human body were laid end to end, they would encircle the Earth four times.
•Skin is the human body’s largest organ
•The outer layer of your skin is the epidermis, it is found thickest on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet (around 1.5 mm thick).
•A large amount of the dust in your home is actually dead skin. Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour.
•Humans have a stage of sleep that features rapid eye movement (REM). REM sleep makes up around 25 per cent of total sleep time and is often when you have your most vivid dreams.
•An eyelash lives for about 150 days before it falls out.
•The smallest bone found in the human body is located in the middle ear. The staples (or stirrup) bone is only 2.8 millimetres long.
•The femur (thigh bone) is the longest bone in the human body.
•As well as having unique fingerprints, humans also have unique tongue prints.
•Goose bumps evolved to make our ancestors’ hair stand up, making them appear more threatening to predators.
•Humans are the only animals with chins.
•Blushing is caused by a rush of adrenaline.
•The cornea is the only part of the body with no blood supply – it gets its oxygen directly from the air.
•The human body contains enough fat to make seven bars of soap.
•Between birth and death, the human body goes from having 300 bones, to just 206.
•The small intestine is roughly 23 feet long.
•An average sized man eats about 33 tons of food in his/her life time which is about the weight of six elephants.
•Nephrons, the kidney’s filtering units, clean the blood in the human body in about 45 minutes and send about six cups of urine (2000 ml) to the bladder every day.
•One quarter of your bones are in your feet.
•You can’t breathe and swallow at the same time.
•The average person produces enough saliva in their lifetime to fill two swimming pools.
•There are about ten thousand taste buds on the human tongue and in general girls have more taste buds than boys!
•While awake, your brain produces enough electricity to power a lightbulb.
•The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body and right side of your brain controls the left side of your body.
•In camera terms, the human eye is about 576 megapixels.
•Our brain is programmed to erect the inverted image formed on our retina by the convex eye lens. A newborn baby sees the world upside down till its brain starts erecting it.
•You carry, on average, about four pounds of bacteria around in your body.
•50 percent of your hand strength comes from your little finger.
•Sometimes the pain from scratching makes your body release the pain-fighting chemical serotonin. It can make the itch feel even itchier.
•As people get older, their skin gets thinner, drier, and less elastic, hence wrinkles start appearing.
•An adult skin weighs around 3 to 4 kgs.
•If you spread out your skin, it would measure around 20 square feet in size, about the same size as a child’s bed sheet.
•Diaphragm, which is a thin membrane under the lungs, sometimes twitches, causing a sudden intake of air, which is interrupted by throat closing. This is what we call hiccups.
•In case of injury under the skin the blood vessels break and spread into the tissues near the injury. The dark colour of the blood shows through the skin as bruise.
•A running nose is the way our body flushes out germs from our nose while we catch cold and flu.
•On average, human body contains enough iron to make a nail 2.5 cm (1 inch) long.
•42 . Your left and right lungs aren’t exactly the same. The lung on the left side of your body is divided into two lobes while the lung on your right side is divided into three. The left lung is also slightly smaller, allowing room for your heart.
•43 . Adult lungs have a surface area of around 70 square metres.
•44 . Human lungs contain almost 1,500 miles of airways and over 300 million alveoli.
•45 . An average person breathes in around 11,000 litres of air every day.
•46. Your nose and ears continue growing throughout your entire life.
•47 . Your sense of smell is around 10,000 times more sensitive than your sense of taste.
•48 . Around 80 per cent of what we think is taste is actually smell. Flavour, is a combination of taste and smell perception.
•49 . The brain uses over a quarter of the oxygen used by the human body.
•50 . The brain of an adult human weighs around 3 pounds (1.5 kg). Although it makes up just 2 per cent of the body’s weight, it uses around 20 per cent of its energy.
•51 . If you smoothed out all of the wrinkles in your brain, it would lay flat the size of a pillowcase.
•When it gets to the brain for me it gets more interesting !
•AS YOU CAN SEE THE HUMAN BODY IS AN AMAZING MACHINE. FIND OUT HOW IT WORKS, FROM HEAD TO TOE.
•1= The Human Brain : The most complex organ in the human body, from its structure to its most common disorders, we gonna a little bit deeper because it’s my lovely subject to be honest.
•Brain, the mass of nerve tissue in the anterior end of an organism. The brain integratessensory information and directs motor responses; in higher vertebrates it is also the centre of learning. The human brain weighs approximately 1.4 kg (3 pounds) and is made up of billions of cells called neurons. Junctions between neurons, known as synapses, enable electrical and chemical messages to be transmitted from one neuron to the next in the brain, a process that underlies basic sensory functions and that is critical to learning, memory and thought formation, and other cognitive activities.
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•right cerebral hemisphere of the human brain
•Lateral view of the right cerebral hemisphere of the human brain, shown in situ within the skull. A number of convolutions (called gyri) and fissures (called sulci) in the surface define four lobes—the parietal, frontal, temporal, and occipital—that contain major functional areas of the brain.
•Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
o
•BRITANNICA QUIZ
•The Human Body: Fact or Fiction?
•Can people choose to be left or right-handed? From nerves and genes to muscles and organs, see how ambidextrous you are by choosing between right—and wrong—in this quiz.
•In lower vertebrates the brain is tubular and resembles an early developmental stage of the brain in higher vertebrates. It consists of three distinct regions: the hindbrain, the midbrain, and the forebrain. Although the brain of higher vertebrates undergoes considerable modification during embryonic development, these three regions are still discernible.
•The hindbrain is composed of the medulla oblongata and the pons. The medulla transmits signals between the spinal cord and the higher parts of the brain; it also controls such autonomic functions as heartbeat and respiration. The pons is partly made up of tracts connecting the spinal cord with higher brain levels, and it also contains cell groups that transfer information from the cerebrum to the cerebellum.
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•human brain; magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
•The midbrain, the upper portion of which evolved from the optic lobes, is the main centre of sensory integration in fish and amphibians. It also is involved with integration in reptiles and birds. In mammals the midbrain is greatly reduced, serving primarily as a connecting link between the hindbrain and the forebrain.
•of fibres is the cerebellum. Relatively large in humans, this “little brain” controls balance and coordination by producing smooth, coordinated movements of muscle groups.
•The forebrain includes the cerebral hemispheres and, under these, the brainstem, which contains the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus is the main relay centre between the medulla and the cerebrum; the hypothalamus is an important control centre for sex drive, pleasure, pain, hunger, thirst, blood pressure, body temperature, and other visceral functions. The hypothalamus produces hormones that control the secretions of the anterior pituitary gland, and it also produces oxytocin and antidiuretic hormone, which are stored in and released by the posterior pituitary gland.
•The cerebrum, originally functioning as part of the olfactory lobes, is involved with the more complex functions of the human brain. In humans and other advanced vertebrates, the cerebrum has grown over the rest of the brain, forming a convoluted (wrinkled) layer of gray matter. The degree of convolution is partly dependent on the size of the body. Small mammals (e.g., lesser anteater, marmoset) generally have smooth brains, and large mammals (e.g., whale, elephant, dolphin) generally have highly convoluted ones.
•The cerebral hemispheres are separated by a deep groove, the longitudinal cerebral fissure. At the base of this fissure lies a thick bundle of nerve fibres, called the corpus callosum, which provides a communication link between the hemispheres. The left hemisphere controls the right half of the body, and vice versa, because of a crossing of the nerve fibres in the medulla or, less commonly, in the spinal cord. Although the right and left hemispheres are mirror images of one another in many ways, there are important functional distinctions. In most people, for example, the areas that control speech are located in the left hemisphere, while areas that control spatial perceptions are located in the right hemisphere.
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•left cerebral hemisphere of the human brain
•Medial view of the left hemisphere of the human brain.
•Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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•Uncover the science behind the split-brain syndrome
•A structure known as the corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain and enables communication between them. Dysfunction or absence of this structure can result in a condition known as split-brain syndrome, in which each hemisphere of the brain functions independently. Split-brain syndrome is associated with conditions such as alien-hand syndrome, which is characterized by involuntary and uncoordinated yet purposeful movement of the hands.
•Science in Seconds (www.scienceinseconds.com) (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
•Two major furrows—the central sulcus and the lateral sulcus—divide each cerebral hemisphere into four sections: the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. The central sulcus, also known as the fissure of Rolando, also separates the cortical motor area (which is anterior to the fissure) from the cortical sensory area (which is posterior to the fissure). Starting from the top of the hemisphere, the upper regions of the motor and sensory areas control the lower parts of the body, and the lower regions of the motor and sensory areas control the upper parts of the body. Other functional areas of the cerebral hemispheres have been identified, including the visual cortex in the occipital lobe and the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe. A large amount of the primate cortex, however, is devoted to no specific motor or sensory function; this so-called association cortex is apparently involved in higher mental activities. (For more information about the human brain,
•Here’s something to wrap your mind around: The human brain is more complex than any other known structure in the universe. Weighing in at three pounds, on average, this spongy mass of fat and protein is made up of two overarching types of cells—called glia and neurons—and it contains many billions of each. Neurons are notable for their branch-like projections called axons and dendrites, which gather and transmit electrochemical signals. Different types of glial cells provide physical protection to neurons and help keep them, and the brain, healthy.
•Together, this complex network of cells gives rise to every aspect of our shared humanity. We could not breathe, play, love, or remember without the brain.
•ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN
•My most lovely subjet.
•The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain, accounting for 85 percent of the organ’s weight. The distinctive, deeply wrinkled outer surface is the cerebral cortex. It’s the cerebrum that makes the human brain—and therefore humans—so formidable. Animals such as elephants, dolphins, and whales actually have larger brains, but humans have the most developed cerebrum. It’s packed to capacity inside our skulls, with deep folds that cleverly maximize the total surface area of the cortex.
•The cerebrum has two halves, or hemispheres, that are further divided into four regions, or lobes. The frontal lobes, located behind the forehead, are involved with speech, thought, learning, emotion, and movement. Behind them are the parietal lobes, which process sensory information such as touch, temperature, and pain. At the rear of the brain are the occipital lobes, dealing with vision. Lastly, there are the temporal lobes, near the temples, which are involved with hearing and memory.
•The second-largest part of the brain is the cerebellum, which sits beneath the back of the cerebrum. It plays an important role in coordinating movement, posture, and balance.
•The third-largest part is the diencephalon, located in the core of the brain. A complex of structures roughly the size of an apricot, its two major sections are the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus acts as a relay station for incoming nerve impulses from around the body that are then forwarded to the appropriate brain region for processing. The hypothalamus controls hormone secretions from the nearby pituitary gland. These hormones govern growth and instinctual behaviors, such as when a new mother starts to lactate. The hypothalamus is also important for keeping bodily processes like temperature, hunger, and thirst balanced.
•Seated at the organ’s base, the brain stem controls reflexes and basic life functions such as heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. It also regulates when you feel sleepy or awake and connects the cerebrum and cerebellum to the spinal cord.
oA brain is displayed at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The human brain is a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) mass of jelly-like fats and tissues—yet it’s the most complex of all known living structures.
•The brain is extremely sensitive and delicate, and so it requires maximum protection, which is provided by the hard bone of the skull and three tough membranes called meninges. The spaces between these membranes are filled with fluid that cushions the brain and keeps it from being damaged by contact with the inside of the skull.
•BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER
•Want more proof that the brain is extraordinary? Look no further than the blood-brain barrier. The discovery of this unique feature dates to the 19th century, when various experiments revealed that dye, when injected into the bloodstream, colored all of the body’s organs except the brain and spinal cord. The same dye, when injected into the spinal fluid, tinted only the brain and spinal cord.
•This led scientists to learn that the brain has an ingenious, protective layer. Called the blood-brain barrier, it’s made up of special, tightly bound cells that together function as a kind of semi-permeable gate throughout most of the organ. It keeps the brain environment safe and stable by preventing some toxins, pathogens, and other harmful substances from entering the brain through the bloodstream, while simultaneously allowing oxygen and vital nutrients to pass through.
•HEALTH CONDITIONS OF THE BRAIN
•Of course, when a machine as finely calibrated and complex as the brain gets injured or malfunctions, problems arise. One in five Americans suffers from some form of neurological damage, a wide-ranging list that includes stroke, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy, as well as dementia.
•Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized in part by a gradual progression of short-term memory loss, disorientation, and mood swings, is the most common cause of dementia. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and the number of people diagnosed with it is growing. Worldwide, some 50 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia. While there are a handful of drugs available to mitigate Alzheimer’s symptoms, there is no cure. Researchers across the globe continue to develop treatments that one day might put an end to the disease’s devasting effects.
•Far more common than neurological disorders, however, are conditions that fall under a broad category called mental illness. Unfortunately, negative attitudes toward people who suffer from mental illness are widespread. The stigma attached to mental illness can create feelings of shame, embarrassment, and rejection, causing many people to suffer in silence. In the United States, where anxiety disorders are the most common forms of mental illness, only about 40 percent of sufferers receive treatment. Anxiety disorders often stem from abnormalities in the brain’s hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
•Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a mental health condition that also affects adults but is far more often diagnosed in children. ADHD is characterized by hyperactivity and an inability to stay focused. While the exact cause of ADHD has not yet been determined, scientists believe that it may be linked to several factors, among them genetics or brain injury. Treatment for ADHD may include psychotherapy as well as medications. The latter can help by increasing the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which are vital to thinking and focusing.
•Depression is another common mental health condition. It is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is often accompanied by anxiety. Depression can be marked by an array of symptoms, including persistent sadness, irritability, and changes in appetite. The good news is that in general, anxiety and depression are highly treatable through various medications—which help the brain use certain chemicals more efficiently—and through forms of therapy.
•Human nervous system, system that conducts stimuli from sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord and conducts impulses back to other parts of the body. As with other higher vertebrates, the human nervous system has two main parts: the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system (the nerves that carry impulses to and from the central nervous system). In humans the brain is especially large and well developed.
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•nervous system
•The human nervous system.
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•The Human Body
•You may know that the human brain is composed of two halves, but what fraction of the human body is made up of blood?
•Prenatal And Postnatal Development Of The Human Nervous System
•Almost all nerve cells, or neurons, are generated during prenatal life, and in most cases they are not replaced by new neurons thereafter. Morphologically, the nervous system first appears about 18 days after conception, with the genesis of a neural plate. Functionally, it appears with the first sign of a reflex activity during the second prenatal month, when stimulation by touch of the upper lip evokes a withdrawal response of the head. Many reflexes of the head, trunk, and extremities can be elicited in the third month.
•During its development the nervous system undergoes remarkable changes to attain its complex organization. In order to produce the estimated 1 trillion neurons present in the mature brain, an average of 2.5 million neurons must be generated per minute during the entire prenatal life. This includes the formation of neuronal circuits comprising 100 trillion synapses, as each potential neuron is ultimately connected with either a selected set of other neurons or specific targets such as sensory endings. Moreover, synaptic connections with other neurons are made at precise locations on the cell membranes of target neurons. The totality of these events is not thought to be the exclusive product of the genetic code, for there are simply not enough genes to account for such complexity. Rather, the differentiation and subsequent development of embryonic cells into mature neurons and glial cells are achieved by two sets of influences: (1) specific subsets of genes and (2) environmental stimuli from within and outside the embryo. Genetic influences are critical to the development of the nervous system in ordered and temporally timed sequences. Cell differentiation, for example, depends on a series of signals that regulate transcription, the process in which deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules give rise to ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules, which in turn express the genetic messages that control cellular activity. Environmental influences derived from the embryo itself include cellular signals that consist of diffusible molecular factors (see below Neuronal development). External environmental factors include nutrition, sensory experience, social interaction, and even learning. All of these are essential for the proper differentiation of individual neurons and for fine-tuning the details of synaptic connections. Thus, the nervous system requires continuous stimulation over an entire lifetime in order to sustain functional activity.
•Neuronal development
•In the second week of prenatal life, the rapidly growing blastocyst (the bundle of cells into which a fertilized ovum divides) flattens into what is called the embryonic disk. The embryonic disk soon acquires three layers: the ectoderm (outer layer), mesoderm (middle layer), and endoderm (inner layer). Within the mesoderm grows the notochord, an axial rod that serves as a temporary backbone. Both the mesoderm and notochord release a chemical that instructs and induces adjacent undifferentiated ectoderm cells to thicken along what will become the dorsal midline of the body, forming the neural plate. The neural plate is composed of neural precursor cells, known as neuroepithelial cells, which develop into the neural tube (see below Morphological development). Neuroepithelial cells then commence to divide, diversify, and give rise to immature neurons and neuroglia, which in turn migrate from the neural tube to their final location. Each neuron forms dendrites and an axon; axons elongate and form branches, the terminals of which form synaptic connections with a select set of target neurons or muscle fibres.
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•human embryonic development
•Development of the human embryo at 18 days, at disk or shield stage, shown in (left) three-quarter view and (right) cross section.
•Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
•The remarkable events of this early development involve an orderly migration of billions of neurons, the growth of their axons (many of which extend widely throughout the brain), and the formation of thousands of synapses between individual axons and their target neurons. The migration and growth of neurons are dependent, at least in part, on chemical and physical influences. The growing tips of axons (called growth cones) apparently recognize and respond to various molecular signals, which guide axons and nerve branches to their appropriate targets and eliminate those that try to synapse with inappropriate targets. Once a synaptic connection has been established, a target cell releases a trophic factor (e.g., nerve growth factor) that is essential for the survival of the neuron synapsing with it. Physical guidance cues are involved in contact guidance, or the migration of immature neurons along a scaffold of glial fibres.
•In some regions of the developing nervous system, synaptic contacts are not initially precise or stable and are followed later by an ordered reorganization, including the elimination of many cells and synapses. The instability of some synaptic connections persists until a so-called critical period is reached, prior to which environmental influences have a significant role in the proper differentiation of neurons and in fine-tuning many synaptic connections. Following the critical period, synaptic connections become stable and are unlikely to be altered by environmental influences. This suggests that certain skills and sensory activities can be influenced during development (including postnatal life), and for some intellectual skills this adaptability presumably persists into adulthood and late life.
•THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
•The central nervous system consists of the brain and spinal cord, both derived from the embryonic neural tube. Both are surrounded by protective membranes called the meninges, and both float in a crystal-clear cerebrospinal fluid. The brain is encased in a bony vault, the neurocranium, while the cylindrical and elongated spinal cord lies in the vertebral canal, which is formed by successive vertebrae connected by dense ligaments.
•right cerebral hemisphere of the human brain
•Lateral view of the right cerebral hemisphere of the human brain, shown in situ within the skull. A number of convolutions (called gyri) and fissures (called sulci) in the surface define four lobes—the parietal, frontal, temporal, and occipital—that contain major functional areas of the brain.
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•The brain weighs about 1,500 grams (3 pounds) and constitutesabout 2 percent of total body weight. It consists of three major divisions: (1) the massive paired hemispheres of the cerebrum, (2) the brainstem, consisting of the thalamus, hypothalamus, epithalamus, subthalamus, midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata, and (3) the cerebellum.
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•left cerebral hemisphere of the human brain
•Medial view of the left hemisphere of the human brain.
•Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
•2- THE HEART : Every cell in the body depends on this muscle, the body’s hardest-working organ.
•THE HEART IS ONE OF THE BODY’S MOST ESSENTIAL ORGANS.
•IT’S the body’s engine room, responsible for pumping life-sustaining blood via a 60,000-mile-long (97,000-kilometer-long) network of vessels. The organ works ceaselessly, beating 100,000 times a day, 40 million times a year—in total clocking up three billion heartbeats over an average lifetime. It keeps the body freshly supplied with oxygen and nutrients, while clearing away harmful waste matter.
•The fetal heart evolves through several different stages inside the womb, first resembling a fish’s heart, then a frog’s, which has two chambers, then a snake’s, with three, before finally adopting the four-chambered structure of the human heart.
•FUNCTION
•About the size of its owner’s clenched fist, the organ sits in the middle of the chest, behind the breastbone and between the lungs, in a moistened chamber that is protected all round by the rib cage. It’s made up of a special kind of muscle (cardiac muscle) that works involuntarily, so we don’t have to think about it. The heart speeds up or slow downs automatically in response to nerve signals from the brain that tell it how much the body is being exerted. Normally the heart contracts and relaxes between 70 and 80 times per minute, each heartbeat filling the four chambers inside with a fresh round of blood.
•These cavities form two separate pumps on each side of the heart, which are divided by a wall of muscle called the septum. The upper chamber on each side is called the atrium. This is connected via a sealing valve to the larger, more powerful lower chamber, or ventricle. The left ventricle pumps most forcefully, which is why a person’s heartbeat is felt more on the left side of the chest.
•When the heart contracts, the chambers become smaller, forcing blood first out of the atria into the ventricles, then from each ventricle into a large blood vessel connected to the top of the heart. These vessels are the two main arteries. One of them, the pulmonary artery, takes blood to the lungs to receive oxygen. The other, the aorta, transports freshly oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. The vessels that bring blood to the heart are the veins. The two main veins that connect to the heart are called the vena cava.
TO ITS MOST COM BLOOD DELIVERY
•Since the heart lies at the center of the blood delivery system, it is also central to life. Blood both supplies oxygen from the lungs to the other organs and tissues and removes carbon dioxide to the lungs, where the gas is breathed out. Blood also distributes nourishment from the digestive system and hormones from glands. Likewise our immune system cells travel in the bloodstream, seeking out infection, and blood takes the body’s waste products to the kidneys and liver to be sorted out and trashed.
•Given the heart’s many essential functions, it seems wise to take care of it. Yet heart disease has risen steadily over the last century, especially in industrialized countries, largely due to changes in diet and lifestyle. It has become the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, claiming almost 700,000 lives a year, or 29 percent of the annual total. Worldwide, 7.2 million people die from heart disease every year.
•MON DISORDERS.
•THE MOST COMPLEX ORGAN IN THE HUMAN BODY, FROM ITS STRUCTURE TO ITS MOST COMMON DISORDERS.
•THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
•Feed the body different foods and discover how this system is the body’s fuel factory.
•Once food is swallowed, it passes through the esophagus into the stomach, the pink organ shown here above the yellow pancreas. A large, muscular chamber, the stomach produces digestive juices like pepsin, lipase, and hydrochloric acid, which digest and dissolve stomach contents.
•THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM is the series of tubelike organs that convert our meals into body fuel. There are about 30 feet (9 meters) of these convoluted pipeworks, starting with the mouth and ending with the anus. Along the way, food is broken down, sorted, and reprocessed before being circulated around the body to nourish and replace cells and supply energy to our muscles.
•CHANGING FOOD TO FUEL
•Food on the plate must be converted into a mashed-up, gooey liquid for the digestive system to be able to split it up into its constituent parts: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Our teeth start the process by chewing and grinding up each mouthful, while the tongue works it into a ball-shaped bolus for swallowing.
•Moistening saliva fed into the mouth from nearby glands starts the process of chemical digestion using specialized proteins called enzymes. Secreted at various points along the digestive tract, enzymes break down large molecules of food into smaller molecules that the body is able to absorb.
•Once we swallow, digestion becomes involuntary. Food passes down the throat to the esophagus, the first of a succession of hollow organs that transport their contents through muscular contractions known as peristalsis.
•The esophagus empties into the stomach, a large, muscular chamber that mixes food up with digestive juices including the enzyme pepsin, which targets proteins, and lipase, which works on fats. Hydrochloric acid likewise helps to dissolve the stomach contents while killing potentially harmful bacteria. The resulting semifluid paste—chyme—is sealed in the stomach by two ringlike sphincter muscles for several hours and then released in short bursts into the duodenum.
•The first of three sections of the small intestine, the duodenum, produces large quantities of mucus to protect the intestinal lining from acid in the chyme.
•Measuring about 20 feet (6 meters) in length, the small intestine is where the major digestion and absorption of nutrients take place. These nutrients are taken into the bloodstream, via millions of tiny, fingerlike projections called villi, and transported to the liver.
•What’s left in the digestive tract passes into the large intestine, where it’s eaten by billions of harmless bacteria and mixed with dead cells to form solid feces. Water is reabsorbed into the body while the feces are moved into the rectum to await expulsion .
oOTHER KEY PLAYERS
•Other organs that play a key role in digestion include the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas. The pancreas is a gland organ located behind the stomach that manufactures a cocktail of enzymes that are pumped into the duodenum. A duct also connects the duodenum to the gallbladder. This pear-shaped sac squeezes out green-brown bile, a waste product collected from the liver that contains acids for dissolving fatty matter.
•The liver itself is the body’s main chemical factory, performing hundreds of different functions. It processes nutrients absorbed into the blood by the small intestine, creating energy-giving glycogen from sugary carbohydrates and converting dietary proteins into new proteins needed for our blood. These are then stored or released as needed, as are essential vitamins and minerals. The liver also breaks down unwanted chemicals, such as any alcohol consumed, which is detoxified and passed from the body as waste.
•4- LUNGS
•Learn how the lungs provide the breath of life and see the debilitating effects of asthma.
•THE HUMAN BODY’S RESPIRATORY SYSTEM.
•OUR LUNGS FUEL us with oxygen, the body’s life-sustaining gas. They breathe in air, then extract the oxygen and pass it into the bloodstream, where it’s rushed off to the tissues and organs that require it to function.
•Oxygen drives the process of respiration, which provides our cells with energy. When we exhale, we produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Without this vital exchange, our cells would quickly die and leave the body to suffocate.
•Since the lungs process air, they are the only internal organs that are constantly exposed to the external environment. Central to the human respiratory system, they breathe in between 2,100 and 2,400 gallons (8,000 and 9,000 liters) of air each day—the amount needed to oxygenate the 2,400 gallons (9,000 liters) or so of blood that is pumped through the heart daily.
•INTRICATE CONSTRUCTION
•Our two lungs are made up of a complex latticework of tubes, which are suspended, on either side of the heart, inside the chest cavity on a framework of elastic fibers. Air is drawn in via the mouth and the nose, the latter acting as an air filter by trapping dust particles on its hairs. The air is warmed up before passing down the windpipe, where it’s divided at the bottom between two airways called bronchi that lead to either lung.
•Within the lungs, the mucus-lined bronchi split like the branches of a tree into tens of thousands of ever smaller tubes (bronchioles), which connect to tiny sacs called alveoli. The average adult’s lungs contain about 600 million of these spongy, air-filled structures. There are enough alveoli in just one lung to cover an area roughly the size of a tennis,
•The alveoli are where the crucial gas exchange takes place. The air sacs are surrounded by a dense network of minute blood vessels, or capillaries, which connect to the heart. Those that link to the pulmonary arteries carry deoxygenated blood that needs to be refreshed. Oxygen passes through the incredibly thin walls of the alveoli into the capillaries and is then carried back to the heart via the pulmonary veins. At the same time, carbon dioxide is removed from the blood through the same process of diffusion.
•The rate at which we breathe is controlled by the brain, which is quick to sense changes in gas concentrations. This is certainly in the brain’s interests—it’s the body’s biggest user of oxygen and the first organ to suffer if there’s a shortage.
•IN AND OUT
•The actual job of breathing is done mainly by the diaphragm, the sheet of muscles between the chest and abdomen. These muscles contract when we breathe in, expanding the lungs and drawing in air. We breathe out simply by relaxing the diaphragm; the lungs deflate like balloons.
•Lungs are delicate organs and vulnerable to a range of illnesses. The most common of these in Western countries are bronchitis and emphysema, which are often caused by smoking. Tubes inside the lung become chronically inflamed, producing excess mucus. Smoking can also lead to lung cancer, the world’s major cancer, which is diagnosed in 1.4 million people a year.
o5- THE SKIN
•Watch how aging and stresses like cuts and sunlight can affect the body’s largest organ.
•Body organs aren’t all internal like the brain or the heart. There’s one we wear on the outside. Skin is our largest organ—adults carry some 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) and 22 square feet (2 square meters) of it. This fleshy covering does a lot more than make us look presentable. In fact, without it, we’d literally evaporate.
•Skin acts as a waterproof, insulating shield, guarding the body against extremes of temperature, damaging sunlight, and harmful chemicals. It also exudes antibacterial substances that prevent infection and manufactures vitamin D for converting calcium into healthy bones. Skin additionally is a huge sensor packed with nerves for keeping the brain in touch with the outside world. At the same time, skin allows us free movement, proving itself an amazingly versatile organ.
•HOW IT PROTECTS THE BODY
•Skin is made up of three layers. The outermost is the epidermis. This consists mainly of cells called keratinocytes, made from the tough protein keratin (also the material in hair and nails). Keratinocytes form several layers that constantly grow outwards as the exterior cells die and flake off. It takes roughly five weeks for newly created cells to work their way to the surface. This covering of dead skin is known as the stratum corneum, or horny layer, and its thickness varies considerably, being more than ten times thicker on the soles of the feet than around the eyes. The epidermis harbors defensive Langerhans cells, which alert the body’s immune system to viruses and other infectious agents.
oThe human body performs amazing feats every day, from sending signals rocketing through the brain at high speed to distributing oxygen over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) of airways.
•The epidermis is bonded to a deeper skin layer below known as the dermis, which gives the organ its strength and elasticity thanks to fibers of collagen and elastin. Blood vessels here help regulate body temperature by increasing blood flow to the skin to allow heat to escape, or by restricting the flow when it’s cold. A network of nerve fibers and receptors pick up feelings such as touch, temperature, and pain, relaying them to the brain.
•The dermis houses hair follicles and glands with ducts that pass up through the skin. Sweat glands bring down internal temperature through perspiration while ridding the body of the waste fluids urea and lactate. Apocrine glands, which develop during puberty, produce a scented sweat linked to sexual attraction that can also cause body odor, especially around the armpits. Sebaceous glands secrete oil-like sebum for lubricating the hair and skin.
•The skin’s base layer is the subcutis, which includes a seam of fat laid down as a fuel reserve in case of food shortage. It also works as insulation and cushions us from knocks and falls.
•SKIN COLOR
•Skin color is due to melanin, a pigment produced in the epidermis to protect us from the sun’s potentially cancer-causing ultraviolet (UV) rays. Dark-skinned people produce more numerous and deeper-colored melanin particles. People with the darkest complexions are native to tropical regions, particularly those with few densely forested areas.
•Fair skin is an adaptation found in people from northern latitudes where solar rays are relatively weak. Here the benefits of dark skin are outweighed by the need for bone-strengthening vitamin D, produced through exposure to UV rays. But hotter, sunnier environments bring the risk of serious skin damage. Australia, where the majority of the population is of northern European descent, has the world’s highest rates of skin cancer, accounting for more than 80 percent of all cancers diagnosed there each year.
•SKIN IS A COMPLEX AND DIVERSE ORGAN.
•The origin of ‘us’: what we know so far about ‘where we humans come from ?
•The question of where we humans come from is one many people ask, and the answer is getting more complicated as new evidence is emerging all the time.
•For most of recorded history humankind has been placed on a metaphorical, and sometimes literal, pedestal. Sure, modern humans were flesh and blood like other animals.
•But they were regarded as being so special that in the Linnaean taxonomy that prevailed well into the second half of the 20th century they were given their own family, the Hominidae.
•This distinguished them from the Pongidae, the separate family used for the three African great apes – the common chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla – plus the orangutan from Southeast Asia.
•We now realise that modern humans are just one of the African great apes.
•So when and how did this radically changed perception come about?
•EARLY OBSERVATIONS
•In the 19th century the only evidence available for determining the closeness of the relationship between any two living animals was how similar they were in terms of what the naked eye could tell from their bones, teeth, muscles and organs.
•The first person to undertake a systematic comparative review of these differences between modern humans and the apes was English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley.
•In the central section of a small book he published in 1863, called Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, Huxley concluded that the differences between modern humans and African apes were less than those between African apes and orangutans.
•This was the evidence the English naturalist Charles Darwin referred to in The Descent of Man in 1871.
•He speculated that because African apes were morphologically closer to modern humans than the apes from Asia, then the ancestors of modern humans were more likely to be found in Africa than elsewhere.
•A CLOSER INSPECTION
•Developments in biochemistry and immunology during the first half of the 20th century enabled the search for evidence of the relationships between modern humans and the apes to shift from macroscopic morphology to the morphology of molecules.
•The results of applying a new generation of analytical methods to proteins were reported by the Austrian-born French biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and American biologist Morris Goodman in the early 1960s.
•Zuckerkandl used enzymes to break up the protein component of haemoglobin into its peptide components. He showed that the patterns of the peptides from modern humans, gorilla and chimpanzee were indistinguishable.
•Goodman used a different method, immunodiffusion, to study albumin, a serum protein. He showed that the patterns produced by the albumins of modern humans and the chimpanzee were identical. He concluded that this was because the albumin molecules were, to all intents and purposes, identical.
•APES AND HUMANS: RELATED
•Proteins are made up of a string of amino acids and in many instances one amino acid can be substituted for another without changing the function of the protein.
•In the late 1960s, the American anthropologist Vince Sarich and New Zealand biologist Allan Wilson exploited these minor differences in protein structure and concluded that modern humans and the African apes were very closely related.
•They also provided the first molecular clock estimate of modern human-African ape divergence, dating the split to only around five million years ago. This date was less than half of contemporary estimates based on fossil evidence.
•In 1975 the American human geneticist Mary-Claire King and Allan Wilson showed that 99% of the amino-acid sequences of chimpanzee and modern human blood proteins were identical.
•ENTER DNA
•The discovery by James Watson and Francis Crick, with unwitting help from Rosalind Franklin, of the basic structure of DNA, and the subsequent discovery by Crick and others of the nature of the genetic code, meant that the relationships among organisms could be pursued at the level of the genome.
•Nowadays technological advances mean that whole genomes can be sequenced. Over the past decade researchers have published good draft sequences of the nuclear genomes of the chimpanzee, orangutan, gorilla and the bonobo.
•More and better data are steadily being accumulated, and in 2013 a review of ape DNA based on the genomes of 79 great apes was published.
•These new ape genome sequences support the results of earlier analyses of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA that suggested modern humans and chimpanzees are more closely related to each other than either is to the gorilla.
•When DNA differences among modern humans and the great apes are calibrated using the best palaeontological evidence for the split between the apes and the old world monkeys, those differences predict that the hypothetical common ancestor of modern humans, chimpanzees and bonobos lived about 8 million years ago.
•THE RISE OF THE HOMININS
•Most researchers now recognise the modern human as hominins.
•Still, the question “where do we come from” can from a scientific perspective be difficult for someone outside of the discipline to come to grips with. In part this is because the fossil record for human evolution seems to grow exponentially, with the author of each new discovery often claiming that the textbooks need to be rewritten.
•The interdisciplinary nature of palaeoanthropology also means that new evidence that helps us make sense of our ancestry does not always come in the form of new fossils.
•It comes from advances in a range of disciplines that include archaeology, comparative anatomy, earth sciences, evolutionary biology, genomics and primatology.
•A further complicating factor is that the human fossil record does not just consist of the fossil evidence of our direct ancestors.
•Many of the fossils belong to lineages that do not make it to the surface of the Tree of Life. They belong to extinct close relatives, and the task of sorting close relatives from ancestors is one with which we are only just now beginning to grapple.
•There is a lineage that leads to today’s HOMO SAPIENS, but there are also a host of side experiments that are equally important to understand. They represent some of the most interesting chapters in human evolution.
•ORIGINS OF THE GENUS Homo
•Understanding the origins of our own genus HOMO means establishing what fossils we recognise as being the first early humans.
•Sometime before 4 million years ago we see the first evidence of the genus AUSTRALOPITHECUS. These fossils sample the kind of creature that was most likely the ancestor to the genus HOMO.
•Around 2.5 million years ago we see the first fossil evidence of species in Africa that many argue belong to our own lineage. One of these, HOMO HABILIS, almost certainly made stone tools, had a slightly larger brain than AUSTRALOPITHECUS, stood upright and regularly walked on two legs.
•Some recognise a second species, HOMO RUDOLFENSIS, about which we know even less.
•These possible human ancestors lived alongside close relatives that were almost certainly not our ancestors. These species are called PARANTHROPUS or robust australopiths – they had small brains, big jaw bones, large flat faces, and huge chewing teeth.
•They lasted for at least a million years, so whatever they were eating (which is still a mystery) they were successful in the sense that they lasted as long in the fossil record as the average mammal.
•But some researchers think that HOMO HABILIS and HOMO RUDOLFENSISare not different enough from the australopiths that preceded them to justify being included in the genus HOMO.
•They claim that the size and shape of their body and the size of their teeth and jaws was little different from that of the australopiths. This means that their locomotion and diet had not shifted far enough in the direction of pre-modern HOMO species such as HOMO ERECTUS to justify inclusion in HOMO.
•TOOL MAKING IS NOT ENOUGH
•Also, because it is becoming evident that australopiths may have been making tools earlier than HOMO HABILIS it means that tool-making can no longer be seen as the sole prerogative of HOMO.
•There is a developing consensus that the relaxation of the criteria more than 50 years ago that saw the inclusion of HOMO HABILISinto the genus HOMO needs to be reconsidered.
•Species that emerge slightly later from Africa, such as HOMO ERGASTER, fit much more clearly within what we understand by the genus HOMO. That species probably left Africa around 2 million years ago and migrated ultimately as far east as China and Indonesia where it evolved, eventually, into HOMO ERECTUS.
•A number of further migrations out of Africa probably occurred after the initial HOMO ERGASTER migration, one of which, HOMO HEIDELBERGENSIS, is considered by many palaeoanthropologists to be the ancestor of both Neanderthals (HOMO NEANDERTHALENSIS) and modern humans (HOMO SAPIENS).
•As far as we know, Neanderthals evolved outside of Africa, perhaps in response to the ice ages of Europe. Our ancestors remained in Africa where perhaps as early as 300,000 years ago, as revealed from recent redating of the Moroccan site of Jebel Irhoud, were well along in the process of evolving into modern humans.
•SO THE ORIGINS OF ‘US’
•Once we get to the origins of our own species HOMO SAPIENS we have the added advantage that we are able to now use next generation sequencing methods to recover ancient DNA (aDNA).
•As geneticists recover ancient genomes from different extinct hominin species, they are generating insights that are not possible from comparing the anatomy of the fossils alone.
•There is now fossil evidence from teeth to suggest that HOMO SAPIENS may have been in China by 120,000 years ago and in South East Asia by 67,000 years.
•The discovery of some distinctive modern human DNA within the DNA recovered from a Neanderthal fossil suggests that modest interbreeding was occurring between Neanderthals and modern humans in Central Asia by 100,000 years ago.
•Modern humans have not shared the planet with another hominin species for several tens of thousands of years. But before that, in the past 300,000 years or so, there is fossil and DNA evidence of several hominin species, including the recently reported archaic hominin HOMO NALEDI
•First and foremost there was HOMO NEANDERTHALENSIS, whose range overlapped with modern humans in the Near East. Neanderthals most likely became extinct as a result of direct competition with the more technologically sophisticated HOMO SAPIENS.
•The evidence from DNA shows that there was interbreeding between our species and pre-modern humans, including the Neanderthals and the other enigmatic hominin referred to as the Denisovans.
•We do not yet know how and when HOMO ERECTUS became extinct. It would appear that another unexpected side experiment in hominin evolution, known from the island of Flores and called HOMO FLORESIENSIS most likely became extinct sometime after 60,000 years ago.
•Indeed this hominin may represent something far more significant than simply an interesting side experiment, with many leading palaeoanthropologists arguing that the Hobbit may represent a pre-ergaster migration out of Africa.
•Even though thousands of hominin fossils have now been recovered and described there is still much work to be done.
•Was there a hominin that successfully migrated out of Africa prior to Homo ergaster? Did most of human evolution occur in Africa? Did some important transitions occur outside of Africa?
•When did Homo erectus become extinct, and was there genetic exchange between erectus, sapiens and perhaps other hominin species?
•As is often the case in science, with the recovery of additional data, in this case fossils and DNA extracted from fossils, we generate more questions than answers.
•But ultimately all of this new evidence will result in a far more sophisticated appreciation of not only our evolution, but also the evolution of our extinct fossil cousins.
•Chapter 10 : religion and odd beliefs and myths (Radicalism ) .
•The most important subject for some people.
•Definition : A religion is a set of beliefs that is passionately held by a group of people that is reflected in a world view and in expected beliefs and actions (which are often ritualized)....
•These beliefs according to some religious sects, are often linked to supernatural beings and energies and places such as the forme or the name of their God, Demons, a number of gods or spirits, heaven and hell, magic , the evil eye…..
•Religion has been a factor of the human experience throughout history, from pre-historic to modern times. The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history. Written history (the age of formal writing) is only c. 5000 years old, A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
•Let’s take a look about the Abrahamic religions :
•Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith are called Abrahamic religions because they all accept the tradition of the God (known as Yahweh in Hebrew and Allah in Arabic) that revealed himself to Abraham. Abrahamic religions share the same distinguishing features :
•all of them originated from Semitic religions in the geographical region of the Middle East,
•all of their theological traditions are to some extent influenced by the depiction of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible;
•all of them trace their roots to the patriarch Abraham.
•The Abrahamic God in this sense is the conception of God that remains a common feature of all Abrahamic religions. God is conceived of as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and as the creator of the universe. God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omni-benevolence and omnipresence. Proponents of Abrahamic faiths believe that God is also transcendent, meaning that he is outside space and outside time and therefore not subject to anything within his creation, but at the same time a personal God, involved, listening to prayer, and reacting to the actions of his creatures
•JUDAISM
•Main articles: God in Judaism, Shema Yisrael, and Tetragrammaton
•[God], the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of series, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity.
•— Maimonides, 13 principles of faith, Second Principle
•Judaism, the oldest Abrahamic religion, is based on a strict, exclusive monotheism, finding its origins in the sole veneration of Yahweh, the predecessor to the Abrahamic conception of God. This is referred to in the Torah: « Hear O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One » (Deuteronomy 6:4).
•The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical in Judaism - it’s considered akin to polytheism. God in Judaism is conceived as anthropomorphic, unique, benevolent, eternal, the creator of the universe, and the ultimate source of morality. Thus, the term God corresponds to an actual ontological reality, and is not merely a projection of the human psyche. Maimonides describes God in this fashion:
•The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being.
•Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal and able to intervene in the world, while some interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is an impersonal force or ideal rather than a being who intervenes in the world.
•And I wanna say something I’ve found through my journey os searching, the jewish people and the arab people are kind of cousins, they have many things in common , I still do know what makes some arabs hate the jews or the the opposite, I think it’s because of religion and a negative way of thinking.
•Christianity
•Further information: Diversity in early Christian theology, Great Apostasy, Son of God (Christianity), and Trinity
•Christianity originated in 1st-century Judea from a sect of apocalyptic Jewish Christians within the realm of Second Temple Judaism, and thus shares most of its beliefs about God, including his omnipotence, omniscience, his role as creator of all things, his personality, immanence, transcendence and ultimate unity, with the innovation that Jesus of Nazareth is considered to be, in one way or another, the fulfillment of ancient prophecies about the Jewish Messiah, the completion of the Law of the prophets of Israel, and/or the incarnation of God as a human being.
•Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnated Son of God, which is the main theological divergence with respect to the other Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith. Although personal salvation is implicitly stated in Judaism, personal salvation by grace and a recurring emphasis in orthodox theological beliefs is particularly emphasized in Christianity, often contrasting this with a perceived over-emphasis in law observance as stated in Jewish law, where it is contended that a belief in an intermediary between man and God is against the Noahide laws, and thus not monotheistic.
•For mainstream Christians, beliefs about God are enshrined in the doctrine of monotheistic Trinitarianism, which holds that the three persons of the trinity are distinct but all of the same indivisible essence, meaning that the Father is God, the Holy spirit is God, and the Son is God, yet there is one God as there is one indivisible essence. These mainstream Christian doctrines were largely formulated at the Council of Nicaea and are enshrined in the Nicene Creed. The Trinitarian view emphasizes that God has a will, and that God the Son has two natures, divine and human, though these are never in conflict but joined in the hypostatic union.
•MORMONISM
•Main article: God in Mormonism
•Further information: Beliefs and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
•In the belief system held by the Christian churches that adhere to the Latter Day Saint movement and most Mormon denominations, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the term God refers to Elohim (God the Father), whereas Godhead means a council of three distinct gods: Elohim (the Eternal Father), Jehovah (God the Son, Jesus Christ), and the Holy Ghost, in a Non-trinitarian conception of the Godhead.The Father and Son have perfected, material bodies, while the Holy Ghost is a spirit and does not have a body. This differs from mainstream Christian Trinitarianism; in Mormonism, the three persons are considered to be physically separate beings, or personages, but united in will and purpose. As such, the term Godhead differs from how it is used in mainstream Christianity. This description of God represents the orthodoxy of the LDS Church, established early in the 19th century.
•UNITARIANISM
•A small minority of Christians, largely coming under the heading of Unitarianism, hold Non-trinitarian conceptions of God.
•Islam
•
Main articles: Allah and God in Islam
•In Islam, God (Allah) ,
•« the God » is the supreme being, all-powerful and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer, and judge of the universe. Islam puts a heavy emphasis on the conceptualization of God as strictly singular (tawhid).He is unique (wahid) and inherently one (ahad), all-merciful and omnipotent. According to the Qur’an there are 99 Names of God (al-asma al-husna lit. meaning: « The best names ») each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of God. All these names refer to Allah, considered to be the supreme and all-comprehensive divine Arabic name.[ Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are « the Most Gracious » (al-rahim) and « the Most Merciful » (al-rahman).
•Creation and ordering of the universe is seen as an act of prime mercy for which all creatures sing his glories and bear witness to his unity and lordship. According to the Qur’an, « No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things » (Quran 6:103).
•God in Islam is not only majestic and sovereign, but also a personal God. According to the Qur’an, he is nearer to a person than that person’s jugular vein. He responds to those in need or distress whenever they call him. Above all, he guides humanity to the right way, the « straight path ».
•Muslims believe that Allah is the same God worshipped by the members of the Abrahamic religions that preceded Islam, i.e. Judaism and Christianity (29:46).However in Islam, Muslims do not believe in the divinity of Jesus as God or son of God, but instead consider him as a prophet of God and the Messiah. Islam views that God does not have any offspring or descendants, he created all things including prophets such as Jesus Christ. Most Muslims today believe that the religion of Abraham (which split into Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are of one source, which is the Almighty God.
•Baháʼí Faith
•Main article: God in the Baháʼí Faith
•Further information: Baháʼí cosmology and Baháʼí teachings
•The writings of the Baháʼí Faith describe a monotheistic, personal, inaccessible, omniscient, omnipresent, imperishable, and almighty God who is the creator of all things in the universe. The existence of God and the universe is thought to be eternal, without a beginning or end.
Religion and myths and the the misunderstanding : now let’s be realistic, did any prophet or any person talk to god or hear his/her/its/their, voice ? saw its face ? it’s all about frequencies and energies, here’s a theory and check it, humans and animals are creative, land and nature in general, what if we humans and animals and nature in general are the Integral picture of this creative energy (God), it completes itself like puzzles ?
Anyways, those prophetes were 80% wise, educated , but made some mistakes,let’s take a look of islam :
It’s almost everything myth in it , for example heaven and hell, and the the point that got me is the 10 PROMISED PARADISE ( Friends of the prophet Muhamed known as Sahaba ), actaully these people were under muhamed’s influance and the prophet muhamed noticed that , their actions, he noticed that they’re living their heaven, they were living in peace perhaps, even the definition of religion for the prophet muhamed and his point of view was realistic,it was completely different of nowadays believers, believe or not i won’t force you, you’re free, now there’s stupid jihadists and monsters,he made myths and people misunderstood the point,
Even when he said you have your religion and i have mine, here you can understand lots of things of this massive wave , your only duties are to know yourself and develope it, help , live your life to the fullest,enjoy, give a hand of the world’s evolution, be responsible, make changes, make justice , discover your own message of exicting , meditate and see the greatness of the creator or that creative energy or whatever,learn more, control yourself , make real great friends, and be yourself and brave no matter what.
•Though transcendent and inaccessible directly,438–446 God is nevertheless seen as conscious of the creation,438–446 with a will and purpose that is expressed through messengers recognized in the Baháʼí Faith as the Manifestations of God:106 (all the Jewish prophets, Zoroaster, Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb, and ultimately Baháʼu’lláh). 438–446 The purpose of the creation is for the created to have the capacity to know and love its creator,111 through such methods as prayer, reflection, and being of service to humankind, God communicates his will and purpose to humanity through his intermediaries, the prophets and messengers who have founded World’s religions from the beginning of humankind up to the present day,107–108 ,438–446 and will continue to do so in the future.438–446
•The Manifestations of God reflect divine attributes, which are creations of God made for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment, onto the physical plane of existence. In the Baháʼí view, all physical beings reflect at least one of these attributes, and the human soul can potentially reflect all of them. The Baháʼí conception of God rejects all pantheistic, anthropomorphic, and incarnationist beliefs about God.
•NOTES
o. While the Semitic god El is indeed the most ancient predecessor to the Abrahamic God, this specifically refers to the ancient ideas Yahweh once encompassed in Ancient Hebrew religion, such as being a storm- and war-god, living on mountains, or controlling the weather. Thus, in this page’s context, « Yahweh » is used to refer to the ancient idea of the Abrahamic God, and should not be referenced when describing his later worship in today’s Abrahamic religions.
Doubt of God , is the first step of a true belief, not the Stupid Inherited beliefs ,
Or Brain washed’s conclusions reality and work are the answers, and it’s 180° different.
Don’t fear God, love it.
We All experience defficult moments, taugh times, where you need a strong and a loyal source of power and energy to hold , that’s the right frequency, all of that happens inside your brain.
But radicalism is Bullsh**.
•Timeline of religion :
•PREHISTORY
•MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC (200,000–50,000 BCE)
•Despite claims by some researchers of bear worship, belief in an afterlife, and other rituals, the archaeological evidence does not support the presence of religious practices by modern humans or Neanderthals during this period.
•100,000 BCE
oEarliest known human burial in the Middle East.
•70,000–35,000 BCE
oNeanderthal burials take place in areas of Europe and the Middle East.
o50TH TO 11TH MILLENNIUM BCE
o40,000 BCE
oThe remains of one of the earliest known anatomically modern humans to be discovered cremated, was buried near Lake Mungo.
•38,000 BCE
oThe Aurignacian Löwenmensch figurine, the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general, was made. The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity.
•35,000–26,000 BCE
oNeanderthal burials are absent from the archaeological record. This roughly coincides with the appearance of Homo sapiens in Europe and decline of the Neanderthals ; individual skulls and/or long bones began appearing, heavily stained with red ochre and separately buried. This practice may be the origin of sacred relics. The oldest discovered « Venus figurines » appeared in graves. Some were deliberately broken or repeatedly stabbed, possibly representing the murders of the men with whom they were buried,or owing to some other unknown social dynamic.
•25,000–21,000 BCE
oClear examples of burials are present in Iberia, Wales, and eastern Europe. These, too, incorporate the heavy use of red ochre. Additionally, various objects were included in the graves (e.g. periwinkle shells, weighted clothing, dolls, possible drumsticks, mammoth ivory beads, fox teeth pendants, panoply of ivory artifacts, « baton » antlers, flint blades etc.).
•13,000–8,000 BCE
oNoticeable burial activity resumed. Prior mortuary activity had either taken a less obvious form or contemporaries retained some of their burial knowledge in the absence of such activity. Dozens of men, women, and children were being buried in the same caves which were used for burials 10,000 years beforehand. All these graves are delineated by the cave walls and large limestone blocks. The burials share a number of characteristics (such as use of ochre, and shell and mammoth ivory jewellery) that go back thousands of years. Some burials were double, comprising an adult male with a juvenile male buried by his side. They were now beginning to take on the form of modern cemeteries. Old burials were commonly re-dug and moved to make way for new ones, with the older bones often being gathered and cached together. Large stones may have acted as grave markers. Pairs of ochred antlers were sometimes mounted on poles within the cave; this is compared to the modern practice of leaving flowers at a grave.
o10TH TO 6TH MILLENNIUM BCE
o9130–7370 BCE
oThis was the apparent period of use of Göbekli Tepe, one of the oldest human-made sites of worship yet discovered; evidence of similar usage has also been found in another nearby site, Nevalı Çori.
o7500–5700 BCE
oThe settlements of Catalhoyuk developed as a likely spiritual center of Anatolia. Possibly practicing worship in communal shrines, its inhabitants left behind numerous clay figurines and impressions of phallic, feminine, and hunting scenes.
•ANCIENT ERA
•c.3750 BCE
oThe Proto-Semitic people emerged from a generally accepted urheimat in the Arabian Peninsula and Levant. The Proto-Semitic people would migrate throughout the Near East into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
•3300–1300 BCE
•The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system and multi-storeyed houses.
•3200–3100 BCE
•Newgrange, the 250,000 ton (226,796.2 tonne) passage tomb aligned to the winter solstice in Ireland, was built.
•3100 BCE
•The initial form of Stonehenge was completed. The circular bank and ditch enclosure, about 110 metres (360 ft) across, may have been completed with a timber circle.
•3000 BCE
•Sumerian Cuneiform emerged from the proto-literate Uruk period, allowing the codification of beliefs and creation of detailed historical religious records.
•The second phase of Stonehenge was completed and appeared to function as the first enclosed cremation cemetery in the British Isles.
•2635–2610 BCE
•The oldest surviving Egyptian Pyramid was commissioned by Pharaoh Djoser.
•2600 BCE
•Stonehenge began to take on its final form. The wooden posts were replaced with bluestone. It began taking on an increasingly complex setup (including an altar, a portal, station stones, etc.) and shows consideration of solar alignments.
•2560 BCE
•This is the approximate time accepted as the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest pyramid of the Giza Plateau.
•2494–2345 BCE
•The first of the oldest surviving religious texts, the Pyramid Texts, was composed in Ancient Egypt.
•2200 BCE
•The Minoan Civilization developed in Crete. Citizens worshipped a variety of goddesses.
•2150–2000 BCE
•The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh—originally titled He who Saw the Deep (Sha naqba īmuru) or Surpassing All Other Kings (Shūtur eli sharrī)—were written.
•1700–1100 BCE
•The oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed. This is the first mention of Rudra, a fearsome form of Shiva as the supreme god.
•1600 BCE
•The ancient development of Stonehenge came to an end.
•1500 BCE
•The Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
•1351 or 1353 BCE
•The reign of Akhenaten, sometimes credited with starting the earliest known recorded monotheistic religion, in Ancient Egypt.
•1300–1000 BCE
•The « standard » Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni.
•1250–600 BCE
•The Upanishads (Vedic texts) were composed, containing the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
•1200 BCE
•The Greek Dark Age began.
•1200 BCE
•The Olmecs built the earliest pyramids and temples in Central America.
•877–777 BCE
•The life of Parshvanatha, 23rd Tirthankara of Jainism.
•800 BCE
•The Greek Dark Age ends.
•8th to 6th centuries BCE
•The Chandogya Upanishad is compiled, significant for containing the earliest to date mention of Krishna. Verse 3.17.6 mentions Krishna Devakiputra (Sanskrit: कृष्णाय देवकीपुत्रा) as a student of the sage Ghora Angirasa. (Rig Veda indirectly mentions Krishna.)
•6th to 5th centuries BCE
•The first five books of the Jewish Tanakh, the Torah (Hebrew: תורה), are probably compiled.
•6th century BCE
•Possible start of Zoroastrianism; however some date Zarathustra closer to 1000 BCE. Zoroastrianism flourished under the Persian emperors known as the Achaemenids. The emperors Darius (ruled 522–486 B.C.E.) and Xerxes (ruled 486–465 B.C.E.) made it the official religion of their empire.
•600–500 BCE
•The earliest Confucian writing, Shu Ching, incorporates ideas of harmony and heaven.
•599–527 BCE
•The life of Mahavira, 24th and last Tirthankara of Jainism.
•c.563/480–c.483/400 BCE,
•Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism was born.
•551 BCE
•Confucius, founder of Confucianism, was born.
•399 BCE
•Socrates was tried for impiety.
•369–372 BCE
•Birth of Mencius and Zhuang Zhou
•300 BCE
•The oldest known version of the Tao Te Ching was written on bamboo tablets.
•300 BCE
•Theravada Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka by the Venerable Mahinda.
•c.250 BCE
•The Third Buddhist council was convened by Ashoka. Ashoka sends Buddhist missionaries to faraway countries, such as China, mainland Southeast Asia, Malay kingdoms, and Hellenistic kingdoms.
•140 BCE
•The earliest grammar of Sanskrit literature was composed by Pāṇini.
•100 BCE–500 CE
•The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, constituting the foundational texts of Yoga, were composed.
•COMMON ERA
•1ST TO 5TH CENTURIES
•c.4 BCE–c.30/33 CE
oThe life of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity.
•c.27-31 CE
oThe death of John the Baptist.
o50–62
oThe first Christian Council was convened in Jerusalem.
•70
oThe Siege of Jerusalem, the Destruction of the Temple, and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism.
•220
oManichaean Gnosticism was formed by the prophet Mani.
•250
oSome of the oldest parts of the Ginza Rba, a core text of Mandaean Gnosticism, were written.
•250–900
oClassic Mayan step pyramids were constructed.
o313
oThe Edict of Milan decreed religious toleration in the Roman empire.
o325
oThe first ecumenical council (the Council of Nicaea) was convened to attain a consensus on doctrine through an assembly representing all Christendom. It established the original Nicene Creed and fixed the date of Easter. It also confirmed the primacy of the Sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, and granted the See of Jerusalem a position of honour.
•c.350
oThe oldest record of the complete biblical texts (the Codex Sinaiticus) survives in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, dating to the 4th century CE.
•380
oTheodosius I declared Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
•381
oThe second ecumenical council (the First Council of Constantinople) reaffirmed and revised the Nicene Creed, repudiating Arianism and Pneumatomachi.
•381–391
oTheodosius proscribed paganism within the Roman Empire.
o393
oA council of early Christian bishops listed and approved a biblical canon for the first time at the Synod of Hippo.
•MIDDLE AGES (5TH TO 15TH CENTURIES)
•5TH TO 10TH CENTURIES
•405
oSt. Jerome completed the Vulgate, the first Latin translation of the Bible.
•410
oThe Western Roman Empire began to decline, signalling the onset of the Dark Ages.
o424
oThe Church of the East in Sassanian Empire (Persia) formally separated from the See of Antioch and proclaimed full ecclesiastical independence.
•431
oThe third ecumenical council (the First Council of Ephesus) was convened as a result of the controversial teachings of Nestorius of Constantinople. It repudiated Nestorianism, proclaimed the Virgin Mary as the Theotokos (the God-bearer or Mother of God). It also repudiated Pelagianism and again reaffirmed the Nicene Creed.
•449
oThe Second Council of Ephesus declared support for Eutyches and attacked his opponents. Originally convened as an ecumenical council, its ecumenical nature was rejected by the Chalcedonians, who denounced the council as latrocinium.
•451
oThe fourth ecumenical council (the Council of Chalcedon) rejected the Eutychian doctrine of monophysitism, adopting instead the Chalcedonian Creed. It reinstated those deposed in 449, deposed Dioscorus of Alexandria and elevated the bishoprics of Constantinople and Jerusalem to the status of patriarchates.
•451
oThe Oriental Orthodox Church rejected the christological view put forth by the Council of Chalcedon and was excommunicated.
o480–547
oBenedict of Nursia wrote his Rule, laying the foundation of Western Christian monasticism.
o553
oThe fifth ecumenical council (the Second Council of Constantinople) repudiated the Three Chapters as Nestorian and condemned Origen of Alexandria.
•570–632
oThe life of Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh
•632–661
oThe Rashidun Caliphate heralded the Arab conquest of Persia, Egypt and Iraq, bringing Islam to those regions.
•650
oThe verses of the Qur’an were compiled in the form of a book in the era of Uthman, the third Caliph of Islam.
•661–750
oThe Umayyad Caliphate brought the Arab conquest of North Africa, Spain and Central Asia, marking the greatest extent of the Arab conquests and bringing Islam to those regions.
o680–681
oThe sixth ecumenical council (the Third Council of Constantinople) rejected Monothelitism and Monoenergism.
oc.680
oThe division between Sunni and Shiites Muslims developed.
•692
oThe Quinisext Council (also known as the Council in Trullo), an amendment to the 5th and 6th ecumenical councils, established the Pentarchy.
•712
oKojiki, the oldest Shinto text, was written.
•716–936
oThe migration of Zoroastrian (Parsi) communities from Persia to India began, caused by Muslim conquest of their lands and the ensuing persecution.
•754
oThe latrocinium Council of Hieria supported iconoclasm.
•787
oThe seventh ecumenical council (the Second Council of Nicaea) restored the veneration of icons and denounced iconoclasm.
•788–820
oThe life of Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara, who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedānta.
•c.850
oThe oldest extant manuscripts of the vocalized Masoretic text, upon which modern editions are based, date to 9th century CE.
•11TH TO 15TH CENTURIES
•c.1052–c.1135
oThe life of Milarepa, one of most famous yogis and poets of Tibetan Buddhism.
•1054
oThe Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches was formalised.
o1095–1099
oThe First Crusade led to the capture of Jerusalem.
•1107–1110
oSigurd I of Norway led the Norwegian Crusade against Muslims in Spain, the Balearic Islands and in Palestine.
•1147–1149
oThe Second Crusade was waged in response to the fall of the County of Edessa.
•1189–1192
oIn the Third Crusade European leaders attempted to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin.
•1202–1204
oThe Fourth Crusade, originally intended to recapture Jerusalem, instead led to the sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.
o1206
oThe Delhi Sultanate was established.
o1209–1229
oThe Albigensian Crusade was conducted to eliminate Catharism in Occitania, Europe.
•1217–1221
oWith the Fifth Crusade, Christian leaders again attempted (but failed) to recapture Jerusalem.
•1222–1282
oThe life of Nichiren Daishonin, the Buddha of the Latter Day of the Law and founder of Nichiren Buddhism.. Based at the Nichiren Shoshu Head Temple Taisekiji (Japan), this branch of Buddhism teaches the importance of chanting the mantra Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō.
•1228–1229
oThe Sixth Crusade won control of large areas of the Holy Land for Christian rulers, more through diplomacy than through fighting.
•1229
oThe Codex Gigas was completed by Herman the Recluse in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice near Chrudim.
o1244
oJerusalem was sacked again, instigating the Seventh Crusade.
o1270
oThe Eighth Crusade was launched by Louis IX of France but largely petered out when Louis died shortly after reaching Tunis.
•1271–1272
oThe Ninth Crusade failed.
•1320
oPope John XXII laid the groundwork for future witch-hunts with the formalisation of the persecution of witchcraft.
•1378–1417
oThe Roman Catholic Church split during the Western Schism.
•1415
oThe death of Jan Hus who is considered as the first reformer of the Western Christianity. This event is often considered as the beginning of the Reformation.
•1469–1539
oThe life of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism.
•1484
oPope Innocent VIII marked the beginning of the classical European witch-hunts with his papal bull Summis desiderantes.
•1486–1534
oChaitanya Mahaprabhu popularised the chanting of the Hare Krishna and composed the Siksastakam (eight devotional prayers) in Sanskrit. His followers, Gaudiya Vaishnavas, revere him as a spiritual reformer, a Hindu revivalist and an avatar of Krishna.
•EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ERAS
•16TH CENTURY
•1500
oIn the Spanish Empire, Catholicism was spread and encouraged through such institutions as the missions and the Inquisition.
•1517
oMartin Luther posted The Ninety-Five Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, launching the Protestant Reformation.
o1526
oAfrican religious systems were introduced to the Americas, with the commencement of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
•1534
oHenry VIII separated the English Church from Rome and made himself Supreme Head of the Church of England.
•1562
oThe Massacre of Vassy sparked the first of a series of French Wars of Religion.
•17TH CENTURY
•1699
oGuru Gobind Singh Ji created the Khalsa in Sikhism.
•18TH CENTURY
•1708
oGuru Gobind Singh Ji, the last Sikh guru, died after instituting the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, as the eternal Guru.
o1770
oBaron d’Holbach published The System of Nature said to be the first positive, unambiguous statement of atheism in the West.
o1781
oGhanshyam, later known as Sahajanand Swami/Swaminarayan, was born in Chhapaiya at the house of Dharmadev and Bhaktimata.
•1789–1799
oIn the Dechristianisation of France the Revolutionary Government confiscated Church properties, banned monastic vows and, with the passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, removed control of the Church from the Pope and subordinated it as a department of the Government. The Republic also replaced the traditional Gregorian Calendar and abolished Christian holidays.
•c.1790–1840
oThe Second Great Awakening, a Protestant religious revival in the United States.
•1791
oFreedom of religion, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, was added as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, forming an early and influential secular government.
•19TH CENTURY
•1801
oThe French Revolutionary Government and Pope Pius VII entered into the Concordat of 1801. While Roman Catholicism regained some powers and became recognized as « the religion of the great majority of the French », it was not afforded the latitude it had enjoyed prior to the Revolution and was not re-established as the official state religion. The Church relinquished all claims to estate seized after 1790, the clergy was state salaried and was obliged to swear allegiance to the State. Religious freedom was restored.
•1819–1850
oThe life of Siyyid ‘Alí Muḥammad Shírází (Persian: better known as the Báb, the founder of Bábism.
o1817–1892
oThe life of Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith.
•1823
oThe Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith claimed to see the Angel Moroni and prophesied of what is now the Book of Mormon.
•1830s
oAdventism was started by William Miller in the United States.
•1830
oThe Church of Christ was founded by Joseph Smith on 6 April – initiating the Latter Day Saint restorationist movement.
•1835–1908
oThe life of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the messianic Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam.
o1836–1886
oThe life of Ramakrishna, saint and mystic of Bengal.
o1844
oJoseph Smith was murdered, reportedly by John C. Elliott, on 27 June, resulting in a succession crisis in the Latter Day Saint movement.
•1857
oFirst great popular uprising against British colonial government in India. Also called Sepoy Mutiny.
•1875
oThe Theosophical Society was formed in New York City by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others.
•1879
oChristian Science was granted its charter in Boston, Massachusetts.
•1881
oZion’s Watch Tower Tract Society was formed by Charles Taze Russell, initiating the Bible Student movement.
o1889
oThe Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was established.
o1893
oSwami Vivekananda’s first speech at The Parliament of World Religions, Chicago, brought the ancient philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the western world.
•1899
oAradia (aka The Gospel of the Witches), one of the earliest books describing post witchhunt European religious Witchcraft, was published by Charles Godfrey Leland.
•20TH CENTURY
•1901
oThe incorporation of the Spiritualists’ National Union legally representing Spiritualism in the United Kingdom.
•1904
oThelema was founded by Aleister Crowley.
o1905
oIn France the law on the Separation of the Churches and the State was passed, officially establishing state secularism and putting an end to the funding of religious groups by the state.
oBecoming a place of pilgrimage for neo-druids and other pagans, the Ancient Order of Druids organised the first recorded reconstructionist ceremony in Stonehenge.
•1907
oFormation of BAPS (Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha). A major sect in the Swaminarayan Sampradaya By Shastriji Maharaj
•1908
oThe Khalifatul Masih was established in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as the « Second Manifestation of God’s Power ».
•1913
oThe Moorish Science Temple of America is founded in Newark, New Jersey.
o1917
oThe October Revolution in Russia led to the annexation of all church properties and subsequent religious suppression.
o1920
oThe Self Realization Fellowship Church of all Religions with its headquarters in Los Angeles, CA, was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda.
•1922-1991
oPersecution of Christians in the Soviet Union. The total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million.
•1926
oCao Dai founded.
•1929
oThe Cristero War, fought between the secular government and religious Christian rebels in Mexico, ended.
•1930
oThe Rastafari movement began following the coronation of Haile Selassie I as Emperor of Ethiopia.
oAfter previously failing to claim the leadership of the Moorish Science Temple of America, Wallace Fard Muhammad creates the Nation of Islam in Detroit, Michigan.
o1932
oA neo-Hindu religious movement, the Brahma Kumaris or « Daughters of Brahma », started. Its origin can be traced to the group « Om Mandali », founded by Lekhraj Kripalani (1884–1969).
•1931
oJehovah’s Witnesses emerged from the Bible Student movement under the influence of Joseph Franklin Rutherford.
•1939–1945
oMillions of Jews were relocated and murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
•1947
oFirst nation in the name of Islam was created called Pakistan. British India was partitioned into the Islamic nation of Pakistan and the secular nation of India with a Hindu majority.
•1948
oThe modern state of Israel was established as a homeland for the Jews.
•1954
oThe Church of Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard.
oWicca was publicised by Gerald Gardner.
•1956
oNavayana Buddhism (Neo-Buddhism) was founded by B. R. Ambedkar, initially attracting some 380,000 Dalit converts from Hinduism.
•1959
oThe 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet amidst unrest and established an exile community in India.
o1960s
oVarious Neopagan and New Age movements gained momentum.
•1961
oUnitarian Universalism was formed from the merger of Unitarianism and Universalism.[
•1962
oThe Church of All Worlds, the first American neo-pagan church, was formed by a group including Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, and Richard Lance Christie.
•1962–1965
oThe Second Vatican Council was convened.
•1965
oSrila Prabhupada established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and introduced translations of the Bhagavad-Gita and Vedic Scriptures in mass production all over the world.
o1966
oThe Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey on Walpurgisnacht.
o1972–1984
oThe Stonehenge free festivals started.
•1972–2004
oGermanic Neopaganism (aka Heathenism, Heathenry, Ásatrú, Odinism, Forn Siðr, Vor Siðr, and Theodism) began to experience a second wave of revival.
•1973
oClaude Vorilhon established the Raëlian Movement and changed his name to Raël following a purported extraterrestrial encounter in December 1973.
•1975
oThe Temple of Set was founded in Santa Barbara, California.
•1979
oThe Iranian Revolution resulted in the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran.
o1981
oThe Stregherian revival continued. « The Book of the Holy Strega » and « The Book of Ways » Volume I & II were published.
o1984
oOperation Blue Star in the holiest site of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, led to Anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and adjoining regions, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
•1985
oThe Battle of the Beanfield forced an end to the Stonehenge free festivals.
•1989
oFollowing the revolutions of 1989, the overthrow of many Soviet-style states allowed a resurgence in open religious practice in many Eastern Europeancountries.[55]
•1990s
oReconstructionist Pagan movements (Celtic, Hellenic, Roman, Slavic, Baltic, Finnish, etc.) proliferate throughout Europe.
•1993
oThe European Council convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, agreed to the Copenhagen Criteria, requiring religious freedom within all members and prospective members of the European Union.
•1995
oFirst Traditional Hindu Mandir outside of India created in London by Pramukh Swami Maharaj (1921-2016) Guru of BAPS.
•1998
oThe Strega Arician Tradition was founded.
•21ST CENTURY
•2006
oSectarian rivalries exploded in Iraq between Sunni and Shia Muslims, with each side targeting the other in terrorist acts, and bombings of mosques and shrines.
•2008
oNepal, the world’s only Hindu Kingdom, was declared a secular state by its Constituent Assembly after declaring the state a Republic on 28 May 2008.
o2009
oThe Church of Scientology in France was fined €600,000 and several of its leaders were fined and imprisoned for defrauding new recruits of their savings. The state failed to disband the church owing to legal changes occurring over the same time period.
•2011
oCivil war broke out in Syria over domestic political issues. The country soon split along sectarian lines between Sunni, Alawite and Shiite Muslims.War crimes and acts of genocide were committed by both parties as religious leaders on each side condemned the other as heretics.The Syrian civil war soon became a battleground for regional sectarian unrest, as fighters joined the fight from as far away as North America and Europe, as well as Iran and the Arab states.
•2013
oThe Satanic Temple was founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry (pseudonyms).
•2014
oA supposed Islamic Caliphate was established by the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in regions of war torn Syria and Iraq, drawing global support from radical Sunni Muslims.This was a modern-day attempt to re-establish Islamic self-rule in accordance with strict adherence to Shariah-Islamic religious law.In the wake of the Syrian civil war, Islamic extremists targeted the indigenous Arab Christian communities. In acts of genocide, numerous ancient Christian and Yazidi communities were evicted and threatened with death by various Muslim Sunni fighter groups.After ISIS terrorist forces infiltrated and took over large parts of northern Iraq from Syria, many ancient Christian and Yazidi enclaves were destroyed.
•and for this subject I blame some people of the Azhar and some people from the saudie arabia for telling unconscious people to go jihad and manipulating a category of people and forgering the whole religion of islam. And there are proves , you can search.
•REAL SERIOUS THINGR
•ELIGIOUS OCD: SEPARATING SHAME FROM SPIRITUALITY
•Religious obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of OCD that causes a person obsess over spiritual fears. It often involves religious compulsions such as excessive prayer. For example, a person might worry they are going to Hell and repeat a mantra to cope with this fear. Religious OCD is also called “scrupulosity.”
•Religious forms of OCD are fairly common. In the United States, a 2002 study suggested 33% of people with OCD have religious obsessions or compulsions. More religious countries such as Egypt seem to have even higher rates of scrupulosity, with up to 60% of OCD cases involving religious themes.
•Religious OCD can turn religious faith, which is often a source of comfort and community, into a trigger for anxiety. The emotional pain can feel overwhelming, but scrupulosity is highly treatable. Therapy is a key component of effective treatment.
- Is religion making you ILL and UNREAL ?
‘ Yeni Adewoye’s article ‘Having faith in mind’ (April 2016) and Abby Midgely’s advice to seek ‘biblical’ counselling, (Letters, July 2016) has prompted me to give another perspective ‘.
•I was indoctrinated into the Christian religion from babyhood, but I never, managed to get it – the ‘belief’ thing. I spent many years trying very hard to believe, everyone around me seemingly having no problem in doing so. The resulting cognitive dissonance caused me to become depressed to the point of suicidal thoughts several times throughout my life. My church’s response was to say that there was some kind of block put on my ‘relationship with God’ because I (or my parents – the ‘sins of the fathers’) had committed some ‘sin’ which separated me from ‘God’. Other explanations for my disbelief and non-acceptance of doctrine were that I was ‘possessed of a demon’ or even being ‘controlled by the devil’! The kinder people suggested I ‘hand my depression over to Jesus’ to deal with… which, since I didn’t believe he was available to hear me, struck me as somewhat absurd!
•Every Sunday, church reiterated and (continues to reiterate today) that only those who believe will ‘inherit the kingdom’ and be ‘rewarded in heaven with eternal life’. I then read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. It was the most liberating experience of my life. Someone had actually dared to question religion, something I had never been able to contemplate before. This freed me from my guilt. I realised compassion, empathy, altruism and kindness are not dependent upon belief in a god and that what one does in this life is what matters, not what one believes.
•I trained as a psychiatric nurse and witnessed many instances of delusions and hallucinations disappearing once medication and a safe non-threatening environment had taken effect. I also witnessed friends who were children of believers and church leaders who, finding themselves unable to take up the family religion were emotionally blackmailed and socially restrained (any contact with outside groups of non-believers was disallowed), their alcoholism or drug addiction, depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia being attributed to religious causes. ‘Treatments’ included – casting-out of demons, begging forgiveness, laying-on of hands. prayer and spiritual healing, right here, in 21st-century England, in a church near you. Sufferers are also pressured not to seek non-Christian intervention.
•It struck me that religious belief is indeed (as Mr Dawkins called it) some kind of ‘delusional’ state. I have read that brain structure, active neural networks and their functioning differs in believers and non- believers. Believers essentially operate under an alternative reality to non- believers.
•To anyone who was born with, or who has acquired a brain physically incapable of ‘belief’ or ‘faith’, I suggest that abandoning religion altogether and seeking help from trained professionals in the real world is a far healthier solution.
•WHAT IS RELIGIOUS OCD?
•In religious OCD, a person has persistent negative or anxious thoughts about their spiritual life. These obsessions often interfere with daily functioning. Individuals may be unable to suppress or ignore these thoughts.
•Some examples of religious obsessions include:
•Fear of not having enough faith.
•Fear of going to Hell.
•Fear of being unclean or contaminated according to the rules of one’s religion.
•Fear of committing immoral behavior.
•Compulsions are behaviors people with OCD adopt to cope with their obsessions. They are often repetitive, time-consuming activities that the person does not enjoy. When a person cannot engage in their compulsions, their anxiety may rapidly escalate. Compulsions in religious OCD may or may not have religious themes.
•Examples of religious compulsions include:
•Going to religious services much more often than is typical in one’s religion.
•Seeking continual reassurance from religious authorities.
•Performing acts of extreme self-denial or self-sacrifice.
•Obsessive prayer, repetition of mantras, or cleansing rituals. (For example, a person might repeat a prayer over and over until they say it exactly right.)
•Unlike typical religious activity, spiritual compulsions are often motivated more by fear than faith. In many cases, people recognize that indulging in a compulsion won’t prevent their fears from becoming reality. Yet they may believe these compulsions are the only way to alleviate their anxiety.
•WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCRUPULOSITY AND TYPICAL RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR?
•Like the rest of the population, many people with OCD hold religious attitudes. It is common even for people without OCD to want to please God or religious authorities. So it can be difficult to distinguish typical religious attitudes from religious OCD.
•Scrupulosity can affect members of any religious faith. The problem is anxiety, not religion.In general, religious behavior is considered compulsive if it doesn’t fit the cultural context. For example, a person may do cleansing rituals every day when their religion only mandates these rituals every week. Different communities of the same faith can have distinct expectations about religious behavior. The same actions may be typical in one place but considered excessive in another.
•Another hallmark of religious OCD is that it undermines a person’s quality of life. It often causes extreme anxiety, guilt, and shame. A person may engage in rituals to the extent that they neglect work, school, or family obligations.
•Scrupulosity can also interfere with one’s religious practices. An individual may focus so much on rules about cleanliness that they neglect other rituals. They may avoid attending religious ceremonies for fear of accidentally committing blasphemy. They may also believe other members of the faith do not take scripture seriously enough and feel isolated from their community as a result.
•WHAT CAUSES RELIGIOUS OCD?
•Religious OCD is not a distinct diagnosis. It is a specific manifestation of OCD. Thus, people with religious OCD may also have non-religious forms of OCD. Some people with religious OCD find their compulsions and obsessions change over time.
•Like other types of OCD, the causes of religious OCD are not fully understood. Research suggests brains affected by OCD may have an imbalance of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This could be due to genetic factors, environmental factors, or a combination of the two. For example, a person with a family history of OCD might be more genetically vulnerable to the diagnosis. When something in the environment triggers their anxiety, OCD may appear.
•A person’s obsessions may be more likely to have spiritual themes if:
•They live in a community in which religion is a large part of one’s identity and social life.
•They assign moral importance to fleeting religious doubts.
•They believe that God will harshly punish their religious or moral mistakes.
•It’s important to note that religion alone will not cause OCD to appear. Scrupulosity can affect members of any religious faith. The problem is anxiety, not religion. Even if a person becomes an atheist or abandons their religion, they will still have OCD (The theme of their obsessions and compulsions may change though.).
•THERAPY FOR RELIGIOUS OCD
•Therapy is often indispensable to the treatment of OCD. In therapy, a person can learn to manage their anxiety in ways that don’t undermine their quality of life. A therapist will not require a person to give up their faith – they only treat a person’s anxiety about said faith. Several types of therapy can be helpful in the treatment of religious OCD:
•Exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP). In ERP, a person is exposed to their fear and then prevented from doing their compulsion. For example, a person may be asked to imagine that God is angry with them. Then, the therapist will help the person calm down as they experience anxiety.
•ERP can help individuals learn to tolerate religious anxiety. Over time, a person can learn to accept uncertainty and feel less pressure to do their compulsions.
•Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This type of therapy can help with many forms of anxiety, including anxiety related to OCD. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps people detect, understand, and push back against automatic negative thoughts. For example, a Jewish person who fears they have accidentally eaten pork could be asked to assess the likelihood that meat was in their vegetarian salad.
•CBT may be more helpful when one worries about concrete actions, such as saying a prayer wrong. CBT is generally less effective in addressing intangible fears, such as being destined for Hell. Due to the subjective nature of faith, debating the “logic” of religious beliefs may alienate the person in therapy.
•Pastoral Counseling. Some people may find it easier to trust a therapist who shares their faith (especially when said faith is marginalized). Pastoral counseling incorporates spiritual elements such as scripture study or prayer. It can be especially helpful for people who worry that treatment means they must give up their religion.
•Family Therapy: When religious OCD undermines family life, family counseling can help. If the affected individual is a young child, a therapist may use techniques suitable for their age. When religious OCD threatens a marriage, couples counseling can also help.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER
•(causes, symptoms, diagnosis)
•WHAT IS SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER ?
•
Schizotypal personality disorder is one of a group of conditions informally called « eccentric » personality disorders. People who have these disorders often seem odd or peculiar to others. They also may show unusual thinking patterns and behaviors.
•What are personality disorders?
•People with personality disorders have long-standing patterns of thinking and acting that differ from what society considers usual or normal. Their rigid personality traits can cause problems and interfere with many areas of life, including social and work. People with significant personality disorders generally also have poor coping skills and trouble forming healthy relationships.
•Unlike people with anxiety disorders, who know that they have a problem but can’t control it, people with personality disorders generally are not aware that they have a problem and do not believe that they have anything to control.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER SYMPTOMS
•People with schizotypal personality disorder have odd behavior, speech patterns, thoughts, and perceptions. Other people often describe them as strange or eccentric. People who have this disorder may also:
•Dress, speak, or act in an odd or unusual way
•Be suspicious and paranoid
•Be uncomfortable or anxious in social situations due to their distrust of others
•Have few friends
•Be very uncomfortable with intimacy
•Tend to misinterpret reality or to have distorted perceptions (for example, mistaking noises for voices)
•Have odd beliefs or magical thinking (for example, being overly superstitious or thinking of themselves as psychic)
•Be preoccupied with fantasy and daydreaming
•Tend to be stiff and awkward when relating to others
•Come across as emotionally distant, aloof, or cold
•Have limited emotional responses or seem “flat”
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER VS. SCHIZOPHRENIA
•People with schizotypal personality disorder may have odd beliefs or superstitions. They have trouble forming close relationships and tend to distort reality. In this way, schizotypal personality disorder can seem like a mild form of schizophrenia, a serious brain disorder that distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, perceives reality, and relates to others.
•People who have schizophrenia are disconnected from reality. They may have delusions and see or hear things that aren’t there (hallucinations). But people who have schizotypal personality disorder don’t.
•In rare cases, people with schizotypal personality disorder may go on to develop schizophrenia.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER CAUSES
•Your genes may play a role in schizotypal personality disorder. It’s more common in relatives of people with schizophrenia and usually starts in early adulthood. A person’s temperament, reactions to life events, relationships, and coping strategies probably all have something to do with how their personality develops during childhood and adolescence.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER DIAGNOSIS
•If you have symptoms, your doctor will ask about your medical history and may do a physical exam. There are no lab tests to diagnose personality disorders, but your doctor might use other tests to rule out physical illness as the cause of the symptoms.
•They might recommend that you see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, health care professionals who are trained to diagnose and treat mental illnesses. Psychiatrists and psychologists use special interview and assessment tools to diagnose personality disorders.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER TREATMENT
•People with schizotypal personality disorder rarely get treatment for the disorder itself. When they do go to the doctor, it’s often for a related disorder, such as depression or anxiety. Your treatment may include:
•Psychotherapy
•Psychotherapy—a form of counseling—is the most common treatment. The symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder could make it hard to begin a relationship with a therapist. But over time, you and your doctor can set common goals and work toward them.
•The aim of therapy is to help you change your relationship styles, expectations, coping patterns, and habits of thinking and behavior. People with this disorder can often learn to realize when they are distorting reality.
•Psychotherapy may include:
•Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which shows you how other people may see your behavior and helps you manage anxiety and improve your social skills.
•Supportive therapy. This teaches you how to handle negative emotions or thoughts, how to trust people, and how to build relationships.
•Supportive-expressive therapy. This helps you get rid of negative biases about relationships. You’ll open up about your thoughts, feelings, and concerns.
•Family therapy. Treatment works best when family members are involved and supportive.
•Medication
•People with schizotypal personality disorder who also have another disorder, such as anxiety or depression, might take medication. But it usually isn’t the main treatment for personality disorders.
•Your doctor could prescribe:
•Antipsychotics such as aripiprazole (Abilify, Aristada), olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), or risperidone (Risperdal)
•Stimulants like methylphenidate (Concerta, Ritalin)
•The ADHD drug guanfacine (Intuniv, Tenex)
•Benzodiazepines such as clonazepam (Klonopin)
•Gabapentin (Gralise, Neurontin), which treats seizures
•In some cases, especially during a period of crisis or severe stress, you might have severe symptoms and need to stay in the hospital briefly.
•Lifestyle management
•Things in your daily life that may help you manage schizotypal personality disorder symptoms include:
•Healthy relationships with friends and family
•A regular schedule with plenty of sleep and exercise
•Taking your medications as directed
•Opportunities to meet goals or make achievements at school, at work, or in recreational activities
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER COMPLICATIONS
•People with this disorder might be more likely to have anxiety or depression. They also tend to have poor social skills and lack fulfilling relationships. Without treatment, people with this disorder can become even more uncomfortable in social situations, which can lead to further isolation.
•SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY DISORDER OUTLOOK
•Your outlook depends on how severe the symptoms are. People who are motivated to change, get treatment, and stick with it have better results.
•You brain system has a side which is like a chain of memories.
•Now as an agnostic theist and a scientist and…...
•I am not a person against religion, but against Radicalist people in any religion, I’m not the type of people who like playing with other people’s faith, but religius people do, don’t force someone to get transformed to your religion, it’s not a Wow ! don’t do bad things under the mask of religion , don’t be hypocrite and taking adventage of some believers or their beliefs, don’t tell people grab a weapon and do Jihad , don’t seperate peaple, because religion devides people at least 5% and our main message of life is to live together as one and sharing energies and traditions and experieces, sharing love and every beautiful thing, don’t hate people because deep down this energy reflects itself,
•But if you take a look of some believers mentalities and actions and deep down inside them you can see at least 7% of hate because of this subject , where is the freedom ? I’d rather die for it ,
•Which truly means if you’re not with me you’re against me , and I can’t predict what’s coming from you . Plus the radicalist’s Ideas and the misunderstandig,
•And the term Exorcism or magic someoene,the evil eye…(negative energy is the right definition )
•Exorcism the expulsion or attempted expulsion of a supposed evil spirit from a person or place as they say.
•Exorcism, ( Ruqya ) (from Greek ἐξορκισμός, exorkismós « binding by oath ») is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed.
•(human or animal) and, more rarely, an inanimate (object). You can call it a demon.
•There is also the term conjuration which has the same meaning but which is exercised through magical practices.
•Those actions have the same concept of : Placebo and nocebo
•You’ve likely heard of the placebo effect, but you might be less familiar with its opposite, called the nocebo effect.
•Placebos are medications or procedures that appear to be actual medical treatments but aren’t. A common example is the week of sugar pills that come in many monthly birth control packs.
•The placebo effect occurs when a placebo actually makes you feel better or improves your symptoms.
•The nocebo effect, on the other hand, happens when a placebo makes you feel worse.
•HOW IT WORKS
•While there’s plenty of research about the placebo effect, the nocebo effect is still poorly understood.
•But experts have identified a few things that seem to play a role in determining who experiences the nocebo effect.
•These include:
•how your healthcare provider talks about potential side effects and outcomes
•your trust in your doctor or priest
•your past experiences
•the medication
•the way you think and believe
•Conclusion : if you believe something worse it will happen to you maybe you can feel it or even see it or hear it…. And vice versa.
•Read on to learn more about the nocebo effect, including common examples and why it raises several ethical issues.
•Personally I find religion is made by humans and God or the creative energy has nothing with it ,
•There are energies and frequencies…
•Which energy and frequency you’re in sincerly ?
•After all look at the religious wars, What do you think ?….same as racisme. Isn’t it ?
•It’s an obstacle of evolution, think it over and over.
•We meant to live together and sharing love and experiences and adventures and getting knowing each other , to shine in general, but we have seen some savage crimes for humanity, we can’t deny the positivie effects that religion gave us but also we can’t deny its negative effects and points and consequences, which means it’t like literature, for my opinion it’s time to change to live life harmony with time and to get free and to get improved, to live life to the fullest not just existing and worship god by hyporicy, a work is a pray any good thing you do is a pray, can’t you realise that heaven and hell are inside you and we choose to be demons or angels , but for me I keep it just a human and do my simple duties , and by the way who told you that holy books are 100% true ? no single mistake in them ? go check it and analyse it and think it over and over to get free
•It’s never too late, think it over.
•Personally I love visiting holy lands but for its history and culture,
•My opinion is the amount of believers is large, that’s not a problem, but the problem is some of them are leading the world and life and humanity to its ending , a tragic eneding. I HOPE NOT.
•Let’s get rid of bad energy now, I’ve just used the word ‘now’ and this term has a power, and I am really fascinated of Mr.Eckhart Tolle’s ideas on the book ‘ the Power of now ‘
•Let’s take a look at it and see as always :
•Forget Past And Future
•A central teaching of Tolle’s enlightenment is, you guessed it, to focus on the now.
•But why should we focus on the now?
•Well, Tolle makes the case that lots our suffering and pain happen because we allow the past and the future to poison our present.
•Which makes no sense to Tolle, because past and future don’t even exist.
•The past cannot survive in your presence: it can only survive in your absence
•2. Now Is All There Is
•Past and future are mental constructs that bare no reality.
•Things only happen in a continuous stream of present moments.
•When you feel something about the past you are feeling it now. So it’s not true that you are feeling some pain from the past: you are experiencing it in a success of present, “now moments”.
•Our feelings indeed can only give you information about the now, about this specific moment.
•What we call the past is nothing but a collection of once-present moments. And the future is made of present moments that have yet to materialize.
•3. How “Now” Empowers You
•Dwelling on past pains and future worries does nothing good for you.
•If you deal with them in the now instead you will only be dealing with smaller problems that you will be tackling without any future worries.
•For example, you might have a huge project you are running behind schedule.
•Most people project the future worry of not making it on time or having to face an angry boss on the now, which does nothing good neither for them nor for the completion of their project.
•If you tackle it instead in the now, you can focus on doing all the actions that need be to taken now, free of future worries.
•The secret of life is dying before you die. And finding there’s no death
•4. Pain Is Focus On What You Can’t Change
•Eckart Tolle says that we experience pain when are unhappy about things we have little control on.
•The past for example, or future issues we don’t feel like we can fully control.
•It’s because we focus too much on the past and the future but we only have the present to tackle them. And the present cannot always fully tackle future events and it can hardly rewrite the past as well (albeit Tony Robbins shares a few technique to change your past memories).
•5. We Create Pain – And We Can Erase It
•As much as past and future are our own construct, so is pain.
•It might feel like external circumstances bring pain to us, but that’s not true: we create our own pain.
•6. Unavoidable Pain
•The Power of Now doesn’t deny that some pain are unavoidable.
•Death of loved ones, for example, will always be painful.
•Tolle says that you should accept unavoidable pain for what it is: a part of life that cannot be changed.
•And you will avoid needless suffering.
•Accepting means that you stop wishing it weren’t, or that you stop blaming yourself for any possible contribution.
•After all, being present in the now is not strictly about avoiding, suppressing or ignoring all pain and negative feelings.
•But it provides with the strength to accept them.
•Accept it as if you chose it
•7. Ego & Thinking Are The Enemy
•We equate our ego with the thoughts in our mind.
•The problem with that is that our mind is always projecting into the future to secure its survival.
•This is why you cannot find the present moment as long as you are in your mind.
•For Tolle indeed the enlightenment is to stop the incessant thinking of our mind.
•He says that Rene’ Descartes got it wrong with his famous “I think therefore I am”.
•He made the typical mistake of equating thinking with being and identity with thinking.
•8. Artists Create From The Now
•Tolle says that all artists, whether they are aware of it or not, create from a place of no mind (=no constant thinking).
•You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold
•9. Path To Enlightenment: Separation & Observation
•To reach an enlightenment state you need to separate yourself from your constantly thinking mind and observe it as you’d observe a third party.
•Tolle proposes several different ways to do that:
•Ask yourself “What will my next thought be?”
•When you fully focus on that question your mind will stop its background humming for a while and you will create a gap in the flow of thinking.
•Listen to your mind without judging
•Judging is an act of your mind, so when you allow your mind to judge its own thought you are allowing it free reins.
•So for example if in the middle of something you feel like taking a break outside, follow that impulse instead of deeming it unrealistic.
•Conversely, if you’re outside taking a break, listen if your thought says “you should be working instead of wasting time” but don’t judge it. Just acknowledge it exists.
•This “listening without equating yourself to your emotions and thoughts” is the same concept of the equally spiritual book “The Untethered Soul“.
•Experience full alertness
•A great to focus on the now is putting yourself in a state where you are awaiting for something important to happen.
•When you in a state of tense awaiting all your body and mind is fully alert without any spare resources for worrying about the past and future.
•Active waiting can also be a tool you can use to enter a state of flow, for example before an exam or before a race (for more on flow read: Grit and The Talent Code).
•This is why, Tolle says, Jesus answered to the disciples who asked him how to live a good and peaceful life:
•Be like a servant waiting for the return of the master
•The servant, fully alert, is living in the now.
•“The second coming of Jesus is in your enlightenment
•10. Relationships In The Now
•Living in the now can be of great help for your relationship.
•It allows you to listen without ego and without judging. And you will have no need to possess and restrict your partner.
•However, it can also make your relationship difficult when only one partner lives in the now.
•Eckhart Tolle says that light and darkness cannot coexist.
•The non-enlightened partner will always try to bring you back to the pains of the past or the worries of the future.
•Only light can recognize light
•11. Addiction & Relationships
•The author says that any addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Being addicted to one person is like being addicted to any other substance.
•The addictions, states the Power of Now, stems by personal refusal to address personal pain.
•Relationships With(out) Yourself
•When you are enlightened, says Tolle, you won’t have a relationship with yourself anymore because you move beyond equating yourself with your ego.
•12. Mind & Body Go Together
•The author says that many spirituals got it wrong in trying to transcend from the body.
•Trying to repress the body is not the way to enlightenment.
•Buddha only found enlightenment when he stopped his 6 years abstinence. Jesus always embraced the body: he ascended to heaven with his body and told the disciples that “your body is a temple”.
•13. Interconnectedness Of Everything
•Eckhart Tolle says that he cannot tell you anything which you don’t already know, deep inside.
•And when you reach a certain stage of interconnectedness you will recognize the truth when you hear it.
•When you reach a high level of interconnectedness you will realize that God is everywhere around you.
•That’s why Jesus said:
•Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone and you will find me there
•14. Real Life Applications :
•Accept it as you chose it
•Accept you feminine side ( for men )
•Accept yourself and work on it to improve it.
•Ryan Holiday calls the acceptance of what we cannot “amor fati” (The Obstacle is The Way).
•The Power of Now goes even one step further, suggesting you accept all that you cannot change as if you had chosen it yourself.
•Very powerful.
•Use clock time
•I really loved, loved, loved the idea of using “clock time” instead of “psychological time” for the future.
•Such as when you need to set deadlines for the future, only treat it as clock time instead of allowing the pain and worry to take over in your present.
•Goals & Drive VS In The Now
•Some people might use “The Power of Now” as an excuse not to plan, make strict goals or push themselves through suffering.
•I have a different approach: keep making goals and deadline, but actively weed out all the worries the future brings into your present.
•Plan in advance and enjoy your journey in the now.
•CONS
•What if past and present bring positive
•While Tolle mostly focuses on the past and the future as harbinger of pain, I couldn’t help but wonder: what if the past and present instead mostly brought us good feelings and sensations?
•In The Power of Positive Thinking for example Norman Vincent Peale talks about the powerful benefits of positive thinking, and that can come from either past, present or future.
•I think indeed that while we can leverage the power of now, we can also leverage the power of past and future, if we need so.
•We can’t stop thinking because…
•… Because we believe that we stop being if we stop thinking.
•I find this answer quite bogus to be honest. How can he say that for sure? I think our mind doesn’t stop because that’s how it’s biologically wired instead.
•Superficial “guilt-tripping” on humanity
•Eckhart Tolle answer a question saying (I paraphrase for brevity):
•Of course, there’s something wrong with you, and you are not being judged. Don’t you belong to the human race who killed over 100 million members of its own species in the 21st century alone?
•I don’t like that attitude.
•I find it very superficial and I don’t see what kind of value it can add.
•Superficial guilt tripping on men
•The author talks about “collective female pain body” as due in large part to collective male violence and repression on women throughout the planet over the millennia.
•I personally disagree, but it’s also factually wrong as patriarchal society is not “global”.
•Plenty of societies have been matriarchal.
•If you’re interested in the topic also check Men on Strike and The Feminist Lie (but the latter goes way overboard).
•But also my reviews of The Red Pill and on Overgrowing The Red Pill.
•Poor relationship theory
•Especially after having read top and scientific resources on relationships I found some relationship analysis in The Power of Now to be a bit shallow.
•If you’re interested in improving your relationship, check my relationship meta-summary.
•Simplistic view on addiction
•The Power of Now says that addiction is always the refusal to address personal pain.
•That’s not completely true in my opinion and can be deceiving.
•Today we know that some personalities are more prone to addictions than others, called addictive personalities.
•A real powerful concept.
•Chapter 11 :
•Raising a great generation.
•Definition of a child : a young human being below the age of puberty or below the legal age of majority.
•The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as « a human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier ».
•A legal definition of a child :
•Who are children and young people? This guidance relates to children and young people from birth until their 18th birthday. We use the term ‘children’ to refer to younger children who do not have the maturity and understanding to make important decisions for themselves.
•Definition of a good child :
•A good kid is a child or teenager who is not too selfish but often considers other people’s needs and feelings. It means the child is capable of empathy, is not dishonest and is of basically good character even if he or she has on occasion strayed and done something wrong, as we all have at times.
•What is child psychologicy ?
•Child psychology is the study of subconscious and conscious childhood development. Child psychologists observe how a child interacts with their parents, themselves, and the world, to understand their mental development.
•What is child psychological development ?
•Psychological development, the development of human beings’ cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and social capabilities and functioning over the course of a normal life span, from infancy through old age. ... It is the subject matter of the discipline known as developmental psychology.
•What is the difference between child psychology and child development ?
•Child psychology studies the mental state and changes that generally take place in an individual from the infancy stage right up to the age of two..... In development psychology the physical and mental changes that take place during growth right from infancy are carefully studied.
•The new born, A baby has a clean brain,
•a blank page.
•How to raise a good child ?
•Many parents focus attention on their children’s grades and extracurricular activities, such as by making sure kids study, do their homework, and get to soccer practice or dance lessons on time. But all too often, we forget to put time and effort into nurturing another component of child success and development—one that is just as important, and perhaps even more essential—being a good person.
•It can be easy to forget the importance of countering the pervasive messages of instant gratification, consumerism, and selfishness prevalent in our society.
•If we want to raise children who are genuinely nice people, we can help guide our kids toward habits and behaviors that promote positive character traits like kindness, generosity, and empathy for those who are less advantaged or who need help.
•Don’t hit them, don’t punish them for telling the truth, but advise them, give them the true information and you can punish them by only 10 minutes of standing on one foot with eyes closed, until they know the consequences of their actions and surprise and support and celebrate with them after doing good things, give them a good sens of livivng, and give them lessons and freedom.
•But first of all , we must be good parents, a good dad and mom, we must be enlightened people, conscious.
•I-
•Let your children be a great version of themselves.
•As C.S. Lewis famously said, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” How can we raise a good child, one who will do the right thing, even when no one may see them do it, and when there may be no reward? While there is no guaranteed formula (if only!), here are some ways parents can build good character and help their child grow into a good person.
•NURTURE EMPATHY IN YOUR CHILD
•Emotional intelligence and empathy, or the ability to put
•oneself in someone else’s shoes and consider their feelings and thoughts, is one of the most fundamental traits in good people. Studies have shown that having a high emotional quotient—that is, being able to understand one’s own feelings and the feelings of others—is an important component of success in life.
•To encourage empathy in your child, encourage your child to talk about her feelings and make sure she knows that you care about them. When a conflict occurs with a friend, ask her to imagine how her friend might be feeling and show her ways of managing her emotions and work positively toward a resolution.
•ENCOURAGE THEM TO LIFT UP OTHERS
•While stories about kids engaging in bullying and other
•bad behavior often make headlines, the truth is that many kids quietly perform good deeds in the ordinary course of their lives, whether it’s making a friend feel better when he’s down or pitching in at a community center.
•As you encourage positive behaviors such as doing something to make someone’s day better (even something as small as patting a friend on the shoulder when they’re sad), be sure to talk about what negative effects behaviors like gossiping or bullying have on both sides (both those who are bullied and those who do the bullying), and why and how it hurts people.
•TEACH THEM TO VOLUNTEER
•Whether your child helps an elderly neighbor by
•shoveling the sidewalk or helps you pack some canned goods into boxes for donation to family shelters, the act of volunteering can shape your child’s character. When kids help others, they learn to think about the needs of those less fortunate than they are, and can feel proud of themselves for making a difference in others’ lives.
•OFFER REWARDS SPARINGLY
•An important thing to remember when encouraging kids to help others is to not reward them for every single good deed. That way, your child won’t associate volunteering with getting things for himself and will learn that feeling good about helping others will be in itself a reward.
•That’s not to say you shouldn’t occasionally take your child out for a special treat or give them a gift for helping others AND for working hard and studying hard.
•Kids love encouragement and thrive on parents’ approval. An occasional reward is a great way to show him how thankful you are for the good things he does.
•TEACH THEM GOOD MANNERS
•Does your child routinely practice the fundamentals of good manners such as saying “Thank you” and “Please”? Does she/he speak in a polite manner to people and address elders as “Mr.” and Ms.”? Does she/he know how to greet people properly, and is she/he familiar with the basics of good table manners? Is he/she a gracious loser when he/she plays a game with friends?
•Remember that you are raising a person who will go out into the world and interact with others for the rest of his/her life. (And this little person, as he/she grows, will be at the dinner table with you and interacting with you every day until he/she leaves the nest.) You can play an important role in shaping how well-mannered your child will be.
•TREAT THEM WITH KINDNESS AND RESPECT
•The most effective way to get kids to speak to you and to others in a respectful way and to interact with others in a nice manner is by doing exactly that yourself when you interact with your child. Think about how you speak to your child.
•Do you speak harshly when you’re not happy about something? Do you ever yell or say things that are not nice? Consider your own way of speaking, acting, and even thinking, and try to choose a friendly and polite tone and manner with your child, even when you are talking to him about a mistake or misbehavior.
•DISCIPLINE YOUR CHILD CONSISTENTLY
•Parents who hold back on giving children boundaries or firmly (but lovingly) correcting bad behavior may actually be harming their child with good intentions. Children who are not disciplined are unpleasant, selfish, and surprisingly unhappy.
•Some of the many reasons why we need to discipline include the fact that children who are given clear rules, boundaries, and expectations are responsible, more self-sufficient, are more likely to make good choices and are more likely to make friends and be happy. As soon as you see behavior problems such as lying or backtalk, handle them with love, understanding, and firmness.
•DISCIPLINE STRATEGIES THAT INFLUENCE EFFECTIVENESS
•It can be hard to know which consequences and discipline strategies will work best for your child. Every child is different and discipline techniques that work for one child might not work for another.
•Although it can take a bit of trial and error to discover which discipline strategies will work best for your child, these five factors can help you narrow down the most effective consequences.
•Your child’s characteristics :
•Your child’s characteristics influence how she will respond to various discipline strategies. Characteristics include personality, temperament, physical abilities, talents, skills, strengths, and weaknesses.
•Parenting a defiant child who is easily frustrated requires different discipline strategies compared to a calm child who is eager to please.
•Also, a child who is clumsy and is teased by peers at school will benefit from different interventions when compared to an athletic child who is popular with peers.
•Consider what types of rules, limits, and consequences will be best suited to your child’s unique characteristics.
•Parental Characteristics :
•Consider the fit between your characteristics and your child’s characteristics. Take note of the similarities and differences between your personalities, temperament, and preferences.
•This can point to areas where you may have less tolerance for average behaviors. For example, if you are a low-key person who prefers a quiet household, you might struggle to have patience with a loud, hyperactive child.
•Or, if you have low frustration tolerance, you may struggle to help a child with a learning disability complete his homework. Examining these factors can increase your awareness of steps that will be more effective in accommodating and disciplining your child.
•Understanding which areas you and your child are well-matched, as well as the areas that might not be completely in-line, can help you craft an effective discipline plan that takes both of your needs into consideration.
•Life Changes and Stressors :
oLife experiences influence a child’s behaviors. Moving to a new home, attending a new school, or adjusting to a new baby in the home are examples of factors that influence behaviors.
oTake note of any recent changes and how this affects your child. For example, a child who is struggling to adjust to a new baby in the home may be feeling left out and may not respond well to a time-out that separates him from the family and leave him feeling even more left out.
oOr, if your family moved to a new city and your child uses electronics to communicate with his former friends, you may not want to take away his phone for misbehavior. Talking to his friends may be one of his best coping skills.
•Consequences for Positive Behaviors :
•The consequence a child receives for positive behavior determines the likelihood that these behaviors will occur again. Examine how you respond when your child follows the rules, listens, and behaves respectfully.
•Does your child receive praise? Are there any rewards for following the rules? Does your child gain any privileges for making good choices?
•Don’t let good behavior go unnoticed. Praise your child for making good choices and behaving well.
•If your child is playing quietly, praise him for doing so. Although you might fear praise will interrupt him, it can actually reinforce him to continue to keep playing quietly.
•Offer praise, attention, and rewards that will motivate your child to follow the rules. If you find that your child is not getting enough positive reinforcement for good behaviors, adjust your discipline strategy to increase your child’s motivation to behave.
•Consequences for Negative Behaviors :
•Sometimes, children receive reinforcement for negative behaviors, which encourages them to continue misbehaving. For example, a child who receives a lot of attention for whining learns that whining is an effective way to get attention.
oNegative attention can be very reinforcing. Yelling, arguing, or pleading with your child, may actually be encouraging your child to misbehave.
oNegative behaviors need a negative consequence in order to discourage them from continuing. Sometimes ignoring mild misbehavior is the most effective consequence
oNegative consequences also need to be consistent. If you are inconsistent with giving time-out or taking away a privilege, your child will continue to misbehave in hopes he won’t get a consequence this time.
oProviding consistent consequences teaches your child that each negative behavior results in a negative consequence. So it’s important to evaluate the consequences you are currently using and determine whether you might want to implement other punishments that could be more effective.
•II-
•TEACH THEM TO BE THANKFUL
•Teaching your child how to be grateful and how to express that gratitude is a key component of raising a good child. Whether it’s for a meal you’ve prepared for dinner or for a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa, teach your child to say thank you. For things like gifts for birthdays and holidays, be sure your child gets into the habit of writing thank you cards.
•GIVE THEM RESPONSIBILITIES
•When children have an expected list of age-appropriate choresto do at home, such as helping set the table or sweeping the floor, they gain a sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Doing a good job and feeling like they are contributing to the good of the household can make kids feel proud of themselves, and help them become happier.
•III-
•MODEL GOOD BEHAVIOR
•Consider how you interact with others, even when your child isn’t watching. Do you say “Thank you” to the checkout clerk at the market? Do you steer clear of gossip about neighbors or co-workers? Do you use a friendly tone when addressing waiters? It goes without saying that you directly influence how your children will be. If you want to raise a good child, conduct yourself in the way you want your child to act.
•ROLE MODEL THE BEHAVIOR YOU WANT TO SEE FROM YOUR KIDS
•Your children and teens are always watching what you do. They see how you handle stress. They watch how you treat other people and observe how you deal with your feelings. They soak in all that information like little sponges. Even when you think your children aren’t paying attention, it’s essential to be a positive role model.
•SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
•According to the Social Learning Theory, people learn by watching others. For instance, the famous Bobo doll experiment demonstrated how kids imitate adult behavior. Researchers discovered that children treated the doll the same way the adults did.
•Children who watched an adult become aggressive with the inflatable doll became aggressive in their interactions as well. Meanwhile, children who watched adults treat the doll kindly imitated the kindness.
•You probably don’t need a fancy science experiment to see that kids imitate their parents. You probably notice it every day.
•When you’re sweeping the floor, you might notice your
•little one pretending to sweep too. Or, you might hear your preschooler put her stuffed bear to bed the same way you tuck her in at night. Kids repeat what they hear, and they imitate what they see. For this reason, you need to be mindful of the things you’re inadvertently teaching your child.
•MODELING BAD BEHAVIOR
•Sometimes, you might unknowingly model a few unhealthy behaviors for your kids. Here are a few examples of ways parents teach kids bad habits.
•A mother tells the cashier at a restaurant that her 12-year-old son is only 11 so she can get a discount at the buffet. Her son learns it’s OK to lie sometimes to get what you want.
•A father spends his evenings watching television, but tells his 14-year-old daughter she should read more.
•Parents tell their kids to treat everyone with respect. Yet, they often make critical comments about other people behind their backs.
•A divorced couple argues frequently about custody issues and visitation, but they expect the kids to get along with one another.
•A parent tells her son to stop putting his fingers in his mouth; but when she’s nervous, she bites her fingernails.
•A mother tells her daughter to be kind to others, but she yells at the store clerk when the store refuses to take back an item she tries to return.
•A father tells his kids that they should eat healthily, but he sneaks dessert after they go to bed.
•Parents tell their kids to share and be generous with what they have, yet they never make donations or get involved in any sort of charity or volunteer work.
•A father smokes cigarettes. While he has a cigarette in his hand, he tells his kids that smoking is unhealthy and that they should never pick up the habit.
•Parents tell their kids to take responsibility for their behavior and their choices. Yet, when they forget about their child’s dentist appointment, they argue with the receptionist and tell her she clearly made a scheduling error.
•FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES
•It’s really hard to model appropriate behavior for your kids all the time, and no one is expecting you to be perfect. But, you should strive to model the rules you want your kids to follow.
•For instance, if you don’t want your kids juuling, it’s probably not a good idea for you to continue using e-cigarettes. Likewise, if you want your kids to be truthful, you should strive to be honest. For example, if you tell “little white lies » rather than being truthful, your kids will learn that lying is acceptable.
•Show your kids how to follow your household rules by modeling them every chance you get. Likewise, use discipline that teaches life skills; and explain how these rules will help them later in life. If you show kids that you honor the rules, it will increase the effectiveness of your discipline strategies.
•There may be instances where you need to explain any decisions that might be confusing.
•For instance, if your friend bakes you a cake, and you think it tastes horrible, you still might tell them it was delicious to spare their feelings. When something like that happens, you’ll want to explain to your children that you didn’t want to hurt your friend’s feelings.
•MODEL LIFE SKILLS
•You also have opportunities every day to live a life worth emulating. Think about what you want your kids to learn from you and try to model that in your life. Naturally, there will be times when you make mistakes or don’t do things exactly as you had planned. But, that is OK.
•When that happens, take the opportunity to talk to your kids about where you slipped up and how you hope to be different next time. Kids learn important lessons from you even when you make mistakes.
•For instance, if you handle poor decisions with grace and don’t beat yourself up, they’ll also learn to be kind to themselves when they screw up. Here are some examples of other things you can model for your kids. Use these ideas to become a good role model, or come up with ideas of your own.
•LIVE A HEALTHY LIFE
•When you eat healthily and exercise on a regular basis,
•you’re setting a good example for your kids. Plus, if you are fixing healthy meals and limiting fast food, you are helping your kids avoid childhood obesity.
•Of course, try not to be overbearing or restrictive in your efforts to set a good example. Being controlling about food or obsessing about how your body (or your child’s body) looks, could lead to body image issues and eating disorders.
•SHOW RESPECT AND TEACH EMPATHY
•Every parent wants to raise kids who are kind to others.
•This goal becomes a reality when you model respect and empathy in your own life. Be respectful to everyone you interact with and soon your kids will be doing the same.
•Whether it’s the cashier in the grocery store or the waitress in your favorite restaurant, smile, say please, and thank you, and before long your kids will be doing that too.
•Allow your kids to see you being compassionate and
•empathetic to others too. Use situations that occur around you to talk about how others might be feeling. Teaching kids to be empathetic is one of the best ways to prevent them from bullying others.
•TACKLE TECHNOLOGY ISSUES
•If you are like most parents, you worry about the
•amount of screen timeyour kids are getting each day. Whether it is the time younger children spend watching shows and playing online games, or it is the time teens spend on social media, every parent worries that their kids are in front of a screen too frequently.
•But before you can say anything to your kids, take a
•look at the amount of time you’re spending in front of a screen. Even if you’re working, answering emails, and doing things you consider productive, you are still setting an example for your kids. Address your technology use first, and then attempt to set some standards for the kids.
•WORK HARD
•Developing a solid work ethic is a life skill every kid
•needs. Whether it is working hard in school, at a part-time job, or on a sports team, kids need to have a good work ethic. The best way to instill this skill is to first model it at home.
•Whether you go to work every day or you work from home, allow your kids to see you working. Even
•doing chores together as a family is a great way to instill a solid work ethic in your kids.
•VOLUNTEER IN THE COMMUNITY
•When you volunteer in the community, you’re showing
•your kids that you care about the world they live in. And, they learn to care too. Whether you volunteer in the schools, participate in a community clean-up project, or donate food and supplies to the local food
•pantry, you’re showing your kids what goes on outside of your home is important—that giving back is essential to making the world a better place.
•You also can get your kids involved in volunteering. When they regularly help others, even if it is in a small way, they will learn to appreciate what they have.
•DEMONSTRATE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS
•Pay attention to emotional and social skills too. Show
•your children how to greet someone and how to ask questions when they are confused. Instruct them on how to meet new friends and invite others to join in. Demonstrate how to manage emotions, like frustration or sadness. Talk about your feelings when you are upset, angry, or sad, and encourage them to do the same.
•TEACH NEW SKILLS
•When you want to teach your children something new, whether it’s how to make their bed or how to tie their shoes, show them how you do it. Then, let them practice it on their own. Showing, rather than telling, can be the best way for kids to learn a variety of new skills.
•MY PERSONAL ADVICE :
•Your primary job as a parent is to help mold your kids into kind, respectful, honest, and caring people. And, sometimes the easiest way to do that is to be a good role model. This may mean taking a closer look at your own habits and making some changes. But, if you do, both of you will benefit.
•And also ,this is very important, don’t bring an innocent life to to world when you’re not even ready, get ready first and improve your education and knowledge firstly.
•How to Teach Kids the Difference Between Tattling and Telling ?
•WHY KIDS TATTLE AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT ?
•Tattling is an annoying but fairly common behavior in school-age kids. Kids may tattle on classmates at school or on siblings or friends at home. They may even tell on a parent or another grown-up.
•The best way to discourage tattling in your child is to first understand why she is acting like an informant before you steer her away from this behavior. If she’s having trouble with a sibling who won’t share, for instance, you can teach her how to find other ways to solve conflicts. If she’s telling on others to get attention, you can help her understand how she might hurt people by tattling and steer her toward more constructive behavior.
•That said, kids should be taught to always speak up when someone is being hurt or is in danger. Since it’s so important that kids learn how to tell grownups about harmful behavior such as physical or emotional bullying, parents also need to know how to teach kids to distinguish between telling and tattling.
•WHAT IS TATTLING?
•Tattling is the act of reporting on someone’s rule-breaking behavior or actions, usually to get that person in trouble. But if a child tells a parent or other grown-up about something that is hurting someone or could cause harm, that is not tattling — that is helping someone or preventing someone from getting hurt.
•Kids need to understand when it’s important to « tell, » such as if a friend is hurt or in danger. Likewise, parents need to learn to recognize when a child is « tattling » versus when they are trying to speak up about a troubling situation.
•WHY KIDS TATTLE
•Kids can resort to tattling for different reasons. For one thing, school-age kids are learning more about rules and what it means to break them. They are developing morals, figuring out the difference between right and wrong, and putting emphasis on being fair. So when they see someone doing something they are not supposed to, they may feel a compulsion to tell on them.
•Children may also tattle because they want to get on a parent or teacher’s good side and because they think there may be a reward for their not doing that bad thing their sibling or classmate is doing. They may also be motivated by jealousy, such as between fighting siblings. In those situations, a child may tattle to gain an edge over her brother or sister.
•Young children also lack the tools to negotiate and manage conflicts. A child who feels like her brother is not being fair to her will need your help not to intervene every time they have a problem but to show them how to get along as loving siblings.
•WAYS TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE
•SIBLING FIGHTING AND RIVALRY
•If you have more than one child, chances are good to excellent that you’ve had to referee sibling fighting and rivalry. The fact is, even the best sibling relationships can have their moments of conflict and friction.
•But with a little insight and patience, a much more peaceful home and sibling harmony can be achieved. When a good sibling bond is established early, and children are taught how to manage conflict with their brother or sister, fighting and rivalry can be greatly minimized. Once children learn how to work through their differences, this very important family bond can flourish and grow strong.
•COMMON CAUSES OF SIBLING CONFLICT
•First, try to understand why sibling fighting may occur.
•Each skirmish may be set off by something different—say a fight over whose turn it is to sweep the floors or who gets to decide what TV show or movie to watch—but the root cause may be a bigger issue.
•In some cases, the problem may be a clash of personalities. In others, it may be unresolved feelings of rivalry. For instance, a child may feel like mom or dad favors their sibling. Another child may feel resentful because they think they don’t get to do as much because they are younger. Or one sibling may simply like things to be quieter and calmer while the other one is all about action and adventure.
•HOW TO HANDLE SIBLING FIGHTING ?
•Whatever the cause, it’s important that parents do what
•they can to foster a good relationship between siblings, and make sure that any conflicts do not damage their relationship. Here’s what parents can do to manage fighting among siblings:
•First, teach kids how to handle conflict in a positive manner.
oChildren who are taught how to manage disagreements in a constructive manner—say, by listening to their sibling’s point of view or not engaging in name-calling—will be in a much better frame of mind to settle disputes and move past fighting.Another bonus: Children who grow up
•learning how to prevent and work out conflicts with their siblings will be better at negotiating and working out compromises in future relationships, both at work and at home. Learning how to handle disputes with their brothers and sisters will help children grow into adults who are skilled at resolving differences and are better at managing relationships with others.
•Cast sibling harmony as important for the whole family.Explain to your children that your family is like a team. And like any good team, everyone—mom, dad, and the kids—needs to work together to have a peaceful and loving home. Any fights among family members can hurt the whole team or the family.
o3. Step in. Some parents believe that it’s best to let kids handle conflict on their own. That can be true to a certain extent, as long as children have the tools to manage disagreements in a constructive, positive, and peaceful way. But if the argument gets heated or there is verbal or physical aggression, intervene immediately. If you’re not there to see the argument, sit down with them and talk about what happened, and make it clear that aggression of any kind is not acceptable in your home.
o4. Listen to each side. There will be two sides to each story in a sibling fight. Let each child feel like they are being listened to, without judgment or interruption. Often, children feel much better after venting to mom or dad about a problem, especially when they feel that they can state their position and it will be heard fairly.
o5. Make respect a non-negotiable rule. This means no name-calling and absolutely no hitting or other physical aggression. Also, encourage your children to really listen to the other’s side of things and give them the respect they would like for themselves.
•Encourage kids to get specific and state the
oproblem. Tell your child to focus on what they are upset about, rather than on their sibling. For instance, if your child is upset that their sibling likes to always choose what game they’ll play, they should state the problem rather than saying something like, “You’re not being fair!” By being specific about the problem (having an equal say in choosing the games) rather than focusing on a sibling’s behavior, the discussion can become more about the problem and solution, rather than their characterization of each other.
•Ask the children to suggest some solutions. Have your children come up with some scenarios or resolutions that will be fair for both sides. Encourage them to put themselves in the other person’s shoes before making suggestions.
•Model good problem-solving behavior.
oChildren ,
owatch and learn from parents, and take our cues on how to settle conflict from how we handle problems with our spouse, friends, and family. If we are respectful and loving during a disagreement, our children will learn and adopt those conflict-resolution skills themselves.
oWays to Discipline Your Child for Bullying Others.
•A bully child :
•Nothing is more unsettling than learning that your child is a bully. In fact, no parent wants to get a call from the school or from another parent and hear that their child has been bullying other kids. But the fact is, a lot of kids bully others. Even the most well-mannered kids can engage in bullying. So do not be shocked if you get that call.
•If you do learn that your child is bullying others, try not to dwell in your surprise. Instead, move forward and take action. Remember, there are a variety of reasons why kids bully.
•POSSIBLE REASONS FOR BULLYING
•Sometimes bullying is the product of peer pressure
•or a sense of entitlement. Other times, it is a reaction to having been a victim of bullying. And other times, the bullying results from your child’s inability to control impulses or manage anger.
•There are a number of reasons why someone may be bullied. They include everything from personality differences to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What’s more, anyone can be a target of bullying, even strong, athletic, and popular kids.
•There are certain characteristics that might increase a child’s chances of getting bullied. It’s important to remember that these children shouldn’t try to change their characteristics to avoid bullying. Bullying is about the wrong choice the bully makes, not some perceived defect in the target.
oTYPES OF KIDS WHO MIGHT GET BULLIED :
•The responsibility for bullying always falls on the bully’s shoulders, not the victim’s. Nonetheless, there are a number of types of kids who are often the target of bullies. These are characteristics or attributes that might make bullying more likely.
•SUCCESSFUL
•Kids who are good at what they do might get bullied.
•A lot of times kids will be bullied because they get a lot of positive attention from their peers and from adults. This attention could be everything from excelling in sports to making the cheerleading squad to getting the editor’s position on the school newspaper.
•Bullies target these students because they either feel inferior or they worry that their abilities are being overshadowed by the target’s abilities. As a result, they bully these kids hoping to make them feel insecure as well as to make others doubt their abilities.
•INTELLIGENT, DETERMINED, CREATIVE
•At school, these students go that extra mile on
•schoolwork. Or they learn very quickly and move
•through projects and assignments faster than other students. For instance,
•gifted students are often targeted for excelling in school. Bullies usually single them out because they are jealous of this attention.
•VULNERABLE
•Children who are introverted, anxious, or submissive
•are more likely to be bullied than kids who are
•extroverted and assertive. In fact, some researchers
•believe that kids who lack self-esteem may attract kids who are prone to bully. What’s more, kids who engage in people-pleasing are often targeted by bullies because they are easy to manipulate.
•Research shows that kids sufferin
•from depression or stress-related conditions may also be more likely to be
•bullied, which often makes the condition worse. Bullies select these kids because they are an easy mark
•and less likely to fight back. Most bullies want to feel powerful, so they often choose kids that are weaker than them.
•ISOLATED
•Many victims of bullying tend to have fewer friends
•than children who do not experience bullying. They may be rejected by their peers, excluded from social events, and may even spend lunch and recess alone.
•Parents and teachers can prevent bullying of socially-isolated students by helping them develop friendships. Bystanders can also support these students by befriending them.
•Research shows that if a child has at least one friend, their chances of being bullied reduce dramatically. Without a friend to back them up, these kids are more likely to be targeted by bullies because they do not have to worry about someone coming to the victim’s aid.
•POPULAR
•Sometimes bullies target popular or well-liked children because of the threat they pose to the bully. Mean girls are especially likely to target someone who threatens their popularity or social standing.
•A lot of relational aggression is directly linked to an attempt to climb the social ladder. Kids will spread rumors, engage in name-calling, and even resort to cyberbullying in an effort to destroy their popularity.
•When these kids are targeted, the bully is looking to discredit the victims and make them less likable.
•DISTINCTIVE PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
•Almost any type of physical characteristic that is different or unique can attract the attention of bullies. It may be that the victim is short, tall, thin, or obese. They might wear glasses or have acne, a large nose, or ears that stick out. It really doesn’t matter what it is, the bully will pick a feature and distort it into a target.
•Many times, this type of bullying is extremely painful and damaging to a young person’s self-esteem. Most bullies that target these kids get some enjoyment from making fun of others. Other times, they are looking for a laugh at another person’s expense. The best way to combat a bully who targets this type of person is to take away their audience.
oILLNESS OR DISABILITY
•Bullies often target special needs children. This can include children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger’s Syndrome (which the DSM-5 no longer uses as a diagnosis but, instead, now falls under ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, Down syndrome, or any condition that sets them apart. Kids with food allergies, asthma, and other conditions also can be targeted by bullies. When this happens, the bullies show a lack of empathy or are making jokes at another person’s expense.
•It is very important for teachers and parents to make sure these kids have a support group with them to help defend against bullying. It also helps if the general student population frowns on this type of bullying in particular. If bullies know this is taboo, they are less likely to do it.
•DIFFERENT SEXUAL ORIENTATION
•More often than not, kids are bullied for being gay. In fact, some of the most brutal bullying incidents have involved children who are bullied for their sexual orientation. If left unchecked, prejudicial bullying can result in serious hate crimes. As a result, it is essential that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students be given a solid support network in order to keep them safe.
•RELIGIOUS OR CULTURAL BELIEFS
•It is not uncommon for kids to be bullied for their religious beliefs. One example of this type of bullying includes the treatment Muslim students received after the 9/11 tragedy. However, any student can be bullied for their religious beliefs. Christian students and
•Jewish and Muslim… students are often ridiculed for their beliefs and practices as well.
•Bullying based on different religious beliefs usually stems from a lack of understanding as well as a lack of tolerance for believing something different.
•DIFFERENT RACE
•Sometimes kids will bully others because they are of a
•different race. For instance, White students may single out African students and bully them. Or Afro-American, or asian students may single out White students and bully them, at the end we’re all one.
•It happens with all races and in all directions. No race is exempt from being bullied, and no race is exempt from having bullies. Just like with religious bullying, these students are singled out for no other reason than the fact that they’re different.
•ps opinion :
•While each of these characteristics may be exploited by bullies, they in no way are faults that victims should change. Remember, bullying is about the bully making a bad choice. It is important that this fact is communicated to victims of bullying. They need to be reminded that there is nothing wrong with them and they are not to blame for being targeted.
•Chapter 12 :
•Laws of nature :
•The concept of a law of Nature cannot be made sense of without God.
•I had no need of this hypothesis. ‘ Pierre Laplace’ to ‘Napoleon Bonaparte’
•In many contemporary science and religion debates, it is noted that there is some confusion concerning two concepts: the laws of nature and the laws of physics. This is causing serious misunderstanding about the
•reality of the laws of physics and the actual meaning of scientific laws and theories. It is generally thought that laws of physics represent the actual phe- nomena which they are describing. This may have been an inherited con- cept from classical Greek philosophy, since it is known that the word φυσικς (physics) as used by Aristotle means “nature”. The word nature means the intrinsic property of something that is capable of causing an effect.1 On the other hand, the concept of a “law of nature” needs to be clarified so that we can understand its actual meaning, and what it means to be a) natural and b) a law. We can realize the importance of this topic once we understand, for example, the deep philosophical implications of quantum indeterminism and once we know whether that is an objective fact, something which is a reality in the world, or whether it is an artifact of the theory. In cosmology, we need to know whether cosmic inflation is a natural historical cosmic necessity that actually happened during the evolution of the universe—which, if it did, el- evates it to the level of being a law of nature—or whether it is just a model that was devised to explain some problems with the big bang theory. A further example is whether we can consider natural selection to be a law of nature for the evolution of living creatures or just a mere suggestion for a possible
•god, nature, and the cause
•mechanism, or part of a mechanism, that biological evolution requires. Such questions are indeed of high importance in science and religion debates and in evaluating the content of a scientific theory.
•The discussion presented by Paul Davies in his book The Mind of God about the “laws of nature” is a typical example of the confusion over laws of nature and laws of physics. Davies sometimes uses the term “laws of nature” to mean what we would describe as natural phenomena, and uses the term “laws of physics” to point to the phenomena themselves. This kind of confu- sion may lead to absurdities and to the faulty identification of the entities at play when discussing such vital questions as the creation of the universe in a philosophical context. For example, he says that, “given the laws of phys- ics, the universe can create itself”.2 This is a typical example of what I call confusion or misunderstanding by mixing the two concepts into one common meaning. This belief that the laws of physics are descriptions of natural phe- nomena was the case until the beginning of the twentieth century, when rela- tivity theory came to replace Newtonian mechanics and his law of universal gravitation with more accurate formulations, and when quantum mechanics uncovered the fact that the classical laws of physics were only an approxi- mate formulation of natural phenomena. This confusion might have been brought about by the common origin of the words “nature” and “physics”, as both terms historically expressed the same meaning. The confusion causes misunderstanding over the reality of the laws of physics and this leads us to give such laws the status of being in existence “out there” with exaggerated supremacy and sovereignty.
•On arguing for the initial conditions of the universe, or the laws operating at initial conditions, Paul Davies suggests that:
•Laws of initial conditions strongly support the Platonic idea that the laws are “out there” transcending the physical universe. It is sometimes argued that the laws of physics came into being with the universe. If that was so, then those laws cannot explain the origin of the universe, because the laws would not exist until the universe existed.3
•The correct expression for the above paragraph is to say that the laws which are actually “out there” are the laws of nature, for which we do not know with absolute certainty their mathematical construct or the logic be- hind their operation. These laws of nature came into being with the universe and we do not know how they could have existed before the birth of the universe.
•Richard Dawkins is another example of an author who puts forward speculations drawn from Darwin’s theory of evolution and tries to present
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•them as being laws of nature. Whereas evolution is a law of nature, being an observed fact, Darwin’s theory of biological evolution is not. It could be considered to be a law of biology, however. It is not a problem of terminology that I am dealing with here; it is a bit more than that. Thus, I feel the need to clarify the two concepts to enable us to use them in their proper contexts more accurately.
•What is a Law of Nature?
•A law of nature is a regular phenomenon that occurs once certain conditions are present. We need not know the details of the process that leads to the natural phenomenon, but the phenomenon needs to be repeated with some regularity in order for it to be designated as a law. For example, a stone could fall once dropped from my hand, which is holding it; this is the law of gravity acting naturally. We know that cotton burns once thrown into fire and that vapor condenses once set on a cold surface. We need not know the mechanism by which such a law acts to observe a law of nature at work; for example, we need not know the mechanism by which cotton begins burn- ing, as this will be part of our identification of the factors contributing to this phenomenon and the relation between such factors, which is usually described by the laws of physics and chemistry. History of thought tells us that humans have given different explanations for the same natural phenom- ena over the ages, depending on their intellectual level and the dominating culture of their age.
•Perhaps the earliest of all the laws of nature that man has discovered is the phenomenon of generating fire by hitting two stones against each other. More sophisticated laws of nature were discovered once man had recognized num- bers and was able to calculate things. At this point, man started identifying laws of nature which were periodic; for example, the recurrence of solar and lunar eclipses, which is an indication of an order in the universe. This is one of the earliest laws of nature to attract the attention of humans. By observing this phenomenon over a long period of time, the Babylonians were able to identify the periodicity of the occurrence of these eclipses. They found that eclipses come in cycles, each composed of 223 synodic months (29.5306 days each). Eclipses of each cycle recur during the next cycle with a geographical separation of about 116 degrees of arc. Accordingly, the Babylonians were able to tabulate the eclipses of one cycle, which was later called the “saros cycle”, and could predict all other eclipses to come. This was one of the ear- liest discoveries of a law of nature. It is known that the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus used this knowledge to resolve a battle between two fighting armies.
•god, nature, and the cause
•More sophistication in recognizing nature was shown when man was able to construct theories from which he could deduce new predictions. Theories were basically proposed in order to explain natural phenomena. That is to say that after man was able to describe laws of nature, such as the occurrence of eclipses, he began to explain how such laws worked. At this point, reason- ing started and causes were identified for what happened. The early interest of man was directed toward the sky as he wondered how the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets were moving periodically around Earth. Perhaps it was a trivial law of nature to know that Earth should be at the center of all, for everywhere you look you see the sky. According to this model, differ- ent celestial objects were located at different distances from Earth according to their observed periods of rotation, measured with reference to the band of fixed stars called the zodiac. The Moon was found to be the fastest with the shortest rotation period of about 27.3 days, so it was placed nearest to Earth; then it was Mercury with a rotation period of 88 days, and next was Venus, which covers the trip in 225 days, and then comes the Sun in the fourth orb, which was observed to cover the zodiac within about 365 days. The red planet Mars was found to cover the zodiac within 680 days and the bright planet Jupiter was known to cover a period of about twelve years. The slowest of all was Saturn, which took about thirty years. Ancient and medieval think- ers, however, considered the celestial orbs of the planets to be thick spheres of rarefied matter, nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below it.4 And, since it was observed that the stars were fixed and did not change their positions relative to one an- other, it was argued that they must be located on a single starry sphere called the “sphere of fixed stars”.5 Perhaps the reason why man thought that the celestial objects were fixed in material spheres was to understand why such objects did not fall to Earth, since it was common to see an object fall when set free. Then, in order to explain the apparent motion of these celestial objects within different periods, another metaphysical explanation was introduced where the position of each of these concentric spheres was changed by its own god, an unchanging divine mover which moved its sphere simply by virtue of being loved by it.6 With such an explanation, man started to construct models for the laws of nature.
•What is a Law of Physics? A law of physics, or a scientific law according to the Oxford English Diction- ary, is “a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present”.7
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•A law of physics is a well-stated relationship by which parameters affect- ing the happening of any phenomena are identified clearly in conjunction with other parameters. For example, Newton’s law of gravity is a well-stated expression for describing the force of gravity between two masses and the distance separating them. It says that the force of gravity between two bodies of a given mass is directly proportional to the product of those masses and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. This statement is a quantitative identification which can be used to calculate the force of gravity between two bodies or more, yet it does not tell us that, once the bodies are set free, they will move toward each other. This needs another law to be effected.
•God and the Law
•During the seventeenth century, the notion of “laws of nature” crystallized; René Descartes (1596–1650) was perhaps the first in the West8 to discuss the existence of laws or rules of nature. In his Principles of Philosophy, he explained three laws concerning the natural motion of bodies and a conserva- tion rule to conserve the quantity of motion as measured by size multiplied by speed. The claim of conservation, and all the other laws, were grounded explicitly in the activity of a transcendent god on his creation.9 Descartes had a version of the doctrine of continual re-creation, similar to what the Ash¢aris believed: that the sustainment of the creation is thought to be performed. Daniel Garber10 tells us that the idea of a law of inanimate nature remained quite distinctively Cartesian throughout much of the seventeenth century. The notion of a law of nature cannot be found, for example, in the works of other reformers of the period, such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626) or Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).
•In contrast, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) did not think that God had any role to play in natural philosophy. In order to explain how a law of nature worked, he resorted to geometry. The way in which Hobbes interpreted na- ture through geometry was to say that a body at rest would remain at rest because of a possibility to move in any and all directions; since there is no pre- ferred direction for motion, the body would have to remain at rest. A similar argument applied to a body in constant motion. In fact, this was a rhetorical statement rather than a sound scientific argument. This kind of understanding is obviously denying the need for an agent to activate such events.
•The geometrical argument is similar to saying that a free stone falls on the ground just because there is a gravitational force between the stone and the earth. But here we are ignoring the question of how gravity works. If you are a free, rational thinker, you would ask such questions, but, if you would like
•god, nature, and the cause
•to ignore them, you could always attribute the action of gravity to another cause: the existence of mass according to Newton or the presence of a curva- ture of spacetime according to Einstein. Hobbes denied divine intervention, as he could not visualize how something non-physical could affect the physical. This we can see in the following paragraph:
•The subject of [natural] Philosophy, or the matter it treats of, is every body of which we can conceive any generation, and which we may, by any consideration thereof, compare with other bodies, or which is capable of composition and res- olution; that is to say, every body of whose generation or properties we can have any knowledge . . . Therefore, where there is no generation or property, there is no philosophy. Therefore it excludes Theology, I mean the doctrine of God, eternal, ingenerable, incomprehensible, and in whom there is nothing neither to divide nor compound, nor any generation to be conceived.11
•Most of the efforts in science are directed toward knowing how nature works rather than knowing why nature is behaving like this or that. For this reason, and in the absence of sensible answers to the questions “how?” and “why?”, it would be reasonable to adopt the empiricists’ view that there is no law of nature, otherwise the laws of nature cannot be made sense of without God. In fact, the question of how a non-physical entity could affect a physi- cal entity is one of the challenging questions at present in science and religion debates.
•The modern sciences, mainly physics and biology, have weakened belief in God by assuming that the universe can be explained by a collection of laws that can be expressed in logical or mathematical forms. This eventually means that the universe is logically intelligible on the basis of deterministic causal- ity. Classical celestial mechanics, for example, have verified this deterministic causality to the extent that they allowed Pierre Laplace (1749–1827) to claim that, once the initial conditions for any system are known, one can predict all subsequent developments of the system without the need to invoke the inter- vention of the divine; he says:
•We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, pro- vided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such intelligence.
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•The view that the world is developing independently of the notion of God culminated later in the declaration by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) that God is dead. This same belief in deterministic causality may have motivated Albert Einstein to ask whether God had any choice in creating the universe.
•The proper scientific investigation of the world started with considering facts of nature as being empirical outcomes of experiments and observations. In this trend, which started with Galileo, the scientific quest to understand the world adopted the principle of seeking explanations for its phenomena by identifying their natural causes. Galileo realized that a proper investiga- tion should concentrate on discovering the actual variables involved in the natural behavior of the world and finding the relations between these vari- ables. He studied the motion of freely falling bodies, the swing of a pendu- lum, and then looked at the sky using his simple telescope. He achieved great discoveries in every track that he followed. This experience enabled him and the generations that followed to obtain a new insight into the world by which mankind was transformed into the age of modern science, the “proper sci- ence”. The Galilean revolution did not come out from nowhere all of a sud- den; the history of thought tells us that there were many previous advances in the methodology of the scientific quest that had paved the way for such a consideration.
•The real transformation in the history of science and the physical law came with Sir Isaac Newton, who had studied the works of Galileo and realized the value of symbolizing variables and understood the implications of general- izing the formulations obtained from experiments and observations. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) formulated the three laws of motion and the law of uni- versal gravitation. Newton was an abstract thinker who invented differential calculus, by which he contributed a great deal to the advancement of science and humanity. Despite subscribing to personal religious beliefs, Newton did not include any metaphysical assumptions in his laws. The one comment he made about readjustment of the comet orbs was a remark rather than a seri- ous scientific position. Newton declared that “religion and Philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into Philoso- phy, nor philosophical opinions into religion”.13 I find that the Newtonian approach to science and religion is the best option that one can adopt where a person subscribes to a religious belief. Science, being in one’s intellectual background, may help to refine personal beliefs and inspire greater confidence based on rational attitudes rather than dogma.
•After Newton, more sophistication was achieved in formulating the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. These refinements and upgrades were brought in by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, Euler, and many others who
•god, nature, and the cause
•constructed classical mechanics. The laws of classical physics formulated as such were deterministic, as the associated natural phenomena belong to the macroscopic world, which seems to follow deterministic causal relationships. This trend served as inspiration for the thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Consequently, the Enlightenment philosophers subjected reli- gion to an unprecedented rational scrutiny, many of them rejecting Christian- ity for deism and a few even turning to atheism.
•The Laws of Modern Physics
•The modern physics of the twentieth century probed the natural world at the microscopic level. New concepts were introduced and a new logic had to be generated. The part was no longer necessarily smaller than the whole, nor did the particle have to be a highly localized entity. The character of the physical law took a sharp turn at the beginning of the twentieth century toward ab- straction. Mathematical formulations became more and more representative of the physical system. This allowed for a broadened scope of interpretations and controversy on explaining the implications of the laws of physics. For ex- ample, the introduction of wave–particle duality by Louis de Broglie brought in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the probabilistic character of the natural phenomena. In essence, laws of nature turned out to be indeterminis- tic, whereas the laws of physics remained deterministic.
•There are some aspects of the laws of physics that cannot correlate with the laws of nature, for example, time reversal. This is something that is exclu- sively assigned to some fundamental laws of physics, but not to the laws of nature. Time reversal does not actually take place in nature because it would contradict the second law of thermodynamics. Time reversal mainly arises in those physical laws which contain a second derivative with respect to time. An example of this is the Maxwell equations of electromagnetism. Another example of a physical law that exhibits time reversal is the Klein–Gordon equation, which is an equation of motion describing the behavior of particles moving at very high velocities (relativistic particles). If the physical law is a first-order differential equation in both space and time, then time reversibility can be achieved in conjugation with space and, if the particle is charged, then it might be possible to have the physical law exhibiting charge conjugation, time reversibility, and space inversion. This is called CPT (Charge conjuga- tion, Parity, Time reversal) symmetry. For some time, particle physicists were fascinated by CPT symmetry, as it seemed to help solve some problems, but later such high hopes proved to be exaggerated. Nature is consistent and will never contradict itself. Consequently, one can say that time reversibility is an artifact of our mathematical formulation.
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•A good law of physics in my opinion is one with rich content, one that is simple and economical, and elegant in form. Elegance may include some sort of symmetry. An example of this is Einstein’s field equation, where we have the whole of spacetime and its material content being expressed in one com- pact form composed of three terms, two on the left-hand side describing the geometry of spacetime and the third on the right describing the matter–energy content. This form can be decomposed into sixteen second-order partial dif- ferential equations (PDEs) describing the gravitational field on one side as a curved four-dimentional spacetime composed of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. We are all familiar with curved surfaces like the surface of a ball, for example, but we are not accustomed to thinking about curved time. It is rather beautiful to see how time curves when we decom- pose the Einstein field equations. This is what popular science writers call “time warp”. The Dirac equation is another example of a physical law that enjoys richness, simplicity, and elegance. This is a first-order partial differ- ential equation written in a compact form using matrices. Originally, it was invented to describe the state of the electron, which is why Dirac called it the “equation of the electron”, but later it was discovered that the same equa- tion describes positrons too. Changing the mass in the equation allows it to describe the proton, neutron, neutrinos, and all spin-1⁄2 particles. The Dirac equation can be decomposed into four separate equations, two of them de- scribing an electron with negative and positive energy states, and the other two describing a positron with positive and negative energy states. The Dirac equation is perhaps the most beautiful law of physics, although it is not the richest.
•The power of a scientific theory is mainly embodied in its ability to gener- ate verifiable predictions. A theory which can only explain phenomena is still useful, but certainly is considered to be at a lower level in the hierarchy of scientific theories. This surely applies to theories of physics. It is through the practical verifications of its theoretical predictions that we know that a theory is correct, or that it at least presents a better description of the world than its predecessors. Relativity theory, for example, contains all the predictions of Newtonian mechanics and his law of gravity plus several other predictions which have been verified by direct and indirect observations. This is what makes Einstein’s theory of relativity superior to Newton’s theory.
•One other important characteristic of a scientific theory is that it must be consistent. This means that it should not be possible to use the assumptions of a theory to reach conclusions that contradict its other results. Results ob- tained from a theory should be unique and, if different versions of the same theory were to be discovered, then this would result in a lack of confidence.
•god, nature, and the cause
•This happened with string theory, for example, which, although it gained much popularity, could not provide verifiable predictions despite its basic simplicity and elegance. Five string theories were found, not one (later inter- preted to be five versions of one and the same theory). However, this remains a controversial question.14
•A theory should not depend on many undefined parameters. For example, the theory of cosmic inflation was devised in order to remedy some serious loopholes in the standard big bang theory of the origin and development of the early universe, but it could not specify a well-defined potential for driving the proposed inflation, which is a fundamental parameter. This problem was counted as one of the shortcomings of the cosmic inflation theory. One more example is the standard model of elementary particles, where the values of the masses are not well known, they are only set by hand. This, we hope, will be rectified in order to have a consistent and complete theory for particle physics.
•Science has now become the accumulation of consistent knowledge that has two very important properties. The first is the capability of self-correction and the second is the property of correspondence by which new theories con- verge with those they replace, producing the same results once set to the spe- cial conditions described by the old theory or physical law. For example, Einstein’s general relativity has provided us with a law of gravity that re- placed Newton’s law of universal gravitation. However, the law provided by Einstein reduces to the same expression as Newton’s law of gravity in the case of weak gravitational field. Therefore, Newton’s gravity becomes a special case of Einstein’s gravity. This same property applies to quantum mechanics, where we find that the laws of quantum mechanics reduce to the correspond- ing laws of classical mechanics once the action (energy multiplied by time or distance multiplied by momentum) of the physical system becomes much larger than the value of Planck’s constant.
•At this moment in history, physics is in crisis. There are many unsolved problems and, toward the end of the twentieth century, the theories of physics became more and more speculative. Mathematical machines produced many abstract speculations with poor physical content and very few verifiable pro- files. Most important is the quantum measurement problem, which has found no resolution and is hindering the advancement of quantum physics. In ad- dition, there are problems concerning the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity. Because gravity is being described by a non-linear theory, there seems to be no way of unifying it with the linear theory of quantum mechan- ics. To understand gravity at the quantum level, it is necessary to understand the beginning of the universe and the singularity at the center of the black hole, and several other situations.
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•We also encounter problems associated with the standard model of cos- mology: the big bang model. Some of the problems have been solved by sug- gesting the era of cosmic inflation, but some physicists believe that the in- flation hypothesis itself is suffering from fundamental theoretical problems. Some other non-inflationary models have been suggested too, but mainstream research in cosmology still follows the big bang model.
•Our description of the world remains approximate as long as we are in this world, and in no way can we dream of obtaining an absolute theory in the near future. This fact of life, which we encounter every time we go into deep analysis of our scientific knowledge, pushes us to believe in an extrapolated case where an omnipotent and omniscient agent has to exist for this universe to be. It might be that some people would not agree with the notion of God as represented by the main religions; however, a belief in the necessity of an omnipotent and omniscient agent for the universe to exist does not neces- sarily mean that we should believe in the God defined by religions. On the other hand, the scientific quest need not refer to the action of such an agent in any detailed description of causation or explanation of events in nature. It remains a matter of personal or communal belief how to account for the role of an omnipotent and omniscient agent.
•Logic, Mathematics, and Reality
•Away from the standard definitions, and in a simple word, I can describe “logic” as being a collection of basic axioms deduced from known first princi- ples that constitute a set of rules for reasoning and deduction. The most direct and simple logical rule says that the whole is larger than its parts. On identify- ing the parts of a whole, we are identifying countable entities which belong to the whole. This kind of identification is made possible by the characteristics of our natural world. Computability of the parts is a fundamental characteristic of the world which makes it possible to construct counting machines, which may have started with the Babylonian mathematical tables that were in use a long time ago. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Oxford mathematical physicist David Deutsch considers computability to be an empirical property which depends on the way the world happens to be rather than on some nec- essary logical truth:
•The reason why we find it possible to construct, say, electronic calculators, and indeed why we can perform mental arithmetic, cannot be found in mathematics and logic. The reason is that the laws of physics happen to permit the existence of physical models for the operation of arithmetic such as addition, subtrac- tion and multiplication. If they did not, these familiar operations would be non- computable functions.15
•god, nature, and the cause
•Here again, I may point out that Deutsch should have used the term “laws of nature” instead of “laws of physics”, since it is the laws of nature that are allowing such a computability and not the laws of physics. This is one more example of a physicist and mathematician misusing terms.
•This kind of understanding of computability helps one realize why we are able to comprehend the world as a computable and physical system, a world which is explicable in terms of numbers and reasons. This is where the laws of nature and the laws of physics meet; it is in the arena of math- ematics that we can describe the physical world most accurately. This is perhaps what made Galileo realize that the world is written in the language of mathematics. It is through the laws of physics that we realize the world is reasonable, comprehensible, and, to some extent, predictable. It is true to say that, “there is evidently a crucial concordance between, on the one hand, the laws of physics and, on the other hand, the computability of the mathematical functions that describe those same laws”.16 But, it is not true to say that the nature of the laws of physics permits certain mathematical operations to be computable—such as addition and multiplication—for, if it were so, then the laws of mathematics would be a subset of the laws of physics, whereas in fact it is the other way around. Plato’s mathematical forms were transcendent; how could it be so unless the laws of mathematics enjoy a kind of superiority over the laws of physics? It is more likely that it is the laws of nature which permit certain mathematical operations, and not the laws of physics.
•Babylonians where known to have developed a mathematical system that enabled them to solve numerical equations of the third order. They were able to calculate many parameters of nature, such as the length of the year, taken from different reference points and with very high accuracy. The invention of the sexagesimal system was a great help to Babylonian astronomers and mathematicians, who used the system very efficiently and were able to ob- tain their results with very high accuracy. Otto Neugebauer, the Austrian- American mathematician and historian of science, described the Babylonian computational efficiency with the following words:
•The system of tables alone, as it existed in 1800 B.C. would put the Bab- ylonians ahead of all numerical computers in antiquity. Between 350 and 400 A.D. Theon Alexandrinus wrote pages of explanations in his commen- taries to Ptolemy’s sexagesimal computations in the Almagest. A scribe of the administration of an estate of a Babylonian temple 2000 years before Theon would have rightly wondered about so many words for such a simple technique.17
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•Many of the theorems of geometry and geometrical relations were known to Babylonians and, according to Neugebauer, “the Pythagorean theorem was known to the Babylonians more than a thousand years before Pythagoras”.18
•Mathematical systems can be very helpful not only in obtaining accurate prescriptive results, but also in exposing the secrets of the laws of nature. For example, tensor calculus greatly helped Einstein in formulating gravity as a spacetime curvature, by which Einstein was able to recognize Newton’s law of gravity as only an approximate formula, making its use suitable for only weak gravitational fields. Tensor calculus enabled Einstein to recognize that the gravitational field in a four-dimensional spacetime has ten components rather than one. This is a fascinating example of the revealing power of math- ematical systems. Vector calculus enabled James Clark Maxwell to formulate his electromagnetic theory in a neat and vivid form.
•These examples make one feel that mathematics does have its version of reality. The fact that tensor calculus can help me to uncover that a gravita- tional field has more components than believed as I describe it in a linear vector form is astonishing. However, mathematics cannot stand alone as a tool to probe nature. Physics is also needed to provide us with insight into the underlying meaning and content of mathematical formulations. Mathematics cannot identify on its own the axes of a coordinate system, let alone label such coordinates for describing spacetime, for example. Mathematics is a machine that is able to generate new expressions for describing relationships between symbols satisfying a certain set of axioms and conditions. A good mathema- tician is someone who can drive this machine efficiently. It is the physicist who identifies those symbols and uses them to describe variables of physical systems. In doing so, he then can deduce the relations between those variables and, accordingly, discover the related physical law. The beauty of mathemat- ics appears when we obtain general solutions for our physical problem, by which we describe the problem in its mathematical form. Then come physical conditions, which are normally introduced to the general mathematical solu- tion as boundary conditions, to assign the physical limits imposed by the real situation specified by the problem.
•Here the fundamental question arises: is it physical law that is embodied in mathematics or is it mathematics that is embodied in the natural phenomena (the laws of nature)? One can ask this question in another way: can we say that mathematics is the underlying structure of the world? Many examples can be provided in support of an affirmative answer. On the other hand, there are many consistent mathematical laws which find no place in natural phe- nomena. It is not possible to explain the world on the basis of mathematical
•god, nature, and the cause
•consistency alone, as there are many consistent mathematical forms that do not find a place in the real world. Steven Weinberg was puzzled by this and considered it a dilemma that atheism is suffering from.19 In addition, one may say that the world of mathematics is quite open to any development and that it is unlimited, except by the required consistency. Indeed, this is where the natural world meets with the world of mathematics. This might sound like Platonic philosophy of course, but it is the result of any free critical thinking. How, then, can we get Weinberg out of the fix he finds himself in? The answer might be somewhere in the distant future, as we have not yet discovered ev- erything in the world. Mathematics, I gather, is the language of the world, but it is physical assumptions that might lead mathematics to acquire meaningful expression, or likewise to produce nonsense. This means that the extent of mathematics as a venture is as broad as the world is open, and not the other way round. The world is designed in such a way that allows mathematically solvable formulae to describe it in a consistent way, and that is what we call the “laws of physics”.
•However, as the world is so open, to the extent that we do not even know its limits, we cannot say for sure to what degree of conformity our mathemat- ical formulation would comply with the reality of the natural world (the laws of nature). For this reason, it would be reasonable to assume that many of our mathematical formulations which are now thought to be redundant might find their way into certain future applications by which they could represent some states of the natural world. For example, we now deal mostly with what we call a “time-like world” in which physical causality in the conventional chronological order of cause and effect applies, but there is no reason why a different kind of world, a space-like world in which the chronological order of cause and effect is reversed, should not exist. Such a world may exist within the same space and time in which we are living; it is only another region of the spacetime. In fact, the spacetime diagrams invented by Herman Minkowski contain such regions and the theory of general relativity accommodates such a space-like world. This kind of space-like universe is not well understood yet, but it is said that the spacetime inside the event horizon of a black hole is space-like. The laws of physics are basically the same with only some physical quantities having interchangeable roles, such as space and time, and in these cases changes are measured according to variations of space, not variations of time. This means that the status of things may not change as time passes, but would change as we changed places. That is why different trajectories (so-called “geodesics”) in a space-like universe would have different destinies and fates. A space-like world is a new world that we are not accustomed to; nevertheless, it is an alternative to our world. Some of the laws of physics
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•would not change when going to a space-like universe, but some other laws may. For example, Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism would not change, but the electric and magnetic charges would exchange roles. We would not be able to see a single electric charge (electric monopole), but instead we would be accustomed to seeing the magnetic monopoles. Were we to move from our time-like world into a space-like world, we would find that the laws of nature have changed even if some laws of physics remain the same.
•In the light of the above discussion, we can firmly conclude that math- ematics obtains its realistic status through the laws of physics and that the laws of physics are constructed to express the relations between the param- eters which contribute to natural phenomena. The laws of nature thus allow for the employment of mathematical constructions to describe them, at least in an approximate form following our own comprehension, and this is what makes these laws describe an approximate reality on the technical level. But, on the conceptual level, no ultimate truth can ever be claimed, no matter how long science is in progress. The good thing is that we are on the right track; every day we improve our calculations and refine our concepts about the laws of nature, but no ultimate status can be reached as long as there is time. Therefore, the dream of an ultimate theory for everything is far-fetched.
•Conservation Laws
•Conservation laws are the most important safeguards for the consistency of our physical world. These are the main pillars of physics without which no physical world can be comprehended. If there were no conservation laws then we would not be sure of anything, our physics would be vague, and the world would be running miraculously. The fact that some physical quantities are known to be conserved in natural processes makes us confident of the validity of physics. This is why Descartes placed so much emphasis on the importance of conservation law. However, no conservation law is known to be abso- lute. The conservation of physical quantities is known to apply within certain limits.
•Despite the suggestion of conservation laws being made by Descartes and Leibniz as early as the seventeenth century, the deep implications of the no- tion were not well established until the late 1930s. When it was discovered in the early thirties that the neutron disintegrated into a proton plus and an electron, it was found that the total mass energy of these two particles did not add up to the total mass energy of a neutron. So, Niels Bohr proposed that the conservation of energy might, on average, only be working statistically.20 However, it was later suggested that another particle is released during the disintegration of the neutron. But, since the electric charge is conserved, and
•god, nature, and the cause
•because the neutron has zero charge, the proton has a +1 charge and the electron has –1 charge; therefore, the suggested particle should be neutral. It was called the “neutrino”. The story of the discovery of the neutrino is one of the fascinating pieces in the history of modern physics. This discovery re- veals many evidences of the success of theoretical physics, which consolidate the fact that this universe is ruled according to certain laws which are based on rigorous logic. The exciting part is the discovery that the neutrino must have a spin-1⁄2, which makes it a member of the family of fermions. This was achieved with full reliance on the law of conservation of spin angular mo- mentum. The fuel of the Sun was only discovered with the help of the law of conservation of mass-energy without which the huge energy radiated by the Sun could not be explained.
•It is fascinating to know that conservation laws are profoundly related to the symmetry of physical systems. Symmetry is known to mean equality, so when we say, for example, that the human body is symmetrical with respect to right and left, it means that every feature of our right side resembles the corresponding feature of our left side. When we say that an unmarked ball is symmetrical when rotating around any axis passing through its center, we mean that it remains the same at any angle during such rotations. But, once we mark the surface of the ball with scars, then it will not retain the same sym- metry. The scars will cause a break in the symmetry. Similarly, an unmarked square is symmetrical under rotation by 90 degrees about an axis passing through its center, but a marked one will not have the same symmetrical properties. Here again, the mark causes a break in the symmetry. All symme- tries correspond to certain conservation laws and many conservation laws in elementary particle physics were discovered through studying their symmetry groups.
•Light preserves the symmetry of the spacetime it moves through. Accord- ing to the theory of general relativity, time becomes dilated near massive bodies owing to the bending of time that is caused by gravity. This might be understood as if the light, while moving through spacetime, makes units of distance along its path (the wavelength) larger and larger as it approaches the massive body in order to keep the pace at a constant value. This implies that light (and all electromagnetic radiation) is a property of spacetime; it is the unit by which space and time is measured simultaneously. Accordingly, the speed of light in a vacuum must be constant with respect to all other observ- ers, because otherwise the invariance of spacetime will be lost and, conse- quently, each point in space or time will have its own physics. Therefore, one can say that the constancy of the velocity of light is the most fundamental law of nature.
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•Why Should There Be a Law?
•Why should the world behave in a way that is comprehensible through mathematics and the laws of physics? The laws of nature (the recurrence of natural phenomena) are clear evidence of an ordered world. But why should there be law and order in the universe? In fact, we do not know the origin of the laws of nature, which we describe by the laws of physics; we do not know why the world follows such laws unless we adopt a teleological explanation. This is what provoked Albert Einstein to say that “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”.21 So, it is we human beings with our advanced consciousness who are giving the world its meaning. But why is a teleological explanation not welcomed by many scientists?
•Suppose we live in a world that does not seem to follow any set of laws. We might call such a world “chaotic”. However, I am not intending to discuss chaos here, which might be described by highly non-linear laws. Instead, what I mean is a world in which some things are produced sud- denly and may disappear suddenly too; a world without any fixed measure or rules and without any regularity. Such a world would not be productive and no material construct could be seen in it. The fact that we are here with such a complex composition is sufficient evidence for the existence of law and order in our world. But does this mean that our existence becomes inevitable, given the laws of physics? Can the laws of physics stand as suf- ficient cause for our existence? This is by no means a trivial argument. It could be accepted that the laws of physics become sufficient cause for our existence if we can prove that these laws have the power, intelligence, plan- ning, and hindsight to act and produce the results they are acting for. But, which of these laws or sets of laws has the character that would qualify it for such a status? One might say that such a question will be answered once we discover the so-called “theory of everything”, that we will discover the mother of all laws of physics, which can explain everything in one shot. But would such a law then belong to the laws of physics? If so, then it would have to have the fundamental characteristics of those laws, among which is the inherent inaccuracy in describing the world, and in this case it would not qualify as the ultimate answer. Otherwise, such a law would have to transcend all of our knowledge and, as such, it would not belong to the realm of physics. On the other hand, mathematically Gödel’s incomplete- ness theorem prevents us from obtaining an absolute, complete proof from any set of axioms. Therefore, if an ultimate law were to exist, it would have to be something that could transcend our mathematics as well as our phys- ics. In fact, this is the essential stumbling block in the atheistic argument for
•god, nature, and the cause
•a universe with sufficient cause ascribed to any law of physics at all. In a letter to Solovine, Einstein wrote:
•You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the ex- tent that we are authorized to speak of such comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which can- not be grasped by the mind in any way . . . the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the “miracle” which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.22
•The above questions and analysis lead us to conclude that, no matter how our theories are refined, the ultimate reality cannot be comprehended without resorting to some super, transcendental power that has the will and knowledge to produce such a magnificent world. Such a power might not be a personal being, as described by the holy scriptures of religion, but it would certainly have to enjoy independence from our physical world. If not independent of the world, such a power would have to be either a part or the whole of the world. Accordingly, this power would have to abide by the laws of the world, which would then bring such a superior power to a lower status and restrict it from being able to control the world. This is the reason why Spinoza’s god is not valid.
•The Cosmological Argument
•The cosmological argument ascribes the creation of the universe and all its contents to a supernatural agent: God. Among these is the Kalām Cosmo- logical Argument, which was recently reformulated by William Craig. On the contrary, it is argued that the laws of physics provide enough reasons for the existence of the universe without the need to refer to any supernatural agent. Stephen Hawking23 and, more recently, Lawrence Krauss24 have spread such a claim in their popular books written for laymen. The main argument is based on the assumption that vacuum quantum fluctuations, the so-called “virtual states”, can be turned spontaneously into real matter and energy, that is to say, real states. This can only be achieved if an external field of force existed, which would enable virtual states of the vacuum to be converted into real states. In a real situation, the field of force would have to be strong enough to achieve such an operation. The question is, from where can such a field of force be produced if we have nothing? Stephen Hawking argued that it could be the force of gravity. But how can a strong field of gravity be produced in a vacuum? No way, since the vacuum fluctuations could only produce a feeble
•laws of nature and laws of physics
•force that would not be strong enough to convert virtual states into real ones. Consequently, a spontaneous generation of real states out of a vacuum is deemed to be impossible.
•On the other hand, and through a somewhat philosophical argument, giv- en the fact that vacuum fluctuations are a contingency, they are therefore cer- tainly subjects of the initiation and sustainment that keep such virtual states popping up and down within a time duration below Heisenberg’s uncertainty limit. Who, then, would do that and what kind of a law would work to sus- tain the state of the quantum vacuum? What kind of law governed the initial conditions of the universe before it came into being? Certainly neither Hawk- ing nor Krauss, nor any other physicist, can answer such a question. This point will be discussed further below.
•The Cosmic Singularity
•On discussing the beginning and the fate of the universe, it is usually claimed that cosmic singularity is unavoidable.25 Usually, this claim is supported by a reference to the work of Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking26 in which they proved a theorem which shows that, in the classic general theory of rela- tivity, cosmic singularity is unavoidable. But, this misses the fact that, in that work of Penrose and Hawking, quantum effects were ignored and therefore such a result cannot be confirmed as representing the actual conditions for the beginning or the fate of the universe. In fact, in discussing this matter, some physicists claim that once space has infinitely shrunk, it must literally disappear and consequently time and matter will disappear too. This claim is not well established in detailed physical terms, since we need a full theory of quantum gravity in order to provide the mechanism for the big crunch or the big bang. To date, such a theory is not available. An alternative detailed mechanism, which might be more realistic, is provided by what I have called the “non-singular quantum model of the early universe”.27 In this model, matter is produced from the vacuum energy that is produced by the unfolding of the curvature of spacetime. So, practically, we start at the moment when a highly curved spacetime existed, producing intense Casimir energy out of the vacuum fluctuations; this energy was converted into matter through the era of matter generation (where massive particles are produced by a condensing of the energy, maybe through the mechanism of a Bose–Einstein condensate, which takes place at very high temperatures). At this moment, the first mat- ter was born and the first law of the interaction of matter with radiation was set at work. In this model, the material content of the universe is gener- ated gradually out of an unfolding of the spacetime curvature which was given a priori, not in one shot as stipulated by the standard big bang model.
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•For this reason, we have no singularity at the beginning of the universe. Some details of the model need to be worked out further in order to understand the full details of the mechanism of matter generation and the conversion of energy into massive particles. This model is free from all the known problems that are associated with the standard big bang model and, therefore, needs no inflation era to remedy those problems.
•Laws of Physics at the First Moment
•All physicists agree that the laws of physics ceased to work at the first moment of existence of the universe. The problem of the initial conditions for the birth of the universe is one of the stumbling blocks in gaining a full understand- ing of the universe’s very early moments. Great minds like those of Penrose, Hawking, Hartle, Wheeler, and many others have been concerned with this problem, but no conclusive answer has been obtained. Whereas all the laws of physics just ceased, the laws of nature were at work. This is because the laws of nature were controlling the actions that were occurring. It is because of this that I say that the laws of physics are what we know about events and processes taking place in this world, but the laws of nature are those which might be unknown to us and yet are still at work. This humble understand- ing of the world is what we may all adopt in order to avoid the blindness of dogma and the arrogance that dominates thinking at times.
•It is true that our understanding of the laws of physics is an approach to our understanding of the laws of nature, but at all times our understanding and formulations remain limited by our mental capabilities and comprehension. We cannot claim at any point that we have reached the ultimate understand- ing of anything at all in the world, so how can we be so confident that we can deny the existence of other agents at work? One thing we have to show in any argument is the logical sequence of reason. Arguments referring to a super- natural agent as being the reason for what happens in nature are not scientific arguments because they cannot explain the events. A supernatural agent is part of a person’s beliefs and cannot be proved to exist until one’s compre- hension adjusts to accommodate facts within a certain framework. However, if one were to attempt to understand this existence and to appreciate such a level of consciousness and comprehension, it would make sense to consider an extended sort of world which goes beyond what we know through con- ventional logical arguments that adopt cause and effect and employ material existence as the only means of deduction. When we go beyond this kind of logic, we can transcend into a form of logic that allows for other versions of comprehension to be realized. However, here we need to be careful not to fall into the fallacy of illusion. When we go beyond our standard logic and
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•comprehension into a transcendent state, we should always have a connection to our formal logic and rational comprehension, yet we should be free from the materialistic dogma which captivates us inside the horizon of a physical world. So, a subtle balance is needed for a factual understanding of the world as a whole and a humble comprehension that allows for other factors to be at play, to seek a comprehensive picture of what is at work. This might be an approach that achieves Einstein’s dream to “catch God at work”.28
•Given the main attributes of God, it is not difficult to realize that He can- not be considered part of the world. A Spinoza type of god, to which Einstein had subscribed, is an extrapolation of the cosmic law and order. This could only be the case if there were a coordinating power within the cosmos itself, a far-fetched requirement to be part of our physical world. Therefore, it seems that in no way can we escape transcendence if we are to seek an explanation for the existence and development of the world.
•So why should we seek to prove the existence of God simply through the laws of physics, which are part of our comprehension of the world, and ig- nore the fact that the world goes beyond our knowledge? Is this not what we cultivate by contemplating the events of this world? Is it not this that we learn from the development of scientific thought through the ages? We cannot dis- prove the existence of God by tracing what we know of the laws of physics. But can we prove the existence of God otherwise? The blunt answer is no, for God is an entity that goes beyond our standard logic; therefore, it is hard to see how we can, using such arguments. However, once the world is assumed to be His creation, we can always contemplate it and reflect on the attributes of God in an approach to comprehend Him as best as we can. This is how we can approach God and seek His company. But, again, it is a matter of faith and submission.
•The laws of physics are deterministic, for example the Schrödinger equa- tion, whereas the laws of nature are probabilistic. We cannot predict the oc- currence of any phenomenon with absolute certainty; this is the outcome of quantum physics by which deterministic causality is invalidated. The reason why the laws of physics are deterministic is because they are formulated on the basis of mathematical logic, which has no room for indeterminism. However, indeterminism does not rule out causality, it rules out deterministic causality.
•The Mind of God
•A final question is whether the laws of physics that we are devising or dis- covering reflect the mind of God? The answer might be obtained when we answer the question of whether scientific theories express facts and realities or whether they are expressions of our own minds and imaginations? Theories
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•suggest expressions for the laws of physics to expose quantitative relation- ships between variables. However, some philosophers like Nancy Cartwright think that these laws might sometimes lie.29 She asserts the fact that, despite the explanatory power of theoretical laws, these laws do not describe reality. Indeed it is the case and this is exactly one major difference between a law of nature and the corresponding descriptive law of physics.
•The history of modern science tells us that scientific theories change over time and, although a correspondence is established sometimes between the results of calculations based on new theories and the old ones, it is found that the concepts are liable to change. We now have two famous and well-studied examples: quantum theory versus classical radiation physics, and relativity theory versus Newtonian mechanics and gravitational theory. We have seen how the classical particle concept has changed and how the wave–particle du- ality concept replaced the old one and constitutes the substratum of quantum theory. Moreover, the determinism of classical physics was replaced by the indeterminism of quantum systems. These new concepts completely changed the philosophy of a law of nature. A deterministic world may not need God if the laws operate independently, but an indeterministic world would surely need an external agent to decide the results and coordinate the actions of dif- ferent, sometimes conflicting, laws. A universe abiding by deterministic laws can enforce a kind of self-ruling; the entire universe can run in a self-contained manner. On the contrary, if indeterminism underlies the structure of the laws of nature, then surely the need for an external ruler becomes inevitable. That is why Einstein could not accept the notion that God plays dice.30 Here, rea- son conflicts with nature, which does not necessarily follow the laws that our minds have devised, but follows the laws that were devised by the Creator.
•The laws of physics by which we describe natural events are actually de- vised by our minds, the mind of Paul Davies for example, but not by the “mind of God”. So, in one way or another, we are discovering the human mind and its workings and not how the mind of God works. This fact may easily be recognized once we remember that people thought for more than 200 years that Newton’s law of gravity was the law of God controlling the solar system. Then it turned out that neither the mathematical formulation of Newton’s law nor his concept of gravity were right, despite the fact that astronomers successfully used it to calculate the orbits of the planets in the sky precisely, and even to predict the existence of other planets which were duly discovered later. That is why no one can catch God at work, not even the great Einstein himself.31
•Different conflicting and stand-alone laws cannot act by themselves to pro- duce the organizational qualities or the delicacy of nature. These laws need
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•some coordinating mechanism, which would be, in essence, yet another law of nature. Otherwise we have to resort to an external agent that does not abide by the characteristics of nature itself. In no way can we find a single law unifying all the laws in nature, simply because such a law would contain the mechanism and control necessary for the coordination of all the other laws; that is a self-defeating goal, because such a goal, in replicating itself ad infini- tum, must ever elude us. Therefore, the role of an external agent that does not follow nature is deemed necessary to resolve such a dilemma, an agent that acts outside of space and time and does not necessarily abide by our logic and comprehension.
•Physicists and other scientists need to revise the ways they think about God in order to be able to seriously comprehend the possibility of having an exter- nal power, will, or wisdom, or whatever initiates, controls, and sustains the universe. God needs to be thought of as an abstract entity that exists and acts beyond physical space and time. Otherwise, if we think of God as an entity within and as part of our physical world, and characterize Him according to our scientific standards, then we surely will be “led to conclude that adding God would just make things more complicated, and this hypothesis should be rejected by scientific standards”, as Sean Carroll puts it.32 God is not physi- cal; were it so, He would be contained within the universe. He would then be subject to the laws of the universe and would need a supernatural power to coordinate His acts and sustain His will and power.
•In one important paper,33 the philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright has argued that the concept of a law of nature cannot be made sense of without God. Cartwright did not mean to defend a theistic view, rather she argues that assuming that laws of nature are prescriptive and not merely descriptive, and supposing that the laws that are responsible for what occurs in nature, would require God. Cartwright suggests an alternative by which the order of nature can be maintained without immediate reliance on God by accepting the pro- posal of empiricism. Nothing in the empirical world makes anything happen, rather nature is a collection of events one after another. In this vision, there is still a realization of the regularities among these events and recognition of the causal relationships, nevertheless Cartwright points out that there is no way in which these laws can be said to govern events in nature. This vision is based on the Hume’s teachings. In one version of the views, the blue-blood empiricism, some regularities are thought to necessarily hold.
•This view echoes the original ideas of al-GhazālÏ concerning his rejection of the presence of a deterministic causality. Indeed, al-GhazālÏ saw the regular- ity of events occurring in nature as being a sort of “custom”, explaining that these laws are written in the book of nature and, as Cartwright asserts, “there
•god, nature, and the cause
•is no sense in which they can be responsible for what happens”.34 Cartwright concludes that, without God, God’s plans, and God’s will, there can be no laws of nature for an empiricist.
•In the next chapter, I will discuss the question of the laws of nature from an Islamic point of view under the subject of causality, where I will show how some Muslims, namely the mutakallimūn, understood causal relationships in the world and the action of the Creator in sustaining the world.
•Chapter 13 :
•My lovely religion (philosophy)
•Let’s take a look about the idea of the subject and the important free thinkers and then we gonna see their wisdom and some magnificent quoetes of my favorite philosophers or as I call them The real Prophets.
•philosophy is such a broad and encompassing subject — I mean, it’s basically about everything — we don’t claim to cover the subject comprehensively. Honestly, the only real way you can fully comprehend the theories, epistemologies, and frameworks described here is to read the writing created by — and critique dedicated to — each of these thinkers. But what follows is your introduction, a rapid-fire look at 20 Major Philosophers, their Big Ideas, and their most important written works. But think fast, because these mindblowers come at a furious pace.
•And believe me, I really wanna drink some wine with Socrates and having a conversation.
•Let’s get started !
•SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (1225–1274)
•Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century Dominican friar, theologian and Doctor of the Church, born in what is known today as the Lazio region of Italy. His most important contribution to Western thought is the concept of natural theology (sometimes referred to as Thomism in tribute to his influence). This belief system holds that the existence of God is verified through reason and rational explanation, as opposed to through scripture or religious experience. This ontological approach is among the central premises underpinning modern Catholic philosophy and liturgy. His writings, and Aquinas himself, are still considered among the preeminent models for Catholic priesthood. His ideas also remain central to theological debate, discourse, and modes of worship.
•AQUINAS’ BIG IDEAS
•Adhered to the Platonic/Aristotelian principle of realism, which holds that certain absolutes exist in the universe, including the existence of the universe itself;
•Focused much of his work on reconciling Aristotelian and Christian principles, but also expressed a doctrinal openness to Jewish and Roman philosophers, all to the end of divining truth wherever it could be found;
•The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) declared his Summa Theolgoiae — a compendium of all the teachings of the Catholic Church to that point — “Perennial Philosophy.”
•2. ARISTOTLE (384–322 BCE)
•Aristotle is among the most important and influential thinkers and teachers in human history, often considered — alongside his mentor, Plato — to be a father of Western Philosophy.” Born in the northern part of ancient Greece, his writings and ideas on metaphysics, ethics, knowledge, and methodological inquiry are at the very root of human thought. Most philosophers who followed — both those who echoed and those who opposed his ideas — owed a direct debt to his wide-ranging influence. Aristotle’s enormous impact was a consequence both of the breadth of his writing and his personal reach during his lifetime.
•In addition to being a philosopher, Aristotle was also a scientist, which led him to consider an enormous array of topics, and largely through the view that all concepts and knowledge are ultimately based on perception. A small sampling of topics covered in Aristotle’s writing includes physics, biology, psychology, linguistics, logic, ethics, rhetoric, politics, government, music, theatre, poetry, and metaphysics. He was also in a unique position to prevail directly over thinking throughout the known world, tutoring a young Alexander the Great at the request of the future conqueror’s father, Phillip II of Macedon. This position of influence gave Aristotle the means to establish the library at Lyceum, where he produced hundreds of writings on papyrus scrolls. And of course, it also gave him direct sway over the mind of a man who would one day command an empire stretching from Greece to northwestern India. The result was an enormous sphere of influence for Aristotle’s ideas, one that only began to be challenged by Renaissance thinkers nearly 2,000 years later.
•ARISTOTLE’S BIG IDEAS
•Asserted the use of logic as a method of argument and offered the basic methodological template for analytical discourse;
•Espoused the understanding that knowledge is built from the study of things that happen in the world, and that some knowledge is universal — a prevailing set of ideas throughout Western Civilization thereafter;
•Defined metaphysics as “the knowledge of immaterial being,” and used this framework to examine the relationship between substance (a combination of matter and form) and essence, from which he devises that man is comprised from a unity of the two.
•3. CONFUCIUS (551–479 BCE)
•Chinese teacher, writer, and philosopher Confucius viewed himself as a channel for the theological ideas and values of the imperial dynasties that came before him. With an emphasis on family and social harmony, Confucius advocated for a way of life that reflected a spiritual and religious tradition, but which was also distinctly humanist and even secularist. Confucius — thought to be a contemporary of Taoist progenitor Lao-Tzu — had a profound impact on the development of Eastern legal customs and the emergence of a scholarly ruling class. Confucianism would engage in historic push-pull with the philosophies of Buddhism and Taoism, experiencing ebbs and flows in influence, its high points coming during the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), Tang (618–907 CE), and Song (960–1296 CE) Dynasties. As Buddhism became the dominant spiritual force in China, Confucianism declined in practice. However, it remains a foundational philosophy underlying Asian and Chinese attitudes toward scholarly, legal, and professional pursuits.
•CONFUCIUS’ BIG IDEAS
•Developed a belief system focused on both personal and governmental morality through qualities such as justice, sincerity, and positive relationships with others;
•Advocated for the importance of strong family bonds, including respect for the elder, veneration of one’s ancestors, and marital loyalty;
•Believed in the value of achieving ethical harmony through skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules, denoting that one should achieve morality through self-cultivation.
•4. RENE DESCARTES (1596–1650)
•A French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, Descartes was born in France but spent 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic. As a member of the Dutch States Army, then as the Prince of Orange and subsequently as STADTHOLDER (a position of national leadership in the Dutch Republic), Descartes wielded considerable intellectual influence over the period known as the Dutch Golden Age. He often distinguished himself by refuting or attempting to undo the ideas of those that came before him.
•DESCARTES’ BIG IDEAS
•Discards belief in all things that are not absolutely certain, emphasizing the understanding of that which can be known for sure;
•Is recognized as the father of analytical geometry;
•Regarded as one of the leading influences in the Scientific Revolution — a period of intense discovery, revelation, and innovation that rippled through Europe between the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras (roughly speaking, 15th to 18th centuries).
•5. RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803 82)
•A Boston-born writer, philosopher, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson is the father of the transcendentalist movement. This was a distinctly American philosophical orientation that rejected the pressures imposed by society, materialism, and organized religion in favor of the ideals of individualism, freedom, and a personal emphasis on the soul’s relationship with the surrounding natural world. Though not explicitly a “naturalist” himself, Emerson’s ideals were taken up by this 20th century movement. He was also seen as a key figure in the American romantic movement.
•EMERSON’S BIG IDEAS
•Wrote on the importance of subjects such as self-reliance, experiential living, and the preeminence of the soul;
•Referred to “the infinitude of the private man” as his central doctrine;
•Was a mentor and friend to fellow influential transcendentalist Henry David Thoureau.
•6. MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984)
•Historian, social theorist, and philosopher Michel Foucault, born in the riverfront city of Poiltiers, France, dedicated much of his teaching and writing to the examination of power and knowledge and their connection to social control. Though often identified as a postmodernist, Foucault preferred to think of himself as a critic of modernity. His service as an international diplomat on behalf of France also influenced his understanding of social constructs throughout history and how they have served to enforce racial, religious, and sexual inequality. His ideals have been particularly embraced by progressive movements, and he allied with many during his lifetime. Active in movements against racism, human rights abuses, prisoner abuses, and marginalization of the mentally ill, he is often cited as a major influence in movements for social justice, human rights, and feminism. More broadly speaking, his examination of power and social control has had a direct influence on the studies of sociology, communications, and political science.
•FOUCAULT’S BIG IDEAS
•Held the conviction that the study of philosophy must begin through a close and ongoing study of history;
•Demanded that social constructs be more closely examined for hierarchical inequalities, as well as through an analysis of the corresponding fields of knowledge supporting these unequal structures;
•Believed oppressed humans are entitled to rights and they have a duty to rise up against the abuse of power to protect these rights.
•7. DAVID HUME (1711–77)
•A Scottish-born historian, economist, and philosopher, Hume is often grouped with thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Sir Francis Bacon as part of a movement called British Empiricism. He was focused on creating a “naturalistic science of man” that delves into the psychological conditions defining human nature. In contrast to rationalists such as Descartes, Hume was preoccupied with the way that passions (as opposed to reason) govern human behavior. This, Hume argued, predisposed human beings to knowledge founded not on the existence of certain absolutes but on personal experience. As a consequence of these ideas, Hume would be among the first major thinkers to refute dogmatic religious and moral ideals in favor of a more sentimentalist approach to human nature. His belief system would help to inform the future movements of utilitarianism and logical positivism, and would have a profound impact on scientific and theological discourse thereafter.
•HUME’S BIG IDEAS
•Articulated the “problem of induction,” suggesting we cannot rationally justify our belief in causality, that our perception only allows us to experience events that are typically conjoined, and that causality cannot be empirically asserted as the connecting force in that relationship;
•Assessed that human beings lack the capacity to achieve a true conception of the self, that our conception is merely a “bundle of sensations” that we connect to formulate the idea of the self;
•Hume argued against moral absolutes, instead positing that our ethical behavior and treatment of others is compelled by emotion, sentiment, and internal passions, that we are inclined to positive behaviors by their likely desirable outcomes.
•8. IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804)
•Prussian-born (and therefore identified as a German philosopher), Kant is considered among the most essential figures in modern philosophy, an advocate of reason as the source for morality, and a thinker whose ideas continue to permeate ethical, epistemological, and political debate. What perhaps most distinguishes Kant is his innate desire to find a synthesis between rationalists like Descartes and empiricists like Hume, to decipher a middle ground that defers to human experience without descending into skepticism. To his own way of thinking, Kant was pointing a way forward by resolving a central philosophical impasse.
•KANT’S BIG IDEAS
•Defined the “Categorical imperative,” the idea that there are intrinsically good and moral ideas to which we all have a duty, and that rational individuals will inherently find reason in adhering to moral obligation;
•Argued that humanity can achieve a perpetual peace through universal democracy and international cooperation;
•Asserted that the concepts of time and space, as well as cause and effect, are essential to the human experience, and that our understanding of the world is conveyed only by our senses and not necessarily by the underlying (and likely unseen) causes of the phenomena we observe.
•9. SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–55)
•A Danish theologian, social critic, and philosopher, Kierkegaard is viewed by many as the most important existentialist philosopher. His work dealt largely with the idea of the single individual. His thinking tended to prioritize concrete reality over abstract thought. Within this construct, he viewed personal choice and commitment as preeminent. This orientation played a major part in his theology as well. He focused on the importance of the individual’s subjective relationship with God, and his work addressed the themes of faith, Christian love, and human emotion. Because Kierkegaard’s work was at first only available in Danish, it was only after his work was translated that his ideas proliferated widely throughout Western Europe. This proliferation was a major force in helping existentialism take root in the 20th century.
•KIERKEGAARD’S BIG IDEAS
•Explored the idea of objective vs. subjective truths, and argued that theological assertions were inherently subjective and arbitrary because they could not be verified or invalidated by science;
•Was highly critical of the entanglement between State and Church;
•First described the concept of angst, defining it as a dread the comes from anxieties over choice, freedom, and ambiguous feelings.
•10. LAO-TZU (ALSO LAOZI, LIVED BETWEEN THE 6TH AND 4TH CENTURY BCE)
•Historians differ on exactly when Lao-Tzu lived and taught, but it’s largely held that some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the “old master” founded philosophical Taoism. Viewed as a divine figure in traditional Chinese religions, his ideas and writings would form one of the major pillars (alongside Confucius and the Buddha) for Eastern thought. Lao-Tzu espoused an ideal life lived through the Dao or Tao (roughly translated as “the way”). As such, Taoism is equally rooted in religion and philosophy. In traditional telling, though Lao-Tzu never opened a formal school, he worked as an archivist for the royal court of Zhou Dynasty. This gave him access to an extensive body of writing and artifacts, which he synthesized into his own poetry and prose. As a result of his writing, his influence spread widely during his lifetime. In fact, one version of his biography implies he may well have been a direct mentor to the Buddha (or, in some versions, was the Buddha himself). There are lot of colorful narratives surrounding Lao-Tzu, some of which are almost certainly myth. In fact, there are some historians who even question whether or not Lao-Tzu was a real person. Historical accounts differ on who he was, exactly when he lived and which works he contributed to the canon of Taoism. However, in most traditional tellings, Lao-Tzu was the living embodiment of the philosophy known as Taoism and author of its primary text, the TAO TE CHING.
•LAO-TZU’S BIG IDEAS
•Espoused awareness of the self through meditation;
•Disputed conventional wisdom as inherently biased, and urged followers of the Tao to find natural balance between the body, senses, and desires;
•Urged individuals to achieve a state of WU WEI, freedom from desire, an early staple tenet of Buddhist tradition thereafter.
•11. JOHN LOCKE (1632–1704)
•An English physicist and philosopher, John Locke was a prominent thinker during the Enlightenment period. Part of the movement of British Empiricism alongside fellow countrymen David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, and Sir Francis Bacon, Locke is regarded as an important contributor to the development of the social contract theory and is sometimes identified as the father of liberalism. Indeed, his discourses on identity, the self, and the impact of sensory experience would be essential revelations to many Enlightenment thinkers and, consequently, to real revolutionaries. His philosophy is said to have figured prominently into the formulation of the Declaration of Independence that initiated America’s war for independence from the British.
•LOCKE’S BIG IDEAS
•Coined the term TABULA RASA (blank slate) to denote that the human mind is born unformed, and that ideas and rules are only enforced through experience thereafter;
•Established the method of introspection, focusing on one’s own emotions and behaviors in search of a better understanding of the self.
•Argued that in order to be true, something must be capable of repeated testing, a view that girded his ideology with the intent of scientific rigor.
•12. NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527)
•Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli is at once among the most influential and widely debated of history’s thinkers. A writer, public office-holder, and philosopher of Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli both participated in and wrote prominently on political matters, to the extent that he has even been identified by some as the father of modern political science. He is also seen as a proponent of deeply questionable — some would argue downright evil — values and ideas. Machiavelli was an empiricist who used experience and historical fact to inform his beliefs, a disposition which allowed him to divorce politics not just from theology but from morality as well. His most prominent works described the parameters of effective rulership, in which he seems to advocate for leadership by any means which retain power, including deceit, murder, and oppression. While it is sometimes noted in his defense that Machiavelli himself did not live according to these principles, this “Machiavellian” philosophy is often seen as a template for tyranny and dictatorship, even in the present day.
•MACHIAVELLI’S BIG IDEAS
•Famously asserted that while it would be best to be both loved and feared, the two rarely coincide, and thus, greater security is found in the latter;
•Identified as a “humanist,” and believed it necessary to establish a new kind of state in defiance of law, tradition and particularly, the political preeminence of the Church;
•Viewed ambition, competition and war as inevitable parts of human nature, even seeming to embrace all of these tendencies.
•13. KARL MARX (1818–83)
•A German-born economist, political theorist, and philosopher, Karl Marx wrote some of the most revolutionary philosophical content ever produced. Indeed, so pertinent was his writing to the human condition during his lifetime, he was exiled from his native country. This event would, however, also make it possible for his most important ideas to find a popular audience. Upon arriving in London, Marx took up work with fellow German Friedrich Engels. Together, they devised an assessment of class, society, and power dynamics that revealed deep inequalities, and exposed the economic prerogatives for state-sponsored violence, oppression, and war. Marx predicted that the inequalities and violence inherent in capitalism would ultimately lead to its collapse. From its ashes would rise a new socialist system, a classless society where all participants (as opposed to just wealthy private owners) have access to the means for production. What made the Marxist system of thought so impactful though was its innate call to action, couched in Marx’s advocacy for a working class revolution aimed at overthrowing an unequal system. The philosophy underlying Marxism, and his revolutionary fervor, would ripple throughout the world, ultimately transforming entire spheres of thought in places like Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe, and Red China. In many ways, Karl Marx presided over a philosophical revolution that continues in the present day in myriad forms of communism, socialism, socialized democracy, and grassroots political organization.
•MARX’S BIG IDEAS
•Advocated a view called historical materialism, arguing for the demystification of thought and idealism in favor of closer acknowledgement of the physical and material actions shaping the world;
•Argued that societies develop through class struggle, and that this would ultimately lead to the dismantling of capitalism;
•Characterized capitalism as a production system in which there are inherent conflicts of interest between the bourgeoisie (the ruling class), and the proletariat (the working class), and that these conflicts are couched in the idea that the latter must sell their labor to the former for wages that offer no stake in production.
•14. JOHN STUART MILL (1806–73)
•British economist, public servant, and philosopher John Stuart Mill is considered a linchpin of modern social and political theory. He contributed a critical body of work to the school of thought called liberalism, an ideology founding on the extension of individual liberties and economic freedoms. As such, Mill himself advocated strongly for the preserving of individual rights and called for limitations to the power and authority of the state over the individual. Mill was also a proponent of utilitarianism, which holds that the best action is one that maximizes utility, or stated more simply, one that provide the greatest benefit to all. This and other ideas found in Mill’s works have been essential to providing rhetorical basis for social justice, anti-poverty, and human rights movements. For his own part, as a member of Parliament, Mill became the first office-holding Briton to advocate for the right of women to vote.
•MILL’S BIG IDEAS
•Advocated strongly for the human right of free speech, and asserted that free discourse is necessary for social and intellectual progress;
•Determined that most of history can be understood as a struggle between liberty and authority, and that limits must be placed on rulership such that it reflects society’s wishes;
•Stated the need for a system of “constitutional checks” on state authority as a way of protecting political liberties.
•15. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844–1900)
•Friedrich Nietzsche was a poet, cultural critic, and philosopher, as well as possessor of among the most gifted minds in human history. The German thinker’s system of ideas would have a profound impact on the Western World, contributing deeply to intellectual discourse both during and after his life. Writing on an enormous breadth of subjects, from history, religion and science to art, culture and the tragedies of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Nietzsche wrote with savage wit and a love of irony. He used these forces to pen deconstructive examinations of truth, Christian morality, and the impact of social constructs on our formulation of moral values. Also essential to Nietzshe’s writing is articulation of the crisis of nihilism, the basic idea that all things lack meaning, including life itself. This idea in particular would remain an important component of the existentialist and surrealist movements that followed.
•NIETZSCHE’S BIG IDEAS
•Favored perspectivism, which held that truth is not objective but is the consequence of various factors effecting individual perspective;
•Articulated ethical dilemma as a tension between the master vs. slave morality; the former in which we make decisions based on the assessment of consequences, and the latter in which we make decisions based on our conception of good vs. evil;
•Believed in the individual’s creative capacity to resist social norms and cultural convention in order to live according to a greater set of virtues.
•16. PLATO (428/427?–348/347? BCE)
•Greek philosopher and teacher Plato did nothing less than found the first institution of higher learning in the Western World, establishing the Academy of Athens and cementing his own status as the most important figure in the development of western philosophical tradition. As the pupil of Socrates and the mentor to Aristotle, Plato is the connecting figure in what might be termed the great triumvirate of Greek thought in both philosophy and science. A quote by British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead sums up the enormity of his influence, noting “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Indeed, it could be argued that Plato founded political philosophy, introducing both the dialectic and dialogic forms of writing as ways to explore various areas of thought. (Often, in his dialogues, he employed his mentor Socrates as the vessel for his own thoughts and ideas.) While he was not the first individual to partake of the activity of philosophy, he was perhaps the first to truly define what it meant, to articulate its purpose, and to reveal how it could be applied with scientific rigor. This orientation provided a newly concreted framework for considering questions of ethics, politics, knowledge, and theology. Such is to say that it is nearly impossible to sum up the impact of Plato’s ideas on science, ethics, mathematics, or the evolution of thought itself other than to say it has been total, permeating, and inexorable from the tradition of rigorous thinking itself.
•PLATO’S BIG IDEAS
•Expressed the view, often referred to as Platonism, that those whose beliefs are limited only to perception are failing to achieve a higher level of perception, one available only to those who can see beyond the material world;
•Articulated the theory of forms, the belief that the material world is an apparent and constantly changing world but that another, invisible world provides unchanging causality for all that we do see;
•Held the foundational epistemological view of “justified true belief,” that for one to know that a proposition is true, one must have justification for the relevant true proposition.
•17. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712–78)
•Rousseau was a writer, philosopher, and — unique among entrants on this list — a composer of operas and classical compositions. Born in Geneva, then a city-state in the Swiss Confederacy, Rousseau would be one of the most consequential thinkers of the Enlightenment era. His ideas on human morality, inequality, and most importantly, on the right to rule, would have an enormous and definable impact not just on thinking in Europe, but on the actual power dynamics within Western Civilization. Indeed, his most important works would identify personal property as the root to inequality and would refute the premise that monarchies are divinely appointed to rule. Rousseau proposed the earth-shattering idea that only the people have a true right to rule. These ideas fomented the French Revolution, and more broadly, helped bring an end to a centuries-old entanglement between Church, Crown, and Country. Rousseau may be credited for providing a basic framework for classical republicanism, a form of government centered around the ideas of civil society, citizenship, and mixed governance.
•ROUSSEAU’S BIG IDEAS
•Suggested that Man was at his best in a primitive state — suspended between brute animalistic urges on one end of the spectrum and the decadence of civilization on the other — and therefore uncorrupted in his morals;
•Suggested that the further we deviate from our “state of nature,” the closer we move to the “decay of the species,” an idea that comports with modern environmental and conservationist philosophies;
•Wrote extensively on education and, in advocating for an education that emphasizes the development of individual moral character, is sometimes credited as an early proponent of child-centered education.
•18. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905–80)
•A French novelist, activist, and philosopher, Sartre was a leading exponent of the 20th century existentialist movement as well as a vocal proponent of Marxism and socialism. He advocated for resistance to oppressive social constructs and argued for the importance of achieving an authentic way of being. His writing coincided with, and contrasted, the sweep of fascism through Europe, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the spread of Nazism. Sartre’s ideas took on increased importance during this time, as did his actions. Sartre became active in the socialist resistance, which aimed its activities at French Nazi collaborators. Of note, one of his activist collaborators was both a romantic partner and a fellow major cohort of existentialism, Simone de Beauvoir. Following the war, Sartre’s writing and political engagement centered on efforts at anticolonialism, including involvement in the resistance to French colonization of Algeria. In fact, his involvement earned Sartre two near-miss bomb attacks at the hands of French paramilitary forces. Also notable, Sartre was supportive of the Soviet Union throughout his lifetime. Though occasionally serving to raise issues regarding human rights abuses as an outside observer, he praised the Soviet Union’s attempt at manifesting Marxism.
•SARTRE’S BIG IDEAS
•Believed that human beings are “condemned to be free,” that because there is no Creator who is responsible for our actions, each of us alone is responsible for everything we do;
•Called for the experience of “death consciousness,” an understanding of our mortality that promotes an authentic life, one spent in search of experience rather than knowledge;
•Argued that the existence of free will is in fact evidence of the universe’s indifference to the individual, an illustration that our freedom to act toward objects is essentially meaningless and therefore of no consequence to be intervened upon by the world.
•19. SOCRATES (470–399 BCE)
•A necessary inclusion by virtue of his role as, essentially, the founder of Western Philosophy, Socrates is nonetheless unique among entrants on this list for having produced no written works reflecting his key ideas or principles. Thus, the body of his thoughts and ideas is left to be deciphered through the works of his two most prominent students, Plato and Xenophon, as well as to the legions of historians and critics who have written on him since. The classical Greek thinker is best known through Plato’s dialogues, which reveal a key contributor to the fields of ethics and education. And because Socrates is best known as a teacher of thought and insight, it is perhaps appropriate that his most widely recognized contribution is a way of approaching education that remains fundamentally relevant even today. The so-called Socratic Method, which involves the use of of questioning and discourse to promote open dialogue on complex topics and to lead pupils to their own insights, is on particular display in the Platonic dialogues. His inquisitive approach also positioned him as a central social and moral critic of the Athenian leadership, which ultimately led to his trial and execution for corrupting the minds of young Athenians.
•SOCRATES’ BIG IDEAS
•Argued that Athenians were wrong-headed in their emphasis on families, careers, and politics at the expense of the welfare of their souls;
•Is sometimes attributed the statement “I know that I know nothing,” to denote an awareness of his ignorance, and in general, the limitations of human knowledge;
•Believed misdeeds were a consequence of ignorance, that those who engaged in nonvirtuous behavior did so because they didn’t know any better.
•20. LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889–1951)
•Born in Austria to a wealthy family, Wittgenstein is one of philosophy’s more colorful and unusual characters. He lived a life of eccentricity and professional nomadism, dabbling in academia, military service, education, and even as a hospital orderly. Moreover, during his life, he wrote voluminously but published only a single manuscript. And yet, he was recognized by his contemporaries as a genius. The posthumous publication of his many volumes confirmed this view for future generations, ultimately rendering Wittgenstein a towering figure in the areas of logic, semantics, and the philosophy of mind. His investigations of linguistics and psychology would prove particularly revelatory, offering a distinctive window through which to newly understand the nature of meaning and the limits of human conception.
•WITTGENSTEIN’S BIG IDEAS
•Argued that conceptual confusion about language is the basis for most intellectual tension in philosophy;
•Asserted that the meaning of words presupposes our understanding of that meaning, and that our particular assignment of meaning comes from the cultural and social constructs surrounding us;
•Resolved that because thought is inextricably tied to language, and because language is socially constructed, we have no real inner-space for the realization of our thoughts, which is to say that the language of our thoughts renders our thoughts inherently socially constructed.
•my collection :
•“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates
•“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
•“Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” – William of Ockham
•“The life of man (in a state of nature) is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” – Thomas Hobbes
•“I think therefore I am” (“Cogito, ergo sum”) – René Descartes
•“He who thinks great thoughts, often makes great errors” – Martin Heidegger
•“We live in the best of all possible worlds” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
•“What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational” – G. W. F. Hegel
•“God is dead! He remains dead! And we have killed him.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
•“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” – Albert Camus
•“One cannot step twice in the same river” – Heraclitus
•“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation” – Jeremy Bentham
•“To be is to be perceived” (“Esse est percipi”)– Bishop George Berkeley
•“Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination” – Immanuel Kant
•“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience” – John Locke
•“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us” – Niccolo Machiavelli
•“Liberty consists in doing what one desires” – John Stuart Mill
•“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true” – Bertrand Russell
•“Even while they teach, men learn” – Seneca the Younger
•“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance” – Socrates
•“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him” – Voltaire
•“This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities” – Bertrand Russell
•“One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another” – René Descartes
•“Leisure is the mother of philosophy” – Thomas Hobbes
•“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
•“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers” – William James
•“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” – Aristotle
•“Only one man ever understood me, and he didn’t understand me” – G. W. F. Hegel
•“The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone” – John Locke
•“Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward ” – Søren Kierkegaard
•“Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know” – Bertrand Russell
•“Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck” – Immanuel Kant
•“Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits” – William James
•“History is Philosophy teaching by examples” – Thucydides
•“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god” – Aristotle
•“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” – Plato
•“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly” – Francis Bacon
•“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” – mistakenly attributed to Edmund Burke
•“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?” – Friedrich Nietzsche
•“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong” – Bertrand Russell
•“Religion is the sign of the oppressed ... it is the opium of the people” – Karl Marx
•“Happiness is the highest good” – Aristotle
•“If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil” – Baruch Spinoza
•“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it” – Epicurus
•“Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable” – G. W. F. Hegel
•“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness” – Immanuel Kant
•“Man is condemned to be free” – Jean-Paul Sartre
•“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth” – John Locke
•“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
•“That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless” – Plato
•“The only thing I know is that I know nothing” – Socrates
•“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” – Voltaire (in parody of Leibniz)
•“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays” – Søren Kierkegaard
•“Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
•“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” – Denis Diderot
•“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things” – René Descartes
•“Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative” – Aristotle
•“I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature” – Spinoza
•“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” – Karl Marx
•“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” – W. K. Clifford
•“Virtue is nothing else than right reason” – Seneca the Younger
•“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire” – Epictetus
•“In everything, there is a share of everything” – Anaxagoras
•“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion” – Sir Francis Bacon
•“The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures” – Democritus
•“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature” – John Locke
•“To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality” – John Stuart Mill
•“Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident” – Jean-Paul Sartre
•“Man is the measure of all things” – Protagoras
•“We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone” – St. Augustine
•“The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone” – John Locke
•The Classical Educational Concepts of Socrates, Plato & Aristotle :
•‘’ The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.’’
•-Socrates (Plato, Apology 38a)
•SOCRATES: Well, then, if we cannot capture the good in one form, we will have to take hold of it in a conjunction of three: beauty, proportion and truth.
•Let us start with a bold statement that it is necessary to realise that many ancient scholars provided us with the knowledge that has been far beyond our imagination for hundreds of years. I hold the view that contemporary culture starts to discover that ancient philosophy is not a discipline that belongs to old libraries, but it can be instead sifted through and used to implement specific concept into our post-modern world. In this paper, I will discuss the concept of education presented by three great philosophers and true masters of this wisdom-loving discipline. It would be undoubtedly beneficial to analyse the ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in greater depth to figure out what might be useful for contemporary concepts of education. I will focus on the modern use of certain educational concepts in the second part of this essay, and therefore we should start with explanation and comparative analysis of these concepts as introduced by three great masters of classical philosophy – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
•Socrates’s Model of Education
•In the beginning, it is necessary to mention that Socrates’ theories about education are mainly preserved in Plato’s writings since Socrates did not write down any of his teachings. Socrates was somehow unique and different compared to his student Plato and Aristotle because Socrates believed that the education not a process of learning. In the dialogue Meno, it is mentioned that Socrates believed that our souls are immortal and same can be applied to our knowledge, but each time we are born again, we lost all the knowledge, and therefore we must educate ourselves to remind us of our lost knowledge (Plato, Meno 85b,c). Socrates emphasised that he is not teaching, but he is merely reminding {maieutics} us of the truth, which is already inside us (Plato, Theaetetus, 155d). To awaken the truth within us, we need to employ question and answers. Unlike Plato in his Academia or Socrates in Lyceum, Socrates did not teach people in an institution, school or one particular place. Socrates roamed through streets, gardens, squares and agora in Athens with his followers and debated about things such as justice, politics, and beauty, a way of life, law and so forth (Plato, Apology, 22c,d,e). According to Socrates, everything is opened to question,
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•answers and criticism (Plato, Gorgias 482c). Socrates was perhaps the most liberal and unconventional compared to his student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle. Socrates claimed we should question a law, religion, politics and so forth (Plato, Apology 39c,d). Furthermore, Socrates highly rejected Sophists’ idea that wisdom is a rational knowledge which should serve primarily to self-centred interests. Consequently, it is evident that Socrates’ way of education was the most liberal one and without any further order, examinations or regulations. It was merely about individual’s willingness to join and participate in the debate. Socrates employed a new method called dialectic, which consists of the abovementioned questions, answers and critical thinking. Socrates encouraged his followers to think critically to expand their knowledge because it allows us to understand better the world that surrounds us (Plato, Apology 30a,b). According to Socrates, we can educate ourselves by thinking critically, questioning beliefs and finding answers. On the other hand, Socrates claimed that philosophy is the far-reaching quest for wisdom, though this quest is never-ending because we simply cannot find all answers such a question of the afterlife, which Socrates himself reflected before he was executed (Plato, Apology 41d). Fortunately, Socrates’ ideas have survived in Plato’s Dialogs, although Plato later followed significantly less liberal opinion when it comes to education.
•Plato’s Scheme of Education
•Plato started as a student of Socrates, and we can trace many Socratic influences in Plato’s philosophy, though Plato later shifts towards more utilitarian, institutionalised and state-controlled education as opposed to Socrates’ liberal and all-encompassing search for the truth – Aletheia. His personal experiences undoubtedly influenced Plato’s ideas during the time of Spartan domination over Athens. Even though Spartan domination was severely compromised the progress of Athenian culture, Plato was able to observe Spartan methods of education and implement certain aspects of Spartan order into his theories. First of all, Plato introduced a concept of education which is closely tied to his more broad concept of virtues such as prudence, courage, temperance and justice (Plato, Republic, Book V. 455c–456a). Justice is universal for all people, but other virtues are connected to particular class or group of individuals based on their profession and desired contribution to the society (Plato, Republic, book IV. 425b). Consequently, education should teach the specific group of people to maintain the balance associated with certain virtue such as a balance of temperance for artisans, prudence for political leaders or courage for soldiers (Plato, Republic, Book II. 377a,b}. Furthermore, the length of education is determined by a series of examinations each 10, respectively 15 years to decide which individual is capable of higher and higher studies up to an age of fifty. Those that failed to pass examinations were automatically sent to participate in activities and work associated with them, e.g. group of artisans (Plato, Republic, Book III. 409a,b). Those who pass all examinations and finished their education at the age of fifty were selected as ideal rules of the society (Plato, Republic, Book V. 473c).
•Plato also believes that education is necessary to key to free individuals from their primal state of ignorance and sensually driven {lower eros} being. People need to be released from the clutches of such existence, and this can be achieved only
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•through the education, which in Plato’s theory serves as a form of therapy to cure the individual of his ignorance. In other words, education helps people to maintain self- control and the healthy balance of virtues. This explanation can also be found in Plato’s Allegory of Cave which emphasises the need to liberate people from prison full of shadows and ignorance of the truth (Plato, Republic, Book VII. 516a–516b). According to Plato, it is a task of the philosopher to liberate people from oblivion through education (Plato, Republic, Book IX. 586a-b). Plato’s education is, therefore, similar to something as the cure for the entire structure of the polis. The success of such education relies on individual ability to embrace the truth. The most important point is that Plato suggests that the education has a goal, and this goal is nothing less than wisdom {episteme} and ability to introspect good and beauty in itself (Plato, Republic, Book VII. 516c). In other words, wisdom for Plato is tied to contemplation and wisdom does not represent quantification or aggregation of knowledge. Subsequently, Plato emphasised the mutual dependence of virtue and knowledge, while virtue in a Platonic sense can be explained as a configuration of mind to incline to specific values such as soldiers’ mind inclination to the virtue of courage. Consequently, it is the purpose of education to teach for instance soldier how to maintain the healthy balance of courage to avoid cowardice or recklessness (Plato, Republic, Book III). Furthermore, Plato believed that education should be controlled by the state and should primarily serve to produce different classes of specialised individuals in order to fulfil needs of the polis This view might differ slightly from Socrates and his idea that individual should be able to self-educate himself per se and therefore there is no need for institutionalised education. On the other hand, Plato also opposed to the idea of private property, and he despised the idea that one can pay for education and therefore the idea that one can buy the knowledge (Plato, Republic, Book VIII. 552b). In conclusion, Plato’s scheme of education is deeply connected to another concept from Plato’s theory such as the role and distribution of virtues in the polis {society}. If we compare Socrates and Plato, we might see significant difference in Socrates’ liberal and free approach to education as being an activity which helps us to follow the path of never-ending quest for wisdom, whereas Plato’s view of education revolves more around creating the best model of a city-state based on precise social stratification, state-controlled education and producing the ideal rulers – philosopher kings. In other words, Plato’s education helps to create not necessarily wisdom-loving society like in Socrates’ theory or good-life in Aristotle’s concept, but Plato instead introduces a system of education that aims to create the most useful theory for the utilitarian and slightly totalitarian polis.
•Aristotle’s Educational System
•Let us begin with the claim that education in Aristotelian philosophy is the most crucial pillar of the polis because one can become ‘complete person’ only when he has educated the person (Aristotle, Book I, 1253a.2). Henceforth, education is immensely valuable because of it the pillar of a prosperous society in the general sense. In the beginning, one must be introduced and educated in the pure philosophy of life. Unfortunately, such a concept is not that simple because it does
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•not work in the way of accumulation of knowledge, but it rather works on principles that emphasised the cultivation of thorough understanding of ethics and politics. In addition to previous steps, a learner can maintain a deeper understating of morality through the process of education itself. This is the crucial point since Aristotelian view tells us that higher morality of people helps them to get rid of selfish or egotistical and make them better members of the polis {society}. Subsequently, the deeper sense of morality helps people to distinguish what is just correct and what is truly good, which results in better cooperation and well-organised society that can achieve goals for the common good (Aristotle, Book VII, 1323b.1). It is evident that Aristotle saw an inseparable connection between the welfare of individuals and the welfare of the polis {society]. Consequently, the Aristotelian model of learning should produce the perfect unity of physical, intellectual and moral education. However, morality seems to be more complicated in the Aristotelian principle, since Aristotle argued that being the good man is not the same thing as being the good citizen. Being good citizen means that one knows the difference between civic virtues and vices, although this does not automatically mean that one has to be the moral man at the same time (Aristotle, Book III, 1276b.34). In conclusion, Aristotelian education aims to make one a good citizen of the polis and therefore the education is tailored to make citizens good and happy because only good citizens can create a good society – the good city-state. Furthermore, it is crucial to focus on Aristotle’s division of education regarding its usefulness for the Athenian city-state – polis (Aristotle, Book III, 1280b.30–1281a.3). It is important to realise that Aristotle’s education provides the model which helps to maintain the balance between body, mind and soul or synthesis of theoretical, practical and technical tasks. In conclusion, one should study, e.g. dancing, physical exercise, rhetoric, natural sciences and philosophy to maintain the perfect balance in education.
•On the other hand, learners should not rely exclusively on education based on reason revealing causes of things, but students should also cultivate their learning through habits (Aristotle, Book I, 1094b.24). We can explain learning through habits as performing the same actions to strengthen the quality which is attached to specific noble actions such as performing speeches regularly will lead to better rhetoric. In conclusion, the education in the Aristotelian sense is a combination of learning through the reason and habits as well. However, Aristotle emphasised that such type of education should last for the entire life, though certain disciplines should be learned during the specific age such as gymnastics should be introduced to learners at the early age and so forth. Also, it also provides the opportunity to study as long as one is willing to study after the last phase of Aristotle’s model. This point shows a remarkable difference from Plato’s methods of education since Plato argued that only the most gifted ones are aspiring to become ideal rulers- philosopher kings should be allowed to study after they successfully pass specific examinations each 10, respectively 15 years. Plato clearly defined those specific professions needed the particular portion of the educational process, and if they failed to pass the examination for higher level, they should leave the education and began to practice assigned occupation such as businessman or clergyman for instance. Aristotle did not
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•agree with limitations when it comes to education in a general sense, though it is worth mentioning that women, servants and other inferior groups should not be educated according to Aristotle. However, if one could be educated according to laws of polis, Aristotle clearly emphasised that opportunity to study further as long as one is willing to study should be supported by polis and other citizens producing exceptional scholars is beneficial for the entire society, though such outstanding individuals must act in favour of the community and polis (Aristotle, Book II, 1273b. 5). Aristotle’s concept is not based on the challenge or rivalry that is pushing us forward, but his theory revolves rather around the formation of a well-balanced group of people through diverse and colourful educational disciplines. We can observe a significant difference from Plato since Plato argued for the gradual examination of learners throughout the process of education to decide if certain learners should finish the education or continue to higher levels. It is evident that Plato’s model of education is explicitly tailored to contribute more or less to Plato’s concept of virtues tied to the specific class of people contributing to the welfare of polis {society}. I dare to say that there is an underlying idea beneath Aristotelian concept of education, and this idea is a nothing less than the creation of harmonious society through education (Aristotle, Book I, 1098a].
•Aristotelian model of education should be regarded as an excellent theoretical concept of learning, though Aristotle established his school Lyceum in Athens during the later years of his life, it is not clear if he we ever try to introduce such model of education to his students because unfortunately a large number of Aristotle’s writings on education had been lost. In conclusion, I believe that Aristotelian model of education is arguably the most compelling in comparison to Plato or Socrates because Aristotle introduced to us the system of education which is well-balanced in theoretical, practical and moral principles. This perfect unity of above-mentioned three educational fields has a potential to produce versatile individuals, cultivate the sense of community and cooperation, though it has a potential to create the harmonious society without any limitations imposed or social stratifications during the educational process as opposed to Plato’s concept.
•Chapter 14 : Know yourself
•Know Yourself
•In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. Asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: ‘Know yourself.’ Knowing yourself has extraordinary prestige in our culture. It has been framed as quite literally the meaning of life.
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•This sounds, when one hears it, highly plausible, yet so plausible it’s worth pausing to ask a few more questions. Just why is self-knowledge such a prestigious good? What are the dangers that come with a lack of self-knowledge? And what do we in fact need to know about ourselves? How do we come to learn such things? And why is self-knowledge difficult to attain? When we speak about self-knowledge, we’re alluding to a particular kind of knowledge – generally of an emotional or psychological kind. There are a million things you could potentially know about yourself. Here are some options:
•On what day of the week were you born?
•Were you able to pick up a raisin between your fore-finger and thumb when you were five months old?
•Are you more an introvert or an extrovert?
•How does your relationship with your father influence your career ambitions?
•What kind of picnic person are you: morning or evening? River-bank, park or hill?
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•Most of us would recognise that questions 3 and 4 are ones worth knowing; the others, not so much. In other words, not everything that we can know about ourselves is all that important to find out. Here we want to focus on the areas of self-knowledge that matter most in life: the areas concerned with the inner psychological core of the self. The key bits of self-knowledge we’ll be interested in are: – what kind of person are you characteristically attracted to in love – what difficult patterns of behaviour are you prey to in relationships – what are your talents at work – what problems do you have around success/failure – how are you about feedback – what do you do when you have been frustrated by life – what kind of taste do you have – can you distinguish between your passing bodily-based emotions and your more rational thoughts
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•If you have solid answers to these issues, you’ll be able to speak of yourself as someone with an adequate degree of self-knowledge. ONE: WHY AND WHERE DOES SELF-KNOWLEDGE MATTER? Self-knowledge is important for one central reason: because it offers us a route to greater happiness and fulfilment. A lack of self-knowledge leaves you open to accident and mistaken ambitions. Armed with the right sort of self-knowledge, we have a greater chance of avoiding errors in our dealings with others and in the formulation of our life choices.
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• Let’s look at some examples of areas where self-knowledge matters LOVE Without self-knowledge, all sorts of problems may occur: 1. Choosing the wrong partner: We try to get together with people who don’t really suit us, because we don’t understand our needs When first looking out for a partner, the requirements we come up with are coloured often by a beautiful non-specific sentimental vagueness: we’ll say we really want to find someone who is ‘kind’ or ‘fun to be with’, ‘attractive’ or ‘up for adventure…’ It isn’t that such desires are wrong, they are just not remotely precise enough in their understanding of what we in particular are going to require in order to stand a chance of being happy – or, more accurately, not consistently miserable.
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•All of us are crazy in very particular ways. We’re distinctively neurotic, unbalanced and immature, but don’t know quite the details because no one ever encourages us too hard to find them out. An urgent, primary task of any lover is therefore to get a handle on the specific ways in which they are mad. They have to get up to speed on their individual neuroses. They have to grasp where these have come from, what they make them do – and most importantly, what sort of people either provoke or assuage them. A good partnership is not so much one between two healthy people (there aren’t many of these on the planet), it’s one between two demented people who have had the skill or luck to find a non-threatening conscious accommodation between their relative insanities. The very idea that we might not be too difficult as people should set off alarm bells in any prospective partner. The question is just where the problems will lie: perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us, or we can only relax when we are working, or we’re a bit tricky around intimacy after sex, or we’ve never been so good at explaining what’s going on when we’re worried. It’s these sort of issues that – over decades – create catastrophes and that we therefore need to know about way ahead of time, in order to look out for people who are optimally designed to withstand them. A standard question on any early dinner date should be quite simply: ‘And how are you mad?’
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•The problem is that knowledge of our own neuroses is not at all easy to come by. It can take years and situations we have had no experience of. Prior to marriage, we’re rarely involved in dynamics that properly hold up a mirror to our disturbances. Whenever more casual relationships threaten to reveal the ‘difficult’ side of our natures, we tend to blame the partner – and call it a day. As for our friends, they predictably don’t care enough about us to have any motive to probe our real selves. They only want a nice evening out. Therefore, we end up blind to the awkward sides of our natures. On our own, when we’re furious, we don’t shout, as there’s no one there to listen – and therefore we overlook the true, worrying strength of our capacity for fury. Or we work all the time without grasping, because there’s no one calling us to come for dinner, how we manically use work to gain a sense of control over life – and how we might cause hell if anyone tried to stop us. At night, all we’re aware of is how sweet it would be to cuddle with someone, but we have no opportunity to face up to the intimacy-avoiding side of us that would start to make us cold and strange if ever it felt we were too deeply committed to someone. One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with. With such a poor level of understanding of our characters, no wonder we aren’t in any position to know who we should be looking out for. 2. We repeat unhealthy patterns from childhood, always latching on to people who will frustrate us in familiar but grievous ways We believe we seek happiness in love, but it’s not quite that simple. What at times it seems we actually seek is familiarity – which may well complicate any plans we might have for happiness. We recreate in adult relationships some of the feelings we knew in childhood. It was as children that we first came to know and understand what love meant. But unfortunately, the lessons we picked up may not have been straightforward. The love we knew as children may have come entwined with other, less pleasant dynamics: being controlled, feeling humiliated, being abandoned, never communicating, in short: suffering. As adults, we may then reject certain healthy candidates whom we encounter, not because they are wrong, but precisely because they are too well-balanced (too mature, too understanding, too reliable), and this rightness feels unfamiliar and alien, almost oppressive. We head instead to candidates whom our unconscious is drawn to, not because they will please us, but because they will frustrate us in familiar ways. We get together with the wrong people because the right ones feel wrong – undeserved; because we have no experience of health, because we don’t ultimately associate being loved with feeling satisfied.
•We fail to explain our feelings to our partners – because we don’t understand ourselves well enough. We act out our feelings rather than spell them out, often to destructive effect. (we break the door rather than explain we are mad with anger).
•We are unaware of the effects of our words on others. We don’t notice how often we say critical things to them.
•We can’t anticipate and signpost our feelings: when we start to get over-excited and talk too fast, we should know it’s time to go for a walk round the block because otherwise there’s liable to be an explosion…
•We project, that is, we respond to events in the here and now according to patterns laid down in childhood; in our heads, our partners become mixed up with other people from our emotional history (a humiliating mother, a distant father etc…).
•We’re governed by the past: old unfortunate habits keep their grip. We don’t see what’s happening and so we can’t do anything about it.
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•There’s a lot we can do once people are able to tell us what’s problematic about themselves. We don’t need people to be problem free – we need people to be able to explain where the problems are. WORK There are many ways in which a shortfall of self-knowledge is an obstacle to flourishing around work:
•We only have a few short years in which to come up with a convincing answer about what we want to do with our lives. Then, wherever we are in the thought-process, we have to jump into a job in order to have enough money to survive or appease society’s demands for our productivity.
•Without self-knowledge, we are too vague about our ambitions; we don’t know what to do with our lives and – because money tends to be such an urgent priority – we lock ourselves into a cage from which it may take decades to emerge.
•We are too modest: we miss out on opportunities: we don’t know what we are capable of.
•We are too ambitious: we don’t know what we shouldn’t attempt. We lack a clear sense of our limitations, wasting years trying to do something we’re not suited to.
•We don’t grasp the ways in which we are difficult employees or bosses. We might – among other problems – be crazily defensive, or resistant to trusting anyone or too eager to please.
•We don’t perceive our hidden attitudes to success and failure. It may be that we see ourselves (wrongly) as not cut out for the bigger roles or when things start to go well, we become manically prone to make a blunder. Perhaps we’re unconsciously trying to avoid rivalry with a parent, or a sibling by tripping ourselves up. Family dynamics have an enormous, subterranean influence on how effectively we operate at work.
•LIVING WITH OTHERS Without self-knowledge, we are, in general, a liability to be around:
•We don’t realise the effect we tend to have on other people: without at all meaning to, we might come across as arrogant or cold, or as tending to hog attention or as needlessly shy and hesitant or as getting furious in dangerous ways.
•We may fall prey to unnecessary loneliness: not understanding what we really need and what makes us hard to get to know.
•Difficulties of empathy: not acknowledging the more vulnerable or disturbed parts of oneself; means not seeing oneself as being ‘like’ other people in crucial ways. It’s hard to understand the deeper bits of others without having explored oneself first.
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•SPENDING MONEY UNWISELY Most of what we spend money on is a hunch about what will make us happy. But without self-knowledge, we’ll have a hard time figuring out the relationship between what we purchase and how we feel.
•Holidays and travels will leave us disappointed.
•Impulsive purchases will soon be regretted.
•We’ll be prey to fashion: not knowing ourselves, we’ll be at the mercy of what consumer society tells us to want.
•We might become inadvertent snobs: liking things because others like them rather than for deeper personal reasons.
•Self-knowledge has always been important. But now it’s more so than ever. This is a result of political and social progress. When life was much more constrained by tradition, rigid social hierarchy and rigorous codes of manners, there was less need for self-knowledge to guide action. Now, if we are to exploit the independence and freedom we’ve been offered (in love, work and social lives), there is all the more reason to get to know ourselves in good time. TWO: WHY IS SELF-KNOWLEDGE SO HARD TO COME BY? We pay a high price for lack of self-knowledge. So why is it in short supply? Why is it hard for us to know ourselves in these ways? It’s not laziness or stupidity that explains it. There are several huge cognitive frailties that make it hard for us to have certain kinds of insight about ourselves. There are six reasons why self-knowledge is tricky for creatures with the kinds of minds we have. One: The Unconscious Human beings have evolved into creatures whose minds are divided into conscious and unconscious processes. Digesting lunch is unconscious; reflecting on what you’d like to do this weekend is conscious.
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•The reason for this division is bandwidth. We simply couldn’t cope if everything we did had to be filtered through the conscious mind. Also, we start off as children with fierce difficulties around self-awareness. Nature has structured us so that self-awareness comes very late on: you only have to study how children are to know that an awareness of self is a very late evolution of character.
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•In general, we can argue that we suffer because a little too much of how we behave happens unconsciously – when we would benefit from a closer grasp on what was going on. The default balance between conscious and unconscious tends to be wrong, we are incentivised to let too much of who we are happen in the unconscious. As a general point, we need to make heroic efforts to correct the imbalance and bring more of our lives into the conscious realm. Two: The Emotional and the Rational Mind A traditional way of conceiving of our minds is that there’s a small rational bit and a far larger, more dominant emotional bit. Plato compared the rational bit to a group of wild horses dragging the conscious mind along.
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•Nowadays, neuroscientists tell us about three parts of the brain: – the reptilian – the limbic – and the neocortex The reptilian is, as the name sounds, the earliest and the most primitive. It’s interested in basic survival and responds immediately, in knee-jerk ways, unconsciously and rather aggressively and destructively. It’s what’s engaged if a lion surprises you in the jungle.
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•The limbic part of the brain, a later development is concerned with emotions and memories. The neocortex, a very late development, is where our higher reasoning faculties lie. We don’t have to buy into the precise terminology here to understand the drift: a lot of our lives is dominated by automatic, over-emotional, distorting responses by the ‘lower’ parts of the mind; and only occasionally can we hope to gain rational perspective through our higher faculties. Three: Freudian Resistance However, it isn’t just the case that things are unconscious by accident. It was Sigmund Freud’s great insight that they remain unconscious because of a squeamishness on our part: there is – in his term – extraordinary ‘resistance’ to making a lot of our unconscious material conscious. The unconscious contains desires and feelings that deeply challenge a more comfortable vision of ourselves. We might discover – if we got to know ourselves better – that we’re attracted to a different gender, or have career ambitions quite different from those our society expects of us. We therefore ‘resist’ finding out too much about ourselves in many areas. It shatters the short-term peace we’re addicted to.
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•But, of course, for Freud, we pay a high price for this. Short-term peace is unstable, it is, to use another word of his, ‘neurotic’, and cuts us off from the benefits of long-term honesty about aspects of our identity. Too often we say of thoughts, it’s ‘safer not to go there’. One simply pushes feelings and ideas aside. Resistance means we are escaping the humiliation of admitting to particular appetites and desires – especially when these are at odds with what we’d like to be like or how others want us to be. We reduce our immediate suffering. But the cost is that we can’t properly aim for what would truly make us happy. Four: Other people won’t tell us There are many aspects of our identities that it is simply hard for us to see without the help of another person. We need others to be our mirrors, feeding back their insights and perspectives on the elusive, hard-to-see parts of ourselves. However, getting hold of data from others is a very unreliable process. Very few people can be bothered to undertake the arduous task of giving us feedback.
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•Either they dislike us too much and therefore can’t be bothered. Or they like us too much, and don’t want to upset us. Our friends are too polite; good intentions lead them to keep their less pleasant observations to themselves. Our enemies have so much to tell us: it’s not always the people we like who see certain aspects of us most clearly. It might be someone we’re at loggerheads with who has the sharpest sense of what’s not quite going right in our character (a way, for instance, of letting people down after a long period of seeming to go along with their plans; a very annoying habit of sitting on the fence). But they are not likely to be good at sharing their wisdom with us. They either won’t take the trouble, or will brush us off with the sort of sharp insults that will make us defensive and closed to the wiser aspects embedded within their harsh assessments. Five: We haven’t lived enough Many bits of self-knowledge only come through experience. Think of ourselves as being like a biscuit mould: it’s only by pressing ourselves against the dough of life that we get to see what shape we actually are.
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•Self-knowledge therefore isn’t something we can always do in isolation, retreating from the world to look into ourselves. We acquire knowledge dynamically, by trying things out and colliding with others – which always carries a risk, and takes time. In careers, for example, we can’t know what we might want to do with our lives simply by asking ourselves this question. We need to head out into the workplace and try things out. We need to spend a week at an architect’s office, or go and meet someone in the diplomatic service etc.
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•Self-knowledge can only evolve as a result of dialogue with the world. Six: We are fatefully vague about stuff Our thoughts about many things are marked first and foremost by vagueness. Our intellectual muscles are – by nature – rather weak. Our initial reactions to things are frequently of the order of ‘yum’ or ‘yuk’. We have pronounced pro or contra feelings towards something but struggle to say more. We say things like:
•I want to be creative
•I loathe big business
•I’m feeling out of sorts
•He annoys me
•These reports might be true, but they are not very high-quality items in terms of self- knowledge. They’re not accurate enough to help guide action. It’s not that they are wrong, the problem is they are too vague. They don’t get to grips with what is really the issue. They circle in the big, general territory but don’t land anywhere specific. This isn’t a personal problem. It’s universal. The first reports from our conscious minds are just by nature horribly vague – and in need of sustained analysis. Seven: Introspection is low on prestige and unfamiliar Introspection is the name we give to the close study of one’s feelings and ideas.
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•Unfortunately, it isn’t given high prestige in our society. We’re rarely encouraged to unpack our thoughts. The notion of what it means to have a conversation with a friend rarely includes trying to make progress in sorting out feelings. Psychotherapy – the prime arena for analysing oneself – interests barely 1% of the population. Part of increasing the self-knowledge of a society is to help make the idea of introspection a little more glamorous; it should be thought of as a very plausible concept to spend a weekend on or host a dinner party around. THREE: HOW TO GET MORE SELF-KNOWLEDGE – AND IN WHAT AREAS ONE: – RELATIONSHIPS i: Repetition Compulsion We’re not terribly flexible when it comes to falling in love. We have types. There are patterns: each of us tends to have a characteristic sort of person we go for – a more or less sketchy template of the sort of person we find very attractive. The template is highly individual, but if we could open up people’s heads we might find things like:
•the Byronic type – dark hair (frequently tousled), reserved but intense; naughty
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•the serene type – calm, unruffled, angst-free
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•the cheeky type – bouncy, unpretentious, free
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•We’re used to seeing our types in terms of the positives. But, in fact, every type also carries a lot of negatives as well. The people we tend to go for may be attractive to us not only for some very nice reasons but also because they bring with them some special kind of trouble or difficulty to which we are especially prone. Most of us are involved in the compulsion to repeat kinds of suffering in our personal lives, normally based on a suffering in early childhood. Putting the same templates in darker terms, it might turn out that someone is drawn to:
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•a chaotic, selfish, volcanic person who seems always to be on the verge of losing their temper and is never on time (Byronic)
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•someone who will be wrapped up in themselves and slightly depressed (serene)
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•an infantile person with poor self-management skills who needs a lot of looking after (cheeky)
•We need self-knowledge in love because were so prone to repeat unhealthy patterns. We leave a relationship hoping to leave behind a particular set of problems – which we find again in the next relationship. These patterns normally derive from childhood experience whereby love was mixed in with various kinds of suffering. The father whose attention and affection we craved was also often annoyed (annoyance, ever since, has proved desperately interesting to a part of us); the mother who we loved was often preoccupied and always heading out to do more exciting things while leaving us behind (our partner is in a high stress job and doesn’t often call…) Now when we’re searching for affection and closeness we look out for some quite negative, even damaging things, since we have learned to think that this is how love works. We don’t notice it, so the pattern keeps on guiding our behaviour in unfortunate ways. The psychoanalytic theory of repetition compulsion means that you’re also being drawn to something problematic. For example:
•they are rather bossy
•they are critical
•they are in some way rather inadequate and in need of help
•they are agitated and irritable
•Self-knowledge means first of all seeing the pattern. It means understanding the negative aspects of the type of person we tend to get involved with. Culturally we are resistant to this kind of self-knowledge. We’re not used to the notion that we might be drawn to people for bad reasons. We want to say: I hate it when people don’t listen or I really don’t like irritable and agitated individuals. And of course that is true. We don’t like it when people behave these ways. But we do much too often end up with them! EXERCISE – Think of a celebrity or actor that you find attractive.
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•What are some good things
you find attractive about them. – What might be the bad reasons you are drawn to them? – What are the difficult sides of people you’re oddly rather drawn to? – Sketch a ‘type’ you find attractive. – What are the bad reasons you find this type attractive? – What have the consequences been in your life? – Gaining self-knowledge about the darker aspects of one’s own pattern of attraction allows us to be more strategic. When looking for a new relationship:
•Realise that emotional appeal is not necessarily – for us – the best guide to who we could have good relationship with.
•Pick up at a much earlier stage that one might be making this mistake and recognising that it is a mistake.
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•In a long-standing relationship:
•Accept that we shouldn’t simply blame the other person for certain annoying characteristics – such as their distance or irritability. We can admit that this was part of what drew us to them in the first place.
•It helps identify the kind of compensating maturity one needs; if you are drawn to quite critical people, you can’t always then blame them for being critical.
•II : PROJECTION Our minds have a strong natural tendency to PROJECTION, that is, to elaborate a response to a current situation from incomplete hints – drawing upon a dynamic set up in our past and indicative of our unconscious interests, drives and concerns. Take a look at this image, which appears as part of a famous PROJECTION TEST:
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•If you ask, what’s going on here, we all could read different things into the image. People might say something like:
•It’s a father and son, mourning together for a shared loss, maybe they’ve heard that a friend of the family has died.
•It’s a manager in the process of sacking (more in sorrow than in anger) a very unsatisfactory young employee.
•I feel something obscene is going on out of the frame: it’s in a public urinal, the older man is looking at the younger guy’s penis and making him feel very embarrassed.
•One thing we do know – really – is that the picture doesn’t really show any of these things. It is an AMBIGUOUS image. The picture simply shows two men rather formally dressed, one slightly older. The elaboration is coming from the person who looks at it. And the way they elaborate, the kind of story they tell, may say more about them than it does about the image. Especially if they get insistent and very sure that this is what the picture really means. This is projection. We don’t just do this around images; the same thing happens with people. In relationships, projection kicks in when there are ‘ambiguous situations’. For instance, your partner is quietly chuckling at a text message. They don’t offer to share it with you. They quickly send a reply. You start to feel very agitated. It looks like your partner is having an affair. They have just received a message from their lover reminding them of some very intimate joke (which might even be about you and your failings); you partner eagerly responds. They don’t love you. You are abandoned, betrayed. You are now very angry with you partner; you feel victimised. But actually, nothing like this is really going on at all. The message was from an over-conscientious colleague at work, and your partner found it comic they should be bothering about such trivia and didn’t think it was even worth mentioning. In fact, the distress you felt derived from when you were at school: you discovered that the person you thought was your best friend was actually saying mean things about to others. You are still wounded by this, though you hate to admit it.
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•The structure is
•We observe something but in honest truth it’s not entirely clear what it means.
•We read into the situation a set of motive, intentions, attitudes – which are usually distressing to us and give rise to anxiety and anger.
•The anxiety or fear actually relate to an earlier experience. But we don’t realise this.
•We are frightened by, or angry about, what’s happening now. Even though really we shouldn’t be.
•Projection is always about telling ourselves a story in answer to the question: what did that really mean? That might be, for instance, be a situation as well as a person. When we are projecting it doesn’t FEEL as if we are doing anything complicated or special. On the contrary it feels just as if we are seeing things as they are. So, typically we dislike the suggestion that we are ‘projecting’. It feels as if it is an insult to our ability to perceive how things really are. Admitting the possibility that one might be projecting is humbling. But it could be worth it because projection brings a lot of trouble into our lives. We’re venting our anger on the wrong individual. And maybe in the process hurting someone very unfairly. We are afraid of the wrong person. Our fear of someone in the past gets in the way of making a friend or ally of someone today. Self-knowledge means recognising one’s projections and attempting to repatriate. The active issue isn’t here and now: it’s some unfinished business from the past that’s still bugging us. EXERCISE – In the images below what do you think is going on? – Say (without thinking too much) what you believe is happening. Write it down on a piece of paper, while others do the same. – Then, as a class, go around and compare. – Then ask yourselves what your possible explanation says not about the picture – it’s ambiguous – but about you. What parts of you have ‘projected’ into the ambiguous image?
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•TWO: – CONFRONTATION AND CRITICISM Another area where a lack of self-knowledge bites is around how we characteristically behave with others, friends, family and colleagues. There are a number of themes here. i: Confrontation Styles Daily life offers us constant frustrations where we have a choice as to how we might respond. All of us exhibit a variety of ‘confrontation styles’, but we’re often unaware which kind we generally go in for – and what the costs and consequences are. EXERCISE Imagine that: – Someone promised you a document by midday. It’s now 1pm. – It’s your birthday next week, but your partner hasn’t said anything about it. You’d ideally love to go out.
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•There’s a drilling sound coming from next door – again. – A work colleague has been muscling in on one of your clients. How do you feel? And how would you typically react? There are 4 key varieties of possible responses: passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive or assertive:
•Passive: you feel it’s just how life goes, some things you have to accept; if you make a fuss, it just makes everything worse. After all, it’s not that bad really. Sometimes you really resent these things, but you make yourself put up with them.
•Aggressive: I’m bloody annoyed. Where is that document? Why hasn’t my partner mentioned a party? Why should I suffer because the neighbours are incompetent, stupid, greedy or too lazy to do their DIY at some reasonable hour? If they don’t get their act together you’re really going to show them who’s boss. They can shape up or ship out as far as you are concerned.
•Passive-aggressive: A curious toxic mixture of passivity and more aggressive feelings. One tells oneself things like: ‘I don’t make a big fuss about my birthday – and of course my partner has a lot on their plate always.’ But secretly one is fuming. Or one thinks, ‘X is a perennially unreliable fool,’ but when their document eventually comes in at 5pm, one says, ‘Great to get this!!’ and leaves it at that… There’s a lot of hostility around but it is indirect. The passive aggressive person keeps their anger veiled just enough so as to be able to deny it to others and to themselves. They don’t feel they are being negative or aggressive. They see themselves as hard done by. What they hate most of all is to make a fuss – but that doesn’t prevent them being very upset. Often, the upset which hasn’t emerged with the person who caused it will later find a way out with a more innocent party. Passive aggressive people who didn’t make their feelings clear in the office will, when they get home, frequently take it out on the kids, the partner or the dog. Passive-aggression has its roots in low self-esteem. One simply doesn’t feel one is allowed to make a direct critique. Direct criticism takes confidence. At the same time, one can’t be happy either. Therefore, the compromise is a veiled compromise attack.
•Assertive: you are clear about when someone has behaved badly towards you or is causing a problem. You aren’t happy about it. But your main aim is to fix the problem. You don’t need to take revenge or try to get the other person to feel guilty. You can go up to them and confidently make your point. You aren’t ashamed of yourself or guilty for making a fuss. You think it’s normal to treat people well – you do – and if someone else falls below your standards, you’re not embarrassed to tell them so in plain terms. It won’t be a catastrophe, just a few unpleasant moments, but that will allow the relationship to improve over the long-term. No festering wounds here.
•Very few of us are assertive. One estimate is that no more than 20% of the population manage to be direct in a mature way about their ailments. That means there’s a lot of subterranean anger, a lot of people who are being shouted at even though they aren’t really responsible.
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•The reason why passive-aggression is something we’re not aware of doing – and therefore need to increase our self-knowledge around – is that there are lots of inhibitions to being ‘straight’ around things one’s annoyed about: – one might feel one doesn’t deserve to make a fuss. – one might have a sense of shame/inner conviction of being bad which prevents one from taking the high ground ever, even when one deserves to. – one might feel that other people will respond volcanically and catastrophically if one makes any complaint against them. These assumptions are all worth questioning. EXERCISE This is from something called the Ascendance-Submission study by the American psychologist Gordon Allport: 1. Someone tries to push ahead of you in line. You have been waiting for some time, and can’t wait much longer. Suppose the intruder is the same sex as yourself, do you usually: – remonstrate with the intrude – ‘look daggers’ at the intruder or make clearly audible comments to your neighbour – decide not to wait and go away – do nothing
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•2. Do you feel self-conscious in the presence of superiors in the academic or business world? – markedly – somewhat – not at all 3. Some possession of yours is being worked upon at a repair shop. You call for it at the time appointed, but the repair man informs you that he has “only just begun to work on it.” Is your customary reaction: – to upbraid him – to express dissatisfaction mildly – to smother your feelings entirely Another American psychologist, Dr Saul Rosenzweig, came up with the Picture Frustration test, which shows a number of frustrating situations and invites us to fill in the blanks:
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•How might you respond to this scenario? Try this out + discuss what other moments in life you respond in similar ways… ii: Criticism Criticism is always challenging, but people respond to it in a variety ways. It can be hugely beneficial to get a better grip on your characteristic response/behaviour around criticism – in order to be able to modulate it, and advance towards the more mature varieties. Possible Responses to Criticism 1. They must be entirely wrong: This is the response colloquially known as ‘defensive’ – whereby a criticism unleashes a disproportionately strong defence against it. The original criticism isn’t heard, for its destinee is so taken up with shoring up their position. One thinks: “I am OK, I don’t generally make mistakes. If they are annoyed with me, it’s likely that they are being too demanding, or they’re jealous, or they’re trying to kick me down. The problem is theirs.” 2. They must be entirely right and I don’t deserve to exist: Here one thinks that a local criticism (of a book, a document, something one said over dinner) is in fact pointing to a global problem. Very quickly, the local criticism brings about a crisis: “I don’t deserve to exist. I am a wretch. They have seen through the facade. It is true, I am meaningless, petty, stupid and dull…’ 3. They might be right AND I can be OK Here one is able to contain the criticism to the issue at hand. One is able to distinguish between a criticism of some aspect of oneself and a wholehearted assault on one’s identity.
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•EXERCISE One of the most popular forms of self-knowledge exercises among psychologists involve an invitation to finish sentence stubs. The idea is to answer fast, without thinking too much, thereby allowing the unconscious mind to have its say before it is censored. Here are some sentence stubs to complete around the issue of criticism: – When someone points out a piece of work of mine is less than perfect, I… – When my boss says something to me, I think… – Bosses who criticise typically… Try to work out your Criticism style: – are you defensive – or do you feel globally attacked – or locally attacked? Analysis One’s response to criticism is formed in childhood. It is the task of all parents to criticise their children and break bad news to them about their wishes and plans – but there are evidently different ways of going about this. The best sort of criticism leaves a child feeling that the criticism is local – but that they remain loved and adored. Moreover, the suggestion is that everyone makes mistakes, especially the parents, and that criticism is a well-meaning and in no way threatening aspect of daily life.
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•But there are also scenarios where the child is criticised and no one notices that the criticism cuts too deep. There is no suggestion that this is ONLY a limited criticism. The child falls prey to the belief that they are entirely worthless. Throughout adulthood, the slightest critique can re-evoke this perspective. Discussion What did you learn about criticism in your childhood? How did your mother/father make you feel when they criticised you? THREE: – CAREER i: Vagueness around one’s ambitions When thinking about aspirations, hopes and what it would be good to do, there’s a very strong tendency to end up saying things like:
•I want to help other people
•I want to be creative
•I want to do something that matters
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•The statements might be very true and the sentiments admirable. The problem with them is that they are vague. They don’t point in any particular direction: they don’t guide action or do much to help make a decision. Vagueness is a sign of the difficulty we have around self-knowledge. It shows that in some important aspect of life we don’t yet know ourselves very well. How do we improve self-knowledge around ambitions? EXERCISE 1. Dare to name some people you envy and or admire – however grand and implausible. One of the causes of vagueness is that (after the age of about eleven) we feel embarrassed to mention very high status individuals as inspiration; we sense that we’ll be seen as pretentious or naive. But it’s important to list them because they are the grandest version of the person you want to be. It could be Michelangelo or Lady Gaga or Goethe or Bill Gates. The point isn’t that you necessarily want to be them or just like them. It’s that there is something about them that you want to learn from.
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•2. Moving from person to trait. Analyse what it is about them that you admire… It needn’t be the thing they are most famous for. The cause of vagueness here is that we get hung up on people. We focus on the person – and there are so many different things about them that are impressive. So simply naming them leaves it vague what it is we’re trying to learn from this person’s example. 3. How could that quality be more present in your life… Another cause of vagueness is inflexibility. We can see how that quality played itself out in that person’s life. But what we really want to know is what else can be done with it. The person we’re thinking about is only giving a hint. ii: Attitudes to ambition There are many obstacles to doing well at work, getting the kind of partner we feel we deserve; or getting on top of our financial and creative lives: competition from able rivals, not enough room at the top, prejudice, limited talents. But some of the most serious barriers to success come from within our own heads. We suffer from problematic attitudes to success. We are held back by anxiety around success. These anxieties mean that we are not purely seeking to succeed. Without realising it, we are also quite invested in aspects of failure.
•Success makes you envied. They’ll think I’m showing off, big-noting myself. I really don’t want to be the target of other people’s envy. Better to remain on the sidelines.
•Inner feudalism: there are sorts of people who are allowed to succeed and do big things in the world; unfortunately, I’m not one of them; things like that just don’t happen to people like me.
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•There is also the danger of over-investment in the idea of ‘success’. It’s natural to want to do well-enough around work. But career can be a magnet for other hopes that don’t really belong in this area. One comes to believe that if only things go well in terms of career or money, many other problems will be solved too. It’s a line of thought that is strongly encouraged by contemporary society. Meritocratic attitudes invite the misleading thought that how you do at work is a measure of your global worth; advertising relentlessly projects the thought that psychological qualities like friendship, good relationships, serenity and a sense of fun are tied to financial prosperity (and hence to career success). These kinds of thoughts are not explicitly running through our heads but reflection on our behaviour may indicate that we act as if we believe such things as:
•If I succeed at work, I will deserve to be loved.
•I will stop feeling lonely when I’ve made it.
•The holiday will be great – if only we stay in luxury.
•High status means happiness.
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•Once such beliefs have been made explicit they can be put to the test. For instance: other people can succeed, but not me. Is it true? Examine it like a statement in court. What evidence supports this? What are all the things that could be said in its favour and assess their plausibility.
•some people are born lucky – this can’t be right.
•talent is unequally distributed – true, but many of the people who you think are successful are not more talented than you.
•there are prejudices which favour some and disadvantage others – yes, but (usually) only to some extent, they are not decisive.
•EXERCISE – If I succeed, what will happen is… (both negative and positive) – By succeeding, I’d love to please… – The person who might (secretly) be most dismayed by my success would be… – People who are successful are typically… – I wouldn’t want to be a success because.. iii: The meaning of your life In the middle of daily life, impressed by the expectations of other people and bombarded with ideas from the media and advertising (which are unlikely to have one’s own best interest at heart), it’s completely unsurprising that we get confused about how much something really matters to us. EXERCISE If you were on your deathbed, what would you regret not doing… The exercise is designed to tease out underlying ambitions that you are reluctant to explore. They might seem too challenging or embarrassing to admit to anyone else. The point isn’t necessarily to explain them to others but to give them more attention in the privacy of your own head.
•Why, in fact, do you hold back from doing these things?
•How might those obstacles be addressed?
•What specific practical steps you could take?
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•The death-bed exercise also helps reveal the true hierarchy of our needs.
•Things that have only a very limited contribution to make to our flourishing come to seem much more important than the really are.
•We underrate the importance of things that are familiar or maybe not especially exciting.
•FOUR: – WHAT OTHERS CAN KNOW OF US (AT ONCE) When it comes to other people, we are all a bit like mind-readers. Mind-readers astonish their customers by telling them things about their lives – you have had a quarrel with your parents recently; you were close to a sibling when you were a child, but in recent years you have drifted apart and that makes you sad. And the visitor is left wondering: how did they know this about me. It must be magic. They can sometimes tell us after a minute things that it’s taken us years to find out about ourselves. They might note that we react defensively when mentioning our parents – as if we feel we are about to be accused of something; though this characteristic is one we are reluctant to recognise in ourselves. Mind-reading just shows up that knowledge about us is surprisingly obvious and easy for an outsider to get hold of – much easier than for us inside. Strangers are surprisingly good at guessing things about us. One consequence is that we find it difficult to grasp how other people see us. The gap between self-perception and the point of view of others is richly comic: pomposity for example occurs when someone can’t see that other people don’t share their high opinion of their own merits; and there’s a satisfaction in seeing this person being forced by events to a much lower and more accurate picture of themselves. But mostly, of course, it doesn’t seem especially funny: You don’t realise
•that you are taxing other people’s patience
•other people often feel you hog the limelight
•you come across as arrogant
•you seem excessively diffident
•you are often trying to hint that you have done everything anyone else has done; as if it would be painful to you to be impressed by anyone
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•The point isn’t that other people are always right. The point isn’t that one should feel cross with other people for not rightly appreciating one’s better intent. (‘Of course, I didn’t mean to be arrogant? Can’t they tell the difference between honest assertion and showing off?’) It’s just that it is really helpful to know how we impact on other people since this allows for strategic adjustment. Once we know we can try to change for the sake of getting on better with others – being a little less assertive at certain points or making an effort to ask other people questions about themselves. EXERCISE Pair up with someone. Get them to say 5 nice things about this person, based on very little knowledge. Then, one negative thing. How did they know this negative thing? Swap roles. EXERCISE – Write down the kind of animal you might see yourself as being. And list three attributes that you feel you share to some extent with this kind of creature. – Then ask another person to draw the animal they see you as being, and to pick out three characteristics that help explain why. – What do you learn from their choice and their reasons? FIVE: – FAMILY DYNAMICS i: Overall Picture: How you feel about your family What do you really feel about your family? Especially the things that you don’t say for all sorts of reasons: you might hurt particular people; you feel guilty because, after all they have been very good to you in some ways; you feel disloyal; you fear that people will feel sorry for you in ways that make you awkward; you fear that people will regard you with contempt. Such thoughts are likely to remain shadowy. We have unconscious – or barely unconscious attitudes in relation to family that are liable to play serious havoc with our lives. Possibilities include:
•Attitudes to a younger brother are governing one’s feelings about never having enough.
•Feelings about an older sister have led to problems around envy.
•A general tendency to be deferential around authority might be traced to an excessive need to please one’s parents.
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•EXERCISE A key psychological exercise is to draw your nuclear family; putting in parents + siblings + house + a sun + a tree. Then examine the drawing. Draw your family. Ask: Who is big? Who is small? Where is everyone standing?
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•Some typical themes in analysis: – who you draw yourself next to is who you are closest to. – who are you are most distant from is put faraway. – the size you have drawn yourself is the size of your self-esteem. – the house is an extension of yourself: it is the ego. Is it in good shape? Optimistic? Ordered? Windows imply a degree of communication/passage. Does it have a door? This is only a start, and it’s not science – but the exercise is useful nevertheless, trying – like the sentence stubb exercise – to catch our unconscious slightly unawares in order to reveal its structure. ii: Blame and self-knowledge: We may not be aware of the extent to which we assign problems in our lives to our parents. EXERCISE 1. What do you blame your parents for? Here we are looking for an ego response: how they hurt me, the mistakes they made etc. 2. Why do you think they were the way they were? This is a very different sort of question. It asks you to step outside of yourself and ask not, how did they hurt me or disappoint me – but rather, what were the pressures and difficulties they were under. It interrupts the circuit of hurt-blame, replacing it with hurt-understanding.
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•Blaming one’s parents isn’t – of course – always a mistake. It’s just that doing so can get in the way of a better understanding of the nature of a problem. And hence of what it is possible to do about it. SIX: – TASTE AND YOUR IDEA OF HAPPINESS We aren’t used to the idea that interior decoration can tell us anything very intimate about ourselves. But aesthetic preferences can yield revealing insights. That’s because personal taste reflects other things about us.
•We may be disturbed by unfortunate associations to certain kinds of objects or environments. At a particular age you might have seen a film in which a character who deeply appealed to you, lived in rather grand classical mansion; ever since then you’ve had quiet – but quite strong – positive feelings about such places. Understanding the attraction leads back to the prior question: what it was about that character that you found so appealing? Or it may be that a rather fearsome relative was very critical of mess, which touched off a rebellious opposite in you; you find a bit of clutter and a confusion of colours homely and endearing (which that person definitely was not). Analysing the response helps uncover the further concerns – the loves, antipathies, hopes and fears – that helped to shape your taste.
•We are drawn to things we don’t have enough of. Aesthetic preference is often connected to the pursuit of balance. If we are typically stressed and anxious, we might be very attracted to serene environments. A person who has been assailed too often by boorish people, might be very attracted to things that suggest refinement, order and harmony: the lack of which has been painfully brought home to them.
•We find neglected parts of ourselves in objects: in daily life we may give little attention or respect to aspects of our own nature that – however – hint at their existence in our tastes. The thrilled response to a grand interior in another wise demure individual suggest a bolder, more ambitious side to them.
•EXERCISE Consider these different interiors:
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•ornate
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•baroque
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•bohemian
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•cosy clutter
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•minimalist
•Which one do you hate? Which one are you drawn to? The underlying theory is that we are drawn to visual styles which capture what is MISSING in our psyches. In other words, the person attracted to calm-minimalism doesn’t feel calm inside. They feel on the verge of being overwhelmed – and look to a taste that can CORRECT their inclinations. Similarly with the bohemian style – this is favoured not by bohemians, but by people deeply frightened of their native impulses towards conformity and rigidity. We use visual decoration styles to correct/rebalance ourselves. SEVEN: – Wisdom and the search for moments of Higher Consciousness Often, self-knowledge is concerned with describing more accurately how one feels. It follows the path of introspection. You try work out what you actually feel when you look at the sky or watch a film or feel bored in a meeting.
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•But there’s another side to self-knowledge: becoming more aware of how the self-machine works: of how your mind operates and distorts things. For instance, you learn that eating a lot of chocolate makes you feel a bit queasy afterwards. Eating chocolate doesn’t feel as if it will do that. It’s so delicious you can’t resist another square. But gradually you just learn that this is how your particular machine work: if you put in a lot of chocolate it starts to create problems. Just as we can learn how the body works, we can also learn how the mind works. One of the major implication of evolutionary theory is that the human brain itself has evolved over a very long period of time. The body, we readily accept, carries many indications of its long, long developmental story. The kind of eyes we have, the way our knees work or how our lungs extract oxygen from the air are not unique to humans. These kinds of organs and joints evolved long before humans were around. So too with our brains. Hence the usefulness of talking about a ‘reptilian’ part of the brain, even though it isn’t absolutely correct scientifically (we don’t literally have the brain of lizard encased within our skulls). We have instincts and response patterns that evolved to suit being chased by predators or needing mate no matter what, that are more suited to existence in the pleistocene era than to life in a modern metropolis (or rural farming community). The reptilian brain is interested only in survival and responds instinctively and fast. It is out for itself, it has no capacity for empathy or morality. It is deeply and constitutionally selfish. But we also have a more evolved mature brain (scientists call it the neocortex) which is able to gain a distance from immediate reptilian demands. It can observe rather than submit to the sexual impulse: it can study, rather than obey, selfish desires etc.
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•The picture of ourselves – as having a sophisticated mind sitting on top of a primitive one – is very helpful because it makes sense of some of our troubles and of our potential for addressing them. The primitive brain is very concerned with safety and reproduction. It is impatient. It’s violent in asserting itself. It has no interest in reasons and explanations. It cannot comprehend what an apology is. In some of our worst moments, the primitive brain is doing the work. From its point of view, smashing a glass on the table might be an ideal way of getting someone to agree with you; being insulting, aggressive and boorish might look like a great way of getting to have sex with someone. That we can behave very badly is, therefore, entirely unsurprising. But it means also that such bad behaviour cannot possible be the whole story about us. Having a divided brain – a reptilian and non-reptilian mind – means that the task is always to get the higher part of the mind to be more in charge and to take over whenever things get complicated. If we understand this about ourselves than we don’t have to go around thinking that we are totally worthless and awful because we did a genuinely very stupid and pretty nasty thing. The evolutionary story gives a more helpful explanation. You are not thoroughly bad at all. You just have a current problem: your modern brain is not as strong as it needs to be – and your reptilian brain is far too strong. It defines the nature of the task: I need to get my non-reptile brain to be more prominent. And I need to learn to distinguish which of my hopes, fears and desires belong to the reptilian mind – and which are soundly founded in the higher rationality of the more evolved mind.
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•What we can call higher-consciousness occurs as we flex the muscles of our modern brain; and manage to free ourselves from the hold of the reptilian brain, gaining perspective over our immediate impulses and moods. In another kind of language, we’d say we had been able to ‘free ourselves’ from the ego and to survey our lives and the world free of the immediate imperatives of being ourselves. There are FIVE key ways this happens. One: Fostering a capacity to observe one’s cruder impulses Very occasionally, perhaps late at night, when the pressures of the day have receded, we have access to what feel like moments of wisdom – they usually don’t last very long but for a short period of time we have access to crucial ideas or insights about the way we operate, which is free of the normal subjectivity, defensiveness or self-justification. In the morning – and for pretty much the whole day – you are in a rush. At dinner, your partner makes a comment about how you eat too fast or how you tune out when they are talking about their work – and immediately you get defensive; you insist you don’t do these things, you say they are hypercritical, that they don’t care and are always coldly judging you. You are furious and might slam the door.
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•Then lying awake in the middle of the night you have a powerful sense that quite often you move too fast defend yourself whenever your partner says anything a bit critical. You can picture yourself doing it. They start to speak, it’s so familiar, and immediately you are crouching, ready to deflect the blow. And so you don’t really hear what they have to say. You admit – very, very privately – that you do quite often stop paying attention when they talk about work; it’s not merely that you have stopped listening to all the ins and outs of life in their office; it’s that you have stopped paying attention to the way they are speaking, to what it means to them and why. So, they’ve got a point. But you feel compelled to say they don’t. And truth be told you know you do eat too fast. Yes, it’s annoying to have it pointed out. But you realise that being a bit critical is a way your partner tries to show affection and care; it’s a possessive gesture on their part. You want to say you’re sorry, hug them, do it differently. In the dark it all makes sense.
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•The midnight insight was right. It was a moment of self knowledge. It was a moment of ‘higher consciousness’ when it was possible to stand back from experience and see it more clearly. You felt sufficiently safe and calm to observe your own behaviour without rushing to either condemn or defend it. You became wiser about yourself. Such states of mind are, however, intermittent. Most of the time we have to be very intent on defending our patch, on fighting our cause. We lack the calm to observe our primitive mind in action. Two: Developing a capacity to interpret the behaviour of others, rather than merely react to it automatically Most of the time, we respond immediately (and rather powerfully) to the behaviour of others. They honk the horn at us, we get furious and honk back. They say something mean-sounding, we insult them right back.
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•The natural instinct is to meet the primitive with the primitive. Our own reptile nature wants to attack their reptile selves and beat them back into their hole. But there is, of course, another option – one of the great marvels of evolution and civilisation (morality and religion too). The civilised, higher move is to understand that they are behaving badly for a reason which they are in no position to tell you about, so under pressure are they from their more primitive minds. Maybe they have had a hard day. Maybe they are worried about something. Perhaps they have felt squashed and sidelined in their career and now having someone squeeze in in front of them on the road is too much to bear. Instead of simply seeing them as the dangerous enemy, we can recognise that they are distressed and that their bad behaviour (the impatient horn the swearing behind the windscreen) is a symptom of hurt rather than of ‘evil’.
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•It’s an astonishing gradual evolution to develop the ability to do this – to explain other people’s behaviour as caused by their distress, rather than simply to see it in terms of how it affects us. There must have been a first time in human history this happened. And in each life there is perhaps a similar awakening. But often it is so hard for this higher consciousness to break through; we are so deeply caught up in our own troubles that we find it almost impossible to be generous in our assessment of why others are causing us trouble: Try out these ideas (they sound foreign); they are examples of higher consciousness:
•the sales assistant is being curt with your request, perhaps because his relationship is breaking up. It isn’t about you.
•the snobbish person at the party is, ultimately, insecure (although they look self-confident and have just ignored you).
•the lout who scratches your car is terrified of being exposed as sexually inadequate.
•the boaster at the bar is convinced that he can never be loved.
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•Three: Developing a capacity for universal love Once we are able to interpret someone’s pain-inducing behaviour as having roots in their own pain, we’re on the threshold of a remarkable steps. It then appears that in truth, no one in this world is ever simply ‘nasty’. They are always hurt – and this means that the appropriate response to humanity is not fear, cynicism or aggression, but love. Once we relinquish our egos, and loosen ourselves from the grip of our primitive defensive and aggressive thought-processes, we are free to consider humanity in a much more benign light. We might even, at an extreme (this might happen only very late at night once in a while), feel that we could love everyone, that no human could be outside the circle of our sympathy.
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•We attain a state reported by certain yogis, christian ascetics and buddhist monks – wherein we feel that we have loosened ourselves from the self: we are looking at the world as if we were not ourselves, without the usual filter of our interests, passions and needs. And the world, at that moment, reveals itself as quite different: a place of suffering and misguided effort, a place full of people striving to be heard and lashing out against others. The fitting response is universal sympathy and kindness. We have taken self-knowledge in a new and interesting direction. Being so aware of ourselves that we can remove the ‘lower self’ from the windscreen through which we look at things – and therefore look at things in a truer and unegoistic way.
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•For years you have had to fight your corner: you have had to grab at every opportunity, defend yourself, look out for your interests. You have to feed and clothe yourself, pay the bills, manage your education, deal as best you can with your own moods and demons. You have to assert your rights, justify your actions and your choices. Being alive is all there is. You are understandably obsessed with your own life – what option do you have? But there are moments when one’s own life feels less precious, or less crucial – and not in a despairing way. And without the support of any imagined afterlife. It might be that the fear of not-existing is – if only for a little while – less intense. Perhaps looking out over the ocean at dusk or walking in woodland in winter, or listening to a particular piece of music Bach’s double violin concerto, that it would be alright not to exist; one can contemplate a world in which one is no longer present with some tranquility and still feel appreciative of life. In such rare moments of higher consciousness, one’s mortality is less of a burden; one’s interests can be put aside; you can fuse with transient things: trees, wind, waves breaking on the shore. From that higher point of view, status doesn’t seem important, possession don’t seem to matter, grievances lose their urgency; one is serene. If certain people could encounter you at this point they be amazed at the transformation.
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•These higher states of consciousness are short lived. We have to accept that. We shouldn’t aspire to make them permanent – because they don’t sit so well with many of the very important practical tasks that we need to attend to. We don’t need to be always in them. But we do need to make the most of them. We have to harvest them and preserve them so that we can have access to them when we need them most. The problem is that when we are in these higher states of mind we have highly important insights; but we lose access to them when we return to the ordinary conditions of life. And so we don’t get the benefit of the insight that was there in those special moments. In the past, religions have been very interested in this move. The Christian churches, for instance, cottoned onto the fact that at times we can recognise that we have been unfair and disloyal to others. It’s a huge triumph over the primitive mind which has little time for such possibilities. They established rituals designed to intensify, prolong and deepen these fragile insights. There was, for example, highly charged words of a special prayer, the Confiteor: I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sister that I have sinned through my own fault, in thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do… So that, ideally, on a very regular basis people would have a powerful experience of recognising that they might have been cruel, harsh, thoughtless, greedy or mean. It didn’t necessarily always work, of course, but the idea is highly significant. It’s an attempt to make this kind of experience less random. To give it more power in our lives and to make the best use of it.
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•The ideal, which is obviously separable from Christianity and involves not occult belief, is that the higher parts of the mind should be more reliable and more powerful. Four: Developing a suspicion about your own feelings Normally we are used to the idea of gaining self-knowledge by asking ourselves ever more closely: how do I feel about this? The idea is that you know ‘who you really are’, by studying your feelings. But this suggestion here is something different, indeed the opposite. What we advise is a capacity to stand aside from feelings in order to recognise their potentially deceptive nature. It means acknowledging a fundamental distinction between what we might feel about a situation – and what it might actually be.
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•The classic example of this historically is when humans learnt for the first time to accept that even though the earth feels flat, it is in fact round. In other words, when humans learnt to be suspicious about their feelings, trusting instead to the data of their rational minds – overruling feeling for the sake of reason. This has come very very late on in human evolution, and in day-to-day life, most of us operate in a pre-Copernican way, especially as regards our emotional lives. One exception though, from which we can learn a lot, is children. When we deal with small children, we rather easily override our reptilian responses and aim for a higher interpretation. We look beyond what seems, and try to picture what is. Imagine a child who is whiny and then goes up to its parent and hits it and says, I hate you.
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•The primitive response is to hit back. The more sophisticated one is to ask: what is going on beneath what I can see of the child’s behaviour? And, because it’s 6pm and they haven’t had a nap and had a bit of a cold, one will quite naturally ascribe the bad mood to these factors. The higher mind will have interpreted the situation. However wise this might be, we find it hard to perform the exercise on ourselves. We too might be feeling tired and hungry. But we don’t ask ourselves what role this might be playing in our sudden sense that everyone hates us and that our careers are a disaster. These seem like entirely reasonable conclusions to draw from real facts. But, in reality, they are the outcome of a very tired and hungry mind trying to deal with existence. After a snack and a lie down, our views will be very different.
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•In other words, our minds are filled with ideas that seem to be rationally founded but actually are not, that owe much to lower physical processes that are denied or unrecognised. Self-knowledge means becoming much better at realising how many of our mental processes (extending to things like our views on politics and our assessments of our careers and our lovers) can be explained by: – not having drunk enough water – not having had enough sleep – lacking something to eat If you haven’t slept well for a few nights and you’ve been working too hard, a few not too tactful comments from your partner can leave you considering divorce. It feels as if your relationship is in tatters, that you need to take a life-changing, dramatic and risky step; that the compromises, accommodations and love of the last few years have all been wasted. The problem looks enormous. But actually it isn’t. All that’s wrong is that you are tired. It’s shockingly hard for us to distinguish between a need of the body and a harrowing emotional conflict.
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•Or it might be that, having skipped breakfast, a tricky work meeting leaves you determined to resign. Things will be tough, certainly, but anything is better than continuing to sell your soul to these mindless fools. The problem looks as if it is huge – one’s career has taken a calamitous turn. Yet the real cause may be no more than depleted blood-sugar levels. Being told that one’s view of existence is – at this moment – not the product of reason but of indigestion or exhaustion, is utterly maddening. Especially when it is true. We want to believe our woes are essentially all high flown – intellectual, moral and existential – when they are often no more, but also no less, than a disturbance of the body. We should be careful of over-intellectualising. To be happy, we require big things (money, freedom, love), but we need a lot of semi-insultingly little things too (enough sleep, a good diet, a sunny sky). Babies know this well. They’re usefully unintellectual. They’re on hand to remind us of some profound truths.
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•The operative question, then, isn’t always ‘how do I feel?’ Self-knowledge might equally derive from asking: how do I function? What role are emotions playing in my life? And it can lead us, crucially, at times to discount them despite their strength. This is the higher capacity to stand aside from one’s feelings. When you are tired, dehydrated or hungry, stressed or frightened these states of mind alter your perception of reality. The sense become misleading. Other people’s behaviour is liable to look more menacing than it is; we find it harder to grasp their more complex motives. Threats look bigger than they are; sources of security or pleasure look smaller, more fragile and more distant than in truth they are. The higher position is to recognise that this is a way the self functions. This is what tiredness, dehydration and such states do to us. So we know to be suspicious of certain states of mind, we have to learn not to act on them. Wisdom means getting better at asking: is this reality or might I be seeing things in a distorted way, due to a lack of lunch or 2 hours less sleep. PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION: ORDERING OUR MINDS RATHER THAN EMPTYING THEM Even though our minds ostensibly belong to us, we don’t always control or know what is in them. There are always some ideas, bang in the middle of consciousness, that are thoroughly and immediately clear to us: for example, that we love our children. Or that we have to be out of the house by 7.40am. Or, that we are keen to have something salty to eat right now. These thoughts feel obvious without burdening us with uncertainty or any requirement that we reflect harder on them. But a host of other ideas tend to hover in a far more unfocused state. For example, we may know that our career needs to change, but it’s hard to say much more. Or we feel some resentment against our partner over an upsetting incident the night before, but we can’t pin down with any accuracy what we’re in fact bitter or sad about. Our confusions sometimes have a positive character about them but are perplexing all the same: perhaps there was something deeply ‘exciting’ about a canal-side cafe we discovered in Amsterdam or the sight of a person reading on a train or the way the sun lit up the sky in the evening after the storm, but it may be equally hard to put a finger on the meaning of these feelings.
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•Unfocused thoughts are constantly orbiting our minds, but from where we are, from the observatory of our conscious selves (as it were), we can’t grasp them distinctly. We speak of needing to ‘sort our heads out’ or to ‘get on top of things’, but quite how one does something like this isn’t obvious – or very much discussed. There is one response to dealing with our minds that has become immensely popular in the West in recent years. Drawn from the traditions of Buddhism, the practice of meditation has gripped the Western imagination, presenting itself as a solution to the problems of our chaotic minds. It is estimated that 1 in 10 adults in the US has taken part in some form of structured meditation. Adherents of meditation suggest that we sit very quietly, in a particular bodily position, and strive, through a variety of exercises, to empty our minds of content, quite literally to push or draw away the disturbing and unfocused objects of consciousness to the periphery of our minds, leaving a central space empty and serene. In the Buddhist world-view, anxieties and excitements are not trying to tell us anything especially interesting or valuable. We continuously fret without good purpose, about this or that random and vain thing – and therefore the best solution is simply to push the objects of the mind to one side.
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•Buddhist meditation has been so successful, we are liable to forget another effective and in some ways superior path to finding peace of mind, this one rooted in the Western tradition: Philosophical Meditation. Like its Eastern counterpart, Philosophical Meditation wants our thoughts, feelings and anxieties to trouble us less, but it seeks to sort out our minds in a very different manner. At heart, it doesn’t believe that the contents of our minds are nonsensical or meaningless. Our worries may seem like a nuisance but they are in fact neurotically garbled but important signals about how we should direct our lives. They contain complex clues as to our development. Therefore, rather than wanting simply to empty our minds of content, practitioners of Philosophical Meditation encourage us to clean these minds up: they want to bring the content that troubles us more securely into focus, and thereby usher in calm through understanding rather than through evacuation. How does one bring the confused objects of the mind into focus? There are instructions for Philosophical Meditation, just as there are for Buddhist Meditation (a little artificiality in these matters may just be what we need to lend the process discipline). The first priority is to set aside a bit of time, ideally 20 minutes, once a day. One should sit with a pad of paper and start by asking oneself a very simple set of questions: what is it that I am regretful, anxious or excited about at present? One is invited to download the immediate contents of one’s mind. One will by nature be a little unsure of what our feelings mean, so it is best simply to write down – without thinking or censoring ourselves – one or two words around each feeling. It’s a case of tipping out the contents of the mind onto the paper as unselfconsciously as possible. One might, for example, write down: Darren, Cologne trip, weekend, shoes, Mum, face at train station… The task is then to try to convert each of these words from an ambiguous and silent worry, regret or thrill into something one can understand, grasp, order and eventually better control. Success in this meditation relies on a skilful process of questioning. Imagine these thoughts as ineloquent and muddled strangers, who are full of valuable ideas, but whom one has to get to know in a roundabout way, by directing just the right questions at them. [See the link at the end of this piece for a more complete Guide to Philosophical Meditation]
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•Philosophical Meditation brings us calm not by removing issues, but by helping us to understand them, thereby evaporating some of the paranoia and static that might otherwise cling to them. When confused objects of consciousness become clearer, they stop bothering us quite so much. Problems don’t disappear, but they assume proportion and can be managed. For example, we may make ourselves at home with an array of administrative worries that had been clumsily concealed under the vague title of ‘the Cologne trip’. The word ‘Darren’ might disclose someone we envy, but who holds out a fascinating run of clues as to how we might make a new move in our career. The word ‘weekend’ yields feelings towards one’s partner which are both resentful and yet capable of being discussed and perhaps worked through in the evening. Sorting out our minds doesn’t just feel comforting (like tidying our homes), it also spares us grave errors. Confused excitement can be highly dangerous when it involves career ambitions. Imagine someone with a tendency to experience excitement when reading Vogue or Gourmet Traveller – and who then declares, without much attempt to analyse the feeling, that they want ‘to work in magazines’. It may seem reasonable enough for them to send off a CV to the magazine company HQ. After many efforts, they may be offered a lowly internship. It might take a few years and a lot of heartache before they realise that it wasn’t really the magazines themselves that were the true object of their attraction to begin with. Actually what was really speaking to this person was the idea of working in a close-knit team in an area that wasn’t finance (where Mum, a caustic and forbidding figure, puritanical in matters of sex and money, spent her career). Philosophical Meditation can, among other things, save us a lot of time.
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•Similar dangers play out when one is upset or anxious. Imagine that yesterday you had dinner at the house of a conspicuously successful friend. They’d just got back from a holiday in the Maldives and were telling you about their latest business venture in pharmaceuticals. You left feeling restless and annoyed, but you didn’t know why. Your own life felt flat and dispiriting. Vague plans about what to do swirled around in your head. Maybe you could have a brilliant idea and start a business. Somehow you wanted your life to be more like your friend’s. But what is a brilliant idea in business? How does one get going? Then your partner said something about having set up a dinner with her mother. At that moment, from somewhere mysterious in you, you felt a wave of anger – and shouted something about the house always being left in such a mess. After all, there was a set of dirty plates in your field of vision. But your partner said you were crazy, the house wasn’t that messy anyway, and how long would it take to tidy away a few plates in the first place…? She walked out of the room crossly and so tonight, you’ll be sleeping on the sofa again for a whole set of reasons that it’s now becoming very hard to disentangle, let alone discuss with any degree of maturity.
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•Countless agonies and mistakes stem from not properly analysing our confused inner experiences. We pick the wrong job; get together with the wrong person, run away from the right person; spend our money on the wrong things and don’t do justice to our talents and deeper aspirations. Acting without Philosophical Meditation is like being allowed to embark on a trip without checking the equipment or the map. We trust the feelings without duly acknowledging that they may prompt us in some catastrophic directions. The longing to empty the mind, to calm turbulent thoughts isn’t completely opposed to the exercise of cleaning up the mind, decoding, analysing and ordering its contents. It’s just that at the moment, as societies, we have allowed ourselves to get overly seduced by the promise of tranquility, so that we always strive to empty the mind, instead of attempting to understand its contents. We see our agitation as the result of thinking too much, rather than of not having – as yet – thought enough. It’s time for our societies to take on board the promises and advantages of Philosophical Meditation. For a step-by-step guide to Philosophical Meditation, see here. THE ART OF CONVERSATION: HOW CAN ONE IMPROVE and SPEED UP SELF-KNOWLEDGE One of the key ways in which we can get to know ourselves and others is through conversation. Unfortunately, we tend to have a ‘Romantic’ conception of conversation. We believe that in the right setting – distressed old wooden tables, food from Liguria, bruschetta – conversation will flow naturally, without special effort.
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•The reality is that conversation is an achievement, something we might need to learn. Key to it is having the right questions to hand. Approach self-knowledge as a game. It can be fun. Let’s look at some very good questions to ask via the 100x question packs done by the School of Life. For example: What would you most like to be complimented on in a relationship? Where do you think you’re especially good as a person? Which of your flaws do you want to be treated more generously? What would you tell your younger self about love? What is one incident you would like to apologise to a lover or friend for?
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•Finish the following sentences: When I am anxious in a relationship, I tend to…. The other then tends to respond by…. which makes me… When I argue, on the surface I show ……, but inside I feel…. Without thinking too hard, let’s finish these sentence stems about our feelings towards one another: I resent… I am puzzled by… I am hurt by… I regret… I am afraid that…
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•I am frustrated by… I am happier when… I want… I appreciate… I hope… CONCLUSION What does the wise person end up knowing about themselves? Of course, what individuals know is specific to them. But we can still identify the kind of things they know. If someone gains a lot of self-knowledge how would this show up in their behaviour? How would self-knowledge impact on their lives? Self-knowledge isn’t so much a set of statements that one gives assent to. Rather it’s a set of capacities for dealing better with one’s needs and weaknesses and generally being better at handling oneself. The wise, self-knowing person …
•Would be less prone to blame others for their troubles. They get upset, they get bothered, they feel anxious; things still go wrong. But self-knowledge admits the full extent of responsibility. So annoyance doesn’t get channelled into being angry with the wrong person – who isn’t really to blame.
•They’d likely be less frustrated at work: it’s not that they have the perfect job. They know themselves well enough to seek out the kind of work they can do comfortably; they don’t push needlessly to get ahead; they can cope fairly well with criticism, so they don’t get unduly anxious in a competitive environment.
•They’d panic a bit less: panic is caused by fear; and mostly the fear is psychological, rather than physical – fear of humiliation of rejection or being bored. Great self-knowledge diminishes these fears.
•They’d be less prone to envy – because envy often comes from not quite knowing what you really need.
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•They don’t stress quite so much about money; that’s because they are more alert to what really matters to them; they are less given to impulse spending; they are better at saving.
•They might have fewer crushes. They don’t project wildly onto others and so are less likely to suppose that a stranger glimpsed on a train or at the next table is their ideal soul-mate.
•They are good at apologising, partly because they can fully appreciate that they are at times very annoying – even if unintentionally so – to others. They can mull over the fact that they might be in the wrong, without getting too defensive.
•They tend to be good conversationalists. Because they are alert to why they do things as they do – and don’t merely assert what they do think. They’re also slow to assume that others automatically think as they do. They can identify widely with different kinds of people because they can pick up on many different aspects of their own experience at different stages of life.
•Chapter 15 : Karma
•We hear that all the time. Somebody does something good, they get good karma. Something bad happens to someone, that’s because they had bad karma.
•But that’s not how it works.
•Surprised? Me too! We all think we know what karma means, but do we?
•What is the definition of karma?
•The truth is, most of us have it wrong. And this misunderstanding doesn’t help any of us.
•When you truly understand what Karma means, it can be used as a powerful tool for personal development.
•Want in on this amazing tool for personal development? Read on to find out the true meaning of karma and how it can impact your life.
•WHAT IS KARMA?
•Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning “action.” It refers to a cycle of cause-and-effect that is an important concept in many Eastern Religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism.
•In its essence, karma refers to both the actions and the consequences of the actions.
•Importantly, karma is not set in stone, is not out of our control, and is not indirect. By this, I mean you don’t do good things with hopes of getting a randomly good outcome (karma is not doing your chores this week in hopes of winning the lottery).
•Instead, it means that the steps of your life, your spiritual development, and your personality are directly molded by your thoughts and actions. Present you affects future you.
•Karma has nothing to do with “fate.” If you do something negative, it doesn’t mean that something negative has to happen to you to “even it out.”
•Karma is based on your actions and thoughts in every single moment.
•So what is the definition of karma, then?
•I love this simple and clear explanation of karma by Barbara O’Brien of the buddhism.about.com blog:
•“The word “karma” means “action,” not “fate.” In Buddhism, karma is an energy created by willful action, through thoughts, words and deeds. We are all creating karma every minute, and the karma we create affects us every minute.It’s common to think of “my karma” as something you did in your last life that seals your fate in this life, but this is not Buddhist understanding. Karma is an action, not a result. The future is not set in stone. You can change the course of your life right now by changing your volitional (intentional) acts and self-destructive patterns.”
•Action, not fate! Karma is the energy we create from our actions, from our thoughts. It’s a dynamic force!
•WHAT IS THE MEANING OF KARMA?
•The meaning of karma is literally “action, work, or deed.”
•However, when we talk of karma, what we are referring to is ” the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect).”
•So, is it just “you reap what you sow?” Close, but that’s not all of it!
•While karma has a strong core of “cause-and-effect,” it’s more that your actions and thoughts will affect how you live your life. It’s less of a “Oh, I picked up recycling outside so I’ll get a good thing later on,” and more of a “the good actions I choose now will mold me into a virtuous person.”
•To quote from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, “A man of good deeds will become good.”
•You see? It’s in the doing of the good deeds that we make ourselves better people. That’s karma!
•WHY DO WE GET KARMA WRONG?
•Why does mainstream society get karma so wrong?
•Why is it that karma in pop culture is just “you get what you deserve?”
•How did we develop this view?
•. Because pop culture takes the easy route. It’s easier to say “bad makes bad” rather than “there’s a dynamic energy system that responds to our every action.”
•2. Because we have this misguided perspective that we aren’t in control of our destinies.
•What?
•I’m serious. Karma is not fate. Karma is an internal power that we create, for good or bad.
•When we shift this to say “that’s karma,” when a bad thing happens to us, we are giving up our internal power. We are giving up our ability to change things.
•It’s because of this false view that we desire to transform karma into a sort of cash machine based on our ethical and spiritual behavior.
•However, if we can let go of this understanding of happiness, we can see that all we need is to live deeply in the present moment with mindfulness and discover our true nature.
•Karma is simply energy. It’s our intentional thoughts and actions. The energy we generate now and in the future will affect us. It has nothing to do with reward or punishment. Karma is unbiased and it’s ours to control.
•Karma explained
•Let’s take a look at some examples of how karma actually works.
•First let’s look at bad karma (it’s best to get the bad out of the way first).
•What are some examples of bad karma?
•Oppressing people
•Abusing power
•Stealing
•Cheating
•When you create bad karma, you will bear bad results. Some of these results could be:
•
•Enfeebling society
•Destroying your close relationships
•Losing your sense of self
•Being punished by society
•And good karma?
•Volunteering in your community
•Loving others as yourself
•Choosing what is moral over what is easy
•When you create good karma, good results will come. What are the results?
•Strengthens society, which ultimately benefits you
•Increases your wisdom
•Helps you keep your negative emotions in balance
•Heals your soul
•You see? When you perform certain actions, you will bear certain consequences. This is how karma works.
•Simple definition of karma
•Ok, perhaps this is all getting a little too complicated. You need a simple, easy definition of karma.
•Here it goes:
•Karma is the entire process of cause-and-effect where our actions and intentions directly influence our future.
•Karma is a dynamic process; it’s not something you bank for a rainy day. When we say “that’s karma” after a bad thing happens, what we actually mean is “that is the natural result of the negative actions that were taken.”
•SPIRITUAL MEANING OF KARMA
•So how does karma relate to our spirituality? How is karma different than just simply “cause-and-effect?”
•Why is it that karma is an energy, as opposed to just an observation?
•It’s different for every religion. Let’s take a quick look at how certain religions discuss karma.
•KARMA IN HINDUISM
•In Hinduism, karma plays an integral part in the cycle of a soul’s rebirth. The actions you have taken in the past will affect your reincarnated self in the future.
•Hinduism has three types of karma:
•Sanchita: our accumulated karma. This is the karma of actions we have already undertaken
•Prarabdha: ripened karma. This is karma that is ready to be experienced in our present state
•Kriyamana: current karma. This is the karma that we make now, which will be experienced in the future.
•KARMA IN BUDDHISM
•Buddhism is less straightforward when it comes to karma. What is important to understand is that Buddhism does not view karma as fatalistic. In Buddhism, you can change your karma through changing your thoughts and actions. Karma is also less tied to actions and more about a person’s thoughts and state of mind.
•KARMA IN JAINISM
•In Jainism, karma is a physical substance, rather than an energy. Karma is attracted to the soul through the actions of the soul itself. The soul then undergoes rebirth in relation to the karma it has accumulated.
•LAWS OF KARMA
•In Hinduism, there are several laws that govern karma. Here are the most important:
•Whatever you sow, so shall you reap.
•What you refuse to accept shall continue for you.
•Wherever you go, there you are.
•Whenever there is something wrong in your life, there is something wrong in you.
•Even if you don’t identify as a Hindu, you can see that these rules are very applicable to our lives. Put in good, and you will cultivate good. Put in bad, and you will reap bad.
•WATERING THE GARDEN OF YOUR MIND: HOW TO USE KARMA AS A GUIDING FORCE
•“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” – Eckhart Tolle
•The best way to think of karma is an energy that you’re creating every moment. Every intentional action or thought generates this energy.
•We feel this every day, and it’s not stored for future punishment or reward.
•However, if you’re reacting with anger all the time, you’re conditioning the mind for anger. Similarly, by reacting to things with peace and calm, you’re conditioning the mind for peace and calm.
•All these qualities, such as anger, discontent, joy, harmony, etc can be seen as flowers and the seeds they sprout from.
•When we’re born, all these mental qualities and emotions are seeds. Now imagine these seeds resting in the garden of your mind and constantly being either watered or neglected with your intentional thoughts.
•Depending on what you do, you’re either watering the bad seeds or watering the good ones. These seeds can eventually grow into flowers or they can wither and die.
•The important thing to realize is that the energy we give to these flowers is our karmic energy.
•By living with mindfulness we can observe this karmic mind which is becoming conditioned in our minds and begin to change how we react in our daily lives.
•Mindfulness gives us the ability to choose which flowers we water and which we don’t. Without mindfulness, we’re simply reactive to conditioned thought patterns.
•So to use karma as a force for our own personal and spiritual development, a force for great good, you need only shine the light of mindfulness on your life to identify your karmic energy and work to heal any karmic energy holding you back.
•Here’s an excellent example of how karma can come back to reward you in the future:
•Karma is a dynamic spiritual cycle of actions and effects that we directly control through our thoughts, decisions, and actions. When we create positive choices and thoughts, we will receive positive outcomes. Not because it is fated, but because this is the natural consequence of the previous actions we took.
•By living with this knowledge of karma, we can let go of mental baggage and worries that we think are assigned to us and instead take control of our life.
•Sure there are going to be outside factors that affect your life. But if you deepen your understanding of what true peace looks like, you’ll have the ability to experience life fully no matter what’s going on around you.
•Karma shows that we have the freedom to decide what happens to us. It’s our intentional actions and thoughts that govern our lives.
•If you’re interested in learning more about Buddhism and eastern philosophy, we’ve put together a no-nonsense guide. It’s a 96-page eBook and focuses on specific actions you can take to improve all aspects of daily living, including your relationships, emotional resilience, and state of mind.
•WHAT DOES YOUR FUTURE HOLD?
•A friend of mine was going through a crisis.
•And she passed me along a free video that she says changed everything for her. The video talks about biorhythms and how we can use them to predict our future and mold it to our advantage.
•Don’t You know what biorhythms are?
•Well it’s a concept that’s generating a lot of buzz among an unlikely group, including scholars, scientists, shamans, and mystics.
•Biorhythms can be used to predict important parts of a person’s life through mathematical cycles. Although it originated in the 19th century, it didn’t become popular until fairly recently.
•The basic idea is that our daily lives are affected by rhythmic cycles, with peaks and storms. The best bit is that by understanding our own cycle we can predict our good and bad days and important life events. And most importantly, go on to achieve great things in life.
•CHAPTER 16 : HOW TO LIVE A HAPPY LIFE ?
•We all want to be happy. But we sometimes think of happiness as a thing that happens to us — something we have no control over. It’s easy to link the idea of happiness with the situation we’re in. We might tell ourselves, « If only things were different, then I’d be happy. »
•But that’s not really how happiness works. Research shows that just a small portion of happiness (only about 10%) depends on a person’s situation. So where does most of our happiness come from?
•BORN HAPPY?
•Part of happiness depends on personality. Some people have a naturally happy nature. We all know people who are cheerful and optimistic most of the time. Their upbeat personalities make it easier for them to be happy.
•So what does that mean for people who are born with a personality that’s on the grumpy side? They might see the faults in people and situations instead of the good. Their mood might be glum more often than it’s cheerful. But if they’d like to be happier (and who wouldn’t?), it is possible to get there.
•HAPPINESS IS UP TO US
•Researchers have found that more than half of happiness depends on things that are actually under our control. That’s really good news because it means everyone can be happier.
•A big part of how happy we are depends on our mindset, the habits we practice, and the way we live each day. By learning the key ingredients of happiness, we can use them to become happier.
•WHY HAPPINESS MATTERS
•Happiness is more than a good feeling or a yellow smiley face. It’s the feeling of truly enjoying your life, and the desire to make the very best of it. Happiness is the « secret sauce » that can help us be and do our best.
•Here’s what researchers found when they studied happy people:
•Happy people are more successful.
•Happy people are better at reaching goals.
•Happy people are healthier.
•Happy people live longer.
•Happy people have better relationships.
•Happy people learn better.
•INGREDIENTS FOR A HAPPY LIFE
•Happiness is so important in our lives that it has it’s own field of research called positive psychology. Experts in this field have found that there are key things that make people happier:
•POSITIVE EMOTIONS
•Joy. Gratitude. Love. Amazement. Delight. Playfulness. Humor. Inspiration. Compassion. Hope. Creativity. Interest. Excitement. Enjoyment. Calm. We all like to have these positive feelings.
•Besides feeling good, positive emotions do good things for our brains and bodies. They lower stress hormones, help ease anxiety and depression, and improve our immune system.
•Feeling some positive emotions every day has a big effect on our happiness and well-being. That’s why it’s so important to do things that give us positive feelings. Even simple actions like playing with a child or a pet or going for a walk outdoors can inspire these feelings.
•Knowing how to manage our negative emotions is also key to happiness. Difficult emotions are a fact of life. But the way we handle them makes all the difference.
•STRENGTHS AND INTERESTS
•The things we’re good at, and like to do, are our strengths. We all have strengths, even if we haven’t discovered them yet.
•Strengths include:
•the things we’re interested in — for example, music, art, science, building things, cooking, reading
•any skills we have — like painting, playing an instrument, or playing a sport
•our good qualities — such as kindness, humor, or leadership
•Happiness increases when we discover a strength and practice it. The more we practice a strength, the better we get until we really master it.
•When we get really good at doing something we enjoy, we can get lost in it. That’s called flow. Experiencing flow helps boost happiness. Finding daily ways to use our strengths is a key ingredient for a happy life.
•GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
•The people in our lives matter. Good relationships are one of the best ways to enjoy happiness, health, and well-being.
•Developing certain emotional skills can help us form and keep good relationships. When we are there for the people in our lives — and when they’re there for us — we are more resilient, resourceful, and successful.
•Here are some of the skills that help us build good relationships:
•learning how to understand and express our emotions
•using empathy to understand how someone else feels
•using kindness
•showing gratitude
•developing assertiveness to say what we want and need
•FINDING MEANING AND PURPOSE IN LIFE
•Our lives can be busy with day-to-day activities and responsibilities. Many of us multi-task, so we might race ahead, thinking about the next place we need to be. But slowing down to pay attention to what we’re doing and why builds happiness.
•Pay attention to the effects of your actions. Notice the ways (big or small) that you make a difference. Live life based on the values that are important to you. Take time to think of what really matters to you (like helping others or protecting the planet).
•In what way do you want to make the world a better place? Notice any small daily actions that point you in that direction. They help give your life a sense of meaning and increase happiness.
•ACHIEVEMENT
•When our lives are rich with positive emotions, great relationships, strengths to practice, and a sense of purpose, we are ready to accomplish things.
•Setting and achieving goals gives us something to put our energy into. It lets us see how we make a difference.
•Put effort into things that matter to you. Do your best at whatever you try, without a need to be perfect. If things don’t work out at first, keep an optimistic mindset and try again. Believe in yourself and your dreams.
•Set realistic goals and small action steps to turn dreams into realities. To make a success even sweeter, celebrate it with people you care about.
•GET HAPPIER
•OK, so you can learn how to be happier by managing your mindset, calming your mind, becoming more confident, using your strengths, building your self-esteem, doing things you enjoy, and creating good relationships. That’s a lot of things to think about! You can’t tackle them all at once. But you can start small and pick one thing to work on.
•The best way to reach any goal is to begin with small, specific actions. After doing these for a while, they become habits — things that fit into your day without you thinking about them too much. That’s when you move on to build a new daily habit. Achieving small, specific goals can add up to big happiness!
•Chapter : 17
•HOW TO CHANGE YOUR FALSE BELIEFS ?
•Exploring someone’s false beliefs and helping them change them
•Okay, so life coaching is like eating a Reese’s peanut butter cup, in that there is no right way to life coach someone. You can coach someone a million different ways. It all depends on what they are coming to you for and how you work, how you go into your sessions. But there’s one technique that can be used in every session, no matter the topic or your style of life coaching. It’s something that affects every person every day of their life, and every session can benefit from it: Exploring false beliefs.
•Now, this doesn’t have to be what the session is about. It’s just something that’s always playing in the background. It’s something you can examine peripherally but it’s a great door to enter at any given time when you feel it’s appropriate.
•First, what are false beliefs? They are beliefs we have about ourselves that are untrue and limiting. They live in our subconscious and since 90 percent of our actions stem from our subconscious, our false beliefs play a huge role in nearly everything we do. Also since they live in our subconscious, we may not be aware of them and how they affect our daily lives.
•For example, if you believe you are unlovable, you may sabotage relationships, hold on when you shouldn’t, or avoid getting into relationships. But logic may provide you will explanations on why you are doing this when at the core it’s fueled by your false belief that you are unlovable. Our behavior stems from our beliefs. And what our life looks like is a result of our collective behavior. So if we change or dissolve our beliefs, especially our false beliefs, we can change our behavior and ultimately change our life.
•Once you discover their false beliefs, you can start to help them rewire themselves. And changing their wiring will change their life. There are many different ways and theories on how to rewire yourself. Everything from NLP to subconscious work. And a lot of it feels hokey to me. Here’s a simple technique I use that won’t turn your session into a seminar or get in the way of how you coach.
•It’s three easy steps.
•Listen for the false beliefs.
•As your client is talking, a false belief will leak. For example, you guys may be talking about the trouble in her relationship and she mumbles under her breath, “I don’t deserve him.” Maybe you explore that statement deeper and find out that statement came from the false belief, “I’m not worthy.” And surely this belief is preventing her from loving fully. Make the client aware of her false belief. Then you can start following this string down. Where did this belief come from? Did something happen? How long did she have this belief?
•The next question to ask is how does this belief manifest in behavior in her life. So because of this belief, she compromises her self? Stays in things too long? Will never break up with someone? What is the behavior that stems from this belief? It’s important for her to see it, to know how her false belief affects her life.
•As you guys are processing this, she may have other revelations. It came from her dad. Or the emotional abuse from her first relationship. Just knowing where it stems from can be helpful in releasing the belief. As a life coach, you may have resistance when it comes to talking about the childhood stuff or the past because you think that’s what therapists do and you don’t want to go there. But I encourage you to not think about what a therapist talks about and what a life coach talks about. Go wherever the client wants to go.
•2. Dissolve/redefine the false beliefs.
•What does she need to do to start dissolving and changing this false belief? Ask her. She may have some great ideas. Many coaches stay away from asking their clients for answers because they feel like they should have all the answers and if they don’t, they’re not a good coach. That is not true. No one has all the answers. I don’t care how many letters you have after your name. So if you don’t, it’s okay. Don’t pretend. Remember, you and your client are in this journey together. You are not behind a podium or on a soapbox. You are with, not at. So if you don’t know, it’s okay.
•Once you discover what the false belief is, explore the emotion behind it. It will be a disempowering emotion, something that makes them feel weak, invisible, less than. Have the client note that feeling. Now put a bookmark there.
•Now have the client play detective and ask her to prove that the false belief is true. You want facts, not feelings. Remind your client just because she feels something doesn’t mean it’s a fact.
•Help your client by challenging her false belief. One way to do this is to redefine. For example, if someone’s false belief is “I don’t think I’m good enough.” What does “good” mean to her? Challenge the client by exploring her definitions. As you do this, she may end up coming up with a brand new definition. Every time this happens, there’s a shift in thinking. We start questioning ourselves, in a good way.
•Now go back to the feeling part. Have the client think of a time when she felt “good” according to her new definition. Let her soak in that feeling. Don’t just remember it, feel it. We need to use both mind and body. As people, we are whole. But many think they can just think their way out do something and get no traction. Feelings are always more powerful than logic.
•Finally, as cheesy as it sounds, have the person says the new belief out loud: “I am good enough.” “I am lovable.” “I am an athlete.” It’s important for them to say it out loud. There is tremendous power in saying something out loud, announcing it, especially with a witness. It’s much more convincing than just thinking it. Think about the difference between thinking « I love you » about someone and actually saying the words to their face. Huge difference, right?
•3. Set up a new experience.
•This is the homework piece.
•There’s nothing more convincing than experience. So the goal would be to set up a new experience(s) for the person that will disprove their false belief.
•Chapter 18 : we meant to live together as one
•WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE TOGETHER AS BROTHERS OR PERISH TOGETHER AS FOOLS. – MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
•What does that mean?
This quote is about the totality of humanity. While it was spoken specifically about the racial divide then present in the United States of America, I believe it also applies to all of us.
•For anyone who has had a brother or known someone who had a brother, you know that life isn’t always peaceful or calm. Yet the familial bond means something to most, and as brothers (or sisters), we tend to treat each-other reasonably well. That is what the quote asks of us, to learn to live together as brothers, as one big family.
•The quote ends with the alternate way the human drama will play out. If we cannot live together as a family, we will perish together as fools. When we have the option of surviving or perishing, and choose to perish, that’s not very bright. When the stakes are all of humanity, choosing to perish is something well beyond foolish, wouldn’t you say?
•Why is learning to live together important?
No one who has a family will pretend that everything was always perfect. We know how our lives were growing up, and it wasn’t like that. We are imperfect beings, and we act that way, even towards our family. Yet we hold our family closer, most of the time.
•By staying closer to our family, we are more likely to communicate fully, and to forgive fully. Yes, there are family disagreements, and sometimes bad blood and resentment can last for years. Yet still the familial bond is there, holding steady, deep beneath the roiling emotions.
•Contrast that to how many treat those who are not family, not friend, not even of the same country, creed, race, or ethnicity. These are ways to divide people, not unite them. A family can be divided, but only if they choose to focus on what is different, rather than what is the same.
•Where can I apply this in my life?
To me, the first step in making everyone your family is to first make everyone your friend. Yeah, I know, easier said than done. While the ultimate goal may be beyond our grasp at the moment, we have to start somewhere, so let’s start at home.
•How is your family? Are you on speaking terms with them? Is everyone within the family still living together as brothers, or are there serious divisions? I’m not talking the kind of stuff that blows over in a few hours or days, but the kind of thing that sticks around for years.
•What can you do to help mend fences, to help people be together and work together? Can you mediate between, or help with an action one feels is necessary and the other feels is not? What can you say to soothe, calm, or otherwise get them prepared to discuss the issue at hand?
•Once you have your family squared away, what do we want to try next? How about a broader question: What do you have to believe in order to live together with someone as if they were family? Remember, this version of ‘live’ means to coexist with someone, not to occupy the same house.
•How do you establish a familial feel, a camaraderie or closeness that siblings often have? There is a certain amount of honesty and openness that seems to be a key element to most familial relationships. How can you extend that to your closest friends?
•Actually, you probably already have, as everyone I know has pointed out to me. They all have at least a friend (most have more) with whom they are at least as close with as the rest of their family. But do you remember how you did it?
•For me, it just kind of happened. Someone either did or didn’t ‘click,’ for lack of a better word. But common interests seem to be part of it, as have common likes and desires. A similar sense of humor also seems to be part of it, at least for me.
•Not everyone will have these traits. But you will have to find something in common. At least we’re all human, we all eat and breathe, and that’s a start, right? I didn’t say this would be easy, did I? But you won’t get better at it if you don’t do it a few times, right?
•Not everyone will want to be your friend, but that shouldn’t prevent you from treating them kindly and well. You can treat them as a brother, or you be a fool. I know which one I prefer.
•What about you? Will you take the time and put in the effort? Will you treat others as your brothers, or will we perish as fools?
•Chapter 19 : manipulation and how to stop it
•Manipulation is a deceptive tactic that people employ to accomplish their own ends.
•Signs of psychological manipulation include lying or other forms of deception, appealing to fear, and establishing a power imbalance.
•It’s important to recognize the signs of manipulation and use appropriate measures to combat it. Here’s how.
•Psychological manipulation is any action that’s designed to help someone accomplish their own agenda through deceptive or otherwise shady tactics. It usually involves creating a power imbalance within the relationship or interaction — and isn’t all that uncommon.
•“Most of us have to deal with it on a regular basis, from untrustworthy relationships to commercial advertising and political rhetoric,” said Preston Ni, communication coach, professor of communication studies at Foothill College, and author of « How to Successfully Handle Manipulative People.”
•The pervasiveness of manipulation can make it difficult to distinguish from persuasion. But there is a key difference, Ni said. “Healthy social influence occurs between most people, and is part of the give-and-take of constructive relationships. In psychological manipulation, one person is used for the benefit of another.”
•To help you figure out if you’re being manipulated, here are four signs it’s happening to you (and ways to stop it):
•THEIR CASE IS OVERSTATED
•Exaggeration is a common trick used by manipulators, Ni explained in a post in Psychology Today. If you aren’t comfortable with a direct approach, you can counteract this attempt at manipulation by focusing on the facts, as well as asking for more information and sources, he wrote.
•THE PRIMARY FOCUS IS ON FEAR
•Some manipulators resort to scare tactics to get others to go along with their plan, Ni told Business Insider. This could involve anything from saying things that play into a fear of rejection or monetary losses to threats of bodily harm or backlash if the other person goes against their wishes.
•This can create a heightened sense of danger, so it may make sense to use less direct methods to de-escalate the situation, like finding a way to end the conversation or, if possible, moving to a more public location.
•THE POWER IMBALANCE IS A BIG PART OF THE DISCUSSION
•Though this is less subtle than other manipulation tactics, Ni said it’s not uncommon for a manipulator to attempt to establish control over the situation by constantly reminding others of their own importance and power.
•This helps them seem more dominant while putting the other person at a disadvantage. It can help to respond by asserting your own importance, thereby leveling the playing field.
•4. YOU CAN’T GET A WORD IN, OR THEY TALK IN LONG MONOLOGUES
•When people know their argument is based on shaky logic, half-truths, or lies, they may try to position themselves as an expert and mask the details so you don’t have the time context to recognize their deception.
•It’s a form of “intellectual bullying” that Ni wrote about in an article for Psychology Today. One subtle way around this is asking the person if he or she can backtrack and slow things down so that you understand their argument more fully or have time to digest what just happened.
•Chapter 20 : findig your SoulMate !
•HOW TO FIND YOUR SOULMATE IN LIFE!
•Don’t we all want to find that one person who brings us joy and helps quell our sorrows? I think probably most people want to find a soulmate in life.
•How many people out there have heard any of the following:
•“There’s someone out there who’s perfect for you, you just need to find them.”
•“Good riddance, that person wasn’t right for you. Now you can find THE ONE FOR YOU.”
•“Everyone has a soul mate.”
•Unfortunately, in our society, we grow up thinking we have a right to have this kind of joy and connection. We’re ENTITLED to a Cinderella romance complete with a prince who pursues you. It’s just THERE for the taking.
•Finding your soulmate IS possible!
•BUT we aren’t just ENTITLED to it.
•It takes a lot of hard work and self-reflection to find your soulmate. Are you willing to put in the time and effort to find your true soulmate?
•The basic steps you need to find your soul mate are:
•Adopt healthy qualities and practices
•Be content to be single
•Be rooted in abundance
•Make changes in your life to widen your scope of people you meet
•Keep an open mind
•Know when you’ve found someone who could be “the one”
•Develop healthy relationship habits and keep your soulmate with you for life
•So let’s go understand a little more about finding your soulmate!
•WHAT IS A SOULMATE?
•A soulmate someone who you have an effortless connection with. They understand you, love you, and are there to walk with you through life, side by side.
•Having said that, there are a few more distinctions we need to make. We’ll get there at the end of the article (SIGNS YOU’VE FOUND YOUR SOUL MATE) so first, let’s read a personal story, things to avoid, and list some steps that YOU can take to find your own soulmate.
•FINDING MY OWN SOULMATE
•I WORKED ON MYSELF FIRST
•I first met the one when I was married to someone else. After two years cleaning up my act and leaving a toxic work environment, I did not realize that my home environment was toxic as well. I had worked on my communication skills, tried hard to compromise, found a good system of organization, managed my time well.
•And I was insanely frustrated by how my then-husband and I never seemed to be on the same page in life. I was ready for kids, for adventure, for a house, for more furry, four-legged children to add love to my home. He was ready for none of it, he had only had a steady income for 2 years (out of the 6 years we had been together after college) and was unemployed at the time.
•I CHANGED MY SURROUNDINGS & KEPT AN OPEN MIND
•But I pushed for change and we moved to a different state for a new job.
•So when I met my new coworker, Phil, we were just friends for a long time. In fact, he was not someone I would have considered dating for most of my life. (We joke that he checked off EVERYTHING on my “NO” list: he is a percussionist/drummer, sang tenor, and was a music major/band director.)
•WE WANTED THE SAME THINGS
•As Phil and I grew closer and I felt that he was truly someone that I could trust and confide in. He was patient and understanding. He was exactly where I was in life, and wanted the same things, which absolutely SHOCKED me! It made me realize that I truly had been settling when I married my first husband–there WERE indeed men out there who shared all the same values and desires in life that I did.
•I WAS CONTENT BEING SINGLE
•I had filed for divorce from my first husband, but I was not ready to dive headfirst into a new relationship. Even though I ultimately WANTED a relationship, I knew that I would truly be content to be single for a while. And I knew that if it didn’t work out with Phil, that I would ultimately be much happier than I had been in my first marriage.
•I JUST “KNEW”
•It wasn’t until a few months later that Phil and I started to see each other romantically. He was patient… he was confident, make no mistake, but he respected my space after my divorce. When we took a road trip together four months after we had been together, I was absolutely sure that he was “the one” (and he was sure too!)
•Because of his kindness, caring, dedication, and genuineness he kept my feet firmly planted next to his. I felt ANCHORED. I felt SAFE.
•We treated each other with compassion and respect, with passion and with caring.
•We stepped into love simultaneously and we saw, and continue to see each other as equals.
•WE PRACTICE HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP HABITS
•Phil and I have been together for seven years, married for 4. I’m proud of our relationship. We’ve never fought. Not once. Sure, there have been times we’ve been angry at each other, or inadvertently done things to hurt the other person. We have expressed frustrations, especially after the kids came along.
•But we have learned how to communicate with each other very well. We’re flexible with our expectations and work toward increasing each other’s happiness.
•I’m his editor when he needs to draft an email or grad school application. He’s my rock when I’m feeling emotional. I make plans and spice up his life, and when I get too carried away with projects, he is the anchor that brings me back down to earth. We’re a good balance and complement each other nicely.
•None of this would be possible if we both feared abandonment, or if we hadn’t developed patience, compassion, and communication skills.
•THE KEY WAS THAT WE HAD BOTH TAKEN TIME TO WORK ON OURSELVES.
•Related
•
How to Manifest a Healthy, Loving Relationship
•THE ROLE OF MEDIA, OR, DON’T COMPARE YOUR LIFE TO HOLLYWOOD
•In the traditional romantic comedy, there is a couple who are clearly destined to be together, but something gets in their way. Ultimately, of course, they overcome that obstacle to get together in the end.
•But here’s the issues with why rom-com romance doesn’t work for long-term “soul mate” material in real life.
•OVERSIZED FLAWS.
•Characters have to have flaws. So do real people, of course, but characters have one or two MASSIVE-sized flaws. It makes for a good story. Reality is not so black and white. Real people have lots of flaws to varying degrees. These character flaws may or may not get resolved by the end of the movie, but if the character continues their relationship without thoroughly examining and working on their flaw, it will likely continue to cause relationships in the future for them, which brings me to my next point.
•2. WHERE DOES IT ALL END?
•Stories have distinct beginnings, middles and ends. For our lives, the end happens when we pass away. Sure there are other important markers throughout our lives, but nothing signifies an end like riding off into the sunset together with a sappy song playing. Get real folks! The story doesn’t end when you overcome the obstacle! There will just be another one down the road!
•3. OPPOSITES DON’T USUALLY ATTRACT IN REAL LIFE.
•If I were in a romantic comedy, I would probably be paired with someone who was shallow, cocky, charming and rude. And extroverted (shoot me now… hey, I actually dated someone like that once!). And the writers would have a fun time making the two of us work things out so we would end up together.
•But the truth is:
•LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THAT DIFFICULT.
•When you are meant to be with someone, it should be easy. It flows.
•IT’S EASY BEING WITH THEM BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE SKILLS TO COMMUNICATE AND YOU’RE ALIKE ENOUGH TO KNOW WHAT WORKS BEST.
•Related
Why I Wear Only a Wedding Band, and It’s Okay If You Want to, too!
•HOW TO FIND YOUR SOULMATE IN LIFE
•Don’t you want your relationship to be easy? Do you want the other person to complement you, not be like oil and water?
•Relationships take time, patience, dedication, compromise, communication, and balance. If you aren’t willing to take the time NOW to figure those things out, then what will that mean to the person you want to spend your life with?
•The basic steps you need to find your soul mate are:
•Adopt healthy qualities and practices
•Be content to be single
•Be rooted in abundance
•Make changes in your life to widen your scope of people you meet
•Keep an open mind
•Know when you’ve found someone who could be “the one”
•Develop good relationship habits and keep your soulmate with you for life
•ADOPT HEALTHY QUALITIES AND PRACTICES
•Your first step in finding your soulmate should always be to work on yourself. Get ready for some self reflection:
•✔ KNOW WHO YOU ARE (AND ACT AUTHENTICALLY)
•Authenticity is essential in a relationship.
•You need to know your triggers and flaws. There are things that will set you off, and if you expect your significant other not to trip any wires, then hopefully, you’ll know about them and be able to communicate.
•Conversely, you need to know what you want in life. What are the good things that you expect? Do you want kids? Are you the kind of person who wants to travel or move around the country? How do you want to live?
•Knowing yourself can help the other person get to know you too.
•BEING INAUTHENTIC WILL PUSH AWAY THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND BRING YOU CLOSER TO THE WRONG ONES.
•So know yourself well and make sure you act authentically. Be true to yourself.
•✔ OBJECTIVITY AND INSIGHT
•There is a certain level of objectivity a person needs to be in a committed, long-term relationship. Being explosive or blowing things out of proportion can be seriously detrimental to the health of a relationship.
•When you’re objective, you take a step back before reacting. You can look at a situation and try to understand the big question: “why?” Why is my significant other acting this way?
•And to answer that question, you need a little bit of insight. Understanding yourself through authenticity can help you understand the behaviors and motivations of others. In Buddhism, understanding and love basically mean the same thing. When you can understand someone, you can love them.
•✔ FLEXIBILITY
•Humans are flawed. Life is unpredictable. You might understand yourself and you might understand your significant other, but when events happen or tragedy strikes, you may not know yourself or them anymore. You never know how you (or SO) might react when confronted with an impactful event, either positive or negative.
•If you think you know what to expect from that person or from your relationship, keep a healthy amount of flexibility in place for these events.
•As much as I would like to stay that my life is 100% stable, the fact is that I’ve had at least five major, life changing events in the last 6 years, including my miscarriage, two children, and two job changes. Those events, four of them planned, rocked my world in a variety of ways.
•Be patient with yourself and with your significant other.
•✔ DEDICATION TO HAPPINESS
•You need to dedicate yourself to your own happiness. As they say, you can’t pour from an empty cup. When you’re dedicated to your own happiness first, you don’t need to rely on another person to fulfill that happiness in you.
•You can stand on your own but walk together with your significant other through life.
•Conversely, if you ignore your significant other’s happiness altogether, it will lead to broken promises and a lot of pain.
•It’s a balancing act.
•2. BE CONTENT TO BE SINGLE
•Give up the unrealistic Hollywood romance. This can lead to heartache.
•You have to ultimately be satisfied with yourself as a person and you have to learn to keep yourself company.
•After dedicating yourself to your own happiness, then and only then, should you dedicate yourself to the other person’s happiness. Fulfill your happiness first, then the other person’s… when you find them.
•3. BE ROOTED IN A GROWTH MINDSET
•This can be somewhat of a challenging concept to grasp. Things that prevent our growth and development as a person can prevent us from finding our soulmate.
•Pessimism is one thing that can prevent finding a soulmate. You have to BELIEVE that you’ll find someone. If you don’t believe it, that person might already be in your life and you won’t recognize it because your pessimism is clouding your judgment.
•Similarly, perfectionism is detrimental to finding your soulmate. Expecting someone to be perfect
•4. MAKE CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE TO WIDEN YOUR SCOPE OF PEOPLE YOU MEET
•I had to move 1,200 miles away from my hometown to find my husband/soulmate. Staying in the same bubble, the same routine, the same place does not lend itself to meeting new people. Here are some ideas for getting out of your same old routine:
•join a gym
•get a new job
•join a Meetup somewhere (once the pandemic ends, of course)
•try a new sport, especially group sports and coed (if you’re heterosexual)
•move to a new apartment complex
•move to a new city or state
•5. KEEP AN OPEN MIND
•As we saw from my story above, sometimes people who you didn’t think would work for you ACTUALLY end up being the best for yourself. This may be because of not being clear on traits that you are looking for or expect in your soul mate.
•Things that used to be deal breakers for me (not having a career in music) suddenly were no longer important when I learned more about myself and discovered what I truly wanted (adventure, a family, an unconventional life).
•Here are some things that might end up being UNIMPORTANT:
•what they look like
•what their career is
•how you met them (in person, online, on Tinder, etc.)
•Healthy, loving relationships are the combination of friendship, physical attraction/sex, and love. A healthy relationship cannot exist without one of these elements on some level. So think about these when you’re thinking of the true deal breakers you have.
•6. KNOW WHEN YOU’VE FOUND SOMEONE WHO COULD BE “THE ONE”
•It’s important to recognize your soulmate when they come along. Here are a few signs you know that you’ve found the one:
•YOU JUST KNOW. YOUR INSTINCTS TELL YOU THEY’RE THE ONE.
•There are not many other explanations that I need to make about this one.
•TRUST YOUR GUT.
•YOU ARE CONTENT TO JUST BE WITH THAT PERSON JUST HANGING OUT.
•When you have quiet time, sitting on the couch and reading separate books, or washing dishes after dinner, these are the true moments of our lives.
•How does quiet time with this person make you feel? Are you comfortable sitting with them in silence? Or do you feel awkward and have a nagging feeling that you need to make constant conversation?
•FEELING COMFORTABLE IN SILENCE with a person can help you determine whether they are a lifelong match for you.
•YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER’S FLAWS
•Like I mentioned above, you cannot be a perfectionist. Understanding and accepting the other person’s flaws is important. For example, being with someone who gets angry often may be a dealbreaker for you. But perhaps you’re okay with someone who is sensitive and emotional.
•Accept the other person’s imperfections. After all, you aren’t perfect either!
•YOU SHARE THE SAME LIFE GOALS.
•This seems obvious, but it’s often overlooked.
•DO YOU AND YOUR PARTNER BOTH WANT TO SETTLE DOWN IN THE SAME PLACE FOR 30 YEARS OR TRAVEL AND HAVE ADVENTURES?
ARE YOU BOTH INTERESTED IN KIDS?
DO YOU WANT TO BE A STAY-AT-HOME PARENT OR WORK FULL TIME? WHAT DOES YOUR PARTNER WANT OR EXPECT?
•These are things that can potentially get in the way of a lifelong partnership if you have different expectations. If you can’t see yourself being with them when you’re 50, 60, 70, or 80 years old, they probably aren’t your soulmate.
•YOU DON’T EXPERIENCE JEALOUSY.
•When the other person needs time with their friends or family, or time alone, you should ideally feel content with that. Experiencing jealousy or feeling a need to control may be a signal that this person really isn’t your soul mate.
•YOU FEEL DEEPLY SAFE, PROTECTED, AND COMFORTABLE WHEN YOU’RE WITH THEM.
•This may be the ultimate thing that tells you they’re the one. Maybe they make you feel like the best version of yourself. Perhaps it’s just that you feel utterly comfortable and safe with them in a way you never have before.
•For me, I had never experienced the feeling that my thoughts, feelings, and body were 100% safe with a person. So when my relationship with my husband began, I was blown away.
•7. DEVELOP HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP HABITS
•You’ve put in all the work on yourself, now it’s time to devote time and care to your relationship.
•MAKE SURE YOU LISTEN
•Just as you’ve learned to listen to yourself, you need to treat your partner with the same kind of respect, value, and appreciation.
•Listening to each other (truly listening, without agenda of replying or responding) is a trait of healthy, long lasting relationships.
•SCHEDULE DATES
•Make time for your soulmate. A relationship cannot survive without continued care.
•Put it in your schedule when you intend to spend time with them, and don’t bail. Do things that bring you both comfort (like curling up on the couch to watch The Office for the millionth time), but also don’t forget to try new things. When you have shared new experiences with
•your soulmate, it refreshes your connection in a way that habits and routine cannot.
•FORGIVE AND APOLOGIZE WHEN NECESSARY
•Giving apologies and accepting apologies are important parts of a healthy relationship with your soulmate.
•There have both been times when my husband has gotten frustrated and later apologized as well as times when I realized that I was in the wrong and needed to apologize to my husband.
•When someone is your true soulmate, they won’t ever do anything to break your trust or disrespect you. But we’re all human, and there may be times when we’re feeling stressed or working through trauma that we need to admit that we’ve made a mistake.
•EXPRESS GRATITUDE
•Gratitude is all about expressing when you’re feeling appreciative for something in your life. Gratitude can come in many forms, like writing a thank you note, or simply saying, “I love you” at random times during the day.
•Be thankful for the positive traits and qualities that this person brings into your life, and they will express their own gratitude for you.
•LEARN ABOUT LOVE LANGUAGES
•Everyone expresses their love in different ways.
•Perhaps they love holding hands or putting their arms around you, or maybe they love to give gifts. Understanding your soulmate’s love language is a fantastic way to show them appreciation, respect, and love.
•CONCLUSION
•When learning how to find your soulmate in life, my answer is to give up society’s foolish expectations and rules. Learn about yourself and learn what you need for a successful relationship. Hopefully your partner will have done the same. And if your partner hasn’t… teach them by being the example they need! Be their soulmate so that they can be yours!
•Chapter 21 : what is the purpose of our existence ?
•“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt.
OTHE REASON OF OUR EXISTENCE
•“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.” ~ Morrie Schwartz
•With the many things we have to do on a regular basis, all our tasks and a busy schedule, it can be quite challenging at times to take a few steps back, to contemplate and to ask ourselves questions like:
•“Is there purpose in my life? Is there meaning?
•Am I being true to myself, to my life path and to my purpose?
•Is the life I am living really the life I want to be living?”
•And even though it can be quite challenging and quite difficult to do these things, we have to make time. We have to find the strength and courage to be bring awareness into our lives and be true to ourselves, because if we don’t… if we don’t seek to find, to know and to understand the purpose of life and the reason for our existence, chances are that we will continue to live by default, betraying ourselves and thinking that it’s okay to walk on a path that is not ours to walk upon.
•“It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.” ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
•Life is very simple, it really is, but because most of us live from the mind and not from the heart, we developed this false belief that life is complicated and that the purpose of our lives is something very complex and hard to find, but that’s just nonsense. If you want to know what the purpose of life and the reason of your existence is, just close your eyes, place your hands over your heart, take a few deep breaths and just ask the answer of yourself. Ask yourself:
•“What is the purpose of life? What is the reason for our existence?”
•And if you can silence your mind completely, connecting with the deep part of you that holds the answers to all your life questions, I guarantee you that the answer you will get will look something like this: “The purpose of life is to love. To become one with love and then to radiate that love outwards. To serve, to shine and to share your light with the rest of the world. “
•That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Nothing complex, and nothing too hard to find. The purpose of life to love, to truly love. To love with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. To love everything and everyone, without excluding anyone or anything. To become one with love and then to radiate that love outwards… To love those who love you, and also those who don’t. Not necessary because they deserve it, but because love is the only things we have to offer… To get to a place where, no matter where you look and no matter what you do, you can’t help but feel an overwhelming love towards that which you see and for the things you do.
•The purpose of life is to become one with love… To have love flow through every cell of your body and then to project that love outwards. To infuse love into all that you do, to infuse love into your surroundings, your relationships, your work, your life, and the whole world. To shine your light on to the world and to make this world a better place with your presence, with your gifts, with your light, and with your grace. And if you can do this, if you can live your life from a place of total love and acceptance, then your whole life will be a complete success and everything you will do will succeed.
•That’s the purpose of life…
•The way I see it, life is love and love is life, and the more love flows through our veins, the more joyful we become, the clearer our vision gets, and the easier it becomes to connect not only with our own heart and Soul but also with the heart and Soul of every living being that inhabits the planet.
•On the surface, we might all look very different from one another but at the core level, we are all the same.
•At the core level, we are all ONE, connected with each other in a very deep and powerful way. At the core level, we are essentially the same, all members of one human race. There is no separation except the separation we created in our minds because of our attachment to fear, and if we allow love back into our hearts, becoming one with it and allowing ourselves to live our lives from that place, then we will recognize ourselves in the world around us and we will finally understand that we are in the world and the world is in us… We are ONE.
•“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein .
•CHAPTER 22 : HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE ?
•What is success to you? How to be successful in life?
•To some, when they think of success, they imagine wealth; others want power; some just want to make a positive impact on the world.
•All of these are perfectly valid, indeed success is a concept that means different things to different people. Though no matter what success is to you, it almost certainly isn’t something will come easily.
•There are countless guides and books to being successful, however, as success is personal and unique to each individual. The advice contained in these books can often not be relevant. Therefore following the advice of a single individual can often be unhelpful.
•With this in mind, considering the advice of a great many people, people whose ideas of success were different both to each other, and quite possibly, to you can be a good alternative.
•What follows is a list of 13 of the best pieces of advice from some of the most successful people who have ever lived. If you want to learn how to be successful, these tips are essential:
•THINK BIG :
oFROM MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, GREAT RENAISSANCE ARTIST:
o“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
oThere are few artists as influential as Michaelangelo. Today centuries after his death, his work still inspires and connects to people. His work imworld famous, just think of his statue of David, or the Mural in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
•Imagine then, if he decided not to work as an artist.
•Being a successful artist has always been extremely difficult, imagine if he decided to give up this ambition in favour of something easier?
•Oftentimes, people often decided to put their dreams aside for something more “realistic”. To give up their dream for something easier. This quote teaches us the danger of such a point of view.
Instead be ambitious.
•2. FIND WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO AND DO IT
•From Oprah Winfrey, Media Mogul:
•“You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it.”
•This is a good quote to remember and think about when you’re at work.
•Imagine being as successful as possible in your current job. Ultimately you’ll probably find yourself working extremely hard and this it will take up much of your time.
•If it’s a job you hate, then being successful at it might only mean filling your life with something you hate to do. What’s the sense in this?
•Instead, why not focus on doing something you love? When you’ve found what you’re passionate about, you get the motivation to keep you moving. Success at this means the fulfilment of your dreams.
•Not sure what your passion is yet? You should learn about this Motivation Engine first.
•Even if you’re not successful, you still filled your time with something you love to do. Many successful musicians spent years of their lives doing unpaid performances, the only reason they kept playing was because they loved to perform.
•3. LEARN HOW TO BALANCE LIFE
•From Phil Knight, CEO of Nike Inc.:
•“There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.”
•All too often, people think that to be successful, they need to make the object of their success their life.
•If a person thinks their job will lead them to success, then they may spend countless hours per day, and well into the evening working hard.
•However this comes at the cost of rest, your health and having an enjoyable life. Ultimately they may burn out and cease to be successful at their job anyway.
•If success comes from having a strong social life and a good group of friends, their job may suffer; meaning that they may lose their job, and then be unable to afford going out with friends.
•In these ways, success, as Phil Knight says above, is helped by balance. Think of it as a balance between rest and work, or work and play.
•To achieve that balance, this Ultimate Guide to Prioritizing Your Work And Life can help you.
•4. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF FAILURE
•From Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motors:
•“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
•There is a story, it’s unconfirmed whether it actually happened, yet the message within is none the less true:
•Thomas Edison inventing the lightbulb was the result of several hundred failed attempts. In an interview, he was asked “How do you feel after all of your failed attempts?”
•His response was great, “I didn’t fail, I learned hundreds of ways NOT to invent the lightbulb”
•He saw each “failure” as a lesson. From that lesson he learned what won’t work, and also might work instead.
•Each failed attempt, each rejection, were key steps on his path to success. It is easy to feel like you should give up after a failure. But perhaps in that failure is a lesson.
•Pay attention to your failures, study them. Perhaps then you’ll learn how to succeed.
•If you find it difficult to fight your fear of failure, here’s a guide for you: Why You Have the Fear of Failure (And How to Conquer It Step-By-Step)
•5. HAVE AN UNWAVERING RESOLUTION TO SUCCEED
•From Colonel Sanders, Founder of KFC:
o“I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.”
•This, in many ways relates to the above quote about learning from your failures.
•It’s the easiest thing in the world to give up from a failure. The only way to push on is if you have the true burning desire to succeed, to not be moved or dissuaded from your goals.
•If you are not truly dedicated towards success, then each failure will hurt more, each set back will slow you down.
•Success is hard; without the unwavering desire to succeed, this difficulty may seem insurmountable. With the desire, it is merely an obstacle to go through.
•6. BE A PERSON OF ACTION
•From Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Genius:
o“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
•Though it was said hundreds of years ago, it works just as much today as it ever had. It applies to literally any successful person.
•Think about it, picture someone like William Shakespeare:
•When we think of the time he lived in, we think of the time in a way shaped by him. When we think of Renaissance era Italy, we think of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. Or think about the present day, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Our current way of life would simply be incomparably different if they didn’t accomplish what they did.
•You’re probably reading this article on a device by a company that they either founded or companies influenced by them.
•All these figures were proactive, they saw ways to do things differently and did them. If they let the world shape them, then they’d simply fit into the background. Instead they shaped the world.
•Applying this to you?
•Don’t be afraid of going outside the norm. If you can think of a better way to do something, do it that way. If you fail, try again.
•7. CULTIVATE POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS
•From Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of America: “
•The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
•The best leaders and some of the most influential people (and Theodore Roosevelt is one of the best leaders and one of the most influential people to have lived) were not those who caused commotions, who fought with people or disregarded people; but were people who were friendly to those around them.
•People liked them. They wanted them to do well.
•This is key to good leadership.
•It’s logical. If someone likes you, they want to help you; if you give them a suggestion, they’ll gladly follow through with it.
•But if someone doesn’t like you, they may either refuse to help or actively get in your way.
•What’s more, it’s always a good idea to cultivate good relationships. You can never tell who will prove to become someone who’ll be able to help you in a big way, or even be a good and supportive friend.
•As such, help people and they may help you; and be good to people, and they my be good to you.
•8. DON’T BE AFRAID OF INTRODUCING NEW IDEAS
•From Mark Twain, Famed Author:
o“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
•It is an unfortunate truth that those with the boldest ideas are often disregarded.
•Most of us are taught from an early age to think and do things similarly to everyone else. This can be great to fill an existing role. But to truly do things differently (and all successful people did things differently), you need to think differently.
•If you have a new idea, don’t throw it away because it’s new and different; instead, celebrate it. Your strange new idea might one day be the one that leads you to success.
•9. BELIEVE IN YOUR CAPACITY TO SUCCEED
•From Walter Disney, Founder of Walt Disney Company:
o“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
•Success has to be something you can imagine yourself achieving.
•It is possible that you will come across those who doubt you and your ability to succeed. You must not become one of these people because the moment you cease believing and dreaming is the moment these dreams fall away.
•Keep dreaming!
•10. ALWAYS MAINTAIN A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
•From Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of America:
•“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
•Like the above quote says, you need to trust in your ability to succeed. This is the only way to cultivate the right mindset.
•Replace negative thoughts with the positive ones. You need to approach problems, not as obstacles stopping you, but merely tasks that need to be completed for you to keep going.
•If you stay positive and think like this, setbacks won’t affect you so much, people’s doubts won’t impact you and even the biggest obstacles will seem like minor problems.
•However with the wrong mindset of doubt, you’ll be much easier to stop.
•11. DON’T LET DISCOURAGEMENT STOP YOU FROM PRESSING ON
•From Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of America:
o“Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.”
•It is an unfortunate fact of human nature — all of us in some way, doubt ourselves. This can be made far worse if others doubt us too.
•When surrounded by doubts, giving up can actually seem like a good idea. Don’t pay attention to the doubts. If you are discouraged, ignore it.
•12. BE WILLING TO WORK HARD
•From JC Penny, Founder of JC Penney Inc.:
•“Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.”
•You might have heard the quote that “success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” or you may have heard about the 10,000 hours idea.
•Whichever way you frame it, they say one thing:
•True success comes from work.
•You’ll never become successful if you don’t work towards your goal in life and keep working towards it.
•13. BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO FOLLOW YOUR INTUITION
•From Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Inc.:
•“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
•In ancient Greece, there was a group of Oracles who lived in Delphi. Everyone who needed advice or to know their future visited them, from the poorest of society to kings. Above the doorway of the temple were the words “know thyself”.
•If you strongly believe and desire something, chances are that you already have an idea how to get there. If not, you may naturally know what things will help you and what things will slow you down.
•It’s like how your body can detect danger even when things seem safe.
•Ultimately then, you need to trust your own instincts.
•CONCLUSION
•What you might have noticed is that many of the above lessons are similar — most are about developing the right state of mind. This clearly suggests that the key to achieving success, in whatever you wish, comes down to the way you approach it mentally.
•Moreover, no matter what stage of life you’re at now, you can still make a difference and pursue success. You can make resetting your life possible when you do what we’ve been talking about.
•Chapter 23 : Getting rid of negative energy and be positive
•Negativity limits your potential to become something great and live a fulfilling, purposeful life. It has a tangible effect on our health, too. Research has shown that people who cultivate negative energy experience more stress, more sickness, and less opportunity over the course of their lives than those who choose to live positively[1]. Learning how to get rid of negative energy can have a significant effect on your mental health.
•When we make a decision to become positive and follow that decision up with action, we will begin to encounter situations and people that are also positive. The negative energy gets edged out by all positive experiences. It’s a snowball effect.
•Although negative and positive energy will always exist, the key to becoming positive is to limit the amount of negativity that we experience by filling ourselves up with more positivity.
•Here’s how to get rid of negative energy and become more positive:
•BE GRATEFUL FOR EVERYTHING
•When life is all about us, it’s easy to believe that we deserve what we have. An attitude of entitlement puts us at the center of the universe and sets up the unrealistic expectation that others should cater to us, our needs, and our wants.
•This vain state of existence is a surefire way to set yourself up for an unfulfilled life of negative thoughts and feelings. If you really want to learn how to get rid of negative energy, you have to start here.
•People living in this sort of entitlement are “energy suckers”—they are always searching for what they can get out of a situation. People that don’t appreciate the nuances of their lives live in a constant state of lacking. And it’s really difficult to live a positive life this way.
•When we spend time being grateful and appreciate everything in our lives—from the small struggles that make us better, to the car that gets us from A to B every day—we shift our attitude from one of lack and frustration to one of appreciation. This appreciation gets noticed by others, and a positive harmony begins to form in our relationships.
•We begin to receive more of that which we are grateful for because we’ve opened ourselves up to the idea of receiving instead of taking. This will make your life more fulfilling and more positive.
•If you’re not sure what you can feel more grateful for, take a look at this article: 32 Things You Should Be Grateful For.
•2. LAUGH MORE, ESPECIALLY AT YOURSELF
•Life gets busy, our schedules fill up, we get into relationships, and work can feel task-oriented and routine-driven at times. Being human can feel more like being a robot. But having this work-driven, serious attitude often results in negative energy and performance-oriented thinking.
•Becoming positive means taking life less seriously and letting yourself off the hook. This is the only life that you get to live, so why not lighten up your mood?
•Laughter helps us become positive by lightening our mood and reminding us not to take life so seriously. Are you sensitive to light sarcasm? Do you have trouble laughing at jokes? Usually, people who are stressed out and overly serious get most offended by sarcasm because their life is all work and no play.
•A 2016 study pointed out that, “Decreasing stress-making hormones found in the blood, laughter can mitigate the effects of stress”. By decreasing levels of certain hormones in the body, laughter can help to reverse the stress response, mitigating short-term or long-term depression.
•If we can learn to laugh at ourselves and our mistakes, life will become more of an experiment in finding out what makes us happy, and finding happiness makes finding positivity a lot easier.
•3. HELP OTHERS
•Negativity goes hand in hand with selfishness. People that live only for themselves have no higher purpose in their lives. If the whole point of this world is only to take care of yourself and no one else, the road to long-term fulfillment and purpose is going to be a long one. To learn how to get rid of negative energy, look outside yourself and begin to help others.
•Positivity accompanies purpose. The most basic way to create purpose and positivity in your life is to begin doing things for others. Start small. Open the door for the person in front of you at Starbucks or ask someone how their day was before telling them about yours.
•Helping others will give you an intangible sense of value that will translate into positivity, and people might just appreciate you in the process.
•4. DIRECT YOUR THINKING AWAY FROM NEGATIVE ENERGY
•We can either be our best coach or our best enemy. Change starts from within. If you want to become more positive, change the wording of your thoughts. We are the hardest on ourselves, and a stream of negative self-talk is corrosive to a positive life.
•The next time you have a negative thought, write it down and rephrase it with a positive spin. For example, change a thought like, “I can’t believe I did so horribly on the test—I suck” to “I didn’t do as well as I hoped to on this test, but I know I’m capable, and I’ll do better next time.”
•Changing our self-talk is powerful. If this is particularly difficult for you, try to sneak in some meditation each day to absorb negative energy. Meditation offers your mind the space to identify negative energy and let it be with you in order to be analyzed and accepted[3]. You will learn to identify negative thoughts and neutralize them with true words.
•5. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE
•We become most like the people that we surround ourselves with. If our friend group is full of negative energy-suckers and drama queens, we will emulate that behavior and become like them. It is very difficult to become more positive when the people around us don’t support or demonstrate positive behavior.
•As you become more positive, you’ll find that your existing friends will either appreciate the new you, or they will become resistant to your positive changes. This is a natural response.
•Change is scary, but cutting out the negative people in your life is a huge step to becoming more positive. Positive people reflect and bounce their perspectives on to one another. Positivity is a step-by-step process when you do it solo, but a positive group of friends can be an escalator.
•6. TURN NEGATIVE ENERGY INTO POSITIVE ACTION
•Negative energy and thoughts can be overwhelming and challenging to navigate. Negativity is usually accompanied by a “freak-out” response, especially when tied to relationships, people, and to worrying about the future. This is debilitating to becoming positive and usually snowballs into more worry, more stress, and more freak-outs. If you’re learning how to get rid of negative energy, you need to turn this into positive action.
•The next time you’re in one of these situations and feel bad, walk away and take a break. With your eyes closed, take a few deep breaths. Once you’re calm, approach the situation or problem with a pen and piece of paper. Write out four or five actions or solutions to begin solving the problem.
•Taking yourself out of the emotionally-charged negative by moving into the action-oriented positive will help you solve more problems rationally and live in positivity.
•If you’re facing a problem that likely can’t be solved with only a few free moments, taking a break still helps. Get out and take a walk or do a short workout in your home. You’ll find that it helps to clear your head so that you can think more clearly to solve the problem you’re facing.
•7. TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY
•You are responsible for your thoughts.
•People that consistently believe that things happen TO them handicap themselves with a victim mentality. This is a subtle and deceptive negative thought pattern. Phrases like “I HAVE to work” or “I can’t believe he did that TO me” are indicators of a victim mentality. Blaming circumstances and blaming others only handicaps our decision to change negative energy into something positive.
•Taking full responsibility for your life, your thoughts, and your actions is one of the biggest steps in creating a more positive life. We have unlimited potential within to create our own reality, change our life, and change our thoughts. When we begin to really internalize this, we discover that no one can make us feel or do anything. We choose our emotional and behavioral response to people and circumstances.
•Make positive choices for yourself.
•“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny” ― Lao Tzu
•FINAL THOUGHTS
•Negative energy can be difficult to let go. Society tells us we need more and more and rarely offers time to simply take a step back and enjoy what’s in front of us. However, once you learn to do this, you make space for positivity to enter your life.
•Chapter 24 : Know yourself Vol2
•simply
•« To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom. » This famous quote is often attributed to Socrates. But what exactly do you know when you “know yourself?”
•This blog will reveal six elements of self-knowledge that can help you understand your own identity. As you live your daily life, you can look for clues to these important building blocks of the self.
•But first, why is it important to know yourself?
•The Benefits of Self-Knowledge
•Maybe it’s obvious, but here in a nutshell are a few reasons why you might want to know your own nature:
•Happiness. You will be happier when you can express who you are. Expressing your desires will make it more likely that you get what you want.
•LESS INNER CONFLICT. When your outside actions are in accordance with your inside feelings and values, you will experience less inner conflict.
•BETTER decision-making. When you know yourself, you are able to make better choices about everything, from small decisions like which sweater you’ll buy to big decisions like which partner you’ll spend your life with. You’ll have guidelines you can apply to solve life’s varied problems.
•Self-control. When you know yourself, you understand what motivates you to resist bad habits and develop good ones. You’ll have the insight to know which values and goals activate your willpower.
•RESISTANCE TO SOCIAL PRESSURE. When you are grounded in your values and preferences, you are less likely to say “yes” when you want to say “no.”
•TOLERANCE AND UNDERSTANDING OF OTHERS. Your awareness of your own foibles and struggles can help you empathize with others.
•VITALITY AND PLEASURE. Being who you truly are helps you feel more alive and makes your experience of life richer, larger, and more exciting.
•Now that you are convinced that self-knowledge is worth having (not that you needed convincing!), we’ll move on to those « VITAL Signs » of self-knowledge.
•The Building Blocks of Self: Your VITALS
•The capital letters in “VITAL Signs” form an acronym for the six building blocks of the self, or VITALS, for short. The letters stand for: Values, Interests, Temperament, Around-the-Clock, Life Mission and Goals, and Strengths/Skills.
•V = Values
•“Values »—such as “helping others,” “being creative,” “health,” “financial security,” and so on—are guides to decision-making and motivators for goals. Research shows that just thinking or writing about your values can make it more likely that you take healthy actions. The motivation provided by worthwhile values can also keep you going even when you are tired, as shown in many psychology experiments.
•I = Interests
•“Interests” include your passions, hobbies, and anything that draws your attention over a sustained period of time. To figure out your interests, ask yourself these questions: What do you pay attention to? What are you curious about? What concerns you? The focused mental state of being interested in something makes life vivid and may give you clues to your deepest passions.
•Many people have built a career around a deep interest in something. For example, a friend of mine broke his leg when he was 11 years old and was so fascinated by the emergency room that he decided to become an emergency physician.
•T = Temperament
•“Temperament” describes your inborn preferences. Do you restore your energy from being alone (introvert) or from being with people (extrovert)? Are you a planner or go-with-the-flow type of person? Do you make decisions more on the basis of feelings or thoughts and facts? Do you prefer details or big Ideas? Knowing the answers to temperament questions like these could help you gravitate toward situations in which you could flourish and avoid situations in which you could wilt.
•In the 60s, spontaneity was valued over planning. I tried hard to go with the flow, but it seemed to me that I wasted a lot of time that way. Going against the grain of my own personality turned out to be a daunting task that wasn’t really worth it.
•A = Around-the-Clock Activities
•The “around-the-clock” category refers to when you like to do things—your biorhythms. Are you a morning person or a night person, for example? At what time of day does your energy peak? If you schedule activities when you are at your best, you are respecting your innate biology. As I look back on my life, I realize I’ve been a morning person since birth. Those fun sleepovers with girlfriends? I loved being included, but I didn’t like staying up late.
•One joy of my adult life has been finding a partner with biorhythms like mine. We wake up early and go to bed early; we both get snappy unless we eat three square meals a day. We hate brunch. While the idea of biorhythm preferences may sound trivial compared to lofty qualities of the self like “values,” your daily life is more pleasant when you are in sync with your biology. In every area, it’s easier to enjoy life when you don’t waste energy pretending to be someone you aren’t.
•L = Life Mission and Meaningful Goals
•“What have been the most meaningful events of your life?” This was a question I liked to ask when students would see me for career counseling at the community college where I worked. One woman of about 40 years old got teary-eyed as she tried to answer. “Recently,” she told me, “I found it incredibly meaningful to care for my aging father as he declined and went into hospice. I was able to be there and hold his hand when he died.” As we talked about the difficulties and rewards of her father’s last days, she had an “aha” moment and realized she wanted to become a hospice nurse. (She accomplished her goal and was one of the leaders of her class.)
•Ask yourself the same question: “What have been the most meaningful events of your life?” You may discover clues to your hidden identity, to your career, and to life satisfaction.
•S = Strengths
•« Strengths » can include not only abilities, skills, and talents, but also character strengths such as loyalty, respect for others, love of learning, emotional intelligence, fairness, and more. Knowing your strengths is one of the foundations of self-confidence; not being able to acknowledge your own superpowers could put you on the path to low self-esteem. Become a person who “takes in the good,” listening for compliments and noticing skills that could be clues to your strengths. Here’s an example: An acquaintance tells you that she loves the soothing sound of your voice. What could you do with that knowledge? Likewise, knowing your weaknesses can help you be honest with yourself and others about what you are not good at. You might decide either to work on those weaknesses or try to make them a smaller part of your personal or professional life.
•Being True to You
•Even if you know your « VITAL Signs, » it’s hard to remain true to yourself because you are constantly changing and because society’s values often conflict with your own. I love this quote from fellow habits author Gretchen Rubin:
•« My first commandment is to “Be Gretchen”—yet it’s very hard to know myself. I get so distracted by the way I wish I were, or the way I assume I am, that I lose sight of what’s actually true. »
•For all of us, being yourself sounds easier than it actually is. But there are a few signposts. When you’ve made a discovery about one of your « VITAL Signs, » you’ll feel a sense of excitement. Acting on self-knowledge will give you energy and save you energy. You’ll feel freer and stronger because you no longer conform to how you “should” feel, think, or act. For example, I can remember my relief when I realized I was an introvert. How comforting it was to give myself the gift of time alone without wondering if I were a freak of nature!
•26 QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU KNOW YOURSELF BETTER
•DO YOU HAVE A CLEAR SENSE OF WHO YOU ARE?
•Developmentally, we wrestle with “finding ourselves” as teens and young adults. Then we often revisit these questionsin middle age. It’s both normal and essential to seek self-understanding.In order to accept ourselvesand establish a sense of belonging, we need to understand who we are. A strong sense of self helps us navigate life and brings meaning to our experiences. Without it, we feel “lost.”
•WHY DO WE EXPERIENCE A LOSS OF IDENTITY?
•We put everyone else’s needs before our own. When we focus on others and neglect ourselves, we fail to recognize and value ourselves and our needs. We minimize who we are and what we need.
•We’re disconnected from our thoughts and feelings. We commonly keep ourselves so distracted and numb with alcohol, food, and electronics that we miss important information about who we are. How often do you reach for your phone or a snack whenever you get even slightly uncomfortable? These things keep us from knowing ourselves because we don’t allow ourselves to be curious and ask ourselves how we’re really feeling.
•We experience life transitions and changes in our roles. Experience like adivorce, retirement, job loss,death of a loved one, or other traumatic events can also result in losing oursense of self, especially the parts associated withour roles.
•We feel ashamed and unworthy, and consequently bury parts of ourselves. We were told that we’re bad, strange, ugly, stupid, or unworthy. We were criticized or teased. Maybe you loved to play chess as a kid, but were told that it’s not cool to join the chess club. Soyou quit. Or perhaps you were shamed for your sexual orientation and tried to deny it. We’re told we have to fit a certain mold if we’re to fit in. So, we squish our squarepeg selves into round holes and try to be something we’re not. After years of doing this, we lose track of who we really are.
•QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU KNOW YOURSELF BETTER:
•What are my strengths?
•What are my short-term goals? Long-term goals?
•Who matters most to me? Who are my support people?
•What am I ashamed of?
•What do I like to do for fun?
•What new activities am I interested in or willing to try?
•What am I worried about?
•What are my values? What do I believe in? (consider politics, religion, social issues)
•If I could have one wish, it would be ___________
•Where do I feel safest?
•What or who gives me comfort?
•If I wasn’t afraid, I would ___________
•What ismy proudest accomplishment?
•What is my biggest failure?
•Am I a night owl or an early bird? How can I arrange my life to better suit this part of my nature?
•What do I like about my job? What do I dislike?
•What does my inner critic tell me?
•What do I do to show myselfself-compassion and self-care?
•Am I an introvert or an extrovert? Am I energized being around others or being by myself?
•What am I passionate about?
•What is my happiest memory?
•What do my dreams tell me?
•What is my favorite book? Movie? Band? Food? Color? Animal?
•What am I grateful for?
•When I’m feeling down I like to ___________________
•I know I’m stressed when I ______________________
•I’ve given you a lot of questions. I suggest answering onlyone or two per day so you can explore them in depth. Work at your own pace. Perhaps one per week is more realistic for you. There is no judgment and this isn’t a race. Rediscovering yourself is a process. It will take thinking, talking, writing, and doing.
•Chapter 25 : know you environment
oKNOW YOUR ENVIRONMENT
•Understanding the importance of baseline, situational awareness, demeanor and understanding the threat is not difficult; applying the concepts to individual, and possibly unique, areas of responsibility can be more challenging.
•FRIENDSHIPS: ENRICH YOUR LIFE AND IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH
•Discover the connection between health and friendship, and how to promote and maintain healthy friendships.
•Friendships can have a major impact on your health and well-being, but it’s not always easy to build or maintain friendships. Understand the importance of friendships in your life and what you can do to develop and nurture friendships.
•WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FRIENDSHIPS?
•Good friends are good for your health. Friends can help you celebrate good times and provide support during bad times. Friends prevent loneliness and give you a chance to offer needed companionship, too. Friends can also:
•Increase your sense of belonging and purpose
•Boost your happiness and reduce your stress
•Improve your self-confidence and self-worth
•Help you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death of a loved one
•Encourage you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise
•Friends also play a significant role in promoting your overall health. Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). Studies have even found that older adults with a rich social life are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections.
•WHY IS IT SOMETIMES HARD TO MAKE FRIENDS OR MAINTAIN FRIENDSHIPS?
•Many adults find it hard to develop new friendships or keep up existing friendships. Friendships may take a back seat to other priorities, such as work or caring for children or aging parents. You and your friends may have grown apart due to changes in your lives or interests. Or maybe you’ve moved to a new community and haven’t yet found a way to meet people.
•Developing and maintaining good friendships takes effort. The enjoyment and comfort friendship can provide, however, makes the investment worthwhile.
•WHAT’S A HEALTHY NUMBER OF FRIENDS?
•Quality counts more than quantity. While it’s good to cultivate a diverse network of friends and acquaintances, you also want to nurture a few truly close friends who will be there for you through thick and thin.
•WHAT ARE SOME WAYS TO MEET NEW PEOPLE?
•It’s possible that you’ve overlooked potential friends who are already in your social network. Think through people you’ve interacted with — even very casually — who made a positive impression.
•You may find potential friends among people with whom:
•You’ve worked or taken classes
•You’ve been friends in the past, but have since lost touch
•You’ve enjoyed chatting with at social gatherings
•You share family ties
•If anyone stands out in your memory as someone you’d like to know better, reach out. Ask mutual friends or acquaintances to share the person’s contact information, or — even better — to reintroduce the two of you with a text, email or in-person visit. Extend an invitation to coffee or lunch.
•To meet new people who might become your friends, you have to go to places where others are gathered. Don’t limit yourself to one strategy for meeting people. The broader your efforts, the greater your likelihood of success.
•Persistence also matters. Take the initiative rather than waiting for invitations to come your way, and keep trying. You may need to suggest plans a few times before you can tell if your interest in a new friend is mutual.
•For example, try several of these ideas:
•Attend community events. Look for groups or clubs that gather around an interest or hobby you share. These groups are often listed in the newspaper or on community bulletin boards. There are also many websites that help you connect with new friends in your neighborhood or city. Do a Google search using terms such as [your city] + social network, or [your neighborhood] + meet-ups.
•Volunteer. Offer your time or talents at a hospital, place of worship, museum, community center, charitable group or other organization. You can form strong connections when you work with people who have mutual interests.
•Extend and accept invitations. Invite a friend to join you for coffee or lunch. When you’re invited to a social gathering, say yes. Contact someone who recently invited you to an activity and return the favor.
•Take up a new interest. Take a college or community education course to meet people who have similar interests. Join a class at a local gym, senior center or community fitness facility.
•Join a faith community. Take advantage of special activities and get-to-know-you events for new members.
•Take a walk. Grab your kids or pet and head outside. Chat with neighbors who are also out and about or head to a popular park and strike up conversations there.
•Above all, stay positive. You may not become friends with everyone you meet, but maintaining a friendly attitude and demeanor can help you improve the relationships in your life and sow the seeds of friendship with new acquaintances.
•HOW DOES SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT FRIENDSHIPS?
•Joining a chat group or online community might help you make or maintain connections and relieve loneliness. However, research suggests that use of social networking sites doesn’t necessarily translate to a larger offline network or closer offline relationships with network members. In addition, remember to exercise caution when sharing personal information or arranging an activity with someone you’ve only met online.
•HOW CAN I NURTURE MY FRIENDSHIPS?
•Developing and maintaining healthy friendships involves give-and-take. Sometimes you’re the one giving support, and other times you’re on the receiving end. Letting friends know you care about them and appreciate them can help strengthen your bond. It’s as important for you to be a good friend as it is to surround yourself with good friends.
•To nurture your friendships:
•Be kind. This most-basic behavior, emphasized during childhood, remains the core of successful, adult relationships. Think of friendship as an emotional bank account. Every act of kindness and every expression of gratitude are deposits into this account, while criticism and negativity draw down the account.
•Listen up. Ask what’s going on in your friends’ lives. Let the other person know you are paying close attention through eye contact, body language and occasional brief comments such as, « That sounds fun. » When friends share details of hard times or difficult experiences, be empathetic, but don’t give advice unless your friends ask for it.
•Open up. Build intimacy with your friends by opening up about yourself. Being willing to disclose personal experiences and concerns shows that your friend holds a special place in your life, and deepens your connection.
•Show that you can be trusted. Being responsible, reliable and dependable is key to forming strong friendships. Keep your engagements and arrive on time. Follow through on commitments you’ve made to your friends. When your friends share confidential information, keep it private.
•Make yourself available. Building a close friendship takes time — together. Make an effort to see new friends regularly, and to check in with them in between meet-ups. You may feel awkward the first few times you talk on the phone or get together, but this feeling is likely to pass as you get more comfortable with each other.
•Manage your nerves with mindfulness. You may find yourself imagining the worst of social situations, and feel tempted to stay home. Use mindfulness exercises to reshape your thinking. Each time you imagine the worst, pay attention to how often the embarrassing situations you’re afraid of actually take place. You may notice that the scenarios you fear usually don’t happen.
•When embarrassing situations do happen, remind yourself that your feelings will pass, and you can handle them until they do.
•Yoga and other mind-body relaxation practices also may reduce anxiety and help you face situations that make you feel nervous.
•Remember, it’s never too late to build new friendships or reconnect with old friends. Investing time in making friends and strengthening your friendships can pay off in better health and a brighter outlook for years to come.
o
•See Something, Say Something. Report suspicious behavior. What, or perhaps who, doesn’t belong? Great advice, but it’s not quite that simple. The solution takes a little more work, but can be summed up by understanding the environment based on baseline, situational awareness, demeanor and understanding the threat. Each is closely related, and usually takes boots on the ground and eyes on the target to establish an action plan that goes beyond words on paper. Understanding the importance of baseline, situational awareness, demeanor and understanding the threat is not difficult; applying them to individual, and possibly unique, areas of responsibility can be more challenging.
•BASELINE
•What’s normal for a community, population, event, etc.? Think of it from a scientific perspective. Before deploying radiation detectors, you must establish the baseline, or normal, amount of radiation, for that area. Once this is established, it can be determined when there’s been a deviation.
Establishing a baseline takes experience, and often a historical background. Setting a baseline for various areas and activities takes work, and often is different within larger components of a community, especially as it relates to special events.
•SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
•Similar to baseline, situational awareness is important to fully grasp what is going on, including additional factors that may complicate the threat picture. A large outdoor sporting event that includes an honor guard with military equipment and weapons, unexpected protestors, VIPs in attendance or a nearby festival with thousands of people dressed in costumes may cause added concern, especially if any of these activities was not included in the original incident action plan. Imagine that the night before a football game at the stadium, there was a concert that included fireworks, and the effects that it might have on the next morning’s sterility sweep.
•Situational awareness helps avoid surprises and unexpected consequences.
•DEMEANOR
•Do the atmosphere and people’s actions match the environment? Demeanor, too, fits in with baseline and situational awareness. How should someone be acting, or reacting, in a particular environment? We all know that a person walking through a parking lot looking into car windows may be getting ready to break into a car. But what about a student walking in a hallway, a person attending a concert or fan at a basketball game? How should they be acting? The fan attending a conference championship game will likely be excited, attending with friends and perhaps be quite animated; what about the person at that same game who comes alone, doesn’t watch the action on the court and spends significant time walking around in various different locations?
•UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT
•Threats often differ depending on the target, environment, event, time of year, opportunity (soft versus hard) and “call to action.” Situational awareness helps public safety officials know both their area of responsibility, and how the greater threat may apply. Those charged with providing security know the importance of understanding the threat picture, when a threat becomes credible and knowing when the threat becomes localized based on the current situation. Federal, state and local agencies continue to provide detailed, and often specific, threat bulletins that provide both indicators and suggested protective measures. Area-specific security measures, threat assessments, vulnerability assessments and threat-based exercises provide additional information related to gaps and resource needs.
•Chapter 26 : you must be independent
•On the fourth day of every July and the fifth day of july, Americans and Algerians celebrate their independence. Freedom is one of those things that is hard to explain, but it’s easy to notice the lack thereof. Anybody can be a follower – in fact, it’s hard not to find people looking for followers. One must only exist to be dependent, but these steps are necessary to become independent.
•FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
•You don’t have to be successful to act like it. As long as you are confident and friendly, people will generally accept you are who you say you are (provided, of course, you can back it up when necessary). As a matter of fact, I’m writing this piece from Denver, CO, where I’m attending the Cannabis Cup as a journalist. I didn’t have a press pass when I showed up, but I have one now, because I acted like I belonged. Now I do.
•2. CREATE A PLAN
•If you’re independent without a plan, you’re not independent – you’re actually just blind to how dependent you actually are. This drives your friends and family absolutely crazy, so stop it. Get yourself a plan, and make it a good one. Sticking to your own plan is how you avoid following or obstructing others.
•3. FORM HABITS
•Now that you have plans, turn those plans into habits by making a conscious effort to continue following them. Every time you follow through with your plan, you’re one step closer to making it a habit. Habits are much easier to follow, as they’re ingrained in your very nature. You become unconsciously drawn to these actions to the point that it actually takes effort to stop. This is when you know you have made it.
•4. MAKE DECISIONS
•As you become more and more comfortable in your independence, it’s vital to exercise your freedom. It’s in exercising your freedoms that they become stronger. Deciding is the easiest way to exercise your freedoms. By deciding, you’re creating your path, your way. Start deciding what you want and learn to get it.
•5. LEARN YOUR ROLE
•Remember you are never isolated. You’re always in a world surrounded by other people, and it’s important to be compassionate to those around you. Just because you’re independent doesn’t make you an automatic CEO, nor will you be treated as one. Learn where you really fit in and play your cards to the best of your ability instead of wishing for a new hand.
•6. TAKE CHANCES
•The only way you can survive independently is to take chances. Even if you have the best plans in the world, there will always be someone ready, willing and able to stop you. You’d be naïve to think you’re the one exception, so be willing to take risks. When these risks pay off, you’ll be a success, and if they fail, you at least have a great story.
•7. THINK INDEPENDENTLY
•If people are agreeing with you, you’re not disrupting enough to be independent. This isn’t to say you need to be an obnoxious jerk, but you do need to shake things up. Anyone can be agreeable up to a point, but if you’re always agreeing with people, you’re following them. Think for yourself and play devil’s advocate every so often, just to keep everyone on their toes.
•Our forefathers fought and died in the name of freedom. In July 1776, they drafted our Declaration of Independence to provide guidelines to preserve the independence of each and every one of us. In order to honor their sacrifices it’s important for each of us to become independent. Get started right now… because I said so…
•CHAPTER 27 : HOW CAN I FORGET UNWANTED MEMORIES
•Everyone has memories they would rather forget, and they may know the triggers that bring them bouncing back. Bad memories can underlie a number of problems, from post-traumatic stress disorder to phobias.
•When an unwanted memory intrudes on the mind, it is a natural human reaction to want to block it out.
•A hundred years ago, Freud suggested that humans have a mechanism that they can use to block unwanted memories out of consciousness.
•More recently, scientists have started to understand how this works.
•Neuroimaging studies have observed which brain systems play a part in deliberate forgetting, and studies have shown that it is possible for people deliberately to block memories from consciousness.
•How do memories form?
•For a person’s mind to store a memory, proteins stimulate the brains cells to grow and form new connections.
•The more we dwell on a memory or rehearse the specific events surrounding the memory, the stronger these neuronal connections become.
•The memory remains there as long as we revisit it from time to time.
•For a long time, people thought that the older the memory, the more fixed it is, but this is not necessarily true.
•Each time we revisit a memory, it becomes flexible again. The connections appear to become malleable, and then they reset. The memory can change a little each time we recall it, and it resets stronger and more vividly with every recall.
•Even long-term memories are not stable.
•This process of strengthening is called reconsolidation. Reconsolidation can change our memories slightly for better or for worse. Manipulating this process can do the same.
•If something frightens us when we are young, the memory of that event can become a little more frightening each time we recall it, leading to a fear that may be out of proportion with the real event.
•A small spider that frightened us once may get bigger in our minds over time. A phobia can result.
•In contrast, casting a humorous light on an embarrassing memory, for example, by weaving it into a funny story, can mean that in time, it loses its power to embarrass. A social gaff can become a party piece.
•WHY ARE BAD MEMORIES SO VIVID?
•Many people find that bad experiences stand out in the memory more than good ones. They intrude on our consciousness when we do not want them to.
•Researchers have shown that bad memories really are more vivid than good ones, possibly due to the interaction between the emotions and the memories. This is particularly so when the emotions and memories are negative.
•Neuroimaging has shown scientists that the process of encoding and retrieving bad memories involves the parts of the brain that process emotions, specifically the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex.
•It seems the stronger the emotions associated with the memory, the more detail we will recall.
•fMRI studies reveal greater cellular activity in these regions when someone is going through a bad experience.
•Substituting memories
•In 2012, scientists at the University of Cambridge showed for the first time which brain mechanisms are involved in substituting and suppressing memories.
•They found that a person can suppress a memory, or force it out of awareness, by using a part of the brain, known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to inhibit activity in the hippocampus. The hippocampus plays a key role in remembering events.
•To substitute a memory, people can redirect their consciousness towards an alternative memory.
•They can do this by using two regions called the caudal prefrontal cortex and the mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These areas are important for bringing specific memories into the conscious mind, in the presence of distracting memories.
•Suppressing a memory involves shutting down parts of the brain that are involved in recall. To substitute a memory, those same regions must be actively engaged in redirecting the memory way towards a more attractive target.
•One of the report’s authors, Dr. Michael Anderson, likens this to either slamming on the brakes in a car or steering to avoid a hazard.
•The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the brain activity of participants during an activity.
•This activity involved learning associations between pairs of words, and then trying to forget the memories by either recalling alternative ones to substitute them or blocking them out.
•Results showed that both strategies are equally effective, but that different neural circuits are activated.
•In post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), people who have experienced a traumatic life event are troubled by unwanted memories that insist on intruding into the consciousness.
•Knowing more about how a memory can be substituted or suppressed might help people with this debilitating condition.
•CHANGING CONTEXTS
•The mental context in which a person perceives an event affects how the mind organizes the memories of that event.
•We remember events in relation to other events, where it occurred, and so on. This, in turn, affects what triggers those later memories, or how we can choose to recall them.
•Context can be anything that is associated with a memory. It could include sense-related cues, such as smell or taste, the external environment, events, thoughts or feelings around the time of the event, incidental features of the item, for example, where it appears on a page, and so on.
•As we use contextual clues to recall information about past events, scientists have suggested that any process that changes our perception of that context can increase or reduce our ability to retrieve specific memories.
•To test this, a team of researchers set participants a task of memorizing sets of words, while viewing images of nature, such as beaches or forests. The aim of the images was to create the contextual memories.
•Some participants were then told to forget the words on the first list before studying the second.
•When the time came to recall the words, the group that had been asked to forget were able to recall fewer words.
•More interestingly, fMRI tracking showed that they also had fewer thoughts of the images.
•In deliberately trying to forget the words, they had discarded the context in which they had memorized them. In addition, the greater the detachment from the context, the fewer words they remembered. This suggests that we can intentionally forget.
•The researchers then instructed the group to remember the words did not “flush out” the scenes from their minds, and continued to remember the words and think of the images.
•The findings could be useful for helping people either to remember things, for example, when studying, or to reduce unwanted memories, for example, in treating PTSD.
•WEAKENING MEMORIES THAT CAUSE PHOBIAS
•Treatment for people with phobias includes exposure to the item that causes fear. Exposure therapy aims to create a “safe” memory of the feared item, which overshadows the old memory. While this works temporarily, the fear often returns in time.
•In August 2016, researchers from Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden showed that disrupting a memory can reduce its strength.
•In their experiment, people who were afraid of spiders were exposed to pictures of their eight-legged friends in three sessions. The aim was to disrupt the memory by disturbing it and then resetting it.
•First, the research team activated the participants’ fear by presenting a mini-exposure to spider images.
•Then, 10 minutes later, the participants viewed the images for longer. The next day, they saw the pictures again.
•By the third viewing, the researchers noticed that there was less activity in the part of the brain known as the amygdala.
•This reflected a lower level of emotional interference and a lesser tendency in the participants to avoid spiders.
•The scientists concluded that the first exposure made the memory unstable. When the longer exposure occurred, the memory was re-saved in a weaker form. This, they say, stops the fear from returning so easily.
•The researchers believe that this could strengthen techniques for dealing with anxiety and phobias in cases where exposure alone does not provide a long-term solution.
•A drug for forgetting?
•To complement cognitive approaches, some scientists have suggested using drugs to remove bad memories or the fear-inducing aspect that is associated with them.
•D-cycloserine is an antibiotic, and it also boosts the activity of glutamate, an “excitatory” neurotransmitter that activates brain cells.
•In one study, people with a fear of heights took D-cycloserine before a virtual reality exposure therapy. One week, and again 3 months later, their stress levels were lower than before.
•In other research, when a group of people with PTSD took propranolol at the time of consolidating a memory, for example, just after recounting a bad experience, they had fewer stress symptoms the next time the memory was activated.
•Propanolol blocks norepinephrine, a chemical that plays a role in the “fight or flight” mechanism and gives rise to stress symptoms.
•Researchers in New York carried out tests on rats that showed it is possible to erase single memories from the brain, by delivering a drug known as U0126, while leaving the rest of the brain intact.
•In a mouse study published in NATURE in 2014, scientists used a drug known as an HDACi to erase epigenetic markers in the DNA that enable bad memories to live on. This could help people, for example, with PTSD.
•However, more research is needed into how to use these drugs safely and effectively.
•IMPLANTING FALSE MEMORIES
•Taking memory manipulation one step further, memory experts like Julia Shaw, author of “The Memory Illusion,” have worked out how to implant false memories.
•She starts, she says, by telling someone that when they were young, they committed a crime, then adding layers of information until the person can no longer decipher reality from imagination.
•Shaw says she does this to highlight how some interrogation methods can be abused.
•ETHICAL ISSUES
•Such techniques are not without ethical concerns.
•Healthy people could use them to erase an inconvenient event from the mind. Perpetrators of crimes could give memory-erasing drugs to people to make them forget events.
•After all, some bad memories serve a purpose. They can prevent people from making the same mistakes again, or guide their actions on similar occasions in the future. How much do we want to forget?
•Chapter 28 : healthy realtionships
•ALL RELATIONSHIPS EXIST ON A SPECTRUM FROM HEALTHY TO ABUSIVE, WITH UNHEALTHY IN BETWEEN.
•A healthy relationship means that both you and your partner are:
•Communicative. You talk openly about problems and listen to one another. You respect each other’s opinions.
•Respectful. You value each other’s opinions, feelings, and needs, and give each other the freedom to be yourself and be loved for who you are.
•Trusting. You believe what your partner has to say and don’t feel the need to “prove” each other’s trustworthiness.
•Honest. You’re honest with each other but can still keep some things private.
•Equal. You make decisions together and hold each other to the same standards. You and your partner have equal say with regard to major decisions within the relationship. All partners have access to the resources they need.
•Setting boundaries. You enjoy spending time apart, alone, or with others. You respect each other’s need for time and space apart. You communicate with each other about what you are and aren’t comfortable with.
•Practicing consent. You talk openly about sexual and reproductive choices together. All partners always willingly consent to sexual activity and can safely discuss what you are and aren’t comfortable with.
•Parenting supportively. All partners are able to parent in a way that they feel comfortable with. You communicate together about the needs of the child(ren), as well as the needs of the parents.
•________________________________________
•UNHEALTHY
•You may be in an unhealthy relationship if your partner is:
•Non-communicative. When problems arise, you fight or you don’t discuss them at all.
•Disrespectful. You or your partner behave inconsiderately toward the other.
•Not trusting. You or your partner refuse to believe the other or feel entitled to invade their privacy.
•Dishonest. You or your partner lie, omit, or obscure facts.
•Taking control. You or your partner takes steps to suggest that one’s desires and choices are more important than another’s.
•Isolating. Your partner restricts your contact with other people, either in person or online.
•Pressured into sexual activity. One partner uses pressure or guilt against another to coerce them into sexual acts or reproductive choices.
•Ignoring boundaries. It’s assumed or implied that only one partner is responsible for making informed decisions.
•Unequal economically. Finances aren’t discussed. Financial decisions are made unilaterally or it’s assumed that only one partner is in charge of finances.
•________________________________________
•ABUSIVE
•A relationship is abusive when your partner:
•Communicates harmfully. Your partner communicates or in a way that is hurtful, threatening, insulting, or demeaning.
•Mistreats the other. Your partner doesn’t respect your thoughts, feelings, decisions, opinions, or physical safety.
•Makes untrue accusations. Your partner accuses you of cheating or breaking the boundaries of your relationship. Your partner may escalate by creating situations where you need to “prove” your trustworthiness, like handing over your social media passwords.
•Controls the other. There’s no equality in your relationship. One partner makes decisions without the other’s input, or makes all of the decisions in certain parts of the relationship, like finances.
•Isolates the other. Your partner controls where you travel, who you talk to, or how you spend your time. This often includes physical or emotional isolation from your family and friends.
•Forces sexual activity or controls reproductive choices.Your partner forces or pressures you to engage in sexual activity you don’t want to. Your partner controls your reproductive choices by sabotaging birth control, or by pressuring you to have or not have children.
•Controls finances. Your partner controls the money and access to resources, including preventing you from earning an income or accessing their own income. Having an open, respectful dialogue about finances is not an option.
•Manipulates children. Your partner uses your children to gain power and control over you, including telling them lies or baseless criticisms about you.
•WHEN SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS TOXIC – HOW TO LET GO,
•WITHOUT GUILT
•If toxic people were an ingestible substance, they would come with a high-powered warning and secure packaging to prevent any chance of accidental contact. Sadly, families are not immune to the poisonous lashings of a toxic relationship.
•Though families and relationships can feel impossibly tough at times, they were never meant to ruin. All relationships have their flaws and none of them come packaged with the permanent glow of sunlight and goodness and beautiful things. In any normal relationship there will be fights from time to time. Things will be said and done and forgiven, and occasionally rehashed at strategic moments. For the most part though, they will feel nurturing and life-giving to be in. At the very least, they won’t hurt.
•WHY DO TOXIC PEOPLE DO TOXIC THINGS?
•Toxic people thrive on control. Not the loving, healthy control that tries to keep everyone safe and happy – buckle your seatbelt, be kind, wear sunscreen – but the type that keeps people small and diminished.
•Everything they do is to keep people small and manageable. This will play out through criticism, judgement, oppression – whatever it takes to keep someone in their place. The more you try to step out of ‘your place’, the more a toxic person will call on toxic behaviour to bring you back and squash you into the tiny box they believe you belong in.
•It is likely that toxic people learned their behaviour during their own childhood, either by being exposed to the toxic behaviour of others or by being overpraised without being taught the key quality of empathy. In any toxic relationship there will be other qualities missing too, such as respect, kindness and compassion, but at the heart of a toxic person’s behaviour is the lack of concern around their impact on others. They come with a critical failure to see past their own needs and wants.
•Toxic people have a way of choosing open, kind people with beautiful, lavish hearts because these are the ones who will be more likely to fight for the relationship and less likely to abandon.
•Even the strongest people can find themselves in a toxic relationship but the longer they stay, the more they are likely to evolve into someone who is a smaller, less confident, more wounded version of the person they used to be.
•Non-toxic people who stay in a toxic relationship will never stop trying to make the relationship better, and toxic people know this. They count on it. Non-toxic people will strive to make the relationship work and when they do, the toxic person has exactly what he or she wants – control.
•TOXIC FAMILIES – A SPECIAL KIND OF TOXIC
•Families are a witness to our lives – our best, our worst, our catastrophes, our frailties and flaws. All families come with lessons that we need to learn along the way to being a decent, thriving human. The lessons begin early and they don’t stop, but not everything a family teaches will come with an afterglow. Sometimes the lessons they teach are deeply painful ones that shudder against our core.
•Rather than being lessons on how to love and safely open up to the world, the lessons some families teach are about closing down, staying small and burying needs – but for every disempowering lesson, there is one of empowerment, strength and growth that exists with it. In toxic families, these are around how to walk away from the ones we love, how to let go with strength and love, and how to let go of guilt and any fantasy that things could ever be different. And here’s the rub – the pain of a toxic relationship won’t soften until the lesson has been learned.
•LOVE AND LOYALTY DON’T ALWAYS EXIST TOGETHER.
•Love has a fierce way of keeping us tied to people who wound us. The problem with family is that we grow up in the fold, believing that the way they do things is the way the world works. We trust them, listen to them and absorb what they say. There would have been a time for all of us that regardless of how mind-blowingly destructive the messages from our family were, we would have received them all with a beautiful, wide-eyed innocence, grabbing every detail and letting them shape who we were growing up to be.
•Our survival would have once depended on believing in everything they said and did, and resisting the need to challenge or question that we might deserve better. The things we believe when we are young are powerful. They fix themselves upon us and they stay, at least until we realise one day how wrong and small-hearted those messages have been.
•At some point, the environment changes – we grow up – but our beliefs don’t always change with it. We stop depending on our family for survival but we hang on to the belief that we have to stay connected and loyal, even though being with them hurts.
•The obligation to love and stay loyal to a family member can be immense, but love and loyalty are two separate things and they don’t always belong together.
•Loyalty can be a confusing, loaded term and is often the reason that people stay stuck in toxic relationships. What you need to know is this: When loyalty comes with a diminishing of the self, it’s not loyalty, it’s submission.
•We stop having to answer to family when we become adults and capable of our own minds.
•WHY ARE TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS SO DESTRUCTIVE?
•In any healthy relationship, love is circular – when you give love, it comes back. When what comes back is scrappy, stingy intent under the guise of love, it will eventually leave you small and depleted, which falls wildly, terrifyingly short of where anyone is meant to be.
•Healthy people welcome the support and growth of the people they love, even if it means having to change a little to accommodate. When one person in a system changes, whether it’s a relationship of two or a family of many, it can be challenging. Even the strongest and most loving relationships can be touched by feelings of jealousy, inadequacy and insecurity at times in response to somebody’s growth or happiness. We are all vulnerable to feeling the very normal, messy emotions that come with being human.
•The difference is that healthy families and relationships will work through the tough stuff. Unhealthy ones will blame, manipulate and lie – whatever they have to do to return things to the way they’ve always been, with the toxic person in control.
•WHY A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP WILL NEVER CHANGE.
•Reasonable people, however strong and independently minded they are, can easily be drawn into thinking that if they could find the switch, do less, do more, manage it, tweak it, that the relationship will be okay. The cold truth is that if anything was going to be different it would have happened by now.
•Toxic people can change, but it’s highly unlikely. What is certain is that nothing anyone else does can change them. It is likely there will be broken people, broken hearts and broken relationships around them – but the carnage will always be explained away as someone else’s fault. There will be no remorse, regret or insight. What is more likely is that any broken relationship will amplify their toxic behaviour.
•WHY ARE TOXIC PEOPLE SO HARD TO LEAVE?
•If you try to leave a toxic person, things might get worse before they get better – but they will always get better. Always.
•Few things will ramp up feelings of insecurity or a need for control more than when someone questions familiar, old behaviour, or tries to break away from old, established patterns in a relationship. For a person whose signature moves involve manipulation, lies, criticism or any other toxic behaviour, when something feels as though it’s changing, they will use even more of their typical toxic behaviour to bring the relationship (or the person) back to a state that feels acceptable.
•When things don’t seem to be working, people will always do more of what used to work, even if that behaviour is at the heart of the problem. It’s what we all do. If you are someone who is naturally open and giving, when things don’t feel right in a relationship you will likely give more of yourself, offer more support, be more loving, to get things back on track.
•Breaking away from a toxic relationship can feel like tearing at barbed wire with bare hands. The more you do it, the more it hurts, so for a while, you stop tearing, until you realise that it’s not the tearing that hurts, it’s the barbed wire – the relationship – and whether you tear at it or not, it won’t stop cutting into you.
•Think of it like this. Imagine that all relationships and families occupy a space. In healthy ones, the shape of that space will be fluid and open to change, with a lot of space for people to grow. People will move to accommodate the growth and flight of each other.
•For a toxic family or a toxic relationship, that shape is rigid and unyielding. There is no flexibility, no bending, and no room for growth. Everyone has a clearly defined space and for some, that space will be small and heavily boxed. When one person starts to break out of the shape, the whole family feels their own individual sections change. The shape might wobble and things might feel vulnerable, weakened or scary. This is normal, but toxic people will do whatever it takes to restore the space to the way it was. Often, that will mean crumpling the ones who are changing so they fit their space again.
•Sometimes out of a sense of love and terribly misplaced loyalty, people caught in a toxic relationship might sacrifice growth and change and step back into the rigid tiny space a toxic person manipulates them towards. It will be clear when this has happened because of the soul-sucking grief at being back there in the mess with people (or person) who feel so bad to be with.
•BUT THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY LOVE ME. THEY SAID SO.
•Sometimes toxic people will hide behind the defence that they are doing what they do because they love you, or that what they do is ‘no big deal’ and that you’re the one causing the trouble because you’re just too sensitive, too serious, too – weak, stupid, useless, needy, insecure, jealous – too ‘whatever’ to get it. You will have heard the word plenty of times before.
•The only truth you need to know is this: If it hurts, it’s hurtful. Fullstop.
•Love never holds people back from growing. It doesn’t diminish, and it doesn’t contaminate. If someone loves you, it feels like love. It feels supportive and nurturing and life-giving. If it doesn’t do this, it’s not love. It’s self-serving crap designed to keep you tethered and bound to someone else’s idea of how you should be.
•There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but a healthy one is a tolerant, loving, accepting, responsive one.
•THE ONE TRUTH THAT MATTERS.
•If it feels like growth or something that will nourish you, follow that. It might mean walking away from people you care about – parents, sisters, brothers, friends – but this can be done with love and the door left open for when they are able to meet you closer to your terms – ones that don’t break you.
•Set the boundaries with grace and love and leave it to the toxic person to decide which side of that boundary they want to stand on. Boundaries aren’t about spite or manipulation and they don’t have to be about ending the relationship. They are something drawn in strength and courage to let people see with great clarity where the doorway is to you. If the relationship ends, it’s not because of your lack of love or loyalty, but because the toxic person chose not to treat you in the way you deserve. Their choice.
•Though it is up to you to decide the conditions on which you will let someone close to you, whether or not somebody wants to be close to you enough to respect those conditions is up to them. The choice to trample over what you need means they are choosing not to be with you. It doesn’t mean you are excluding them from your life.
•Toxic people also have their conditions of relationship and though they might not be explicit, they are likely to include an expectation that you will tolerate ridicule, judgement, criticism, oppression, lying, manipulation – whatever they do. No relationship is worth that and it is always okay to say ‘no’ to anything that diminishes you.
•The world and those who genuinely love you want you to be as whole as you can be. Sometimes choosing health and wholeness means stepping bravely away from that which would see your spirit broken and malnourished.
•When you were young and vulnerable and dependent for survival on the adults in your life, you had no say in the conditions on which you let people close to you. But your life isn’t like that now. You get to say. You get to choose the terms of your relationships and the people you get close to.
•There is absolutely no obligation to choose people who are toxic just because they are family. If they are toxic, the simple truth is that they have not chosen you. The version of you that they have chosen is the one that is less than the person you would be without them.
•THE GROWTH.
•Walking away from a toxic relationship isn’t easy, but it is always brave and always strong. It is always okay. And it is always – always – worth it. This is the learning and the growth that is hidden in the toxic mess.
•Letting go will likely come with guilt, anger and grief for the family or person you thought you had. They might fight harder for you to stay. They will probably be crueller, more manipulative and more toxic than ever. They will do what they’ve always done because it has always worked. Keep moving forward and let every hurtful, small-hearted thing they say or do fuel your step.
•You can’t pretend toxic behaviour away or love it away or eat it, drink it, smoke it, depress it or gamble it away. You can’t avoid the impact by being smaller, by crouching or bending or flexing around it. But you can walk away from it – so far away that the most guided toxic fuelled missile that’s thrown at you won’t find you.
•One day they might catch up to you – not catch you, catch up to you – with their growth and their healing but until then, choose your own health and happiness over their need to control you.
•You can love people, let go of them and keep the door open on your terms, for whenever they are ready to treat you with love, respect and kindness. This is one of the hardest lessons but one of the most life-giving and courageous ones.
•Sometimes there are not two sides. There is only one. Toxic people will have you believing that the one truthful side is theirs. It’s not. It never was. Don’t believe their highly diseased, stingy version of love. It’s been drawing your breath, suffocating you and it will slowly kill you if you let it, and the way you ‘let it’ is by standing still while it spirals around you, takes aim and shoots.
•If you want to stay, that’s completely okay, but see their toxic behaviour for what it is – a desperate attempt to keep you little and controlled. Be bigger, stronger, braver than anything that would lessen you. Be authentic and real and give yourself whatever you need to let that be. Be her. Be him. Be whoever you can be if the small minds and tiny hearts of others couldn’t stop you.
•CHAPTER 29 : HOW TO START A NEW LIFE WITH A NEGATIVE PAST ?
•Leaving old ways behind can be daunting because we become used to living a certain way and change can be scary. When the pain of staying the same overcomes the fear of change, you can put in an effort to start a new life. Your changes won’t occur overnight but by taking responsibility for yourself and putting in some effort, you can improve your reputation and your life.
•Working Toward a Better Future
•Set goals for yourself : Think about what it is that you want to achieve that will make your future better than your present and past circumstances. Write down clear, concise goals you can work towards. Make sure your goals are realistic, specific, measurable, time-based and achievable.
•Consider also the things that you DON’T want in your life.
•Start work on one goal at a time.
•Break your goals into small, manageable steps. These will help you accomplish your goals over time.
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Gather a support system. Think of people who will be a good influence on you and help you
•accomplish your goals. If you’re moving to a new place and don’t have many friends, consider maintaining contact with some of your old good friends and also making new ones. Reach out to family who have been loving and supportive of you in the past. Nurture your relationship with them; be honest, trustworthy and kind—this will show them you want to turn over a new leaf.
•Your support system can include figures of authority in your life such as your teachers. Seek their advice and follow through on it, if you believe you can confide in them. Such connections can also help you out in the future when your life is more stable and you need someone to put in a good word for you, such as for a job application or a college reference.
•Avoid negative people. Distance yourself from friends who were negative influences in your life. If such people are not also trying to start over in life, then they might pull you back into habits, behavior or activities that made your past negative. These friends might also mock you and tease you for trying to leave your old ways behind. Ignore them and focus on improving your life.
•Make sure you have people to talk to and to support you through this transition.
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Deal with things one day at a time. Make sure the goals you set take daily living into account. At the beginning of every day, reflect on your schedule for that day and what it is you have to go through, what you need to do to prepare. At the end of the day, reflect on how your day was and what progress you made. It’s okay if it wasn’t as much as you’d like. What matters is that you keep trying.
•Your negative past probably spanned a long period of time. Whether you’re trying to leave your old ways behind or to distance yourself from a negative situation created by others (e.g. an abusive relationship), things probably won’t become completely perfect overnight. Negative habits, behaviors, and methods of coping with stressful situations all take time to develop and time to be replaced with positive, alternative ones.
•Take personal responsibility. You have direct control over your thoughts, your emotions, your behavior and your life. Make the decision to follow your goals and improve your life. Actively choose what to do next. Every morning, look in the mirror and say confidently, ‘I control my life. My choices today make a better tomorrow.
•No matter who was responsible for the events of your past, you have to take responsibility for improving your present and future. Remember that you can only control yourself and your actions but that your actions affect others and the future.
•It can be easy to sit back and blame others for the way you are—don’t use that as an excuse to continue living a life you’re not satisfied with.
•Accepting and Dealing with the Past
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Seek therapy. A therapist will offer you a confidential, non-judgemental space to work through your thoughts, concerns, and problems and help you better define and work towards your goals. Therapists have the skills and resources needed to help you put your life into perspective and see things from angles that may not have occurred to you or others.
•Therapy is not only for those who face problems with mental health. Anyone who wants to can benefit from speaking to a counsellor or therapist. If you are uncomfortable going to a therapist/counsellor because you’re afraid people will make fun of you, discuss your fears with someone you trust, someone you know has been to therapy or research online to understand the process of therapy better.
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Face consequences. Try to separate yourself as much as you can from your old way of life. It can be difficult if you’re trying to turn over a new leaf but are going to be living in the same place and attending the same school or staying at the same job. You may have to face the consequences of your past behavior before your reputation improves.
•You will have to keep trying your hardest to show that you have changed: let your actions speak for themselves.
•Accept any punishments that are dealt to you by authority figures (e.g. your principal or boss) and try to perform to the best of your ability. This will be a way of showing that you can accept responsibility for your actions.
•Make amends with loved ones. You may have grievances with others that are making your present difficult or miserable. Perhaps you had a big fight with your brother and he doesn’t talk to you anymore. Working toward a better relationship may improve your situation and give you peace of mind. Accept if you were to blame for anything that made the situation worse.
•Apologize and indicate that you want to make things better. Tell your loved one that you’re sorry for what happened, explain how you think you hurt him and why this was wrong. Then tell him how you can make it better. A simple script to follow is:
oI’m sorry for…
oThis is wrong because…
oIn the future, I will…
oWill you forgive me?
•Your loved one may not forgive you immediately. Keep trying.
•
Forgive yourself. When you take responsibility for your life, you may be feeling guilty about the part you played (or the part you think you played) in making it negative in the first place. Consider discussing this with a trusted friend. Explain how you feel and why you think you’re feeling that way.
•Your friend might be able to show you a different perspective. If you don’t want to talk about it, try writing your thoughts out, then responding in writing as you would to someone you love. Be honest and forthright.
•Making mistakes does not decrease your worth or make you a bad person. Everybody makes mistakes.
oPreventing a Return to Your Old Way
•
Understand the problem. It may have taken you a long time to reach a point in your life when you decided you needed to start over. Alternatively, you could have been in a negative family situation since you were born and then decided that you needed to make life better. Whatever your case, try to determine the contributing factors to the situation.
•Think about things people said and did, patterns of behavior (your own and others’), tones of voice, and patterns of your own thinking.
•Make a list of negative things you tend to repeat to yourself. Find evidence for and against this thought. Look for facts, rather than opinions. Ask yourself what makes you think this way.
•
Take precautions against making mistakes. Put systems in place that will ensure that you don’t repeat the negative things that happened in the past. Create plans to follow whenever you notice feelings that trigger behavior that you regret. For example, perhaps you’ve noticed that when you feel sad, you tend to drink alcohol: form a plan for dealing with your sadness that will keep you from drinking.
•Talk to a friend and ask him to help you with this problem. When you’re feeling sad, you can call him and ask them to come over. You can both play a sport or do something different. You could even try to talk about what is making you feel sad to help you deal with the situation.
•Try to come up with more than one plan to follow in these situations in case something prevents you from following your original one.
•
Learn from your past. If you understand why things happened the way they did, try to think of solutions that will prevent history from repeating. If other people are the reason that your life was negative, it can be more difficult to change the situation. For example, if you’re a teenager and your parents make your home life difficult, maybe you can encourage your parents to seek help for their lifestyle.
•You know your loved one best. It can be difficult to convince others to seek the help they need to better their life. Think of ways that you can help him yourself, consult with others on how best to approach the situation or read psychology articles related to your issue.
•
Form new habits and routines. You can’t simply stop doing things—you have to start doing other activities to replace them. For example, if you had a habit of coming home from school and smoking in your room, form a routine that will help you achieve your goals instead. Plan ahead and ask a friend to help you, if you like. Once you come home, wash up, eat lunch then immediately leave for the public library to study.
•New habits may be harder to form than new routines. Start by consciously engaging in behavior that you want to become habit. Take for example, trying to maintain your personal hygiene. Make a conscious effort to brush your teeth before going to bed and after waking up in the morning. Set a daily reminder on your phone to help you or ask a parent to check that you’ve brushed your teeth. Once this becomes habit, you’ll feel uncomfortable if you don’t brush your teeth at these times.
•Make better choices. In your day to day life and in the long run, keep your goals in mind when you’re making decisions. Think about how your decision will affect your day and your future. Remember the poor choices you’ve made in the past. Choose that which is better for you.
•Sometimes, you might make a decision that would have worked for you in the past but doesn’t any more. Maybe playing video games used to refresh your mind and now it doesn’t bring you that same peace of mind. This is okay. You can outgrow anything. Don’t force yourself to do something that no longer serves you well.
•-Serious Note :
•Be kind to yourself and be patient with yourself. If you constantly criticize yourself for not accomplishing the things you want to, when you want to, you will have low self-esteem and lower motivation to change your life.
•Consider joining a support group if you don’t like the idea of one-on-one therapy.
•Habits take time to break and form because they are etched in the neural pathways of the brain and you engage in them without you consciously making a decision to do it. Don’t give up trying to break old habits and form new ones.
•Remember that you can only deal with the here and now to change what will come. You can’t change what happened in the past - only the way you think of it. Try to think of lessons you can take with you from the past and avoid making the same mistakes again.
•One of the consequences of your past may be that you run into people whom you no longer want to be friends with. If you can, learn to be polite but distant every time you run into such people. If they try to cause trouble by taunting and provoking you, either ignore them or ask them firmly to stop.
•Chapter 30 : homophobia and sexual orientation
•WHAT IS HOMOPHOBIA?
•Homophobia refers to various negative attitudes toward homosexual individuals that may be expressed at the individual, cultural, and institutional level.
•While homophobia has evolved throughout history, it continues to create a significant negative impact on those who are the unfortunate targets of contempt, prejudice, and violence.
•While the term homophobia itself sounds like the fear of homosexuality or those who identify as LGBTQ+, it’s more indicative of people who have an aversion to others who belong to the gay community.
•HOMOPHOBIA TOWARD SPECIFIC GROUPS
•While homophobia might traditionally have been applied only to those considered to be lesbian or gay, the term also extends to bisexual individuals and transgender and transsexualindividuals. However, there are also specific terms relating to different types of LGBTQ+ individuals that reflect specific orientations.
•Lesbophobia: Lesbophobia refers to homophobia directed toward lesbians (women who are attracted to women).
•Biphobia: Biphobia refers to homophobia directed toward bisexual individuals (individuals who are attracted to people of both sexes whether they are considered a man, woman, non-binary, trans, etc.)
oIn general, based on how homophobia varies by various social and cultural factors, it seems to stem from ignorance or irrational fear of the unfamiliar.
•HISTORY
•The term homophobia is a relatively new phrase (in the course of history) and was first introduced by psychologist George Weinberg in the 1960s. However, the concept of homophobia can be traced back all the way to ancient Greece, which is the time when it was first considered in common culture.
•In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association made the decision to remove homosexuality as a diagnosable mental disorder. Later in 1992, the APA released the following statement:1
•« Whereas homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) calls on all international health organizations, psychiatric organizations, and individual psychiatrists in other countries to urge the repeal in their own countries of legislation that penalizes homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur. »
•Causes
•There are various potential causes of homophobia. For some people there may be one clear cause such as their religious background, others may not be aware of what has caused their homophobia (or even that they are homophobic).
•Religion
•It’s long been the case that religion can be a cause of homophobia. Certain religions teach that homosexual attraction is immoral or a sin. For this reason, those who ascribe to these religions will grow up with this as their cultural understanding. This type of early learning can be difficult to shift or change.
•Repressed Desires
•There has been some research into the notion that people who engage in homophobia may in fact have repressed homosexual desires. In a well-known study conducted at the University of George in 1996,2 it was determined that individuals who expressed more homophobia displayed a greater erectile response when viewing explicit sexual images than did those who did not express homophobic attitudes.
•This result was employed to argue that homophobia may reflect a covering up of internalized desires. This has also been used to explain why some religious leaders may be publicly homophobic but then later revealed to have engaged in homosexual acts.
•Cultural Factors
•In a 2019 study, it was determined that homophobia varied by the following factors: age, ethnicity, geographic area, race, sex, social class, level of education, religion, and partisan identification.3 This indicates that there are multiple potential causes of homophobia and that we need to consider all factors when designing awareness campaigns.
•Institutional Factors
•It has been argued that a competition for power exists and that homophobia is one way for the larger group to oppress and create a power imbalance for minorities. In other words, the dominant group does not wish to give up their privilege, so they create social norms that are pervasive and indicate what is acceptable and what is not.
•Types
•Various types of homophobia have been identified and labeled as researchers seek to understand this psychological phenomenon. The primary types that have commonly been categorized include the following four different types.
•Internalized Homophobia
•Internalized homophobia refers to homophobia that is directed inwardly at yourself. This type of homophobia can arise from a few different situations and can be the most self-destructive from an internalized standpoint.
•You Identify as LGBTQ+ But Feel Ashamed of Your Sexuality
•The first situation is one in which you yourself are a person who identifies as LGBTQ+, but who has internalized homophobia projected upon you by other individuals or society.
•In this case, you may not believe that you deserve the same privileges as those who are heterosexual, or you may settle with accepting less than you deserve.
•As an example, you might feel uncomfortable holding hands or kissing your significant other in public, despite the fact that this is a privilege enjoyed by heterosexual individuals without giving it a second thought.
•You Identify as LGBTQ+ But Ignore Your Sexuality
•The second situation of internalized homophobia involves a person who has experienced a same-sex attraction but who has repressed that attraction because they deem it to be unacceptable (for whatever reason).
•For example, a person raised in a family in which homosexuality was not accepted for religious reasons might choose to ignore their preference and instead live life as a heterosexual individual.
•Interpersonal Homophobia
•Interpersonal homophobia refers to homophobia that takes place between individuals. People who engage in interpersonal homophobia do so based on prejudices that they hold with regard to sexual orientation that result in them experiencing feelings of discomfort or dislike for individuals.
•As an example, a person may experience being shunned by a particular relative when that person learns of their sexual orientation. Interpersonal homophobia may also show up in the workplace, either in the form of discrimination from superiors or hostile or dismissive attitudes from coworkers. The same could be said for a student who might experience homophobia in the classroom or on a college campus.
•Finally, interpersonal homophobia may also show up in more discreet ways. For example, you might be good friends with someone but that person may treat you differently because of your sexual orientation. For example, a friend might openly share details of their heterosexual relationship with you but then not want to hear details about your relationship.
•Discrimination Can Lead to Increased Risk of Hypertension
•Institutional Homophobia
•Institutional homophobia refers to homophobia that originates within institutions, organizations, governments, businesses, etc. This type of homophobia generally leads to discrimination through the enforcement of policies, allocation of resources, and protection of rights in ways that put individuals with a non-heterosexual orientation at a disadvantage.
•For example, a photography business that refuses to take wedding photos for homosexual clients would be engaging in homophobia and discrimination. A law prohibiting marriage between two same-sex individuals is another example of institutionalized homophobia.
•Cultural Homophobia
•Cultural homophobia refers to homophobia that is transmitted through popular culture in the form of norms and social standards that reinforce the idea that all individuals should have a heterosexual orientation.
•For example, television shows, magazine ads, and movies tend to portray mostly heterosexual characters and models.
•Signs
•Are you wondering what homophobia looks like or whether you might be homophobic yourself? Below are some signs to look for. The truth is that many people are homophobic without realizing this fact. In some ways, this is similar to how people can have subconscious racial prejudice.
•You Use Religion to Condemn the LGBTQ+ Community
•You may be homophobic if you use your religion to argue that LGBTQ+ don’t deserve the same basic rights as others.
•You’re Against the Gay Pride Parade
•You may be homophobic if you argue against the need for demonstrations such as the Gay Pride Parade.
•For example, some people might argue that there is no need for a Gay Pride Parade when there is no straight pride parade. This ignores the fact that one group is marginalized and suppressed and fighting for recognition and basic human. Doing this is similar to saying « All Lives Matter » in response to « Black Lives Matter. »
•If You Are a Man and Avoid Doing Things that Make You « Seem Gay »
•If you are a man and are afraid to do certain things that are traditionally viewed as feminine, for fear of appearing « gay, » then you may be secretly homophobic.
•This includes maybe making complimentary statements to other men while following your compliment with the phrase « no homo. »
•You Don’t Acknowledge Homophobic Behavior
•You may be homophobic if you refuse to stand up for gay rights or speak out when someone else is acting in a homophobic manner.
•This is similar to refusing to acknowledge or support the Black Lives Matter movement for fear of offending people or linking yourself to the movement.
•Impact
•There can be various effects of the different kinds of homophobia on LGBTQ+ individuals. Below are some of the common effects:
•Internalized shame and repression of your sexual orientation
•Believing negative LGBTQ+ stereotypes about yourself
•Denying or ignoring your sexual orientation
•Being the victim of oppression, discrimination, insults, violence, and abuse
•Depression and an increased risk of suicide (especially in younger people)
•Increased stress and lack of social support
•Social anxiety out of the fear of encountering people who are homophobic
•Rejection from others (family, friends, or coworkers)
•Difficulty obtaining adequate health coverage and quality services
•Inability to marry depending on legislation
•Negative impact on income and employment
•How to Reduce Homophobia
•Are you interested in learning about different ways to reduce homophobia in your community, within your organization, among your friends and family, or even within yourself?
•Or are you wondering what efforts already exist to combat homophobia at a national or international level? Below are some things that you could do to help and also initiatives to know about.
•Institutional Homophobia
•Engage in political activism such as attending protests or signing petitions
•Make yourself aware of issues relating to legislation and homophobia and engage in political activism related to those issues
•Encourage schools and colleges to teach students about prominent historical figures who were homosexual to promote understanding and inclusion
•Report discrimination that you encounter through businesses
•Cultural Homophobia
•Participate in events such as the Gay Pride Parade to bring awareness to differences and the importance of acceptance
•Spread awareness about homophobia by sharing media campaigns
•If you are in a position of creating media, be sure to include images reflecting varying sexual orientations
•Interpersonal Homophobia
•Post on social media about important observances such as the International Day Against Homophobia (the very first day was May 17, 2005)
•If you are a parent, understand the role of bullying in schools in spreading homophobia and teach your children how to treat others
•Be willing to listen and learn about the experiences of those in the LGBTQ+ community
•Be open to understanding the challenges that those in the LGBTQ+ community face on a daily basis. Understand that their experiences are different from yours and that they face different problems than you
•If you are a teacher or school official, promote a positive school environment that encourages respect to be shown toward all students
•Include information relevant to LGBTQ+ students when discussing health issues or other relevant topics at school
•Report harassment and call for help if you feel that you or someone else is in danger
•Internalized Homophobia
•Make sure that you have a strong social support system to help combat the impact of homophobia. Surrounding yourself with people who love and understand you will help to build your confidence in yourself
•Work on your self-esteem and spend time with people who make you feel comfortable being who you are rather than those who expect you to behave in a way that makes them feel comfortable
•Coping
•How can you cope with being the victim of homophobia? Below are some tips to help you manage the reactions of others and how you respond in a way that promotes understanding instead of division.
•Find a Support System
•It’s always important to find people who support and love you for who you are. If your friends and family are not supportive, consider joining a support group (local or online) to meet other people going through the same struggles as you.
•Challenge Homophobic Beliefs
•While this is easier said than done, try to eliminate negative self-talk and don’t buy into stereotypes that harm you and your self-esteem.
•If you are dealing with homophobia directed at you by someone who claims that their religion forbids it, you can choose to try to share different perspectives.
•For example, you could share about religions that promote full acceptance and inclusivity or talk about how you just want to have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual individuals.
•Consider Going to Therapy
•If homophobia has had a negative effect on your mental health, consider seeing a mental health professional such as a psychologist or counselor who can help you to develop coping strategies.
•Speak Up When You Are Being Mistreated
•If someone is directing homophobic comments toward you, avoid becoming defensive. Instead, try to respond in a positive way so that you are not stooping to their level (so to speak). If responding positively feels like too much of an effort, you could choose instead to simply walk away from the situation or the person.
•If it’s a person who you can’t walk away from for some reason (e.g., a family member, a teacher, a classmate), find a person in authority and tell them what is going on. Homophobic insults are considered harassment or abuse and need not be tolerated.
•If someone has made you feel uncomfortable with their comments, but you don’t think they are aware of their homophobia, consider sharing with them how their words are affecting you. Talking openly about your feelings may help them to realize the impact that they are having, without needing to get upset or be confrontational.
•Get to Know Members of the LGBTQ+ Community
•If you are the person trying to cope with your own homophobia, consider getting to know an LGBTQ+ person on a personal level.
•When a person ceases to be a stereotype and is instead viewed as an individual, it will be harder for you to hold on to incorrect negative assumptions.
•Arguments Against Homophobia
•Are you looking for some good arguments against homophobia for the next time someone expresses this view?
•Here are some talking points to keep in mind. Remember that you likely won’t change someone’s mind with one conversation, but if you keep talking to them, you might eventually shift some of their long-held beliefs.
•Sometimes we hold on to beliefs because of traditions. The idea that marriage should only be between a man and woman is a tradition and nothing more. Instead, marriage should be about joining two people together who are in love.
•When someone argues that their religion speaks out against homosexuality, you can argue that religion has promoted many other acts (e.g., slavery) that are no longer considered acceptable today.
•The concept that homosexuality is unnatural does not mean that it is necessarily wrong. Many things may go against what we traditionally view as natural, but if they are not hurting anyone then they should be accepted.
•A Word of support
•Whether you are a victim of homophobia or concerned about how homophobia is affecting others, there are actions that you can take to improve your situation. Know that you are not alone and that change can happen both at an individual level as well as at a community, institutional, and cultural level.
•While change may take longer than you would like, it is true that every step toward inclusivity and acceptance means one step away from hatred, violence, contempt, anger, and inequality. Once you make a commitment to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem (whether that is internalized, interpersonal, institutional, or cultural-based), you will begin to appreciate how even the smallest act can make a difference.
oWhile everyone is raised with different ethics and morals, questioning the status quo and thinking for yourself reflects a higher level of understanding and appreciation for the fact that everyone deserves to live their lives free of fear for simply being themselves. Homophobia is what stands in the way for many individuals to do something as simple as that and the first step toward change is to realize that fact.
oNow let’s talk about sexual orientation
•WHAT IS HOMOSEXUALITY?
•Homosexuality refers to attraction between people who are the same sex. It comes from the Greek word HOMOS, meaning “the same.”
•It is a sexual orientation, as opposed to a gender identity such as male, female, and non-binary. People who are homosexual could refer to themselves as gay, lesbian, LGBTQ, queer, or a number of other terms.
•There is no one way to experience same-sex attraction. Many people who are gay develop feelings for people of the same sex in their teenage years. However, it can take some time to find what you’re most attracted to or to be comfortable in acknowledging it to yourself and others. People experience sexual, romantic, and emotional feelings toward another person in different ways at different points in their lives.
•OTHER NAMES FOR HOMOSEXUALITY
•There are many different synonyms for “homosexuality,” as the term itself is outdated.
•The most common synonym is “gay” or “lesbian.” Gay usually means a man being attracted to another man, while lesbian means a woman is attracted to another woman. “Queer” is a broad term that refers to someone who is not heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex) or cisgender (having a gender identity that corresponds with their assigned birth gender). “LGBTQ” is an acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning. It usually defines a community of individuals rather than a specific person.
•MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY
•Unfortunately, there is a lot of homophobia in the United States and around the world. In many countries, it’s illegal to be gay. People who are anti-gay have spread several harmful myths demonizing homosexuality. Among them include:
•Myth 1: LGBTQ Members Make Bad Parents
•Many people who are gay have loving families and raise happy, successful children. In fact, a study done in 2014 stated that there were few differences in family structure or social development between same-sex parent households and opposite-sex parent households.
•Myth 2: Being Gay Is a Choice and Can Be Fixed
•Being gay is not a choice, or something that can be changed. Most scientists agree that sexuality is the result of several factors, including biology and environment.
•Conversion therapy, or efforts to make someone change their sexuality, is potentially harmful and has been rejected by mainstream American medical organizations. The American Medical Association is against therapy that is “based on the assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the person should change their orientation.
•It’s important to know that there is nothing wrong with loving people of the same gender as you. You might want to let your loved ones know if you feel same-sex attraction, or you might not be ready to share this yet. It’s entirely up to you, but no one can invalidate your identity.
•HELPING YOUR LOVED ONES UNDERSTAND HOMOSEXUALITY
•Coming out, or telling people in your life about your sexual identity, is a different experience for everyone. It’s not always easy, and you don’t have to come out if you’re not ready.
•It might be an extended process that happens over months of years rather than one conversation. Whatever you decide to do is valid. Take time to think about your intentions before you decide to come out to your loved ones.
•-SERIOUS NOTE :
•Coming out might help build understanding in your relationships, or it might help you build new ones. Remember, there’s no requirement that you need to come out. In fact, you need to come out to yourself and foster acceptance for yourself before you share who you are with other people, HOMOSEXUALITY IS A NORMAL THING, YOU CAN FIND IT IN NATURE IN GENERAL.
•A choice or not, isn’t my business.
•It’s also vital to build a support system around you. You might find this by building relationships with other members of the LBGTQ community, even joining a club or a support group. You might even find role models in media and popular culture.
•Remember that your identity is your own. It is defined by you and no one else.
•HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE GAY, STRAIGHT, OR SOMETHING IN BETWEEN?
•Figuring out your orientation can be complicated.
•In a society where most of us are expected to be straight, it can be difficult to take a step back and ask whether you’re gay, straight, or something else.
•You’re the only person who can figure out what your orientation truly is.
•IT ALL STARTED WITH A SEX DREAM — DOES THIS MEAN WHAT I THINK IT MEANS?
•Many of us grow up to assume that we’re straight only to find out, later, that we’re not.
•Sometimes, we realize this because we have sex dreams, sexual thoughts, or feelings of intense attraction toward people of the same gender as us.
•However, none of those things — sex dreams, sexual thoughts, or even feelings of intense attraction — necessarily “prove” your orientation.
•Having a sex dream about someone of the same gender as you doesn’t necessarily make you gay. Having a sex dream about someone of the opposite gender doesn’t necessarily make you straight.
•There are a few different forms of attraction. When it comes to orientation, we usually refer to romantic attraction (who you have strong romantic feelings for and desire a romantic relationship with) and sexual attraction (who you want to engage in sexual activity with).
•Sometimes we’re romantically and sexually attracted to the same groups of people. Sometimes we’re not.
•For example, it’s possible to be romantically attracted to men but sexually attracted to men, women, and nonbinary people. This sort of situation is called “mixed orientation” or “cross orientation” — and it’s totally OK.
•Bear this in mind as you consider your sexual and romantic feelings.
•IS THERE A QUIZ I CAN TAKE?
•If only Buzzfeed had all the answers! Unfortunately, there isn’t a test to help you figure out your sexual orientation.
•And even if there were, who’s to say who qualifies as gay or straight?
•Every single straight person is unique. Every single gay person is unique. Every person, of every orientation, is unique.
•You don’t have to fulfill certain “criteria” to qualify as gay, straight, bisexual, or anything else.
•This is an aspect of your identity, not a job application — and you can identify with whatever term fits you!
•THEN HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?
•There’s no “right” way to come to terms with your orientation. However, there are a few things you can do to explore your feelings and help figure things out.
•Above all else, let yourself feel your feelings. It’s hard to understand your feelings if you ignore them.
•Even now, there’s a lot of shame and stigma around orientation. People who aren’t straight are often made to feel like they should repress their feelings.
•Remember, your orientation is valid, and your feelings are valid.
•Learn about the different terms for orientations. Find out what they mean, and consider whether any of them resonate with you.
•Consider doing further research by reading forums, joining LGBTQIA+ support groups, and learning about these communities online. This could help you understand the terms better.
•If you start identifying with a certain orientation and later feel differently about it, that’s OK. It’s all right to feel differently and for your identity to shift.
•How can I ever be sure that my orientation is X?
•That’s a good question. Unfortunately, there’s no perfect answer.
•Yes, sometimes people do get their orientation “wrong.” Plenty of people thought they were one thing for the first half of their life, only to find that wasn’t true.
•It’s also possible to think you’re gay when you’re actually bi, or think you’re bi when you’re actually gay, for example.
•It’s totally OK to say, “Hey, I was wrong about this, and now I actually feel more comfortable identifying as X.”
•It’s important to remember that your orientation may change over time. Sexuality is fluid. Orientation is fluid.
•Many people identify as one orientation for their entire life, while others find it changes over time. And that’s OK!
•Your orientation may change, but that doesn’t make it any less valid over time, nor does it mean you’re wrong or confused.
•Is there anything that ‘causes’ orientation?
•Why are some people gay? Why are some people straight? We don’t know.
•Some people feel they were born this way, that their orientation was always just a part of them.
•Others feel their sexuality and orientation changes over time. Remember what we said about orientation being fluid?
•Whether orientation is caused by nature, nurture, or a mix of the two isn’t really important. What is important is that we accept others as they are, and ourselves as we are.
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•To help you be well, we’ll send you honest talk about women’s bodies, and beauty, nutrition, and fitness advice.
•What does this mean for my sexual and reproductive health?
•Most sex education in schools focuses solely on heterosexual and cisgender (that is, not transgender, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary) people.
•This leaves the rest of us out of it.
•It’s important to know you can get sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and, in some cases, become pregnant regardless of what your sexual orientation is.
•STIs can transfer between people no matter what their genitals look like.
•They can transfer to and from an anus, penis, vagina, and mouth. STIs can even spread through unwashed sex toys and hands.
•Pregnancy isn’t reserved for straight people, either. It can happen whenever two fertile people have penis-in-vagina sex.
•So, if it’s possible for you to become pregnant — or impregnate someone — look into contraception options.
•Still have questions? Check out our guide to safer sex.
•You may also consider scheduling an appointment with an LGBTIQA+-friendly doctor to talk about your sexual health.
•Do I have to tell people?
•You don’t have to tell anyone anything that you don’t want to.
•If you feel uncomfortable talking about it, that’s OK. Not disclosing your orientation doesn’t make you a liar. You don’t owe that information to anyone.
•What implications can this have?
•Telling people can be great, but keeping it private can be great, too. It all depends on your personal situation.
•On the one hand, telling people might help you feel better. Many queer people feel relief and a sense of freedom once they come out. Being “out” can also help you find an LGBTQIA+ community that can support you.
•On the other hand, coming out isn’t always safe. Homophobia — and other forms of bigotry — are alive and well. Queer people are still discriminated against at work, in their communities, and even in their families.
•So, while coming out can feel freeing, it’s also OK to take things slow and move at your own pace.
•How can I go about telling someone?
•Sometimes, it’s best to start by telling someone who you’re sure will be accepting, such as an open-minded family member or friend. If you’d like, you could ask them to be there with you when you tell others.
•If you’re not comfortable talking about it in person, you can tell them via text, phone, email, or handwritten message. Whatever you prefer.
•If you want to talk to them in person but are struggling to broach the topic, perhaps start by watching an LGBTQIA+ movie or bringing up something about an openly queer celebrity. This could help you segue into the conversation.
•You may find it helpful to start with something like:
•“After thinking about it a lot, I’ve realized that I’m gay. This means I’m attracted to men.”
•“Since you’re important to me, I want to let you know that I’m bisexual. I’d appreciate your support.”
•“I’ve figured out that I’m actually pansexual, which means I’m attracted to people of any gender.”
•You could end the conversation by asking for their support and directing them to a resource guide, perhaps online, if they need it.
•There are many resources out there for people who want to support their queer friends and family members.
•Also let them know whether you mind them sharing this news with others or not.
•What should I do if it doesn’t go well?
•Sometimes the people you tell don’t react the way you want them to.
•They may ignore what you said or laugh it off as a joke. Some people might try to convince you that you’re straight, or say you’re just confused.
•If this happens, there are a few things you can do:
•Surround yourself with supportive people. Whether it’s LGBTQIA+ people you’ve met online or in person, your friends, or accepting family members, try to spend time with them and talk to them about the situation.
•Remember that you’re not the one in the wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you or your orientation. The only wrong thing here is the intolerance.
•If you want, give them space to improve their reaction. By this, I mean that they may have realized their initial reaction was wrong. Send them a message to let them know you’re willing to talk when they’ve had some time to process what you said.
•It’s not easy to deal with loved ones who don’t accept your orientation, but it’s important to remember that there are many people out there who love and accept you.
•If you’re in an unsafe situation — for example, if you were evicted from your home or if the people you live with threaten you — try to find an LGBTQIA+ shelter in your area, or arrange to stay with a supportive friend for a while.
•If you’re a young person in need of help, contact The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. They provide help and support for people who are in crisis or feeling suicidal, or for people who simply need someone to talk to and vent to.
•Where can I find support?
•Consider joining in-person groups so you can meet people face-to-face. Join an LGBTQIA+ group at your school or college, and look for meetups for LGBTQIA+ people in your area.
•You can also find support online:
•Join Facebook groups, subreddits, and online forums for LGBTQIA+ people.
•The Trevor Project has a number of hotlines and resources for people in need.
•The Centers for Disease Control and PreventionTrusted Source has compiled resources on LGBTQIA+ health.
•The Asexual Visibility and Education Network wiki site has a number of entries relating to sexuality and orientation.
•The bottom line
•There’s no easy, foolproof way to figure out your orientation. It can be a difficult and emotionally tough process.
•Ultimately, the only person who gets to label your identity is you. You’re the only authority on your own identity. And no matter what label you choose to use — if you use any label at all — it should be respected.
•Remember that there are plenty of resources, organizations, and individuals out there who are willing to support and help you. All you need to do is find them and reach out.
•CHAPTER 31 : THE BENEFITS OF BEING OPEN-MINDED
•Open-mindedness is a characteristic that involves being receptive to a wide variety of ideas, arguments, and information. Being open-minded is generally considered a positive quality. It is a necessary ability in order to think critically and rationally.
•Ad
•If you are not open to other ideas and perspectives, it is difficult to see all of the factors that contribute to problems or come up with effective solutions. In an increasingly polarized world, being able to step outside your comfort zone and consider other perspectives and ideas is important.
•This doesn’t mean that being open-minded is necessarily easy. Being open to new ideas and experiences can sometimes lead to confusion and cognitive dissonance when we learn new things that conflict with existing beliefs. However, being able to change and revise outdated or incorrect beliefs is an important part of learning and personal growth.
•If you want to be able to enjoy the benefits of being open-minded, there are things that you can do to build this ability.
•What Does It Mean to Be Open-Minded?
•There are a few different aspects to open-mindedness:
•In everyday use, the term open-minded is often used as a synonym for being non-prejudiced or tolerant.
•From a psychological perspective, the term is used to describe how willing people are to consider other perspectives or to try out new experiences.
•Open-mindedness can also involve asking questions and being active about searching for information that challenges your beliefs.
•It also encompasses the belief that other people should be free to express their beliefs and arguments, even if you do not necessarily agree with those views.
•The opposite of open-minded is closed-minded or dogmatic. People who are more closed-minded are usually only willing to consider their own viewpoints and are not receptive to other ideas.
•Even if you consider yourself a fairly open-minded person, there are probably certain topics on which you take a much harder stance. Things that you are passionate about or social issues, for example. Having convictions can be a great thing, but strong belief does not negate an open-mind. Being open-minded means having the ability to consider other perspectives and trying to be empathetic to other people, even when you disagree with them.
•Of course, open-mindedness has its limits. It does not imply that you must sympathize with every ideology. But making an effort to understand the factors that might have led to those ideas can be helpful in finding ways to persuade people to change their minds.
•Characteristics of Open-Minded People
•They are curious to hear what others think
•They are able to have their ideas challenged
•They don’t get angry when they are wrong
•They have empathy for other people
•They think about what other people are thinking
•They are humble about their own knowledge and expertise
•They want to hear what other people have to say
•They believe others have a right to share their beliefs and thoughts
•The Benefits of Being Open-Minded
•What are some of the benefits of being more open-minded?
•Gaining Insight: Challenging your existing beliefs and considering how new ideas can give you fresh insights not only about the world; it can also teach you new things about yourself.
•Having New Experiences: Being open to other ideas can also open you up to new experiences.
•Achieving Personal Growth: Keeping an open mind can help you grow as a person. You learn new things about the world and the people around you.
•Becoming Mentally Strong: Staying open to new ideas and experiences can help you become a stronger, more vibrant person. Your experiences and knowledge continue to build on one another.
•Feeling More Optimistic: One of the problems with staying closed-minded is that it often leads to a greater sense of negativity. Being open can help inspire a more optimistic attitude toward life and the future.
•Learning New Things: It’s hard to keep learning when you surround yourself with the same old ideas. Pushing your boundaries and reaching out to people with different perspectives and experiences can help keep your mind fresh.
•Factors That Influence Open-Mindedness
•There are a number of things that can affect how open- or closed-minded a person is:
•Personality
•In the five-factor model of human personality, openness to experience is one of the five broad dimensions that make up human personality. This personality trait shares many of the same qualities with open-mindedness, such as being willing to consider new experiences and ideas and engaging in self-examination.
•Expertise
•Research suggests that people expect experts to be more dogmatic about their area of expertise. When people feel that they are more knowledgeable or skilled in an area than other people, they are less likely to be open-minded.
•Researchers have found that giving participants false positive or false negative feedback about their performance on a task influenced how closed-minded they were about considering an alternative political opinion.
•How Hard Is It to Become an Expert at Something?
•Comfort With Ambiguity
•People have varying levels of comfort when dealing with uncertainty. Too much ambiguity leaves people feeling uncomfortable and even distressed. Dogmatism is sometimes an attempt to keep things simpler and easier to understand. By rejecting alternative ideas that might challenge the status quo, people are able to minimize uncertainty and risk —or at least their perception of risk. Older research does support this idea, suggesting that people who are closed-minded are less able to tolerate cognitive inconsistencies.
•While some of the factors that go into determining how open-minded you are might be inborn characteristics, there are things that you can do to cultivate a more open mindset.
•How to Be More Open-Minded
•Learning how to be more open-minded is possible, but it can be a bit of a challenge. In many ways, our minds are designed to view concepts as wholes. We develop an idea or a category of knowledge, which the psychologist Jean Piaget referred to as a schema. As we come across new information, we tend to want to sort it into one of our existing schemas in a mental process known as assimilation.
•Sometimes, however, the new things we learned don’t quite fit in with what we already know. In this instance, we have to adjust our understanding of the world in a process known as accommodation. Essentially, we have to change how we think in order to deal with this new information.
•Assimilation tends to be a fairly easy process; after all, you’re just filing new information into your existing filing system. Accommodation is more difficult. You’re not just putting something into an existing file; you’re creating a whole new filing system.
•Sometimes new information requires rethinking the things you thought you knew. It requires reevaluating your memories and past experiences in light of what you’ve learned.
•In order to do this, you have to be able to set aside your judgments, take a serious look at the existing evidence, and admit that you were wrong. That process can be difficult, confusing, and sometimes painful or life-changing.
•It takes a lot of mental effort, but here are some of the things you can do to train your brain to be more open-minded.
•Fight the Confirmation Bias
•A cognitive tendency known as the confirmation bias can be one of the biggest contributors to closed-mindedness. Overcoming this tendency, however, can be a bit tricky. The confirmation bias involves paying more attention to things that confirm our existing beliefs, while at the same time discounting evidence that challenges what we think.
•Being aware of the confirmation bias is perhaps one of the best ways to combat it. As you encounter information, take a moment to consider how this bias might affect how you evaluate the information. If it seems like you are readily accepting something because it supports your existing arguments, take a moment to consider some arguments that might challenge your ideas. Learning how to evaluate sources of information and learning how to be an informed consumer of scientific stories in the news can also be helpful.
•How Cognitive Biases Influence How You Think and Act
•Ask Questions
•Most people like to believe in their own sense of intellectual virtue. And in many ways, it is important to be able to have trust and faith in your own choices. But it is good to remember that what might seem like being resolute and committed to certain ideals may actually be a form of closed-minded stubbornness.
•Part of being open-minded involves being able to question not just others, but also yourself. As you encounter new information, ask yourself a few key questions:
•How much do you really know about the topic?
•How trustworthy is the source?
•Have you considered other ideas?
•Do you have any biases that might be influencing your thinking?
•In many cases, this sort of self-questioning might help deepen your commitment to your beliefs. Or it might provide insights that you hadn’t considered before.
•Give It Time
•When you hear something you disagree with, your first instinct may be to disagree or just shut down. Instead of listening or considering the other perspective, you enter a mode of thinking where you are just trying to prove the other person wrong, sometimes before you even have a chance to consider all of the points.
•It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotional response you have to something. You disagree, you don’t like what you’ve heard, and you might even want the other person to know just how wrong they are. The problem with that sort of quick-draw response is that you are acting in the heat of the moment, not taking the time to really consider all aspects of the problem, and probably not arguing all that effectively.
•The alternative is to give yourself a brief period to consider the arguments and evaluate the evidence. After you hear something, take a few moments to consider the following points before you respond:
•Are your own arguments based upon multiple sources?
•Are you willing to revise your opinion in the face of conflictingevidence?
•Will you hold on to your opinion even if the evidence discounts it?
•Open-mindedness requires more cognitive effort than dogmatism. Just being willing to consider other perspectives can be a challenge, but it can be even more difficult when you find yourself having to revise your own beliefs as a result.
•Practice Intellectual Humility
•Even if you are an expert on a topic, try to keep in mind that the brain is much more imperfect and imprecise than most of us want to admit. As the research has shown, being knowledgeable about something can actually contribute to closed-mindedness.
•When people think that they are an authority on a topic or believe that they already know all there is to know, they are less willing to take in new information and entertain new ideas. This not only limits your learning potential, but it can also be an example of a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. This bias leads people to overestimate their own knowledge of a topic, making them blind to their own ignorance.
•True experts tend to actually be more humble about their knowledge; they know that there is always more to learn. So if you think you know it all, chances are that you probably don’t.
•As science communicator and television personality Bill Nye once said, “Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don’t.” Without an open mind, you’ll never have the opportunity to consider those other perspectives and experiences. You’ll never get to know what others know.
•A Word of support
•Being open-minded can be hard. It doesn’t help that our minds are often geared toward conserving cognitive energy by relying on shortcuts and simplification. Even if being open-minded does not come naturally to you, there are things that you can do to cultivate a receptive attitude that leaves you open to new perspectives, knowledge, people, and experiences.
•CHAPTER 32 : STEPS TO ACHIEVE YOUR DREAM
•“VISION IS THE SPECTACULAR THAT INSPIRES US TO CARRY OUT THE MUNDANE.” —Chris Widener
•Can achievement be broken down into steps? It isn’t always that clean and easy, but those who achieve great things usually go through much of the same process, with many of the items listed below as part of that process. So if you have been struggling with achievement, look through the following. Begin to apply them and you will be on the road to achieving your dream.
•STEP 1: DREAM IT.
•Everything begins in the heart and mind. Every great achievement began in the mind of one person. They dared to dream, to believe that it was possible. Take some time to allow yourself to ask “What if?” Think big. Don’t let negative thinking discourage you. You want to be a “dreamer.” Dream of the possibilities for yourself, your family and for others. If you had a dream that you let grow cold, re-ignite the dream! Fan the flames. Life is too short to let it go.
•STEP 2: BELIEVE IT.
•Yes, your dream needs to be big. It needs to be something that is seemingly beyond your capabilities. But it also must be believable. You must be able to say that if certain things take place, if others help, if you work hard enough, though it is a big dream, it can still be done. Good example: A person with no college education can dream that he will build a $50 million-a-year company. That is big, but believable. Bad example: That a 90-year-old woman with arthritis will someday run a marathon in under three hours. It is big all right, but also impossible. She should instead focus on building a $50 million-a-year business! And she better get a move on!
•STEP 3: SEE IT.
•The great achievers have a habit. They “see” things. They picture themselves walking around their CEO office in their new $25 million corporate headquarters, even while they are sitting on a folding chair in their garage “headquarters.” Great free-throw shooters in the NBA picture the ball going through the basket. PGA golfers picture the ball going straight down the fairway. World-class speakers picture themselves speaking with energy and emotion. All of this grooms the mind to control the body to carry out the dream.
•STEP 4: TELL IT.
•One reason many dreams never go anywhere is because the dreamer keeps it all to himself. It is a quiet dream that only lives inside of his mind. The one who wants to achieve their dreammust tell that dream to many people. One reason: As we continually say it, we begin to believe it more and more. If we are talking about it then it must be possible. Another reason: It holds us accountable. When we have told others, it spurs us on to actually doing it so we don’t look foolish.
•STEP 5: PLAN IT.
•Every dream must take the form of a plan. The old saying that you “get what you plan for” is so true. Your dream won’t just happen. You need to sit down, on a regular basis, and plan out your strategy for achieving the dream. Think through all of the details. Break the whole plan down into small, workable parts. Then set a time frame for accomplishing each task on your “dream plan.”
•STEP 6: WORK IT.
•Boy, wouldn’t life be grand if we could quit before this one! Unfortunately the successful are usually the hardest workers. While the rest of the world is sitting on their sofas watching reruns of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, achievers are working on their goal—achieving their dream. I have an equation that I work with: Your short-term tasks, multiplied by time, equal your long-term accomplishments. If you work on it each day, eventually you will achieve your dream. War and Peace was written, in longhand, page by page.
•STEP 7: ENJOY IT.
•When you have reached your goal and you are living your dream, be sure to enjoy it. In fact, enjoy the trip, too. Give yourself some rewards along the way. Give yourself a huge reward when you get there. Help others enjoy it. Be gracious and generous. Use your dream to better others. Then go back to No. 1. And dream a little bigger this time!
•CHAPTER 33 : PRACTICAL TIPS TO ACHIEVE A POSITIVE MINDSET
•The “power of positive thinking” is a popular concept, and sometimes it can feel a little cliché. But the physical and mental benefits of positive thinking have been demonstrated by multiple scientific studies. A positive mindset can give you more confidence, improve your mood, and even reduce the likelihood of developing conditions such as hypertension, depression and other stress-related disorders.
•All this sounds great, but what does the “power of positive thinking” really mean?
•You can define positive thinking as positive imagery, positive self-talk or general optimism, but these are all still general, ambiguous concepts. If you want to be effective in thinking and being more positive, you’ll need concrete examples to help you through the process.
•Here they are :
•Start the day with a positive affirmation.
•How you start the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. Have you ever woken up late, panicked, and then felt like nothing good happened the rest of the day? This is likely because you started out the day with a negative emotion and a pessimistic view that carried into every other event you experienced. Instead of letting this dominate you, start your day with positive affirmations. Talk to yourself in the mirror, even if you feel silly, with statements like, “Today will be a good day” or “I’m going to be awesome today.” You’ll be amazed how much your day improves.
•2. Focus on the good things, however small.
•Almost invariably, you’re going to encounter obstacles throughout the day—there’s no such thing as a perfect day. When you encounter such a challenge, focus on the benefits, no matter how slight or unimportant they seem. For example, if you get stuck in traffic, think about how you now have time to listen to the rest of your favorite podcast. If the store is out of the food you want to prepare, think about the thrill of trying something new.
•3. Find humor in bad situations.
•Allow yourself to experience humor in even the darkest or most trying situations. Remind yourself that this situation will probably make for a good story later and try to crack a joke about it. Say you’re laid off; imagine the most absurd way you could spend your last day, or the most ridiculous job you could pursue next—like kangaroo handler or bubblegum sculptor.
•You aren’t perfect. You’re going to make mistakes and experience failure in multiple contexts, at multiple jobs and with multiple people. Instead of focusing on how you failed, think about what you’re going to do next time—turn your failure into a lesson. Conceptualize this in concrete rules. For example, you could come up with three new rules for managing projects as a result.
•5. Transform negative self-talk into positive self-talk.
•Negative self-talk can creep up easily and is often hard to notice. You might think I’m so bad at this or I shouldn’t have tried that. But these thoughts turn into internalized feelings and might cement your conceptions of yourself. When you catch yourself doing this, stop and replace those negative messages with positive ones. For example, I’m so bad at this becomes Once I get more practice, I’ll be way better at this. I shouldn’t have tried becomes That didn’t work out as planned—maybe next time.
•6. Focus on the present.
•I’m talking about the present—not today, not this hour, only this exact moment. You might be getting chewed out by your boss, but what in this exact moment is happening that’s so bad? Forget the comment he made five minutes ago. Forget what he might say five minutes from now. Focus on this one, individual moment. In most situations, you’ll find it’s not as bad as you imagine it to be. Most sources of negativity stem from a memory of a recent event or the exaggerated imagination of a potential future event. Stay in the present moment.
•7. Find positive friends, mentors and co-workers.
•When you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll hear positive outlooks, positive stories and positive affirmations. Their positive words will sink in and affect your own line of thinking, which then affects your words and similarly contributes to the group. Finding positive people to fill up your life can be difficult, but you need to eliminate the negativity in your life before it consumes you. Do what you can to improve the positivity of others, and let their positivity affect you the same way.
•Almost anybody in any situation can apply these lessons to their own lives and increase their positive attitude. As you might imagine, positive thinking offers compounding returns, so the more often you practice it, the greater benefits you’ll realize
•Chapter 34 : The maghreban ID and the european slavery of The Ottomans underthe mask of relegion and islam for their goods and their benefits Ofcourse.
•The word maghreban ( a western, the west, )
•Well known names such as St Augustin, the son of Santa Monica, who are originally from north Africa ( Algeria,Annaba specificly).
•History :
•Further information: Maghreb placename etymology
•
•Hippo Regius on the map of Roman Numidia, Atlas Antiquus, H. Kiepert, 1869
•Hippo is the latinization of ʿpwn (Punic),
•probably related to the word ûbôn, meaning « harbor ». The town was first settled by Phoenicians from Tyre around the 12th century BC. To distinguish it from Hippo Diarrhytus (the modern Bizerte, in Tunisia), the Romans later referred to it as Hippo Regius (« the Royal Hippo ») because it was one of the residences of the Numidian kings. Its nearby river was latinized as the Ubus and the bay to its east was known as Hippo Bay (Latin: Hipponensis Sinus).
•A maritime city near the mouth of the river Ubus, it became a Roman colonia which prospered and became a major city in Roman Africa. It is perhaps most famous as the bishopric of Saint Augustine of Hippo in his later years. In AD 430, the Vandals advanced eastwards along the North African coast and laid siege to the walled city of Hippo Regius. Inside, Saint Augustine and his priests prayed for relief from the invaders, knowing full well that the fall of the city would spell death or conversion to the Arian heresy for much of the Christian population. On 28 August 430, three months into the siege, St. Augustine (who was 75 years old) died, perhaps from starvation or stress, as the wheat fields outside the city lay dormant and unharvested. After 14 months, hunger and the inevitable diseases were ravaging both the city inhabitants and the Vandals outside the city walls. The city fell to the Vandals and King Geiseric made it the first capital of the Vandal Kingdom until the capture of Carthage in 439.
•It was conquered by the Eastern Roman Empire in 534 and was kept under Roman rule until 698, when it fell to the Muslims; the Arabs rebuilt the town in the eighth century. The city’s later history is treated under its modern (Arabic and colonial) names.
•About three kilometres distant in the eleventh century, the Berber Zirids established the town of Beleb-el-Anab, which the Spaniards occupied for some years in the sixteenth century, as the French did later, in the reign of Louis XIV. France took this town again in 1832. It was renamed Bône or Bona, and became one of the government centres for the Constantine (departement) in Algeria.It had 37,000 inhabitants, of whom 10,800 were original inhabitants, consisting of 9,400 Muslims and 1,400 naturalized Jews. 15,700 were French and 10,500 foreigners, including many Italians.
•Hippo was an ancient bishopric, one of many suffragans in the former Roman province of Numidia, since French colonial rule a part of the residential see of Constantine. It contains some ancient ruins, a hospital built by the Little Sisters of the Poor and a fine basilica dedicated to St. Augustine. Under St. Augustine there were at least three monasteries in the diocese besides the episcopal monastery.
•The diocese was established around 250 AD. Only these six bishops of Hippo are known:
•Saint Theogenes(256? – martyr 259?)
•Saint Leontius(? – 303?)
•Fidentius (? – martyr ?304)
•Valerius (388? – 396), who ordained St. Augustine
•the « Doctor of Grace », Saint Augustine (354 – 28 August 430, coadjutor in 395, bishop in 396)
•Heraclius (coadjutor in 426, bishop in 430).
•It was suppressed around 450 AD.
•COUNCIL OF HIPPO
•Main article: Synod of Hippo
•Three church councils were held at Hippo (393, 394, 426)and more synods – also in 397 (two sessions, June and September) and 401, all under Aurelius.
•The synods of the Ancient (North) African church were held, with but few exceptions (e.g. Hippo, 393; Milevum, 402) at Carthage. We know from the letters of Saint Cyprian that, except in time of persecution, the African bishops met at least once a year, in the springtime, and sometimes again in the autumn. Six or seven synods, for instance, were held under St. Cyprian’s presidency during the decade of his administration (249–258), and more than fifteen under Aurelius (391–429). The Synod of Hippo of 393 ordered a general meeting yearly, but this was found too onerous for the bishops, and in the Synod of Carthage (407) it was decided to hold a general synod only when necessary for the needs of all Africa, and it was to be held at a place most convenient for the purpose. Not all the bishops of the country were required to assist at the general synod. At the Synod of Hippo (393) it was ordered that « dignities » should be sent from each ecclesiastical province. Only one was required from Tripoli (in Libya), because of the poverty of the bishops of that province. At the Synod of Hippo (393), and again at the Synod of 397 at Carthage, a list of the books of Holy Scripture was drawn up,[9] and these books (including some considered apocryphal by Protestants) are still regarded as the constituents of the Catholic canon.
•TITULAR EPISCOPAL SEE
•The Hippo(ne) diocese was nominally revived in 1400 as Catholic Latin titular bishopric of the (lowest) episcopal rank, for which no incumbent is recorded.
•It ceased to exist on 23 September 1867, when the see was formally united with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Constantine.
•(Hippo, also called Hippo Regius, ancient port on the coast of North Africa, located near the modern town of Annaba (formerly Bône) in Algeria. Hippo was probably first settled by Carthaginians in the 4th century BCE. It later became the home of Numidian rulers. Under Roman control it was first made a MUNICIPIUM (a community that exercised partial rights of Roman citizenship) and later a COLONIA (Roman settlement with full rights of citizenship). St. Augustine, one of the city’s most important personages and later a Father of the Church, served as bishop there from 395 CE until his death during the Vandal siege of the city in 430. According to St. Augustine, the city contained numerous sacred edifices, including the Basilica Major and churches devoted to Saints Leontius and Theogenes as well as to numerous martyrs).
•Traditionally, the term “Berber” has been used to refer to the indigenous peoples of North Africa. ... To combat discrimination and to reclaim their identity, the indigenous peoples use the terms: Amazigh (singular), Imazighen (plural), and Tamazight(feminine) to refer to themselves.
•HISTORY OF THE BERBERS
•
•Berbers in French-occupied North Africa in1902
•Berbers are the indigenous people of Morocco and Algeria and to a lesser extent Libya and Tunisia. They are descendants of an ancient race that has inhabited Morocco and much of northen Africa since Neolithic times. The origins of the Berbers are unclear; a number of waves of people, some from Western Europe, some from sub-Saharan Africa, and others from Northeast Africa, eventually settled in North Africa and made up its indigenous population.
•The Berbers entered Moroccan history toward the end of the second millennium B.C., when they made initial contact with oasis dwellers on the steppe who may have been the remnants of the earlier savanna people. Phoenician traders, who had penetrated the western Mediterranean before the twelfth century B.C., set up depots for salt and ore along the coast and up the rivers of the territory that is now Morocco. Later, Carthage developed commercial relations with the Berber tribes of the interior and paid them an annual tribute to ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008 **]
•Berber tribesmen with a warlike reputation resisted the spread of Carthaginian and Roman colonization before the Christian era, and they struggled for more than a generation against the seventh century Arab invaders who spread Islam to North Africa by military conquests mounted as jihads, or holy wars. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•Berber is a foreign word. The Berbers call themselves Imazighen (men of the land). Their languages is totally unlike Arabic, the national language of Morocco and Algeria. One reason the Jews have prospered in Morocco is that has been a place where Berbers and Arabs shaped the history and multi-culturalism has been a fixture of everyday life for a long time.
•Berbers and Arabs
•The Arabs have traditionally been townspeople while the Berbers lives in the mountains and desert. The Berbers have traditionally been dominated politically by the Arab ruling class and population majority but many Moroccan believe the Berbers are what gives the country its character. « Morocco “is” Berber, the roots and the leaves, » Mahjoubi Aherdan, longtime leader of the Berber party, told National Geographic.
•
•Because present-day Berbers and the overwhelming majority of the Arabs largely descend from the same indigenous stock, physical distinctions carry little or no social connotation and are in most instances impossible to make. The term Berber is derived from the Greeks, who used it to refer to the people of North Africa. The term was retained by the Romans, Arabs, and other groups who occupied the region, but is not used by the people themselves. Identification with the Berber or Arab community is largely a matter of personal choice rather than of membership in discrete and bounded social entities. In addition to their own language, many adult Berbers also speak Arabic and French; for centuries Berbers have entered the general society and merged, within a generation or two, into the Arab group. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•This permeable boundary between the two major ethnic groups permits a good deal of movement and, along with other factors, prevents the development of rigid and exclusive ethnic blocs. It appears that whole groups slipped across the ethnic « boundary » in the past—and others may do so in the future. In areas of linguistic contiguity, bilingualism is common, and in most cases Arabic eventually comes to predominate. »
•Algerian Arabs, or native speakers of Arabic, include descendants of Arab invaders and of indigenous Berbers. Since 1966, however, the Algerian census no longer has had a category for Berbers; thus, it is only an estimate that Algerian Arabs, the major ethnic group of the country, constitute 80 percent of Algeria’s people and are culturally and politically dominant. The mode of life of Arabs varies from region to region. Nomadic herders are found in the desert, settled cultivators and gardeners in the Tell, and urban dwellers on the coast. Linguistically, the various Arab groups differ little from each other, except that dialects spoken by nomadic and seminomadic peoples are thought to be derived from beduin dialects; the dialects spoken by the sedentary population of the north are thought to stem from those of early seventh-century invaders. Urban Arabs are more apt to identify with the Algerian nation, whereas ethnic loyalties of more remote rural Arabs are likely to be limited to the tribe. »
•Origin of the Berbers
•The origin of the Berbers is a mystery, the investigation of which has produced an abundance of educated speculation but no solution. Archaeological and linguistic evidence strongly suggests southwestern Asia as the point from which the ancestors of the Berbers may have begun their migration into North Africa early in the third millennium B.C. Over the succeeding centuries they extended their range from Egypt to the Niger Basin. Caucasians of predominantly Mediterranean stock, the Berbers present a broad range of physical types and speak a variety of mutually unintelligible dialects that belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. They never developed a sense of nationhood and have historically identified themselves in terms of their tribe, clan, and family. Collectively, Berbers refer to themselves simply as imazighan, to which has been attributed the meaning « free men. »
•Inscriptions found in Egypt dating from the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2200 B.C.) are the earliest known recorded testimony of the Berber migration and also the earliest written documentation of Libyan history. At least as early as this period, troublesome Berber tribes, one of which was identified in Egyptian records as the Levu (or « Libyans »), were raiding eastward as far as the Nile Delta and attempting to settle there. During the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2200-1700 B.C.) the Egyptian pharaohs succeeded in imposing their overlordship on these eastern Berbers and extracted tribute from them. Many Berbers served in the army of the pharaohs, and some rose to positions of importance in the Egyptian state. One such Berber officer seized control of Egypt in about 950 B.C. and, as Shishonk I, ruled as pharaoh. His successors of the twentysecond and twenty-third dynasties—the so-called Libyan dynasties (ca. 945-730 B.C.)--are also believed to have been Berbers. »
•The name Libya is derived from the name by which a single Berber tribe was known to the ancient Egyptians, the name Libya was subsequently applied by the Greeks to most of North Africa and the term Libyan to all of its Berber inhabitants. Although ancient in origin, these names were not used to designate the specific territory of modern Libya and its people until the twentieth century, nor indeed was the whole area formed into a coherent political unit until then. Hence, despite the long and distinct histories of its regions, modern Libya must be viewed as a new country still developing national consciousness and institutions.
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•Amazigh (Berber) peoples
•Like the Phoenicians, Minoan and Greek seafarers had for centuries probed the North African coast, which at the nearest point lay 300 kilometers from Crete, but systematic Greek settlement there began only in the seventh century B.C. during the great age of Hellenic overseas colonization. According to tradition, emigrants from the crowded island of Thera were commanded by the oracle at Delphi to seek a new home in North Africa, where in 631 B.C. they founded the city of Cyrene. The site to which Berber guides had led them was in a fertile highland region about 20 kilometers inland from the sea at a place where, according to the Berbers, a « hole in the heavens » would provide ample rainfall for the colony. »
•Early History of North Africa and the Berbers
•Ancient Berbers are believed to have entered present-day Morocco in the 2nd millennium B.C. By the 2nd century B.C., Berber social and political organization had evolved from extended families and clans to kingdoms. The first records of the Berbers are descriptions of Berber merchants trading with the Phoenicians. At that time Berbers controlled much of the trans-Saharan caravan trade.
•Early inhabitants of the central Maghrib (also seen as Maghreb; designates North Africa west of Egypt) left behind significant remains including remnants of hominid occupation from ca. 200,000 B.C. found near Saïda. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 B.C. This type of economy, so richly depicted in the Tassili-n-Ajjer cave paintings in southeastern Algeria, predominated in the Maghrib until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers. Distinguished primarily by cultural and linguistic attributes, the Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008 **]
•The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers. Distinguished primarily by cultural and linguistic attributes, the Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts. Roman, Greek, Byzantine, and Arab Muslim chroniclers typically depicted the Berbers as « barbaric » enemies, troublesome nomads, or ignorant peasants. They were, however, to play a major role in the area’s history. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994]
•The Berbers entered Moroccan history toward the end of the second millennium B.C., when they made initial contact with oasis dwellers on the steppe who may have been the remnants of the earlier savanna people. Phoenician traders, who had penetrated the western Mediterranean before the twelfth century B.C., set up depots for salt and ore along the coast and up the rivers of the territory that is now Morocco. Later, Carthage developed commercial relations with the Berber tribes of the interior and paid them an annual tribute to ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008]
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•ruins of Carthage
•North Africa During the Classical Period
•Berbers held off Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Sometimes they allied themselves with the Carthaginians to fight the Romans. Rome annexed their domain in 40 A.D. but never ruled beyond the coastal regions. Trade was helped by the introduction of camels which occurred in the Roman period.
•Phoenician traders arrived on the North African coast around 900 B.C. and established Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) around 800 B.C. By the fifth century B.C., Carthage had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa. By the second century B.C., several large, although loosely administered, Berber kingdoms had emerged. The Berber kings ruled in the shadow of Carthage and Rome, often as satellites. After the fall of Carthage, the area was annexed to the Roman Empire in A.D. 40. Rome controlled the vast, ill-defined territory through alliances with the tribes rather than through military occupation, expanding its authority only to those areas that were economically useful or that could be defended without additional manpower. Hence, Roman administration never extended outside the restricted area of the coastal plain and valleys. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008 **]
•During the classical period, Berber civilization was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and political organization supported several states. Trade links between Carthage and the Berbers in the interior grew, but territorial expansion also brought about the enslavement or military recruitment of some Berbers and the extraction of tribute from others. The Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars, and in 146 B.C. the city of Carthage was destroyed. As Carthaginian power waned, the influence of Berber leaders in the hinterland grew. By the second century B.C., several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. **
•Berber territory was annexed to the Roman Empire in A.D. 24. Increases in urbanization and in the area under cultivation during Roman rule caused wholesale dislocations of Berber society, and Berber opposition to the Roman presence was nearly constant. The prosperity of most towns depended on agriculture, and the region was known as the “granary of the empire. » Christianity arrived in the second century. By the end of the fourth century, the settled areas had become Christianized, and some Berber tribes had converted en masse. **
•Carthage and the Berbers
•Phoenician traders arrived on the North African coast around 900 B.C. and established Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) around 800 B.C. By the sixth century B.C., a Phoenician presence existed at Tipasa (east of Cherchell in Algeria). From their principal center of power at Carthage, the Carthaginians expanded and established small settlements (called emporia in Greek) along the North African coast; these settlements eventually served as market towns as well as anchorages. Hippo Regius (modern Annaba) and Rusicade (modern Skikda) are among the towns of Carthaginian origin on the coast of present-day Algeria. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
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•Battle of Zama between the Romans and Carthaginians
•As Carthaginian power grew, its impact on the indigenous population increased dramatically. Berber civilization was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and political organization supported several states. Trade links between Carthage and the Berbers in the interior grew, but territorial expansion also resulted in the enslavement or military recruitment of some Berbers and in the extraction of tribute from others. By the early fourth century B.C., Berbers formed the single largest element of the Carthaginian army. In the Revolt of the Mercenaries, Berber soldiers rebelled from 241 to 238 B.C. after being unpaid following the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War. They succeeded in obtaining control of much of Carthage’s North African territory, and they minted coins bearing the name Libyan, used in Greek to describe natives of North Africa.
•The Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars; in 146 B.C. the city of Carthage was destroyed. As Carthaginian power waned, the influence of Berber leaders in the hinterland grew. By the second century B.C., several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. Two of them were established in Numidia, behind the coastal areas controlled by Carthage. West of Numidia lay Mauretania, which extended across the Moulouya River in Morocco to the Atlantic Ocean. The high point of Berber civilization, unequaled until the coming of the Almohads and Almoravids more than a millennium later, was reached during the reign of Masinissa in the second century B.C. After Masinissa’s death in 148 B.C., the Berber kingdoms were divided and reunited several times. Masinissa’s line survived until A.D. 24, when the remaining Berber territory was annexed to the Roman Empire. »
•Berbers and North Africa in the Roman Era
•Increases in urbanization and in the area under cultivation during Roman rule caused wholesale dislocations of Berber society. Nomadic tribes were forced to settle or move from traditional rangelands. Sedentary tribes lost their autonomy and connection with the land. Berber opposition to the Roman presence was nearly constant. The Roman emperor Trajan (r. A.D. 98-117) established a frontier in the south by encircling the Aur’s and Nemencha mountains and building a line of forts from Vescera (modern Biskra) to Ad Majores (Hennchir Besseriani, southeast of Biskra). The defensive line extended at least as far as Castellum Dimmidi (modern Messaad, southwest of Biskra), Roman Algeria’s southernmost fort. Romans settled and developed the area around Sitifis (modern Sétif) in the second century, but farther west the influence of Rome did not extend beyond the coast and principal military roads until much later. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
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•Roman Emperor Septimus Severus was from North Africa
•The Roman military presence in North Africa was relatively small, consisting of about 28,000 troops and auxiliaries in Numidia and the two Mauretanian provinces. Starting in the second century A.D., these garrisons were manned mostly by local inhabitants. »
•Aside from Carthage, urbanization in North Africa came in part with the establishment of settlements of veterans under the Roman emperors Claudius (r. A.D. 41-54), Nerva (r. A.D. 96-98), and Trajan. In Algeria such settlements included Tipasa, Cuicul (modern Djemila, northeast of Sétif), Thamugadi (modern Timgad, southeast of Sétif), and Sitifis. The prosperity of most towns depended on agriculture. Called the « granary of the empire, » North Africa, according to one estimate, produced 1 million tons of cereals each year, one-quarter of which was exported. Other crops included fruit, figs, grapes, and beans. By the second century A.D., olive oil rivaled cereals as an export item. »
•The beginnings of the decline of the Roman Empire were less serious in North Africa than elsewhere. There were uprisings, however. In A.D. 238, landowners rebelled unsuccessfully against the emperor’s fiscal policies. Sporadic tribal revolts in the Mauretanian mountains followed from 253 to 288. The towns also suffered economic difficulties, and building activity almost ceased. »
•The towns of Roman North Africa had a substantial Jewish population. Some Jews were deported from Palestine in the first and second centuries A.D. for rebelling against Roman rule; others had come earlier with Punic settlers. In addition, a number of Berber tribes had converted to Judaism. »
•Berbers and Christianity
•Christianity arrived in Berber regions of North Africa in the A.D. 2nd century. Many Berbers adopted the heretical Donatist sect of Christianity. St. Augustine was of Berber stock. Christianity gained converts in the towns and among slaves and Berber farmers. More than eighty bishops, some from distant frontier regions of Numidia, attended the Council of Carthage in 256. By the end of the fourth century, the Romanized areas had been Christianized, and inroads had been made as well among the Berber tribes, who sometimes converted en masse. But schismatic and heretical movements also developed, usually as forms of political protest. The area had a substantial Jewish population as well. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008 **]
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•St Augustine (Augustin d’Hippone) , the son of Santa Monica (Monique d’Hippone),
•Some facts, Hippo Regius (also known as Hippo or Hippone) is the ancient name of the modern city of Annaba, Algeria. It historically served as an important city for the Phoenicians, Berbers, Romans, and Vandals. Hippo was the capital city of the Vandal Kingdom from 435–439 C.E.until it was shifted to Carthage following the Vandal Capture of Carthage (439).
•It was the focus of several early Christian councils and home to the philosopher, theologian, Doctor of the Church and one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo.
•lived in North Africa ( Annaba, Algeria as known nowadays ) and had Berber blood
•A division in the church that came to be known as the Donatist controversy began in 313 among Christians in North Africa. The Donatists stressed the holiness of the church and refused to accept the authority to administer the sacraments of those who had surrendered the scriptures when they were forbidden under the Emperor Diocletaian (r. 284-305). The Donatists also opposed the involvement of Emperor Constantine (r. 306-37) in church affairs in contrast to the majority of Christians who welcomed official imperial recognition. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•The occasionally violent controversy has been characterized as a struggle between opponents and supporters of the Roman system. The most articulate North African critic of the Donatist position, which came to be called a heresy, was Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius. Augustine (354-430) maintained that the unworthiness of a minister did not affect the validity of the sacraments because their true minister was Christ. In his sermons and books Augustine, who is considered a leading exponent of Christian truths, evolved a theory of the right of orthodox Christian rulers to use force against schismatics and heretics. Although the dispute was resolved by a decision of an imperial commission in Carthage in 411, Donatist communities continued to exist through the sixth century. »
•The resulting decline in trade weakened Roman control. Independent kingdoms emerged in mountainous and desert areas, towns were overrun, and Berbers, who had previously been pushed to the edges of the Roman Empire, returned. »
•Belisarius, general of the Byzantine emperor Justinian based in Constantinople, landed in North Africa in 533 with 16,000 men and within a year destroyed the Vandal kingdom. Local opposition delayed full Byzantine control of the region for twelve years, however, and imperial control, when it came, was but a shadow of the control exercised by Rome. Although an impressive series of fortifications were built, Byzantine rule was compromised by official corruption, incompetence, military weakness, and lack of concern in Constantinople for African affairs. As a result, many rural areas reverted to Berber rule. »
•Spread of Islam in Berber Regions
•After the arrival of Arabs in the 7th century, many Berbers converted to Islam. The Islamization and arabization of the region were complicated and lengthy processes. Whereas nomadic Berbers were quick to convert and assist the Arab invaders, not until the twelfth century under the Almohad Dynasty did the Christian and Jewish communities become totally marginalized. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•Islamic influence began in Morocco in the seventh century A.D. Arab conquerors converted the indigenous Berber population to Islam, but Berber tribes retained their customary laws. The Arabs abhorred the Berbers as barbarians, while the Berbers often saw the Arabs as only an arrogant and brutal soldiery bent on collecting taxes. Once established as Muslims, the Berbers shaped Islam in their own image and embraced schismatic Muslim sects, which, in many cases, were simply folk religion barely disguised as Islam, as their way of breaking from Arab control. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2006 **]
•The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed the founding of several great Berber dynasties led by religious reformers and each based on a tribal confederation that dominated the Maghrib (also seen as Maghreb; refers to North Africa west of Egypt) and Spain for more than 200 years. The Berber dynasties (Almoravids, Almohads, and Merinids) gave the Berber people some measure of collective identity and political unity under a native regime for the first time in their history, and they created the idea of an “imperial Maghrib” under Berber aegis that survived in some form from dynasty to dynasty. But ultimately each of the Berber dynasties proved to be a political failure because none managed to create an integrated society out of a social landscape dominated by tribes that prized their autonomy and individual identity. »*
•Arab Conquest of the Maghrib
•The first Arab military expeditions into the Maghrib, between 642 and 669, resulted in the spread of Islam. This harmony was short-lived, however. Arab and Berber forces controlled the region in turn until 697. By 711 Umayyad forces helped by Berber converts to Islam had conquered all of North Africa. Governors appointed by the Umayyad caliphs ruled from Al Qayrawan, the new wilaya (province) of Ifriqiya, which covered Tripolitania (the western part of present-day Libya), Tunisia, and eastern Algeria. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
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•In 750 the Abbasids succeeded the Umayyads as Muslim rulers and moved the caliphate to Baghdad. Under the Abbasids, the Rustumid imamate (761–909) actually ruled most of the central Maghrib from Tahirt, southwest of Algiers. The imams gained a reputation for honesty, piety, and justice, and the court of Tahirt was noted for its support of scholarship. The Rustumid imams failed, however, to organize a reliable standing army, which opened the way for Tahirt’s demise under the assault of the Fatimid dynasty. With their interest focused primarily on Egypt and Muslim lands beyond, the Fatimids left the rule of most of Algeria to the Zirids (972–1148), a Berber dynasty that centered significant local power in Algeria for the first time. This period was marked by constant conflict, political instability, and economic decline. *
•Kharijites
•The Berbers used the schism between Sunnis and Shiities to carve out their unique niche in Islam. They embraced, the Kharijite sect of Islam, a puritanical movement that originally supported Ali , the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, but later rejected the leadership of Ali after his supporters battled with forces loyal to one of Muhammad’s wives and revolted against the rule of the caliphs in Iraq and the Maghreb. Ali was murdered by a knife-carrying Kharajite assassin on his way to a mosque in Kufa, near Najaf in Iraq in A.D. 661.
•Kharijism was a puritanical form of Shia Islam that developed over disagreements over the succession of the caliph. It was regarded as heretical by the Muslim status quo. Kharijism took root in the countryside of North Africa and denounced people living in the cities as decadent. Kharajitism was particularly strong in a Sijilmassa, a great caravan center in southern Morocco, and Tahert, in present-day Algeria. These kingdoms became strong in the 8th and 9th centuries.
•The Kharijites objected to Ali, the fourth caliph, making peace with the Umayyads in 657 and left Ali’s camp (khariji means « those who leave »). The Kharijites had been fighting Umayyad rule in the East, and many Berbers were attracted by the sect’s egalitarian precepts. For example, according to Kharijism, any suitable Muslim candidate could be elected caliph without regard to race, station, or descent from the Prophet Muhammad. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•After the revolt, Kharijites established a number of theocratic tribal kingdoms, most of which had short and troubled histories. Others, however, like Sijilmasa and Tilimsan, which straddled the principal trade routes, proved more viable and prospered. In 750 the Abbasids, who succeeded the Umayyads as Muslim rulers, moved the caliphate to Baghdad and reestablished caliphal authority in Ifriqiya, appointing Ibrahim ibn Al Aghlab as governor in Al Qayrawan. Although nominally serving at the caliph’s pleasure, Al Aghlab and his successors ruled independently until 909, presiding over a court that became a center for learning and culture. »
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•Just to the west of Aghlabid lands, Abd ar Rahman ibn Rustum ruled most of the central Maghrib from Tahirt, southwest of Algiers. The rulers of the Rustumid imamate, which lasted from 761 to 909, each an Ibadi Kharijite imam, were elected by leading citizens. The imams gained a reputation for honesty, piety, and justice. The court at Tahirt was noted for its support of scholarship in mathematics, astronomy, and astrology, as well as theology and law. The Rustumid imams, however, failed, by choice or by neglect, to organize a reliable standing army. This important factor, accompanied by the dynasty’s eventual collapse into decadence, opened the way for Tahirt’s demise under the assault of the Fatimids. »
•Idrisids
•One of the Kharijite communities, the Idrisids established a kingdom around Fez. It was led by Idriss I, the great grandson of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, and Ali, the nephew and son-in-law of Muhammad. He is believed to be have come from Baghdad with the mission of converting the Berber tribes.
•The Idrisids were Morocco’s first national dynasty. Idriss I began the tradition, which lasts to this day, of independent dynasties ruling Morocco and justifying the rule by claiming descent from Muhammad. According to a story in “Arabian Nights”, Idriss I was killed by a poisoned rose sent to hom by the Abbasid ruler Harun el Rashid.
•Idriss II (792-828), the son of Idriss I, founded Fez in 808 as the Idrisid capital. He established the world’s oldest university, Qarawiyin University, in Fez. His tomb is one of the most sacred placed in Morocco.
•When Idriss II died the kingdom was divided between his two sons. The kingdoms proved to be weak. They soon broke up, in A.D. 921, and fighting broke out between the Berber tribes. The fighting continued until the 11th century when there was a second Arab invasion and many North African cities were sacked and many tribes were forced to become nomads.
•Fatimids in East Africa
•In the closing decades of the ninth century, missionaries of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam converted the Kutama Berbers of what was later known as the Petite Kabylie region and led them in battle against the Sunni rulers of Ifriqiya. Al Qayrawan fell to them in 909. The Ismaili imam, Ubaydallah, declared himself caliph and established Mahdia as his capital. Ubaydallah initiated the Fatimid Dynasty, named after Fatima, daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, from whom the caliph claimed descent. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•The Fatimids turned westward in 911, destroying the imamate of Tahirt and conquering Sijilmasa in Morocco. Ibadi Kharijite refugees from Tahirt fled south to the oasis at Ouargla beyond the Atlas Mountains, whence in the eleventh century they moved southwest to Oued Mzab. Maintaining their cohesion and beliefs over the centuries, Ibadi religious leaders have dominated public life in the region to this day. »
•For many years, the Fatimids posed a threat to Morocco, but their deepest ambition was to rule the East, the Mashriq, which included Egypt and Muslim lands beyond. By 969 they had conquered Egypt. In 972 the Fatimid ruler Al Muizz established the new city of Cairo as his capital. The Fatimids left the rule of Ifriqiya and most of Algeria to the Zirids (972-1148). This Berber dynasty, which had founded the towns of Miliana, Médéa, and Algiers and centered significant local power in Algeria for the first time, turned over its domain west of Ifriqiya to the Banu Hammad branch of its family. The Hammadids ruled from 1011 to 1151, during which time Bejaïa became the most important port in the Maghrib. »
•This period was marked by constant conflict, political instability, and economic decline. The Hammadids, by rejecting the Ismaili doctrine for Sunni orthodoxy and renouncing submission to the Fatimids, initiated chronic conflict with the Zirids. Two great Berber confederations—the Sanhaja and the Zenata—engaged in an epic struggle. The fiercely brave, camelborne nomads of the western desert and steppe as well as the sedentary farmers of the Kabylie to the east swore allegiance to the Sanhaja. Their traditional enemies, the Zenata, were tough, resourceful horsemen from the cold plateau of the northern interior of Morocco and the western Tell in Algeria. »
•For the first time, the extensive use of Arabic spread to the countryside. Sedentary Berbers who sought protection from the Hilalians were gradually arabized. »
•Berber Dynasties
•Morocco reached its golden period from the 11th to the mid-15th century under the Berber dynasties: the Almoravids, Almohads and Merinids. The Berbers were famous warriors. None of the Muslim dynasties or colonial powers were ever able to subdue and absorb the Berber clans in the mountainous regions. The later dynasties—the Almoravids, the Almohads, the Merinids, the Wattasids, the Saadians, and the still reining Alaouits—moved the capital around from Fez, to Marrakesh, Meknes and Rabat.
•Following a large incursion of Arab bedouins from Egypt beginning in the first half of the eleventh century, the use of Arabic spread to the countryside, and sedentary Berbers were gradually Arabized. The Almoravid (“those who have made a religious retreat”) movement developed early in the eleventh century among the Sanhaja Berbers of the western Sahara. The movement’s initial impetus was religious, an attempt by a tribal leader to impose moral discipline and strict adherence to Islamic principles on followers. But the Almoravid movement shifted to engaging in military conquest after 1054. By 1106 the Almoravids had conquered Morocco, the Maghrib as far east as Algiers, and Spain up to the Ebro River. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•Like the Almoravids, the Almohads (“unitarians”) found their inspiration in Islamic reform. The Almohads took control of Morocco by 1146, captured Algiers around 1151, and by 1160 had completed the conquest of the central Maghrib. The zenith of Almohad power occurred between 1163 and 1199. For the first time, the Maghrib was united under a local regime, but the continuing wars in Spain overtaxed the resources of the Almohads, and in the Maghrib their position was compromised by factional strife and a renewal of tribal warfare. In the central Maghrib, the Zayanids founded a dynasty at Tlemcen in Algeria. For more than 300 years, until the region came under Ottoman suzerainty in the sixteenth century, the Zayanids kept a tenuous hold in the central Maghrib. Many coastal cities asserted their autonomy as municipal republics governed by merchant oligarchies, tribal chieftains from the surrounding countryside, or the privateers who operated out of their ports. Nonetheless, Tlemcen, the “pearl of the Maghrib, » prospered as a commercial center. *
•Almoravids
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•Almoravid Empire
•The Almoravids (1056-1147) are a Berber group that emerged in the deserts of southern Morocco and Mauritania. They embraced a puritanical form of Islam and were popular among the dispossessed in the countryside and the desert. Within a short time they became powerful. The Almoravid movement initial impetus was religious, an attempt by a tribal leader to impose moral discipline and strict adherence to Islamic principles on followers. But the Almoravid movement shifted to engaging in military conquest after 1054. By 1106 the Almoravids had conquered Morocco, the Maghrib as far east as Algiers, and Spain up to the Ebro River. [Source: Library of Congress, May 2008 **]
•The Almoravid (“those who have made a religious retreat”) movement developed early in the eleventh century among the Sanhaja Berbers of the western Sahara, whose control of trans-Saharan trade routes was under pressure from the Zenata Berbers in the north and the state of Ghana in the south. Yahya ibn Ibrahim al Jaddali, a leader of the Lamtuna tribe of the Sanhaja confederation, decided to raise the level of Islamic knowledge and practice among his people. To accomplish this, on his return from the hajj (Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) in 1048-49, he brought with him Abd Allah ibn Yasin al Juzuli, a Moroccan scholar. In the early years of the movement, the scholar was concerned only with imposing moral discipline and a strict adherence to Islamic principles among his followers. Abd Allah ibn Yasin also became known as one of the marabouts, or holy persons (from al murabitun, « those who have made a religious retreat. » Almoravids is the Spanish transliteration of al murabitun. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•The Almoravid movement shifted from promoting religious reform to engaging in military conquest after 1054 and was led by Lamtuna leaders: first Yahya, then his brother Abu Bakr, and then his cousin Yusuf (Youssef) ibn Tashfin. Under ibn Tashfin, the Almoravids rose to power by capturing the key Saharan trade route to Sijilmasa and defeating their primary rivals in Fez. With Marrakech as their capital, the Almoravids had conquered Morocco, the Maghrib as far east as Algiers, and Spain up to the Ebro River by 1106.
•At its height the Berber Almoravid empire stretched from the Pyrenees to Mauritania to Libya. Under the Almoravids, the Maghrib and Spain acknowledged the spiritual authority of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, reuniting them temporarily with the Islamic community in the Mashriq. »
•Almoravid Rule
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•Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh
•Although it was not an entirely peaceful time, North Africa benefited economically and culturally during the Almoravid period, which lasted until 1147. Muslim Spain (Andalus in Arabic) was a great source of artistic and intellectual inspiration. The most famous writers of Andalus worked in the Almoravid court, and the builders of the Grand Mosque of Tilimsan, completed in 1136, used as a model the Grand Mosque of Córdoba. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•The Almoravids established Marrakesh in A.D. 1070. The city began as a rudimentary camp of black wool tents with a kasbah called « the Castle of Stones. » The city prospered on the trade of gold, ivory and other exotica that traveled by camel caravans from Timbuktu to the Barbary Coast.
•The Almoravids were intolerant of other religions By the 12th century the Christian churches in the Maghreb had largely disappeared. Judaism, however, managed to endure in Spain As the Almoravids became rich they lost their religious zeal and military cohesion that marked their rise to power. The peasants that supported them regarded them as corrupt and turned against them. They were overthrown in revolt led by the Berber Masmuda tribes from the Atlas mountains.
•Almohads
•The Almohads (1130-1269) displaced the Almoravids after capturing the strategic Sijilmasa trade routes. They relied on support that came from the Berbers in the Atlas mountains. The Almohads took control of Morocco by 1146, captured Algiers around 1151, and by 1160 had completed the conquest of the central Maghrib. The zenith of Almohad power occurred between 1163 and 1199. Their empire at its greatest extent included Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and the Muslim part of Spain.
•Like the Almoravids, the Almohads (“unitarians”) found their initial inspiration in Islamic reform. Their spiritual leader, the Moroccan Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tumart, sought to reform Almoravid decadence. Rejected in Marrakech and other cities, he turned to his Masmuda tribe in the Atlas Mountains for support. Because of their emphasis on the unity of God, his followers were known as Al Muwahhidun (unitarians, or Almohads). [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•
•Almohad architecture in Malaga, Spain
•Although declaring himself mahdi, imam, and masum (infallible leader sent by God), Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tumart consulted with a council of ten of his oldest disciples. Influenced by the Berber tradition of representative government, he later added an assembly composed of fifty leaders from various tribes. The Almohad rebellion began in 1125 with attacks on Moroccan cities, including Sus and Marrakech. »
•Upon Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tumart’s death in 1130, his successor Abd al Mumin took the title of caliph and placed members of his own family in power, converting the system into a traditional monarchy. The Almohads entered Spain at the invitation of the Andalusian amirs, who had risen against the Almoravids there. Abd al Mumin forced the submission of the amirs and reestablished the caliphate of Córdoba, giving the Almohad sultan supreme religious as well as political authority within his domains. The Almohads took control of Morocco in 1146, captured Algiers around 1151, and by 1160 had completed the conquest of the central Maghrib and advanced to Tripolitania. Nonetheless, pockets of Almoravid resistance continued to hold out in the Kabylie for at least fifty years. »
•Almohad Rule
•The Almohads established a professional civil service—recruited from the intellectual communities of Spain and the Maghreb—and elevated the cities of Marrakesh, Fez, Tlemcen and Rabat into great centers of culture and learning. They established a powerful army and navy, built up the cities and taxed the population based on productivity. They clashed with local tribes over taxation and the distribution of wealth.
•After Abd al Mumin’s death in 1163, his son Abu Yaqub Yusuf (r. 1163-84) and grandson Yaqub al Mansur (r. 1184-99) presided over the zenith of Almohad power. For the first time, the Maghrib was united under a local regime, and although the empire was troubled by conflict on its fringes, handcrafts and agriculture flourished at its center and an efficient bureaucracy filled the tax coffers. In 1229 the Almohad court renounced the teachings of Muhammad ibn Tumart, opting instead for greater tolerance and a return to the Maliki school of law. As evidence of this change, the Almohads hosted two of the greatest thinkers of Andalus: Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•The Almohads shared the crusading instincts of their Castilian adversaries, but the continuing wars in Spain overtaxed their resources. In the Maghrib, the Almohad position was compromised by factional strife and was challenged by a renewal of tribal warfare. The Bani Merin (Zenata Berbers) took advantage of declining Almohad power to establish a tribal state in Morocco, initiating nearly sixty years of warfare there that concluded with their capture of Marrakech, the last Almohad stronghold, in 1271. Despite repeated efforts to subjugate the central Maghrib, however, the Merinids were never able to restore the frontiers of the Almohad Empire. »
•For the first time, the Maghrib was united under a local regime, but the continuing wars in Spain overtaxed the resources of the Almohads, and in the Maghrib their position was compromised by factional strife and a renewal of tribal warfare. The Almohads were weakened by their inabilty to create a sense of statehood among the warring Berber tribes and by incursions from Christian armies in the north and rival Bedouin armies in Morocco. They were forced to divide their administration. After being defeated by the Christians in Las Nevas de Tolosa in Spain their empire collapsed.
•Zayanids
•From its capital at Tunis, the Hafsid Dynasty made good its claim to be the legitimate successor of the Almohads in Ifriqiya, while, in the central Maghrib, the Zayanids founded a dynasty at Tlemcen. Based on a Zenata tribe, the Bani Abd el Wad, which had been settled in the region by Abd al Mumin, the Zayanids also emphasized their links with the Almohads. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•For more than 300 years, until the region came under Ottoman suzerainty in the sixteenth century, the Zayanids kept a tenuous hold in the central Maghrib. The regime, which depended on the administrative skills of Andalusians, was plagued by frequent rebellions but learned to survive as the vassal of the Merinids or Hafsids or later as an ally of Spain. »
•Many coastal cities defied the ruling dynasties and asserted their autonomy as municipal republics. They were governed by their merchant oligarchies, by tribal chieftains from the surrounding countryside, or by the privateers who operated out of their ports. »
•Nonetheless, Tlemcen prospered as a commercial center and was called the « pearl of the Maghrib. » Situated at the head of the Imperial Road through the strategic Taza Gap to Marrakech, the city controlled the caravan route to Sijilmasa, gateway for the gold and slave trade with the western Sudan. Aragon came to control commerce between Tlemcen’s port, Oran, and Europe beginning about 1250. An outbreak of privateering out of Aragon, however, severely disrupted this trade after about 1420. »
•Ottoman Take Over of North Africa
•At about the time Spain was establishing its presidios in the Maghrib, the Muslim privateer brothers Aruj and Khair ad Din — the latter known to Europeans as Barbarossa, or Red Beard — were operating successfully off Tunisia under the Hafsids. In 1516 Aruj moved his base of operations to Algiers, but was killed in 1518 during his invasion of Tlemcen. Khair ad Din succeeded him as military commander of Algiers. The Ottoman sultan gave him the title of beylerbey (provincial governor) and a contingent of some 2,000 janissaries, well-armed Ottoman soldiers. With the aid of this force, Khair ad Din subdued the coastal region between Constantine and Oran (although the city of Oran remained in Spanish hands until 1791). Under Khair ad Din’s regency, Algiers became the center of Ottoman authority in the Maghrib, from which Tunis, Tripoli, and Tlemcen would be overcome and Morocco’s independence would be threatened. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•So successful was Khair ad Din at Algiers that he was recalled to Constantinople in 1533 by the sultan, Süleyman I (r. 1520-66), known in Europe as Süleyman the Magnificent, and appointed admiral of the Ottoman fleet. The next year he mounted a successful seaborne assault on Tunis. The next beylerbey was Khair ad Din’s son Hassan, who assumed the position in 1544. Until 1587 the area was governed by officers who served terms with no fixed limits. Subsequently, with the institution of a regular Ottoman administration, governors with the title of pasha ruled for three-year terms. Turkish was the official language, and Arabs and Berbers were excluded from government posts. »
•
•The pasha was assisted by janissaries, known in Algeria as the ojaq and led by an agha. Recruited from Anatolian peasants, they were committed to a lifetime of service. Although isolated from the rest of society and subject to their own laws and courts, they depended on the ruler and the taifa for income. In the seventeenth century, the force numbered about 15,000, but it was to shrink to only 3,700 by 1830. Discontent among the ojaq rose in the mid-1600s because they were not paid regularly, and they repeatedly revolted against the pasha. As a result, the agha charged the pasha with corruption and incompetence and seized power in 1659. »
•The dey was in effect a constitutional autocrat, but his authority was restricted by the divan and the taifa, as well as by local political conditions. The dey was elected for a life term, but in the 159 years (1671-1830) that the system survived, fourteen of the twenty-nine deys were removed from office by assassination. Despite usurpation, military coups, and occasional mob rule, the day-to-day operation of government was remarkably orderly. In accordance with the millet system applied throughout the Ottoman Empire, each ethnic group—Turks, Arabs, Kabyles(AMAZIGH), Berbers, Jews, Europeans—was represented by a guild that exercised legal jurisdiction over its constituents. »
•Revolt in the Rif Mountains
•Spain took control over northern Morocco in 1912 but it took 14 years to subdue the Rif mountains. There, a zealous Berber chieftain and former judge named Abd el Krim el Khattabi — outraged by Spanish rule and exploitation — organized a band of mountain guerillas and declared a “jihad “against the Spanish. Armed only with rifles, his men routed a Spanish force at Annaoual, massacring more than 16,000 Spanish soldiers and then, armed with captured weapons, drove a force of 40,000 Spanish out of their main mountain stronghold at Chechaouene.
•The Berbers were emboldened by their religious beliefs and protected by the mountains. They held off the Spanish even though they were outnumbered by an overwhelming margin and were bombed by airplanes. Finally, in 1926, with more than 300,000 French and Spanish soldiers mounted against him, Abd el-Krim was forced to surrender. He was exiled to Cairo where he died in 1963.
•French conquest of the whole of North Africa was complete by the end of the 1920s. The last mountain tribes were not “pacified” until 1934.
•King Muhammad V
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•King Mohammed V in 1950
•After World War II, King Muhammad V (1927-62) of Morocco called for gradual independence, seeking greater autonomy from the French. He also called for social reforms. In 1947 Muhammad V asked his daughter Princess Lalla Aicha to deliver a speech without a veil. King Muhammad V still kept some traditional customs. He was cared for by a stable of slaves and harem of concubines that faced severe beatings if they displeased him.
•France regarded Muhammad V as a dreamer and exiled him in 1951. He was replaced by a Berber chieftain and leader of a tribal force that the French had hoped would intimidate the nationalists. The plan backfired. The move made Muhammad V a hero and a rallying point for the independence movement.
•After World War II, France was relatively weak. It was humiliated by its defeat, preoccupied with matters at home and had more of a stake in Algeria than in Morocco. Military action by nationalists and Berber tribesmen prompted France to accept the King’s return in November 1955 and preparations were made for Moroccan independence.
•Berber Separatism
•The Berbers have resisted foreign influences since ancient times. They fought against the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Ottoman Turks, and the French after their 1830 occupation of Algeria. In the fighting between 1954 and 1962 against France, Berber men from the Kabylie region participated in larger numbers than their share of the population warranted. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•Since independence the Berbers have maintained a strong ethnic consciousness and a determination to preserve their distinctive cultural identity and language. They have particularly objected to efforts to force them to use Arabic; they regard these efforts as a form of Arab imperialism. Except for a handful of individuals, they have not been identified with the Islamist movement. In common with most other Algerians, they are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki legal school. In 1980 Berber students, protesting that their culture was being suppressed by the government’s arabization policies, launched mass demonstrations and a general strike. In the wake of riots at Tizi Ouzou that resulted in a number of deaths and injuries, the government agreed to the teaching of the Berber language as opposed to classical Arabic at certain universities and promised to respect Berber culture. Nevertheless, ten years later, in 1990, the Berbers were again forced to rally in large numbers to protest a new language law requiring total use of Arabic by 1997. »
•The Berber party, the Front of Socialist Forces (Front des Forces Socialistes—FFS), gained twenty-five of the 231 contested seats in the first round of the legislative elections of December 1991, all of these in the Kabylie region. The FFS leadership did not approve of the military’s cancellation of the second stage of the elections. Although strongly rejecting the FIS’s demand that Islamic law be extended to all facets of life, the FFS expressed confidence that it could prevail against Islamist pressure. »
•The primary language of school instruction is Arabic, but Berber-language instruction has been permitted since 2003, in part to ease reliance on foreign teachers but also in response to complaints about Arabization. In November 2005, the government held special regional elections to address under-representation of Berber interests in regional and local assemblies. *
•Berber Politics in Algeria in the 1980s
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•Abd el-Krim, Leader of the Rif Revolt, on the cover of Time in 1925
•The pressure for arabization has brought resistance from Berber elements in the population. Different Berber groups, such as the Kabyles, the Chaouia, the Tuareg, and the Mzab, each speak a different dialect. The Kabyles, who are the most numerous, have succeeded, for example, in instituting the study of Kabyle, or Zouaouah, their Berber language, at the University of Tizi Ouzou, in the center of the Kabylie region. Arabization of education and the government bureaucracy has been an emotional and dominant issue in Berber political participation. Young Kabyle students were particularly vocal in the 1980s about the advantages of French over Arabic. [Source: Helen Chapan Metz, ed. Algeria: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1994 *]
•In the 1980s, real opposition in Algeria came from two main quarters: the « modernizers » among bureaucrats and technocrats and the Berbers, or, more specifically, the Kabyles. For the urban elite, French constituted the medium of modernization and technology. French facilitated their access to Western commerce and to economic development theory and culture, and their command of the language guaranteed their continued social and political prominence. *
•The Kabyles identified with these arguments. Young Kabyle students were particularly vocal in expressing their opposition to arabization. In the early 1980s, their movement and demands formed the basis of the « Berber question » or the Kabyle « cultural movement. » Militant Kabyles complained about « cultural imperialism » and « domination » by the Arabic-speaking majority. They vigorously opposed arabization of the education system and the government bureaucracy. They also demanded recognition of the Kabyle dialect as a primary national language, respect for Berber culture, and greater attention to the economic development of Kabylie and other Berber homelands. »
•The Kabyle « cultural movement » was more than a reaction against arabization. Rather, it challenged the centralizing policies the national government had pursued since 1962 and sought wider scope for regional development free of bureaucratic controls. Essentially, the issue was the integration of Kabylie into the Algerian body politic. To the extent that the Kabyle position reflected parochial Kabyle interests and regionalism, it did not find favor with other Berber groups or with Algerians at large. »
•Long-simmering passions about arabization boiled over in late 1979 and early 1980. In response to demands of Arabic-language university students for increased arabization, Kabyle students in Algiers and Tizi Ouzou, the provincial capital of Kabylie, went on strike in the spring of 1980. At Tizi Ouzou, the students were forcibly cleared from the university, an action that precipitated tension and a general strike throughout Kabylie. A year later, there were renewed Kabyle demonstrations. »
•The government’s response to the Kabyle outburst was firm yet cautious. Arabization was reaffirmed as official state policy, but it proceeded at a moderate pace. The government quickly reestablished a chair of Berber studies at the University of Algiers that had been abolished in 1973 and promised a similar chair for the University of Tizi Ouzou, as well as language departments for Berber and dialectical Arabic at four other universities. At the same time, levels of development funding for Kabylie were increased significantly. »
•By the mid-1980s, arabization had begun to produce some measurable results. In the primary schools, instruction was in literary Arabic; French was taught as a second language, beginning in the third year. On the secondary level, arabization was proceeding on a grade-by-grade basis. French remained the main language of instruction in the universities, despite the demands of arabists. »
•A 1968 law requiring officials in government ministries to acquire at least minimal facility in literary Arabic has produced spotty results. The Ministry of Justice came closest to the goal by arabizing internal functions and all court proceedings during the 1970s. Other ministries, however, were slower to follow suit, and French remained in general use. An effort was also made to use radio and television to popularize literary Arabic. By the mid-1980s, programming in dialectical Arabic and Berber had increased, whereas broadcasts in French had declined sharply. »
•As is true of other peoples of the Maghrib, Algerian society has considerable historical depth and has been subjected to a number of external influences and migrations. Fundamentally Berber in cultural and racial terms, the society was organized around extended family, clan, and tribe and was adapted to a rural rather than an urban setting before the arrival of the Arabs and, later, the French. An identifiable modern class structure began to materialize during the colonial period. This structure has undergone further differentiation in the period since independence, despite the country’s commitment to egalitarian ideals.
•Berbers in Libya
•In Libya, Berbers are known as Amazigh. Glen Johnson wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Under Kadafi’s oppressive identity politics...there was no reading, writing or singing in the Amazigh language, Tamazight. Attempts to organize festivals were met with intimidation. Amazigh activists stood accused of militant Islamist activity and were imprisoned. Torture was common...In a post-Kadafi Libya globalized youths dream of greater autonomy while traditionalists and religious conservatives find comfort in more familiar strictures. » [Source: Glen Johnson, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2012]
•Part of what was once the dominant ethnic group throughout North Africa, the Berbers of Libya today live principally in remote mountain areas or in desert localities where successive waves of Arab migration failed to reach or to which they retreated to escape the invaders. In the 1980s Berbers, or native speakers of Berber dialects, constituted about 5 percent, or 135,000, of the total population, although a substantially larger proportion is bilingual in Arabic and Berber. Berber place-names are still common in some areas where Berber is no longer spoken. The language survives most notably in the Jabal Nafusah highlands of Tripolitania and in the Cyrenaican town of Awjilah. In the latter, the customs of seclusion and concealment of women have been largely responsible for the persistence of the Berber tongue. Because it is used largely in public life, most men have acquired Arabic, but it has become a functional language for only a handful of modernized young women. [Source: Helen Chapin Metz, ed. Libya: A Country Study, Library of Congress, 1987*]
•By and large, cultural and linguistic, rather than physical, distinctions separate Berber from Arab. The touchstone of Berberhood is the use of the Berber language. A continuum of related but not always mutually intelligible dialects, Berber is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is distantly related to Arabic, but unlike Arabic it has not developed a written form and as a consequence has no written literature. »
•Unlike the Arabs, who see themselves as a single nation, Berbers do not conceive of a united Berberdom and have no name for themselves as a people. The name Berber has been attributed to them by outsiders and is thought to derive from barbari, the term the ancient Romans applied to them. Berbers identify with their families, clans, and tribe. Only when dealing with outsiders do they identify with other groupings such as the Tuareg. Traditionally, Berbers recognized private property, and the poor often worked the lands of the rich. Otherwise, they were remarkably egalitarian. A majority of the surviving Berbers belong to the Khariji sect of Islam, which emphasizes the equality of believers to a greater extent than does the Maliki rite of Sunni Islam, which is followed by the Arab population. A young Berber sometimes visits Tunisia or Algeria to find a Khariji bride when none is available in his own community. »
•Most of the remaining Berbers live in Tripolitania, and many Arabs of the region still show traces of their mixed Berber ancestry. Their dwellings are clustered in groups made up of related families; households consist of nuclear families, however, and the land is individually held. Berber enclaves also are scattered along the coast and in a few desert oases. The traditional Berber economy has struck a balance between farming and pastoralism, the majority of the village or tribe remaining in one place throughout the year while a minority accompanies the flock on its circuit of seasonal pastures. »
•Berbers and Arabs in Libya live together in general amicability, but quarrels between the two peoples occasionally erupted until recent times. A short-lived Berber state existed in Cyrenaica during 1911 and 1912. Elsewhere in the Maghrib during the 1980s, substantial Berber minorities continued to play important economic and political roles. In Libya their number was too small for them to enjoy corresponding distinction as a group. Berber leaders, however, were in the forefront of the independence movement in Tripolitania. »
•Now let’t talk about the aweful ottoman empire slavery, personally I suffer because of that subject , my identity, personally I have italian origins and imagine how many people people are suffering of this subject and they’re not in their right place, their nature, this is a serious problem, a bad influence comes in, and other things, anyways, let get it straight to the head.
•White slavery (also white slave trade or white slave trafficking) refers to the chattel slavery of Europeans, whether by non-Europeans (such as North Africans), or by other Europeans (for example naval galley slaves or the Vikings’ thralls). Slaves of European origin were present in ancient Rome and the Ottoman Empire.
•Many different type of white people were enslaved, based purely on their skin color.On the European continent under feudalism, there were various forms of status applying to people (such as serf, bordar, villein, vagabondand slave) who were indentured or forced to labor without pay.
•Under Muslim rule, the Arab slave trades that included Caucasian captives were often fueled by raids into European territories or were taken as children in the form of a blood tax from the families of citizens of conquered territories to serve the empire for a variety of functions. In the mid-19th century, the term ‘white slavery’ was used to describe the Christian slaves that were sold into the Barbary slave trade.
•The modern legal term applies more narrowly to sexual slavery, forced prostitution and human trafficking, with less focus on the race of victims or perpetrators.
•History
•The phrase « white slavery » was used by Charles Sumner in 1847 to describe the chattel slavery of Christians throughout the Barbary States and primarily in the Algiers, the capital of Ottoman Algeria.[2] It also encompassed many forms of slavery, including the European concubines (Cariye) often found in Turkish harems.[3]
•The term was also used by Clifford G. Roe from the beginning of the twentieth century to campaign against the forced prostitution and sexual slavery of girls who worked in Chicago brothels. Similarly, countries of Europe signed in Paris in 1904 an International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic aimed at combating the sale of women who were forced into prostitution in the countries of continental Europe.
•White slave trade
•Slavic Slaves
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•The Rus trading slaves with the Khazars: Trade in the East Slavic Camp by Sergei Ivanov (1913)
•The Volga trade route was established by the Varangians (Vikings) who settled in Northwestern Russia in the early 9th century. About 10 km (6 mi) south of the Volkhov River entry into Lake Ladoga, they established a settlement called Ladoga (Old Norse: Aldeigjuborg). It connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad. White Christians, Jews, and all ethnic groups were enslaved for their race, The route functioned concurrently with the Dnieper trade route, better known as the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, and lost its importance in the 11th century.
•Saqaliba originally was used to denote Slavic people, however later it came to denote all European slaves in some Muslim regions like Spain including those abducted from raids on Christian kingdoms of Spain. The Franks started buying slaves from the Slavs and Avar Khaganate while Muslims also came across slaves in the form of mercenaries serving the Byzantine Empire and settlers in addition to among the Khazars. Most Slavic slaves were imported to the Muslim world through the border between Christian and Islamic kingdoms where castration centres were also located instead of the direct route. From there they were sent into Islamic Spain and other Muslim-ruled regions especially North Africa. The saqaliba gained popularity in Umayyad Spain especially as warriors. After the collapse of the Umayyads, they also came to rule over many of the taifas. With the conversion of Eastern Europe, the trade declined and there isn’t much textual information on saqaliba after 11th century.
•Central Europe was the most favoured destination for importation of slaves alongside Central Asia and Bilad as-Sudan, though slaves from Northwestern Europe were also valued. This slave trade was controlled mostly by European slave traders. France and Venice were the routes used to send Slavic slaves to Muslim lands and Prague served as a major centre for castration of Slavic captives.The Emirate of Bari also served as an important port for this trade.Due to the Byzantine Empire and Venice blocking Arab merchants from European ports, they later started importing in slave from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
•The Saqaliba were also imported as eunuchs and concubines to Muslim states.The slavery of eunuchs in the Muslim world however was expensive and they thus were given as gifts by rulers. The Saqaliba eunuchs were prominent at the court of Aghlabids and later Fatimids who imported them from Spain. The Fatimids also used other Saqaliba slaves for military purposes.
•Crimean Khanate
•Main articles: History of slavery in Asia and Crimean Khanate
•See also: Crimean–Nogai raids into East Slavic lands
•In the time of the Crimean Khanate, Crimeans engaged in frequent raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy. For each captive, the khan received a fixed share (savğa) of 10 percent or 20 percent. The campaigns by Crimean forces categorize into sefers, declared military operations led by the khans themselves, and çapuls, raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Caffa was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved between 1 and 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700.Caffa (city on Crimean peninsula) was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets,In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.
•Barbary slave trade
•Main articles: Barbary slave trade and Barbary corsairs
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•The Barbary Coast
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•The purchase of Christian captives by Catholic monks in the Barbary states
•Slave markets flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 15th and middle of the 19th century.
•These markets prospered while the states were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, though, in reality, they were mostly autonomous. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as the Turkish Abductions in Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned.
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•1815 illustration of a group of Christian slaves in Algiers by British artist Walter Croker
•According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. However, to extrapolate his numbers, Davis assumes the number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates were constant for a 250-year period, stating:
•There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.’’
•Davis’ numbers have been challenged by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe and black people from west Africa. A second book by Davis, Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian–Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean, widened its focus to related slavery.
•It is also worth noting that there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.
•Such observations, across the late 1500s and early 1600s observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.
•From bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured. From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore, Ireland were abandoned following the raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates.
•While Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured, their primary goal was to capture people for sale as slaves or for ransom. Those who had family or friends who might ransom them were held captive, but not obliged to work; the most famous of these was the author Miguel de Cervantes, who was held for almost five years. Others were sold into various types of servitude. Attractive women or boys could be used as sex slaves. Captives who converted to Islam were generally freed, since enslavement of Muslims was prohibited; but this meant that they could never return to their native countries, Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail Ben Sharif controlled a fleet of corsairs based at Salé-le-Vieux and Salé-le-Neuf (now Rabat), which supplied him with Christian slaves and weapons through their raids in the Mediterranean and all the way to the Black Sea. Moulay Ismail was nicknamed the ‘bloody king’ by the Europeans due to his extreme cruelty and exaction of summary justice upon his Christian slaves. He is also known in his native country as the « Warrior King ».
•16th- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul’s additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700. The markets declined after the loss of the Barbary Wars and ended in the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.
•Christian slavery in Muslim Iberia
•Main article: Slavery in Spain
•Main article: Slavery in Portugal
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•Abraham Duquesne delivering Christian captives in Algiers after the Bombardment of Algiers (1683)
•During the Al-Andalus (also known as Islamic Iberia), the Moors controlled much of the peninsula.
•In Spain concretely they imported white Christian slaves from the 8th century until the Reconquista in the late 15th century. The slaves were exported from the Christian section of Spain, as well as Eastern Europe, sparking significant reaction from many in Christian Spain and many Christians still living in Muslim Spain. Soon after, Muslims were successful, taking 30,000 Christian captives from Spain. In the eighth century slavery lasted longer due to « frequent cross-border skirmishes, interspersed between periods of major campaigns ». By the tenth century, in the eastern Mediterranean Byzantine, Christians were captured by Muslims. Many of the raids designed by Muslims were created for a fast capture of prisoners. Therefore, Muslims restricted the control in order to keep captives from fleeing. The Iberian peninsula served as a base for further exports of slaves into other Muslim regions in Northern Africa.
•Ottoman slave trade
•Main article: Ottoman slave trade
•Slavery was a legal and a significant part of the Ottoman Empire’s economy and society.[The main sources of slaves were war captives and organized enslavement expeditions in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Circassia and Georgia in the Caucasus. It has been reported that the selling price of slaves fell after large military operations. Enslavement of Europeans was banned in the early 19th century, while slaves from other groups were allowed.
•Even after several measures to ban slavery in the late 19th century, the practice continued largely unabated into the early 20th century. As late as 1908, female slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire. Sexual slavery was a central part of the Ottoman slave system throughout the history of the institution.
•Spanish slaves in Araucanía
•See also: Slavery of Mapuches and Mapuche polygamy
•In the Arauco War (1550–1662), a long-running conflict between Spanish and Mapuches in Chile, both sides engaged in slavery of the enemy population, among other atrocities. Much like the Spanish Mapuches had also captured Spanish, often women, trading their ownership among them.Indeed, with the Destruction of the Seven Cities (1599–1604) Mapuches are reported to have taken 500 Spanish women captive, holding them as slaves. It was not uncommon for captive Spanish women to have changed owner several times. As late as in the 1850s alledged shipwreck survivor Elisa Bravo was said to be living as wife to a Mapuche cacique,in what is described as the most brutal forced coexistence resulting in children of « mixed blood ».A report dating from 1863 said that her captors, fearing vengeance from Spaniards, sold her to the warlord Calfucurá in Puelmapu for a hundred mares, but that she had died after three years.
•European slavery
•See also: Slavery in Ireland, Slavery in Britain, Slavery in Spain, and Slavery in Russia
•
•Relief from Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey) depicting a Roman soldier leading captives in chains
•Slavery in ancient Rome
•Main article: Slavery in ancient Rome
•Further information: Slavery in the Byzantine Empire
•
•The Slave Market, by Gustave Boulanger (1882)
•In the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire, slaves accounted for most of the means of industrial output in Roman commerce. Slaves were drawn from all over Europe and the Mediterranean, including Gaul, Hispania, North Africa, Syria, Germania, Britannia, the Balkans, and Greece. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital, where their number was largest, at its peak.
•Slaves numbering in the tens of thousands were condemned to work in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. Damnati in metallum (« those condemned to the mine ») were convicts who lost their freedom as citizens (libertas), forfeited their property (bona) to the state, and became servi poenae, slaves as a legal penalty. Their status under the law was different from that of other slaves; they could not buy their freedom, be sold, or be set free. They were expected to live and die in the mines. Imperial slaves and freedmen (the familia Caesaris) worked in mine administration and management.
•In the Late Republic, about half the gladiators who fought in Roman arenas were slaves, though the most skilled were often free volunteers. Successful gladiators were occasionally rewarded with freedom. However, gladiators being trained warriors and having access to weapons, were potentially the most dangerous slaves. At an earlier time, many gladiators had been soldiers taken captive in war. Spartacus, who led a slave rebellion of 73–71 BC, was a rebel gladiator.
•The slaves imported in Italy were native Europeans, and very few of them were from outside Europe. This has been confirmed by biochemical analysis of 166 skeletons from three imperial-era cemeteries in the vicinity of Rome (where the bulk of the slaves lived), which shows that only one individual came from outside of Europe (North Africa), and another two possibly did, but results are inconclusive. In the rest of the Italian peninsula, the fraction of non-European slaves was much lower than that.
•Slavery under Islamic rule
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•History of the Ottoman Empire
•Social structure
•Court and aristocracy
•Ottoman court Slavery Devshirme
•Millets
•Muslims Christians Armenians Aromanians (« Vlachs ») Bulgarians Greeks Jews Great Fire of 1660
•Rise of nationalism
•Tanzimat Ottomanism
•vte
•Main articles: History of slavery in the Muslim world and Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
•The « pençik » or « penç-yek » tax, meaning « one fifth », was a taxation based on a verse of the Quran; whereby one fifth of the spoils of war belonged to God, to Muhamad and his family, to orphans, to those in need and to travelers. This eventually included slaves and war captives were given to soldiers and officers to help motivate their participation in wars.
•Christians and Jews, known as People of the Book in Islam, were considered dhimmis in territories under Muslim rule, a status of second-class citizens that were afforded limited freedoms, legal protections, personal safety, and were allowed to « practice their religion, subject to certain conditions, and to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy » in return for paying the jizya and kharaj taxes. If a dhimmi broke his agreement and left Muslim territory for enemy land, he was liable to be enslaved – unless the dhimmi had left Muslim territory because he suffered injustice there.
•Dhimmis were protected persons who could not be enslaved unless they violated the terms of protection. Such violations normally included rebellion, treason; according to some authorities this could also include failure to pay due taxes. Failure to pay tax could also result in imprisonment.
•The Devshirme was a blood tax largely imposed in the Balkans and Anatolia in which the Ottoman Empire sent military to collect Christian boys between the ages of 8 to 18 that were taken from their families and raised to serve the empire. The tax was imposed by Murad I in the mid 1300s and lasted until the reign of Ahmet III in the early 1700s. From the mid to late 14th, through early 18th centuries, the devşirme–janissary system enslaved an estimated 500,000 to one million non-Muslim adolescent males. These boys would attain a great education and high social standing after their training and forced conversion to Islam. Basilike Papoulia wrote that « the devsirme was the ‘forcible removal’, in the form of a tribute, of children of the Christian subjects from their ethnic, religious and cultural environment and their transportation into the Turkish-Islamic environment with the aim of employing them in the service of the Palace, the army, and the state, whereby they were on the one hand to serve the Sultan as slaves and freedmen and on the other to form the ruling class of the State. »
•Indentured servitude
•Main articles: Indentured servitude and Irish indentured servants
•Further information: Irish slave myth
•In the 17th to 18th centuries, many whites in Britain, Ireland and European colonies in North America were indentured servants, a form of slavery now banned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but not all had the comfort of having the documentation of being indentured, and some indentured servants were treated just as badly as their African brethren. Sterling Professor of History at Yale University David Brion Davis wrote that:
•From Barbados to Virginia, colonists long preferred English or Irish indentured servants as their main source of field labor; during most of the seventeenth century they showed few scruples about reducing their less fortunate countrymen to a status little different from chattel slaves – a degradation that was being carried out in a more extreme and far more extensive way with respect to the peasantry in contemporary Russia. The prevalence and suffering of white slaves, serfs and indentured servants in the early modern period suggests that there was nothing inevitable about limiting plantation slavery to people of African origin.
•Between 50 and 67 percent of white immigrants to the American colonies, from the 1630s and American Revolution, had traveled under indenture. Many women brought to the colonies were poor, some were abandoned or young girls born out of wedlock, others prostitutes or criminals. One ship’s captain reportedly described them as a « villainous and demoralized lot ». Many were transported against their will and for profit to Virginia and Maryland. The French transported women from the Salpêtrière prison for the homeless, insane and criminal to New Orleans.
•Women held at Salpêtrière were bound in chains, flogged and lived in generally poor and unsanitary conditions. Female inmates, some of whom were sick with venereal disease, were forced to attend confessions three times each day where they would be whipped if their demeanor and behaviors were not acceptably penitent. In addition to Salpêtrière, the French transported women from other almshouses and hospitals including Bicêtre, Hôpital général de Paris and Pitié.
•White slave traffic[
•Main article: International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic
•See also: History of sexual slavery in the United States § White slavery
•The International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic is a series of anti–human trafficking treaties, the first of which was first negotiated in Paris in 1904. It was one of the first multilateral treaties to address issues of slavery and human trafficking. The Slavery, Servitude, Forced Labour and Similar Institutions and Practices Convention of 1926 and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age of 1933 are similar documents.
•White Slave Traffic Act of 1910
•Main article: Mann Act
•To battle sex trafficking in the United States, in 1910 the US Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act (better known as the Mann Act), which made it a felony to transport women across state borders for the purpose of « prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose. » As more women were being trafficked from foreign countries, the US began passing immigration acts to curtail aliens from entering the country such as the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924. Following the banning of immigrants during the 1920s, human trafficking was not considered a major issue until the 1990s.
•Criminal Law Amendment (White Slave Traffic) Bill
•An attempt was made to introduce a similar law into the UK between 1910 and 1913 as the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1912. Arthur Lee would state in the House of Commons: « the United Kingdom, and particularly England, is increasingly becoming a clearing-house and depot and dispatch centre of the white slave traffic, and the headquarters of the foreign agents engaged in the most expensive and lucrative phase of the business. »[61] South America was stated as the main destination for the trafficked girls. The Spectator commented that « the Bill has been blocked by a member [alluding to Frederick Handel Booth ] or members who, for various reasons consider that it is not a measure which ought to be placed upon the statute book » as it would affect the liberty of the individual.
I said it and I repeat it,barbar in ancient greek means a foreigner ‘verrany’ in Amazigh, the berbers aren’t the barbarics, Barbarics are the Ottomans.
•We really suffered because of the Ottomans.
•but there’s something called work.
•CHAPTER 35 : NIKOLA TESLA ( DOOR OF ANY SCIENTIFIC CONVERSATION )
•Serbian-American inventor
•The mysterious genius
•Nikola Tesla, (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died January 7, 1943, New York, New York, U.S.), Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-currentmachinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology.
•Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic touch.
•Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.
•In May 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison’s direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out.
•Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given free rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in 1895. Tesla’s countless experiments included work on a carbon button lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting.
•In order to allay fears of alternating currents, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lit lamps by allowing electricity to flow through his body. He was often invited to lecture at home and abroad. The Tesla coil, which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and other electronic equipment. That year also marked the date of Tesla’s U.S. citizenship.
•Westinghouse used Tesla’s alternating current system to light the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. This success was a factor in their winning the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla’s name and patent numbers. The project carried power to Buffalo by 1896.
•In 1898 Tesla announced his invention of a teleautomatic boat guided by remote control. When skepticism was voiced, Tesla proved his claims for it before a crowd in Madison Square Garden.
•In Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 41 metres (135 feet). At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals.
•
•Nikola Tesla
•Publicity photo of Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in December 1899. Tesla posed with his “magnifying transmitter,” which was capable of producing millions of volts of electricity. The discharge shown is 6.7 metres (22 feet) in length.
•Wellcome Library, London
•Returning to New York in 1900, Tesla began construction on Long Island of a wireless world broadcasting tower, with $150,000 capital from the American financier J. Pierpont Morgan. Tesla claimed he secured the loan by assigning 51 percent of his patent rights of telephony and telegraphy to Morgan. He expected to provide worldwide communication and to furnish facilities for sending pictures, messages, weather warnings, and stock reports. The project was abandoned because of a financial panic, labour troubles, and Morgan’s withdrawal of support. It was Tesla’s greatest defeat.
•Tesla’s work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still examined by enthusiasts for unexploited clues. In 1915 he was severely disappointed when a report that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize proved erroneous. Tesla was the recipient of the Edison Medal in 1917, the highest honour that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow.
•Tesla allowed himself only a few close friends. Among them were the writers Robert Underwood Johnson, Mark Twain, and Francis Marion Crawford. He was quite impractical in financial matters and an eccentric, driven by compulsions and a progressive germ phobia. But he had a way of intuitively sensing hidden scientific secrets and employing his inventive talent to prove his hypotheses. Tesla was a godsend to reporters who sought sensational copy but a problem to editors who were uncertain how seriously his futuristic prophecies should be regarded. Caustic criticism greeted his speculations concerning communication with other planets, his assertions that he could split the Earth like an apple, and his claim of having invented a death ray capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 400 km (250 miles).
•After Tesla’s death the custodian of alien property impounded his trunks, which held his papers, his diplomas and other honours, his letters, and his laboratory notes. These were eventually inherited by Tesla’s nephew, Sava Kosanovich, and later housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Hundreds filed into New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine for his funeral services, and a flood of messages acknowledged the loss of a great genius. Three Nobel Prize recipients addressed their tribute to “one of the outstanding intellects of the world who paved the way for many of the technological developments of modern times.”
•THE RISE AND FALL OF NIKOLA TESLA AND HIS TOWER
•THE INVENTOR’S VISION OF A GLOBAL WIRELESS-TRANSMISSION TOWER PROVED TO BE HIS UNDOING
•By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the Serbian physicist, engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He spent days in a park surrounded by the creatures that mattered most to him—pigeons—and his sleepless nights working over mathematical equations and scientific problems in his head. That habit would confound scientists and scholars for decades after he died, in 1943. His inventions were designed and perfected in his imagination.
•Tesla believed his mind to be without equal, and he wasn’t above chiding his contemporaries, such as Thomas Edison, who once hired him. “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack,” Tesla once wrote, “he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.”
•But what his contemporaries may have been lacking in scientific talent (by Tesla’s estimation), men like Edison and George Westinghouse clearly possessed the one trait that Tesla did not—a mind for business. And in the last days of America’s Gilded Age, Nikola Tesla made a dramatic attempt to change the future of communications and power transmission around the world. He managed to convince J.P. Morgan that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, and the financier gave Tesla more than $150,000 to fund what would become a gigantic, futuristic and startling tower in the middle of Long Island, New York. In 1898, as Tesla’s plans to create a worldwide wireless transmission system became known, Wardenclyffe Tower would be Tesla’s last chance to claim the recognition and wealth that had always escaped him.
•Nikola Tesla was born in modern-day Croatia in 1856; his father, Milutin, was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. From an early age, he demonstrated the obsessiveness that would puzzle and amuse those around him. He could memorize entire books and store logarithmic tables in his brain. He picked up languages easily, and he could work through days and nights on only a few hours sleep.
•At the age of 19, he was studying electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz in Austria, where he quickly established himself as a star student. He found himself in an ongoing debate with a professor over perceived design flaws in the direct-current (DC) motors that were being demonstrated in class. “In attacking the problem again I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end,” Tesla later wrote. “I had so much energy to spare. When I undertook the task it was not with a resolve such as men often make. With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. I knew that I would perish if I failed. Now I felt that the battle was won. Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could not yet give it outward expression.”
•He would spend the next six years of his life “thinking” about electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternate-current that would and should work. The thoughts obsessed him, and he was unable to focus on his schoolwork. Professors at the university warned Tesla’s father that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him. But rather than finish his studies, Tesla became a gambling addict, lost all his tuition money, dropped out of school and suffered a nervous breakdown. It would not be his last.
•In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, after recovering from his breakdown, and he was walking through a park with a friend, reciting poetry, when a vision came to him. There in the park, with a stick, Tesla drew a crude diagram in the dirt—a motor using the principle of rotating magnetic fields created by two or more alternating currents. While AC electrification had been employed before, there would never be a practical, working motor run on alternating current until he invented his induction motor several years later.
•In June 1884, Tesla sailed for New York City and arrived with four cents in his pocket and a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor—a former employer—to Thomas Edison, which was purported to say, “My Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!”
•A meeting was arranged, and once Tesla described the engineering work he was doing, Edison, though skeptical, hired him. According to Tesla, Edison offered him $50,000 if he could improve upon the DC generation plants Edison favored. Within a few months, Tesla informed the American inventor that he had indeed improved upon Edison’s motors. Edison, Tesla noted, refused to pay up. “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke,” Edison told him.
•Tesla promptly quit and took a job digging ditches. But it wasn’t long before word got out that Tesla’s AC motor was worth investing in, and the Western Union Company put Tesla to work in a lab not far from Edison’s office, where he designed AC power systems that are still used around the world. “The motors I built there,” Tesla said, “were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision, and the operation was always as I expected.”
•Tesla patented his AC motors and power systems, which were said to be the most valuable inventions since the telephone. Soon, George Westinghouse, recognizing that Tesla’s designs might be just what he needed in his efforts to unseat Edison’s DC current, licensed his patents for $60,000 in stocks and cash and royalties based on how much electricity Westinghouse could sell. Ultimately, he won the “War of the Currents,” but at a steep cost in litigation and competition for both Westinghouse and Edison’s General Electric Company.
•
•Wardenclyffe Tower. Photo: Wikipedia
•Fearing ruin, Westinghouse begged Tesla for relief from the royalties Westinghouse agreed to. “Your decision determines the fate of the Westinghouse Company,” he said. Tesla, grateful to the man who had never tried to swindle him, tore up the royalty contract, walking away from millions in royalties that he was already owed and billions that would have accrued in the future. He would have been one of the wealthiest men in the world—a titan of the Gilded Age.
•His work with electricity reflected just one facet of his fertile mind. Before the turn of the 20th century, Tesla had invented a powerful coil that was capable of generating high voltages and frequencies, leading to new forms of light, such as neon and fluorescent, as well as X-rays. Tesla also discovered that these coils, soon to be called “Tesla Coils,” made it possible to send and receive radio signals. He quickly filed for American patents in 1897, beating the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi to the punch.
•Tesla continued to work on his ideas for wireless transmissions when he proposed to J.P. Morgan his idea of a wireless globe. After Morgan put up the $150,000 to build the giant transmission tower, Tesla promptly hired the noted architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead, and White in New York. White, too, was smitten with Tesla’s idea. After all, Tesla was the highly acclaimed man behind Westinghouse’s success with alternating current, and when Tesla talked, he was persuasive.
•“As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere,” Tesla said at the time. “He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind.”
•White quickly got to work designing Wardenclyffe Tower in 1901, but soon after construction began it became apparent that Tesla was going to run out of money before it was finished. An appeal to Morgan for more money proved fruitless, and in the meantime investors were rushing to throw their money behind Marconi. In December 1901, Marconi successfully sent a signal from England to Newfoundland. Tesla grumbled that the Italian was using 17 of his patents, but litigation eventually favored Marconi and the commercial damage was done. (The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld Tesla’s claims, clarifying Tesla’s role in the invention of the radio—but not until 1943, after he died.) Thus the Italian inventor was credited as the inventor of radio and became rich. Wardenclyffe Tower became a 186-foot-tall relic (it would be razed in 1917), and the defeat—Tesla’s worst—led to another of his breakdowns. ”It is not a dream,” Tesla said, “it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive—blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!”
•
•Guglielmo Marconi in 1903. Photo: Library of Congress
•By 1912, Tesla began to withdraw from that doubting world. He was clearly showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was potentially a high-functioning autistic. He became obsessed with cleanliness and fixated on the number three; he began shaking hands with people and washing his hands—all done in sets of three. He had to have 18 napkins on his table during meals, and would count his steps whenever he walked anywhere. He claimed to have an abnormal sensitivity to sounds, as well as an acute sense of sight, and he later wrote that he had “a violent aversion against the earrings of women,” and “the sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit.”
•THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF NIKOLA TESLA’S FILES AFTER HIS DEATH
•
•Wellcome Collection/CC BY
•Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors and visionaries of all time. At the time of his death, the U.S. Government took possession of all his possessions to stop them from falling into enemy hands.
•Little is really known what this great man was working on just before his death. But, given the significance of his earlier work, you can forgive the authorities at the time for trying to keep them a state secret until they were reviewed.
•Much of his work was later released into the public domain but, curiously, some of the material appears to be lost...
•How did Nikola Tesla die?
•This is actually more of an interesting question that it first seems. Although he was of advanced age at his time of death, his final end might have been caused by an earlier incident in his life.
•In the autumn of 1937, Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker to make his regular commute to the Cathedral and library. Whilst crossing the street he was hit by a taxicab and thrown to the ground.
•The incident severely damaged his back and broke three of his ribs. But, as he never consulted a doctor, the full extent of his injuries are, to this day, unknown.
•Given his age, 81, at the time, he never really recovered and the accident must have affected his psychology and confidence.
•Tesla was already a very solitary individual who spent most of his life shying away from society. He was much happier with his own company rather than large crowds and spent most of his time in his workshop or his own imagination.
•
•The hotel Tesla spent the last years of his life staying at. Source: Bramstercate/Wikimedia Commons
•Nikola Tesla had become a recluse in his later years
•Following the accident, Nikola Tesla spent more and more time on his own in his room, Room 3327, 33rd Floor, at the Hotel New Yorker. According to the staff at the hotel, he rarely received guests and had special vegetarian-style meals prepared for him daily by the chef.
•When he did permit staff into his room he always asked them to remain at least three feet away (91 centimeters) from him. His fate, it seemed, was in his own hands.
•The great Nikola Tesla, perfector of AC, inventor of the Tesla coil and all-around visionary inventor and futurist, would die just as he had chosen to live his life - alone.
•Nikola Tesla was found dead in his hotel room bed by hotel staff on January the 8th 1943. It was later established that he’d died at approximately 10:45 pm on the 7th.
•The maid in question, Alice Monaghan, immediately called a physician who examined Nikola and pronounced him dead shortly after. It was quickly discovered that the cause of death was most likely coronary thrombosis.
•This is caused by a blood clot in the blood vessels of the heart restricting blood flow and ultimately leading to heart failure. It is usually associated with atherosclerosis, or build up of cholesterol and fats on blood vessel walls.
•Coronary thrombosis is usually the result of a high LDL cholesterol diet, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, and hypertension. Tesla rarely drank tea or coffee, stopped smoking in his 20s, and clearly had low cholesterol and fatty diet towards the end of his life.
•He also had an interesting dietary strategy, as revealed in a fascinating 1935 interview during his life. Within it, he also reveals his love for exercise and its importance on a healthy body and mind.
•Clearly, the earlier taxi accident had a profound impact on the old man’s last years. A sad and ignoble end to one of the world’s greatest visionaries.
•
•Source: Scewing/Wikimedia Commons
•What was Nikola Tesla working on when he died?
•Nikola Tesla’s ideas became more and more fantastical towards the end of his life. One famous example was his announcement of inventing a « Death Ray » on his seventy-eighth birthday.
•He also started to show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder in his waning years. For example, he became particularly obsessed with the number three.
•He would often walk around a block three times before entering a building. At meal times he would request a stack of three-folded napkins to be placed beside his plate during meal times as well.
•SEE ALSO: 7 INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA THAT WERE NEVER BUILT
•And, as we have previously mentioned, he would ask staff to stand at least three feet away (91 centimeters) from him at all times. OCD was not very well understood at the time and was considered a form of madness.
•By the time he was 81, Tesla had completed a Dynamic Theory of Gravity. Whilst he had announced that the theory had « worked out all the details », he never published it.
•
•Source: Chetvorno/Wikimedia Commons
•From what was announced by Tesla, it seemed to attempt to explain gravity by using electrodynamics consisting of transverse waves and longitudinal waves.
•This was reminiscent of Mach’s principle and in 1925 Tesla publically stated: « There is no thing endowed with life - from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature - in all this world that does not sway in its turn. Whenever [an] action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results. » - 1925.
•He was also famously critical of Einstein’s work on Relativity. Tesla was adamant that it was deeply flawed and was mainly supported by metaphysicists rather than scientists.
•« I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties, we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.. » - 1932, New York Herald Tribune.
•Just before he died, Tesla appears to have been working on some form of teleforce weapon. The famous so-called « Death Ray. »
•This was an idea he seemed to become obsessed with and, on his eighty-fourth birthday, he announced he was almost ready to unveil his idea to the U.S. Government. He believed it could be used to build an invisible Chinese Wall of defense around the country.
•This appeared to be related to his previous work on ball lightning and plasma.
•By the time of this death, Tesla, now partially ‘house-bound’ at The New Yorker Hotel, had sold his AC electricity patents. Despite this, he was effectively destitute and would die with significant debts.
•What happened to Tesla’s papers after he died?
•Immediately following the announcement of the great man’s death, the U.S. Government moved quickly to acquire Tesla’s papers. The FBI instructed the Office of Alien Property to immediately take possession of all that remained of his property and possessions.
•Because of the apparent nature of Tesla’s work, J. Edgar Hoover Director of FBI declared it « most secret ». In the U.S. Government’s view, it was vitally important to get hold of them before any foreign powers, especially the Soviet Union, could.
•Shortly after an electrical engineer, Dr. John G. Trump (yes it is current President Donal Trump’s uncle) was assigned to review his papers to discover if any of it was of actual tangible value.
•He determined that it was « primarily of a speculative, philosophical and promotional character” and said the papers did “not include new sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”
•Tesla’s extended family, including his nephew Sava Kosanovic, tried desperately to have at least his personal effects returned. Their requests were eventually accepted and some of his personal items were returned to the family.
•Recently declassified documents reveal that the FBI, at the time, were concerned with his nephew’s intentions. They had even considered arresting him to prevent Tesla’s work falling into enemy hands.
•After a long court battle, Kosanovic, the rightful heir to his uncle’s belongings, was finally given them. Tesla’s possessions and files were sent to Belgrade.
•But, interestingly, of the 80 trunks or so of Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Belgrade. Whether the U.S. Government had kept some of the information and effects or not is still, today, unknown.
•
•Source: Frank R. Paul/Wikimedia Commons
•This had led to multiple conspiracy theories springing up about the whereabouts of the missing material. But after years of fielding questions on the matter, the FBI finally declassified some 250 pages of Tesla’s captured works in 2016.
•Yet despite this, it still seems some of his material is still missing. It is known that the U.S. Miltary had attempted to develop Tesla’s ideas on particle-beam technology in the post-war years.
•
•BIOGRAPHY
•Nikola Tesla: The Life and Times of the Genius Who Lit the World
•It is also believed that Ronald Reagan’s « Star Wars » Strategic Defense Initiative program in the 1980s was probably inspired by Tesla’s « Death Ray ». But if the government is still using some of Tesla’s material for its Research and Development, this would explain why some, if any, of his original works, are still missing today.
•Of course, we will never know for sure.
•All of Nikola Tesla’s returned personal possessions and papers are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
•Chapter 36 : Some Physics ,Chemistry AND Science facts AND Some SIMPLE Cool Experiments
I - Physics : the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. The subject matter of physics includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms.
•the physical properties and phenomena of something.
•Fun Facts for Physics Appreciation
A lot of learners dread studying physics simply because it represents the marriage of two most-feared school subjects: maths and science.
But, like every marriage, there are both lighthearted and more difficult aspects and, like most who make committed relationships work know, focusing on the lighter side is often what makes the darker times bearable.
In that spirit, your Superprof now presents you awesome, amazing, cool, fun, neat and nifty facts of physics; aspects of this very serious science that make it so intriguing to so many.
Hire a Physics and Maths tutor S1 to help you appreciate science even more.
Hopefully, by the end of this article, you too will be hooked!
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Interesting Physics Facts About Your Phone
Your smart phone screen is an application of plasma physics! Source: Pixabay Credit: Stevepb
These days, one does not need to be a rocket scientist or have a degree in astrophysics to operate such a high-tech gadget as a smartphone, even though there is a substantial amount of physics involved in their concept and operation.
Have you ever wondered how touching your phone’s screen can make things happen?
First, a bit of background.
Humans are electrical beings: throughout our bodies, there exist positive and negative charges that send messages along our nervous system, regulate our heartbeat and even protect individual cells.
These positively- or negatively-charged ions are especially evident when we touch something with an opposing electrical charge, and especially in the winter.
Static electricity is an electric charge buildup waiting for release – as opposed to current electricity, which flows from wall outlets into devices calling for it.
Friction, such as walking across a carpet in your stockinged feet, will generate a buildup of electrons that discharge when you touch something with an opposite charge, such as a door handle.
Electrical activity in our brains can be measured with an EEG – an electroencephalograph which, curiously enough, works on the same basic principle as our smartphone screens!
EEG and smartphone results are both due to ionic current.
The electrons in your fingertips repel the like-charged electrons in your phone’s screen, causing the electrical circuit at that point to open and a programmed sensor to perform the action coded in the phone’s software.
That is why you cannot operate your average smartphone with your fingernail or pencil rubber; they do not have the proper electrical charge!
Nor can you tap to play your fav video with gloves on unless you have those special gloves that permit the conduit of ions through the knit.
Another nifty physics fact related to phones: they make use of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.
GPS navigation depends on the very factors that comprise our most renown theoretical physicist’s superbly elegant formula: energy, mass and speed (time).
Unnoticed by you, your phone is under constant scrutiny by a minimum of four precisely calibrated satellites that measure the distance you’ve travelled between exactly-timed signal pulses and apply your positioning on known maps.
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You may well turn off your phone’s location services but your positioning data goes on regardless.
Harvesting that data is one reason why Google is in such hot water just now!
You may want to consult a physics glossary for some of these terms...
Water slows the speed of light, meaning looking at anything through a glass of water will resort in distortion Source: Pixabay Credit: 95839
Cool Physics Facts About Water
Being as we just mentioned water, we’ll dive right into this life-sustaining substance to discover surface tension and light refraction.
But first, a question: who doesn’t enjoy a refreshing gelatin dessert?
Maybe not right now, when chill winds blow and winter storms threaten... let’s think back to summer when the heat was unbearable...
Who among gelatin dessert lovers has not tapped their spoon on their treat, just to watch it wriggle but not yield?
That phenomenon is called surface tension: when the outer surface of a body functions as an elastic membrane.
The concept of surface tension is quite separate from flotation, which implies the object floating in the substance is more buoyant than the substance itself.
Wood, for example, is much less dense than water, permitting it to float. However, should a tree branch floating in the river absorb enough water, it would become heavier and eventually sink.
Gelatin has a relatively high surface tension, meaning you have to dig into your dessert rather than skimming across its surface, as you might with ice cream.
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Water has the amazing property that, while being a cohesive body, each water molecule has surface tension!
That is why, when you look through a glass of water, the image is distorted more so than if you looked through the glass alone.
It has to do with water slowing down light: by the time it reaches your eye, you are not getting the whole picture.
When light passes through water, its protons are only travelling at ¾ speed.
That doesn’t mean that classical physics is wrong: light does travel fast... under vacuum.
If you filled the Large Hadron Collider with water and shot a beam of light through, it would travel much slower!
Now, let’s talk about a body of water that has no more surface tension than any other, yet is denser than any on earth.
The Dead Sea’s salt content is such that, although you can’t see the salt crystals swimming around in the water, they render that body so dense that an average human cannot sink!
Which begs the question: why do drowning bodies sink and then float back up to the surface?
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The cause of drowning is taking water into the lungs, which makes the body heavier than the water. As the body decomposes, it fills with gas, making it lighter than water.
What a gruesome idea!
One last, most famous example of how water helped advance discovery: Archimedes and his bathtub.
He was tasked with calculating whether crown makers had cheated the king by mixing silver with the gold the king had provided for his new crown, but he was not allowed to melt the crown in order to test its contents.
Pondering the problem as he got in his bath, he noticed that the water level rose in exact proportion to his body’s volume. Thus, he reasoned he could submerge the crown in question, measure the water’s displacement and calculate the density of the crown.
Gold is far denser a metal than silver, as you may know.
So excited by his postulate was he that he completely forgot he was nearly in the bath – not a stitch of clothing on. He ran thus through the streets, shouting “Eureka!” - the ancient Greek equivalent of “I’ve got it!”
Learn more about Archimedes’ Principle, along with other key concepts in physics!
We could be condensed to just elementary particles, meaning that all of humanity could be one very heavy lump of sugar! Source: Pixabay Credit: Humusak
Physics Fun Facts About People
As a total science geek, crazy for anything to do with quantum mechanics or computational physics, I often bemoan the fact that I was born centuries too late to converse with Leonardo da Vinci, humanity’s most prolific polymath.
But then, I am cheered by the fact that I lived in a time when Stephen Hawking was on earth and wonder if, centuries from now, would some soul get their introduction to physics through his Theory of Everything and bemoan the fact that s/he was born too late, too?
That segment intro provides avenues to two fascinating areas of physics study: condensed matter physics and aspects of cosmology. Among others, black holes, dark matter and Hawking radiation.
Did you know that the entire human race could be condensed into something the size of an ordinary sugar cube?
We are all made up of atoms: protons, electrons and neutrons... and a whole bunch of empty space between them.
If we were to remove that space in every human body, all of humanity would be as large as a cube of sugar, but it would be incredibly heavy because it would be extremely dense!
That means that the theory behind the exploration of the quantum realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp is valid but the visuals aren’t: shrunken cars, buildings and people would be too heavy to pick up with just one hand.
Space has the same space issue: what we can see comprises only about 5% of the whole universe.
It’s not that we need better telescopes or equipment; it’s just that most of what the universe is made up of is space... filled with dark energy and dark matter.
Perhaps that dark energy is what keeps virtual particles popping in and out of existence.
Next time you pour yourself a glass of cola or other carbonated beverage, consider the life cycle of one bubble: it forms seemingly out of nothing, rises to the top and pops, releasing its tiny, gaseous load.
The same thing happens in space, a phenomenon known as quantum foam. It stands accused of constantly breaking the laws of physics... but nobody knows why their doing so doesn’t affect other aspects of cosmological events or balance.
And then, there are black holes.
The general relativity theory predicts that a sufficiently compact mass, perhaps one with all of the space sucked out from its atoms as described above, can deform spacetime and cause such a gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape it.
The late, great investigator of cosmic phenomena, Stephen Hawking, not only postulated that black holes emit radiation but that they retain the trace memory of every cosmic event that falls into them.
That concept is more famously expressed by our favourite fictitious Doctor, who can see everything there ever was and everything that ever will be.
A more real Doctor, Mr Hawking’s last public engagement discussed gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two neutron stars, a boon for astrophysicists!
You don’t have to be Sheldon, Leonard or Raj – or Stephen Hawking to appreciate theoretical physics and our universe, and you don’t need to be Howard to love the science behind statistical mathematics, electricity and magnetism.
So much for actors playing physicists; how about real physicists and their discoveries?
You only need to recognise that you are the embodiment pure physics: full of electricity and magnetism, with a dash of uncertainty principle thrown in.
Now that you are comforted and enthused about physics, you only need to decide your undergraduate field of study:
•solid state physics
•quantum electrodynamics
•mathematical physics
•nuclear physics
•thermodynamics
•applied physics
•particle physics
II- What is quantum physics in simple terms?
What is quantum physics? Put simply, it’s the physics that explains how everything works: the best description we have of the nature of the particles that make up matter and the forces with which they interact. Quantum physics underlies how atoms work, and so why chemistry and biology work as they do
QUANTUM PARTICLES BLEW OUR MINDS
Mind-blowing science
(Image credit: NASA)
The small world got up to some pretty big things this year. From strange Schrödinger’s-cat situations to mysteries of water to impossible-seeming particles flying up from the Antarctic ice, particle physics proved that there are many unknowns in the universe for us to explore. Here are the 18 most stunning quantum mechanics and high-energy particle physics stories of 2018.
Quantum data got denser than ever
To build quantum computers, scientists will have to first figure out how to manipulate and effectively store information with quantum objects. In 2018, researchers hit a milestone in that effort, packing 18 qubits of quantum information into just six photons, a new record.
The thermometer went Schrödinger
In our world, temperature is just one thing. If a freezer is cold enough to make ice, any water you put inside it should freeze. But quantum mechanics allows for objects to exist in uncertainty between multiple states, in a sense to be more than one thing at the same time — just like Schrödinger’s cat is both alive and dead in his thought experiment. And in 2018, we learned that this applies to temperature as well. Quantum objects can, from a certain point of view, be both hot and cold at the same time.
Light lost track of time
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Time is supposed to flow in one direction, following the path set for it by causality. A bowling ball rolls down a lane and smacks into a pin, so the pin falls. The pin falling doesn’t cause the bowling ball to roll down the lane and smack into it. But in the quantum realm, things are fuzzier. A team of scientists in 2018 sent a photon on a journey, one that should have taken it down path A and then path B, or path B and then path A. But thanks to the loosey-goosey way quantum objects function, that photon didn’t follow one path before the other. It followed both of them, without bothering to pick an order.
Quantum physics forced us to re-evaluate life
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
In theory, quantum physics should work for objects of any size. But many researchers believe that life might be too complicated for any sort of meaningful quantum effects to emerge. But an experiment conducted in 2016 did seem to show bacteria interacting quantum mechanically with light in a very limited, subtle way. In 2018, another group of researchers went back and looked at that experiment and found that something much deeper and stranger might have been going on, forcing us to re-evaluate life and the quantum world.
A tiny dumbbell spun really, really fast
(Image credit: Tongcang Li/Purdue University)
Sometimes, when you’ve got a new toy, you’ve got to take it out for a spin. That’s what scientists did with joint spheres of silica this year, « nanodumbbells » just 0.000012 inches (320 nanometers) long and approximately 0.000007 inches wide (170 nm). Using lasers, they blasted those dumbbells up to rotational speeds of 60 billion whirls per minute.
Water revealed its Jekyll and Hyde
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
There isn’t really just one kind of water molecule, a quantum-physics experiment revealed this year. Instead, there are two. Both are made up of two hydrogen atoms sticking up from one big oxygen atom, H2O. But in one kind of water, called « ortho-water, » those hydrogen atoms have quantum « spins » pointing in the same direction. In another kind of water, called « para-water, » those spins point in opposite directions.
Math, Reading, Science, and Social Studies. Einstein was proved right yet again (Image credit: Library of Congress) A team of Swiss scientists has performed a massive test of one of the strangest paradoxes in quantum mechanics, a huge example of the sort of behavior Albert Einstein skeptically called « spooky action at a distance. » Using a super-cooled clump of nearly 600 atoms, they showed that entanglement still works even at very large (quantum-mechanically-speaking) scales. 20 qubits got entangled (Image credit: IQOQI Innsbruck/Harald Ritsch) Qubits are the fundamental unit of information in quantum computers, and making quantum computers work will involve entangling them with each other. In 2018, an experiment managed to entangle 20 of qubits together and make them talk to one another, then read back the information they contained. The result was a sort of prototype of short-term memory for a quantum-computer system. Quantum radar got closer to becoming a reality (Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty) Military radar works by bouncing radio waves off objects flying through the sky. But in regions near Earth’s magnetic north pole, those signals can get scrambled. And there are stealth planes designed to avoid bouncing radar waves back at their source. In 2018, Canada made progress on a quantum radar that would bounce light photons off incoming planes, after entangling those photons with other photons far away, at the radar base. The quantum radar system would study photons at the base to see if their entangled partners were being tampered with by quantum technologies. Quantum randomness became a bit more democratic (Image credit: Shutterstock) Randomness is extremely important to cybersecurity. But true randomness, which is physically impossible to predict, is surprisingly hard to come by. One of the few sources of randomness in the world is the quantum realm, which is inaccessible to most of us. But that changed in 2018, when scientists created an online randomness « beacon » — a public source of random stri
Einstein was also proved wrong
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Einstein believed in an idea called « local realism, » meaning that objects have specific properties whether or not those traits are observed, and that information about those traits can’t travel faster than the speed of light. A huge test conducted in 2018, though, showed once again that Einstein was wrong about this. In the experiment, entangled particles seemed to « choose » matching states faster than light could have transferred information between them. This introduces two mind-bending scenarios: Either our observations of the world actually change it, or particles are communicating with each other in some manner that we can’t see or influence. « Or possibly both, » one researcher previously told Live Science.
The skyrmion finally explained ball lightning
(Image credit: Public domain)
For centuries, credible reports have described « ball lightning, » a strange phenomenon where lighting seems to persist as a sphere flying through space. But physicists have never been able to study this phenomenon, or to explain it. New research suggests the effect could be the result of « skyrmions, » tightly clustered groups of magnetic fields held together like interlocking rings. For the first time in 2018, scientists reported generating a true skyrmion in a lab, and its magnetic profile matched predictions for the magnetic system necessary to contain ball lightning.
A fifth state of matter in space
(Image credit: NASA)
You’ve probably heard of at least three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Plasma is the other bigger one. But there’s at least one more: the Bose-Einstein condensate, a state in which super-cooled atoms clump together and exhibit quantum activity on unusually large scales. Researchers have made Bose-Einstein condensates on Earth before, but for the first time in 2018, NASA did it in outer space, in an orbital lab aboard the International Space Station.
A superfast « clock » measured an electron in action
(Image credit: Terry Anderson / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Electrons move so fast that under normal circumstances researchers can’t find them at a specific spot in space. But in 2018, researchers switched on a device called the « attoclock » that blasts electrons with extraordinarily fast bursts of laser light, knocking them off their host atoms. The attoclock knows precisely when it fires its bursts of laser light, and measures precisely where the atoms land after they fly off into space. Using that information, they can figure out where the electron was in its orbit around the nucleus at the moment it was struck.
(Image credit: CERN)
Scientists haven’t found it yet, but they think there’s a kind of particle out there called the « leptoquark » that binds with two fundamental types of particle, the lepton and the quark. They didn’t find it in 2018, but they did publish results this year that narrow down its nature further than ever before, bringing the actual discovery (if it’s out there) much closer.
Cosmic rays fired upward out of Antarctica’s ice
(Image credit: Australian Antarctic Division)
Under normal circumstances, cosmic rays crash into Earth from outer space. But in 2018, researchers showed that at least a few seemed to be bursting out of the ground as well in Antarctica. Scientists don’t know what’s causing this upward cosmic shower, but the best explanation is that there’s some previously unknown high-energy particle out there, and it’s penetrating all the way through the Earth and coming out the other side [CK].
A high-energy neutrino finally told us where it came from
(Image credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab)
Under normal circumstances, high-energy neutrinos are cosmic mysteries. They’re ghostly particles, detectable under only limited circumstances, and we know very little about their ultimate source. But in 2018, a 4-billion-year-old neutrino crashed into an atom in a block of ice in Antarctica and gave up the goods. Researchers pointed telescopes all over the planet back in the direction from which the neutrino came, and revealed its source. It turned out that a flaring blazar, a black hole with a galaxy wrapped around it, was firing gamma-rays at Earth at the same time and from the same direction as that neutrino emerged. It was the first-ever such successful hunt for a neutrino’s home.
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•Definition of science
•1a: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
•2a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study the science of theology
•b: something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge have it down to a science
•3a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
•b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena: NATURAL SCIENCE
•4: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws cooking is both a science and an art
•5capitalized : CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
•Definition of chemistry :
•
1a : a science that deals with the composition, structure, and properties of substances and with the transformations that they undergo
•2a: the composition and chemical properties of a substance the chemistry of iron
•b: chemical processes and phenomena (as of an organism) blood chemistry
•3a: a strong mutual attraction, attachment, or sympathy they have a special chemistry
•b: interaction between people working togetherspecifically : such interaction when harmonious or effective
•WHAT IS AN
•‘ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMIST’ ?
•
•Environmental chemistry focuses on the presence and impact of chemicals in soil, surface water, and groundwater. Environmental chemists study how chemicals - usually contaminants - move through the environment. This is referred to as chemical “fate and transport”. They also study the effects of these contaminants on ecosystems, animals, and human health.
•What Does an Environmental Chemist Do?
•Environmental chemists advise on the movement and outcome of contaminants in soil and groundwater, assess long-term risks to ecological and human health, apply for environmental permits to undertake corrective strategies, classify contaminated soils as hazardous waste and manage their disposal, and supervise onsite remediation.
•In addition to working in the field, the may also conduct laboratory work. For example, they may analyze chemical interactions or relationships using chromatography or spectroscopy techniques. They may also take measurements, interpret data, and use computers to model chemical fate and transport. Environmental chemists may also write reports or academic papers to communicate their findings to clients or colleagues.
•WHERE DOES AN ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMIST WORK?
•Most environmental chemists are employed by remediation firms and environmental consulting companies. Professionals in these positions may travel to reach job sites and meet with clients and legislators. These professionals have more interaction with others and greater variety of work than many other chemists who work in isolation in laboratories.
•Environmental chemists may also work for state and federal government land management and regulatory agencies. They may also teach and conduct research as faculty members in academia.
•Environmental chemists may be exposed to contaminants and hazardous conditions in the course of their work. Wearing protective equipment and following established safety procedures is important when working in a laboratory, or at a contaminated work site.
•WHAT IS THE AVERAGE ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY SALARY?
•While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) doesn’t collect information on environmental chemists specifically, the mean annual wage for chemists overall was $77,740 in May 2013.
•ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY JOBS
•Environmental chemists work mainly in applied fields analyzing new chemicals and their impact on the environment - they also study the environment’s impact on newly created chemicals. While candidates seeking an environmental chemist job may pursue teaching or theoretical research, the larger demand is for these chemists to work in industrial or manufacturing settings. While responsibilities do vary significantly from company to company, the basic scope of an environmental chemist is responsible for can be found below:
•Develop data collection methods and systems according to the elements that are under study
•Collect information from observations, samples, and specimens
•Record and manage records of observations, samples and specimens in the lab and via fieldwork
•Use GIS and computer modelling to help forecast and analyze chemical impact
•Analyze literature, data, laboratory samples, and other sources of information to uncover primary, secondary, and tertiary chemical impacts
•Prepare reports and present research findings to internal and external stakeholders
•Communicate with team lead and executive through regular, scheduled reports and presentation of research findings
•Advise organizations and policymakers on the short and long-term impact and safety of chemicals in the environment
•Review research and literature in the field to stay abreast of current discoveries
•A lead environmental chemist or chief researcher may have the following or similar additional responsibilities, depending on the project goals:
•Develop and inform project scopes, timelines, and budgetary metrics
•Assure quality, integrity, organization, and appropriate tracking of field and lab data
•Oversee site integrity to control for chemical impacts
•Manage office-based tasks including technical report preparation and submittal, as well as liaising with site stakeholders
•Be able to interact with ease while adhering to local norms and area customs
•Supervise fieldwork (survey, site recording, testing, monitoring, and data integrity) of one or more field crews
•Communicate with funding agencies and individuals through field status reports and presentation of team findings
•WHAT IS THE JOB DEMAND FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTS?
•BLS projects that demand for all chemists will grow more slowly (3% to 7%) than average through 2022. However, with around 1,000 new chemicals introduced into the marketplace every year, the American Chemical Society (ACS) predicts that the demand for environmental chemists in particular will grow.
•WHAT DO ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTS STUDY?
•Environmental chemists usually have at least a bachelor’s degree from an ACS-approved chemistry program. Seek out programs offering a concentration in environmental chemistry. Environmental chemists study environmental organic chemistry, a branch of chemistry focusing on how environmental factors influence the fate and transport of organic chemicals. For example, they may examine how air pollutants interact with atmospheric gases, or how plants metabolize and break down contaminants.
•They develop a solid background in chemistry as a whole, including organic and biochemistry, and often study related disciplines such as oceanography, biogeochemistry, analytical methods, ecology, biology, geology, and engineering. Coursework generally includes several lab courses, as well as courses on mathematics. Knowledge of software for chemical analysis is also important.
•WHAT KIND OF SOCIETIES AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS DO ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTS HAVE?
•The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) , is a global professional organization that actively balances its focus among its academic, business, and government members. It develops and promotes multidisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems, and provides a forum for sharing ideas. It holds annual meetings, offers short courses, and maintains regional branches and chapters, a job board, and a directory of graduate programs.
•The American Chemical Society (ACS) , represents professionals at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry, as well as other sciences that involve chemistry. It holds annual and regional meetings, and posts presentations from past national meetings online. It also offers workshops, short courses, and symposia related to the chemical sciences, and provides a portal to resources on green chemistry called the Green Chemistry Institute.
•AMAZING CHEMISTRY FACTS THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND :
•Chemistry is king when it comes to making science cool. There are many interesting and fun projects to try, but these 10 awesome chemistry experiments can make anyone enjoy science.
•Copper and Nitric Acid
•
•When you place a piece of copper in nitric acid, the Cu2+ ions and nitrate ions coordinate to color the solution green and then brownish-green. If you dilute the solution, water displaces nitrate ions around the copper and the solution changes to blue.
•Hydrogen Peroxide with Potassium Iodide
•
•Jasper White, Getty Images
•Affectionately known as elephant toothpaste, the chemical reaction between the peroxide and potassium iodide shoots out a column of foam. If you add food coloring, you can customize the « toothpaste » for holiday-colored themes.
•Any Alkali Metal in Water
•
•Andy Crawford and Tim Ridley / Getty Images
•Any of the alkali metals will react vigorously in water. How vigorously? Sodium burns bright yellow. Potassium burns violet. Lithium burns red. Cesium explodes. Experiment by moving down the alkali metals group of the periodic table.
•Thermite Reaction
•
•nanoqfu / Getty Images
•The thermite reaction essentially shows what would happen if iron rusted instantly, rather than over time. In other words, it’s making metal burn. If the conditions are right, just about any metal will burn. However, the reaction usually is performed by reacting iron oxide with aluminum:
•Fe2O3 + 2Al → 2Fe + Al2O3 + heat and light
•If you want a truly stunning display, try placing the mixture inside a block of dry ice and then lighting the mixture.
•Coloring Fire
•
•SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images
•When ions are heated in a flame, electrons become excited, then drop to a lower energy state, emitting photons. The energy of the photons is characteristic of the chemical and corresponds to specific flame colors. It’s the basis for the flame test in analytical chemistry, plus it’s fun to experiment with different chemicals to see what colors they produce in a fire.
•Make Polymer Bouncy Balls
•
•mikroman6 / Getty Images
•Who doesn’t enjoy playing with bouncy balls? The chemical reaction used to make the balls makes a terrific experiment because you can alter the properties of the balls by changing the ratio of the ingredients.
•Make a Lichtenberg Figure
•
•Bert Hickman, Stoneridge Engineering
•A Lichtenberg figure or « electrical tree » is a record of the path taken by electrons during an electrostatic discharge. It’s basically frozen lightning. There are several ways you can make an electrical tree.
•Experiment with ‘Hot Ice’
•
•Henry Mühlfpordt
•Hot Ice is a name given to sodium acetate, a chemical you can make by reacting vinegar and baking soda. A solution of sodium acetate can be supercooled so that it will crystallize on command. Heat is evolved when the crystals form, so although it resembles water ice, it’s hot.
•Barking Dog Experiment
•
•Tobias Abel, Creative Commons
•The Barking Dog is the name given to a chemiluminescent reaction between the exothermic reaction between nitrous oxide or nitrogen monoxide and carbon disulfide. The reaction proceeds down a tube, emitting blue light and a characteristic « woof » sound.
•Another version of the demonstration involves coating the inside of a clear jug with alcohol and igniting the vapor. The flame front proceeds down the bottle, which also barks.
•Dehydration of Sugar
•
•Peretz Partensky, Creative Commons
•When you react sugar with sulfuric acid, the sugar is violently dehydrated. The result is a growing column of carbon black, heat, and the overwhelming odor of burnt caramel.
•FACT 1
•You cannot taste anything without saliva.
•FACT 2
•Yes, it is possible to die from drinking too much water.
•FACT 3
•Blue is the color of liquid oxygen.
•FACT 4
•Chalk is made of trillions of microscopic skeleton fossils of plankton.
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•FACT 5
•Fish scales are commonly used as an integral part of lipstick ingredients.
•FACT 6
•Coca-Cola initially contained cocaine and hence, the name.
•FACT 7
•Lemons have more sugar than strawberries.
•FACT 8
•Air becomes liquid at -190 degrees centigrade.
•FACT 9
•Gallium has a melting point of 29.76 degrees centigrade and can melt on the palm of your hand.
•
•FACT 10
•Dynamite contains peanuts as a part of its ingredient.
•FACT 11
•Graphene (AKA the miracle metal) is the best conductor of electricity and heat.
•FACT 12
•Lobster blood is colorless until it’s exposed to air. The blood then appears to be blue.
•FACT 13
•Goldfish eyes perceive the visible spectrum, infrared, as well as the ultraviolet light.
•FACT 14
•When you freeze seawater or saltwater, you get freshwater ice.
•FACT 15
•If you expose a glass of water to space, it won’t freeze; rather it will boil. The water vapor would, however, turn into ice soon afterward.
•FACT 16
•Stale eggs will float in water. Fresh eggs will sink.
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•FACT 17
•Sound travels 4.3 times faster in comparison to air. It doesn’t travel through the vacuum at all.
•FACT 18
•The solid form of carbon dioxide is known as the dry ice.
•FACT 19
•Tabletop volcanoes (ones found commonly in school exhibitions and projects) can be created using ammonium dichromate.
•FACT 20
•The softest known substance known to humankind is talc.
•FACT 21
•The lighter was invented way before the match.
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•FACT 22
•More than 78% of human brain consists of water.
•FACT 23
•Macadamia nuts are harmful to dogs and must be avoided at all possible cost.
•FACT 24
•A lightning strike may sometimes reach a staggering temperature of 30,000 degrees Celsius (i.e., 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit).
•FACT 25
•Helium is lighter than air. Hence, it floats.
•FACT 26
•DNA doesn’t catch fire.
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•FACT 27
•Ununoctium is the heaviest metal found so far.
•FACT 28
•Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table. It is highly inflammable.
•FACT 29
•Bromine and mercury are the only elements that can stay liquid at room temperature.
•FACT 30
•Unlike many other substances, water expands during freezing. An ice cube takes up almost 9% more volume than the water used to make it.
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•FACT 31
•Fire spreads uphill quicker than downhill. That is because temperature considerably affects the rate of combustion.
•FACT 32
•If you add a handful of salt in a glass of water, the level of water would actually go down.
•FACT 33
•Many radioactive elements do glow in the dark.
•FACT 34
•There is about 250 g of table salt (NaCl) in an average adult human body.
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•FACT 35
•Frogs don’t drink water because they can absorb it through their skin.
•FACT 36
•Your tooth enamel is the hardest chemical substance in your body.
•FACT 37
•Gold and copper are the only two metals devoid of having a silvery appearance.
•FACT 38
•The chemical elements are organized in order of their increasing atomic numbers.
•FACT 39
•Carbon comes in many forms like graphite, diamond, etc.
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•FACT 40
•J is the only letter that doesn’t appear on the periodic table.
•FACT 41
•The most abundant element in the universe is hydrogen.
•The most abundant element on the Earth is Oxygen.
•FACT 42
•Bones, teeth, and pearl will dissolve in vinegar because it contains weak acetic acid.
•FACT 43
•You have taste buds on your cheek as well as on your tongue.
•FACT 44
•Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.
•FACT 45
•Hydrofluoric acid is so corrosive that it can dissolve glass.
•FACT 46
•The Amazon rainforest produces approximately 20% of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
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•FACT 47
•Wasp stings are alkaline whereas bee stings are acidic.
•FACT 48
•Helium can be frozen only through pressure; not by cooling.
•FACT 49
•The surface of Mars is red because of the presence of iron oxide.
•FACT 50 : A pure element can take many forms.
NOW SOME INTERESTING SCIENCE FACTS :
•
•can dissolve razor blades
•On the rare occasion that you swallow a razor blade, don’t fret. The human body is more capable than you think. Acids are ranked on a scale from 0 to 14—the lower the pH level, the stronger the acid. Human stomach acid is typically 1.0 to 2.0, meaning that it has an impeccably strong pH. In a study, scientists found that the “thickened back of a single-edged blade” dissolved after two hours of immersion in stomach acid.
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•in water
•Yes, really. A cool thing called total internal reflection is applied when pointing a laser beam through a container of water. When light travels through water, it’s slowed by the heavier particles in water, as described here. Thus, the laser beam effectively gets “trapped” in the water. You also probably never learned these geography facts in school.
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•Earth’s oxygen is produced by the ocean
•Ever stopped to think where oxygen comes from? Your first thought may be a rainforest, but marine organisms take the bait. Plankton, seaweed and other photosynthesizers produce over half of the world’s oxygen. We know the answer to this and other fun science facts.
•
•Animals use Earth’s magnetic field for orientation
•Lost land animals may not be able to find their way home, but sea animals might. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “there is evidence that some animals, like sea turtles and salmon, have the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field and to use this sense for navigation.” These creepy real experiments sound like science fiction.
•
•A cloud can weigh over a million pounds
•Your childhood dreams of floating on a weightless cloud may get rained on with this fact: the average cumulus cloud can weigh up to a million pounds. A million pounds! That’s about as heavy as the world’s largest passenger jet. Before you hop on a plane it’s important to check the weather.
•
•Soil is alive and well
•In just one teaspoon of soil, there are more microorganisms than people on the planet, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Millions of species and billions of organisms—bacteria, algae, microscopic insects, earthworms, beetles, ants, mites, fungi and more—represent the greatest concentration of biomass anywhere on the planet
•
•Rats laugh when being tickled
•These creatures are more dynamic then we think. Rats have the ability to “laugh” when tickled. A National Geographic video demonstrated that rats respond positively to tickling. And they even chase after the researcher’s hand in a playful manner. Read up on these facts about Black History month you never learned in school.
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•There are more trees on Earth than stars in our galaxy
•NASA experts believe there could be anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, Snopes reports. However, a 2015 paper published in the journal Nature estimated that the number of trees around the world is much higher: 3.04 trillion.
•
•Oxygen has a color
•As a gas, oxygen is odorless and colorless. In its liquid and solid forms, however, it looks pale blue. Some science facts are just plain weird. In addition to these fun science facts.
•
•Only two letters don’t appear in the periodic table
•The letters J and Q don’t appear anywhere on the periodic table. Go ahead and double check. We’ll wait. Don’t miss these science “facts” that aren’t actually true, either, we gonna check them later.
•
•Bananas are radioactive
•For one of our strangest science facts, bananas contain potassium, and since potassium decays, that makes them slightly radioactive. But this is one of those fun science facts you don’t need to worry about. You’d need to eat 10,000,000 bananas at once to die of radiation poisoning, Forbes reports.
•
•Hot water freezes faster than cold water
•This fact seems counterintuitive, but it’s called the Mpemba effect, after a Tanzanian student named Erasto Mpemba who told his teacher than a hot mixture of ice cream froze faster than a cold one. Scientists now believe this is because the velocities of water particles have a specific disposition while they’re hot that allows them to freeze more readily. If proven correct, this finding could also have implications in daily life, like cooling down electronic devices.
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•Cold water heats up faster than hot water
•The researchers who investigated the cause of the Mpemba effect made this discovery as well. They unsurprisingly named the phenomenon the inverse Mpemba effect. Check out these
•
•Humans are related to fungi
•A 2015 study from the University of Cambridge suggests that mankind may have evolved with genes that came from plants. Because of those findings, researchers accept that about 1 percent of the human genome could have been acquired from plants, the Telegraph reports. So all those times your corny uncle called himself a “fungi”? He was actually sort of right.
•
•But don’t worry—we have a lot of DNA
•Scientists predict that there are over 3 billion base pairs of DNA in human genes and over 25,000 genes in the human genome. An entire copy of that genome exists in each of the 10 trillion cells in the human body. If all of that DNA were lined up, it would cover the distance between Earth and the sun 100 times. Once you master these fun science facts.
•
•It can rain diamonds on other planets
•Diamonds are definitely the Milky Way galaxy’s best friends. Studies have examined the potential that Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn have to produce diamonds. The atmospheres in all four planets have such extreme pressure that they can crystalize carbon atoms and turn them into diamonds. Scientists were able to create the correct conditions in a lab to prove this occurs on Neptune and Uranus. Separately, a different group of researchers speculates that it may rain as much as 2.2 million pounds of diamonds on parts of Saturn every year—this is definitely the richest of our science facts!
•
•You can make balls fly
•If you spin a ball when you drop it, it will fly through the air as it falls. This is called the Magnus effect, and it makes playing tennis and soccer a whole lot easier.
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•Water can exist in three states at once
•This is called the Triple Boil, and at that temperature, water exists as a gas, a liquid, and a solid simultaneously. It requires very specific conditions to achieve, so don’t even think about trying it at home. Haven’t gotten your fill of fun science facts?
•
•Only one type of mammal has wings
•Those mammals would be bats. While flying squirrels can jump from trees and glide, they can’t truly fly like bats can.
•
•Helium can also work against gravity
•When helium is cooled to extreme temperatures, just a few degrees away from absolute zero (-460˚F or -273˚C), it turns into a superfluid, meaning it can flow without friction. It can climb up and over the sides of a glass. It can leak through molecule-think cracks in a container. If it starts flowing like a fountain, it will never stop.
•
•Solar flares are scarily powerful
•The energy they release is the equivalent of 100-megaton atomic bombs exploding at once. It’s a good thing the Earth’s atmosphere protects us from their radiation.
•
•It’s impossible to burp in space
•When you burp on Earth, gravity keeps down the solids and liquid from the food you just ate, so only the gas escapes from your mouth. In the absence of gravity, the gas cannot separate from the liquids and solids, so burping essentially turns into puking.
•
•About half of your body is bacteria
•That’s right. A 2014 study estimates that the human body consists of 39 trillion bacteria and 30 trillion human cells. In the past, researchers thought we were more bacteria than human with a ratio of 10:1. While this new calculation is probably closer to the true numbers, it’s not a hard fact.
•
•Men are more likely to be colorblind than women
•The genes responsible for the most common type of colorblindness are found on the X chromosome, the National Eye Institute explains. Even if women have the genes on one of their two X chromosomes, a properly functioning gene on the other one makes up for that loss. If men inherit the gene on their only X chromosome, they’ll become colorblind.
•
•We have no idea what most of the universe looks like
•About 96 percent of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, which are undetectable to humans. Scientists believe this is because the particles that make up these substances don’t interact with regular matter or light. Even though scientific discoveries are constantly being made about the stars, planets, and other galaxies we can see, it’s impossible to make conclusions about things that are invisible to our eyes.
•BABIES HAVE AROUND 100 MORE BONES THAN ADULTS
•Babies have about 300 bones at birth, with cartilage between many of them. This extra flexibility helps them pass through the birth canal and also allows for rapid growth. With age, many of the bones fuse, leaving 206 bones that make up an average adult skeleton.
•THE EIFFEL TOWER CAN BE 15 CM TALLER DURING THE SUMMER
•When a substance is heated up, its particles move more and it takes up a larger volume – this is known as thermal expansion. Conversely, a drop in temperature causes it to contract again. The mercury level inside a thermometer, for example, rises and falls as the mercury’s volume changes with the ambient temperature. This effect is most dramatic in gases but occurs in liquids and solids such as iron too. For this reason, large structures such as bridges are built with expansion joints which allow them some leeway to expand and contract without causing any damage.
•20% OF EARTH’S OXYGEN IS PRODUCED BY THE AMAZON RAINFOREST
•Our atmosphere is made up of roughly 78 per cent nitrogen and 21 per cent oxygen, with various other gases present in small amounts. The vast majority of living organisms on Earth need oxygen to survive, converting it into carbon dioxide as they breathe. Thankfully, plants continually replenish our planet’s oxygen levels through photosynthesis. During this process, carbon dioxide and water are converted into energy, releasing oxygen as a by-product. Covering 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles), the Amazon rainforest cycles a significant proportion of the Earth’s oxygen, absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide at the same time.
•SOME METALS ARE SO REACTIVE THAT THEY EXPLODE ON CONTACT WITH WATER
•There are certain metals – including potassium, sodium, lithium, rubidium and caesium – that are so reactive that they oxidise (or tarnish) instantly when exposed to air. They can even produce explosions when dropped in water! All elements strive to be chemically stable – in other words, to have a full outer electron shell. To achieve this, metals tend to shed electrons. The alkali metals have only one electron on their outer shell, making them ultra-keen to pass on this unwanted passenger to another element via bonding. As a result they form compounds with other elements so readily that they don’t exist independently in nature.
•A TEASPOONFUL OF NEUTRON STAR WOULD WEIGH 6 BILLION TONS
•A neutron star is the remnants of a massive star that has run out of fuel. The dying star explodes in a supernova while its core collapses in on itself due to gravity, forming a super-dense neutron star. Astronomers measure the mind-bogglingly large masses of stars or galaxies in solar masses, with one solar mass equal to the Sun’s mass (that is, 2 x 1030 kilograms/4.4 x 1030 pounds). Typical neutron stars have a mass of up to three solar masses, which is crammed into a sphere with a radius of approximately ten kilometres (6.2 miles) – resulting in some of the densest matter in the known universe.
•HAWAII MOVES 7.5CM CLOSER TO ALASKA EVERY YEAR
•The Earth’s crust is split into gigantic pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are in constant motion, propelled by currents in the Earth’s upper mantle. Hot, less-dense rock rises before cooling and sinking, giving rise to circular convection currents which act like giant conveyor belts, slowly shifting the tectonic plates above them. Hawaii sits in the middle of the Pacific Plate, which is slowly drifting north-west towards the North American Plate, back to Alaska. The plates’ pace is comparable to the speed at which our fingernails grow.
•CHALK IS MADE FROM TRILLIONS OF MICROSCOPIC PLANKTON FOSSILS
•Tiny single-celled algae called coccolithophores have lived in Earth’s oceans for 200 million years. Unlike any other marine plant, they surround themselves with minuscule plates of calcite (coccoliths). Just under 100 million years ago, conditions were just right for coccolithophores to accumulate in a thick layer coating ocean floors in a white ooze. As further sediment built up on top, the pressure compressed the coccoliths to form rock, creating chalk deposits such as the white cliffs of Dover. Coccolithophores are just one of many prehistoric species that have been immortalised in fossil form, but how do we know how old they are? Over time, rock forms in horizontal layers, leaving older rocks at the bottom and younger rocks near the top. By studying the type of rock in which a fossil is found palaeontologists can roughly guess its age. Carbondating estimates a fossil’s age more precisely, based on the rate of decay of radioactive elements such as carbon-14.
•IN 2.3 BILLION YEARS IT WILL BE TOO HOT FOR LIFE TO EXIST ON EARTH
•Over the coming hundreds of millions of years, the Sun will continue to get progressively brighter and hotter. In just over 2 billion years, temperatures will be high enough to evaporate our oceans, making life on Earth impossible. Our planet will become a vast desert similar to Mars today. As it expands into a red giant in the following few billion years, scientists predict that the Sun will finally engulf Earth altogether, spelling the definite end for our planet.
•POLAR BEARS ARE NEARLY UNDETECTABLE BY INFRARED CAMERAS
•Thermal cameras detect the heat lost by a subject as infrared, but polar bears are experts at conserving heat. The bears keep warm due to a thick layer of blubber under the skin. Add to this a dense fur coat and they can endure the chilliest Arctic day.
•IT TAKES 8 MINUTES, 19 SECONDS FOR LIGHT TO TRAVEL FROM THE SUN TO THE EARTH
•In space, light travels at 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second. Even at this breakneck speed, covering the 150 million odd kilometres (93 million miles) between us and the Sun takes considerable time. And eight minutes is still very little compared to the five and a half hours it takes for the Sun’s light to reach Pluto.
•IF YOU TOOK OUT ALL THE EMPTY SPACE IN OUR ATOMS, THE HUMAN RACE COULD FIT IN THE VOLUME OF A SUGAR CUBE
•The atoms that make up the world around us seem solid but are in fact over 99.99999 per cent empty space. An atom consists of a tiny, dense nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons, spread over a proportionately vast area. This is because as well as being particles, electrons act like waves. Electrons can only exist where the crests and troughs of these waves add up correctly. And instead of existing in one point, each electron’s location is spread over a range of probabilities – an orbital. They thus occupy a huge amount of space.
•STOMACH ACID IS STRONG ENOUGH TO DISSOLVE STAINLESS STEEL
•Your stomach digests food thanks to highly corrosive hydrochloric acid with a pH of 2 to 3. This acid also attacks your stomach lining, which protects itself by secreting an alkali bicarbonate solution. The lining still needs to be replaced continually, and it entirely renews itself every four days.
•THE EARTH IS A GIANT MAGNET
•Earth’s inner core is a sphere of solid iron, surrounded by liquid iron. Variations in temperature and density create currents in this iron, which in turn produce electrical currents. Lined up by the Earth’s spin, these currents combine to create a magnetic field, used by compass needles worldwide.
•VENUS IS THE ONLY PLANET TO SPIN CLOCKWISE
•Our Solar System started off as a swirling cloud of dust and gas which eventually collapsed into a spinning disc with the Sun at its centre. Because of this common origin, all the planets move around the Sun in the same direction and on roughly the same plane. They also all spin in the same direction (counterclockwise if observed from ‘above’) – except Uranus and Venus. Uranus spins on its side, while Venus defiantly spins in the complete opposite direction. The most likely cause of these planetary oddballs are gigantic asteroids which knocked them off course in the distant past.
•A FLEA CAN ACCELERATE FASTER THAN THE SPACE SHUTTLE
•A jumping flea reaches dizzying heights of about eight centimetres (three inches) in a millisecond. Acceleration is the change in speed of an object over time, often measured in ‘g’s, with one g equal to the acceleration caused by gravity on Earth (9.8 metres/32.2 feet per square second). Fleas experience 100 g, while the Space Shuttle peaked at around 5 g. The flea’s secret is a stretchy rubber-like protein which allows it to store and release energy like a spring.
•16 . THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS GENERALLY ROUNDED DOWN TO 186,000 MILES PER SECOND. IN EXACT TERMS IT IS 299,792,458 M/S (METRES PER SECOND – THAT IS EQUAL TO 186,287.49 MILES PER SECOND).
•IT TAKES 8 MINUTES 17 SECONDS FOR LIGHT TO TRAVEL FROM THE SUN’S SURFACE TO THE EARTH.
•3. OCTOBER 12TH, 1999 WAS DECLARED “THE DAY OF SIX BILLION” BASED ON UNITED NATIONS PROJECTIONS.
•4. 10 PERCENT OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS EVER BORN ARE ALIVE AT THIS VERY MOMENT.
•5. THE EARTH SPINS AT 1,000 MPH BUT IT TRAVELS THROUGH SPACE AT AN INCREDIBLE 67,000 MPH.
•6. EVERY YEAR OVER ONE MILLION EARTHQUAKES SHAKE THE EARTH.
•7. WHEN KRAKATOA ERUPTED IN 1883, ITS FORCE WAS SO GREAT IT COULD BE HEARD 4,800 KILOMETRES AWAY IN AUSTRALIA.
•8. THE LARGEST EVER HAILSTONE WEIGHED OVER 1KG AND FELL IN BANGLADESH IN 1986.
•9. EVERY SECOND AROUND 100 LIGHTNING BOLTS STRIKE THE EARTH.
•10. EVERY YEAR LIGHTNING KILLS 1000 PEOPLE.
•11. IN OCTOBER 1999 AN ICEBERG THE SIZE OF LONDON BROKE FREE FROM THE ANTARCTIC ICE SHELF .
•12. IF YOU COULD DRIVE YOUR CAR STRAIGHT UP YOU WOULD ARRIVE IN SPACE IN JUST OVER AN HOUR.
•13. HUMAN TAPEWORMS CAN GROW UP TO 22.9M.
•14. THE EARTH IS 4.56 BILLION YEARS OLD…THE SAME AGE AS THE MOON AND THE SUN.
•15. THE DINOSAURS BECAME EXTINCT BEFORE THE ROCKIES OR THE ALPS WERE FORMED.
•FEMALE BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS EAT THEIR MALES AFTER MATING.
•WHEN A FLEA JUMPS, THE RATE OF ACCELERATION IS 20 TIMES THAT OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE DURING LAUNCH.
•IF OUR SUN WERE JUST INCH IN DIAMETER, THE NEAREST STAR WOULD BE 445 MILES AWAY.
•THE AUSTRALIAN BILLYGOAT PLUM CONTAINS 100 TIMES MORE VITAMIN C THAN AN ORANGE.
•ASTRONAUTS CANNOT BELCH – THERE IS NO GRAVITY TO SEPARATE LIQUID FROM GAS IN THEIR STOMACHS.
•THE AIR AT THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST, 29,029 FEET IS ONLY A THIRD AS THICK AS THE AIR AT SEA LEVEL.
•ONE MILLION, MILLION, MILLION, MILLION, MILLIONTH OF A SECOND AFTER THE BIG BANG THE UNIVERSE WAS THE SIZE OF A …PEA.
•DNA WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN 1869 BY SWISS FRIEDRICH MIESCHLER.
•THE MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF DNA WAS FIRST DETERMINED BY WATSON AND CRICK IN 1953.
•THE FIRST SYNTHETIC HUMAN CHROMOSOME WAS CONSTRUCTED BY US SCIENTISTS IN 1997.
•THE THERMOMETER WAS INVENTED IN 1607 BY GALILEO.
•ENGLISHMAN ROGER BACON INVENTED THE MAGNIFYING GLASS IN 1250.
•ALFRED NOBEL INVENTED DYNAMITE IN 1866.
•WILHELM RONTGEN WON THE FIRST NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS FOR DISCOVERING X-RAYS IN 1895.
•THE TALLEST TREE EVER WAS AN AUSTRALIAN EUCALYPTUS – IN 1872 IT WAS MEASURED AT 435 FEET TALL.
•CHRISTIAN BARNARD PERFORMED THE FIRST HEART TRANSPLANT IN 1967 – THE PATIENT LIVED FOR 18 DAYS.
•THE WINGSPAN OF A BOEING 747 IS LONGER THAN THE WRIGHT BROTHER’S FIRST FLIGHT.
•AN ELECTRIC EEL CAN PRODUCE A SHOCK OF UP TO 650 VOLTS.
•‘WIRELESS’ COMMUNICATIONS TOOK A GIANT LEAP FORWARD IN 1962 WITH THE LAUNCH OF TELSTAR, THE FIRST SATELLITE CAPABLE OF RELAYING TELEPHONE AND SATELLITE TV SIGNALS.
•THE EARLIEST WINE MAKERS LIVED IN EGYPT AROUND 2300 BC.
•THE EBOLA VIRUS KILLS 4 OUT OF EVERY 5 HUMANS IT INFECTS.
•IN 5 BILLION YEARS THE SUN WILL RUN OUT OF FUEL AND TURN INTO A RED GIANT.
•GIRAFFES OFTEN SLEEP FOR ONLY 20 MINUTES IN ANY 24 HOURS. THEY MAY SLEEP UP TO 2 HOURS (IN SPURTS – NOT ALL AT ONCE), BUT THIS IS RARE. THEY NEVER LIE DOWN.
•A PIG’S ORGASM LASTS FOR 30 MINUTES.
•WITHOUT ITS LINING OF MUCUS YOUR STOMACH WOULD DIGEST ITSELF.
•HUMANS HAVE 46 CHROMOSOMES, PEAS HAVE 14 AND CRAYFISH HAVE 200.
•THERE ARE 60,000 MILES OF BLOOD VESSELS IN THE HUMAN BODY.
•AN INDIVIDUAL BLOOD CELL TAKES ABOUT 60 SECONDS TO MAKE A COMPLETE CIRCUIT OF THE BODY.
•UTOPIA IA A LARGE, SMOOTH LYING AREA OF MARS.
•ON THE DAY THAT ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL WAS BURIED THE ENTIRE US TELEPHONE SYSTEM WAS SHUT DOWN FOR 1 MINUTE IN TRIBUTE.
•THE LOW FREQUENCY CALL OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE IS THE LOUDEST NOISE MADE BY A LIVING CREATURE.
•THE CALL OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE IS LOUDER THAN CONCORDE AND CAN BE HEARD FROM 500 MILES AWAY.
•A QUARTER OF THE WORLD’S PLANTS ARE THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION BY THE YEAR 2010.
•EACH PERSON SHEDS 40LBS OF SKIN IN HIS OR HER LIFETIME.
•AT 15 INCHES THE EYES OF GIANT SQUIDS ARE THE LARGEST ON THE PLANET.
•THE LARGEST GALEXIES CONTAIN A MILLION, MILLION STARS.
•THE UNIVERSE CONTAINS OVER 100 BILLION GALAXIES.
•WOUNDS INFESTED WITH MAGGOTS HEAL QUICKLY AND WITHOUT SPREAD OF GANGRENE OR OTHER INFECTION.
•MORE GERMS ARE TRANSFERRED SHAKING HANDS THAN KISSING.
•THE LONGEST GLACIER IN ANTARCTICA, THE ALMBERT GLACIER, IS 250 MILES LONG AND 40 MILES WIDE.
•THE FASTEST SPEED A FALLING RAINDROP CAN HIT YOU IS 18MPH.
•A HEALTHY PERSON HAS 6,000 MILLION, MILLION, MILLION HAEMOGLOBIN MOLECULES.
•A SALMON-RICH, LOW CHOLESTEROL DIET MEANS THAT INUITS RARELY SUFFER FROM HEART DISEASE.
•INBREEDING CAUSES 3 OUT OF EVERY 10 DALMATION DOGS TO SUFFER FROM HEARING DISABILITY.
•THE WORLD’S SMALLEST WINGED INSECT, THE TANZANIAN PARASITIC WASP, IS SMALLER THAN THE EYE OF A HOUSEFLY.
•IF THE SUN WERE THE SIZE OF A BEACH BALL THEN JUPITER WOULD BE THE SIZE OF A GOLF BALL AND THE EARTH WOULD BE AS SMALL AS A PEA.
•IT WOULD TAKE OVER AN HOUR FOR A HEAVY OBJECT TO SINK 6.7 MILES DOWN TO THE DEEPEST PART OF THE OCEAN.
•THERE ARE MORE LIVING ORGANISMS ON THE SKIN OF EACH HUMAN THAN THERE ARE HUMANS ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH.
•THE GREY WHALE MIGRATES 12,500 MILES FROM THE ARTIC TO MEXICO AND BACK EVERY YEAR.
•EACH RUBBER MOLECULE IS MADE OF 65,000 INDIVIDUAL ATOMS.
•AROUND A MILLION, BILLION NEUTRINOS FROM THE SUN WILL PASS THROUGH YOUR BODY WHILE YOU READ THIS SENTENCE.
•68/…AND NOW THEY ARE ALREADY PAST THE MOON.
•QUASARS EMIT MORE ENERGY THAN 100 GIANT GALAXIES.
•QUASARS ARE THE MOST DISTANT OBJECTS IN THE UNIVERSE.
•THE SATURN V ROCKET WHICH CARRIED MAN TO THE MOON DEVELOPS POWER EQUIVALENT TO FIFTY 747 JUMBO JETS.
•KOALAS SLEEP AN AVERAGE OF 22 HOURS A DAY, TWO HOURS MORE THAN THE SLOTH.
•LIGHT WOULD TAKE .13 SECONDS TO TRAVEL AROUND THE EARTH.
•MALES PRODUCE ONE THOUSAND SPERM CELLS EACH SECOND – 86 MILLION EACH DAY.
•NEUTRON STARS ARE SO DENSE THAT A TEASPOONFUL WOULD WEIGH MORE THAN ALL THE PEOPLE ON EARTH.
•ONE IN EVERY 2000 BABIES IS BORN WITH A TOOTH.
•EVERY HOUR THE UNIVERSE EXPANDS BY A BILLION MILES IN ALL DIRECTIONS.
•SOMEWHERE IN THE FLICKER OF A BADLY TUNED TV SET IS THE BACKGROUND RADIATION FROM THE BIG BANG.
•EVEN TRAVELLING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IT WOULD TAKE 2 MILLION YEARS TO REACH THE NEAREST LARGE GALAXY, ANDROMEDA.
•THE TEMPERATURE IN ANTARCTICA PLUMMETS AS LOW AS -35 DEGREES CELSIUS.
•AT OVER 2000 KILOMETRES LONG THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS THE LARGEST LIVING STRUCTURE ON EARTH.
•A THIMBLEFUL OF A NEUTRON STAR WOULD WEIGH OVER 100 MILLION TONS.
•THE RISK OF BEING STRUCK BY A FALLING METEORITE FOR A HUMAN IS ONE OCCURENCE EVERY 9,300 YEARS.
•THE DRIEST INHABITED PLACE IN THE WORLD IS ASWAN, EGYPT WHERE THE ANNUAL AVERAGE RAINFALL IS .02 INCHES.
•THE DEEPEST PART OF ANY OCEAN IN THE WORLD IS THE MARIANA TRENCH IN THE PACIFIC WITH A DEPTH OF 35,797 FEET.
•THE LARGEST METEORITE CRATERS IN THE WORLD ARE IN SUDBURY, ONTARIO, CANADA AND IN VREDEFORT, SOUTH AFRICA.
•THE LARGEST DESERT IN THE WORLD, THE SAHARA, IS 3,500,000 SQUARE MILES.
•THE LARGEST DINOSAUR EVER DISCOVERED WAS SEISMOSAURUS WHO WAS OVER 100 FEET LONG AND WEIGHED UP TO 80 TONNES.
•THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT GESTATES FOR 22 MONTHS.
•THE SHORT-NOSED BANDICOOT HAS A GESTATION PERIOD OF ONLY 12 DAYS.
•THE MORTALITY RATE IF BITTEN BY A BLACK MAMBA SNAKE IS OVER 95%.
•IN THE 14TH CENTURY THE BLACK DEATH KILLED 75,000,000 PEOPLE. IT WAS CARRIED BY FLEAS ON THE BLACK RAT.
•A DOG’S SENSE OF SMELL IS 1,000 TIMES MORE SENSITIVE THAN A HUMANS.
•A TYPICAL HURRICANE PRODUCES THE NERGY EQUIVALENT TO 8,000 ONE MEGATON BOMBS.
•90% OF THOSE WHO DIE FROM HURRICANES DIE FROM DROWNING.
•TO ESCAPE THE EARTH’S GRAVITY A ROCKET NEED TO TRAVEL AT 7 MILES A SECOND.
•IF EVERY STAR IN THE MILKY WAY WAS A GRAIN OF SALT THEY WOULD FILL AN OLYMPIC SIZED SWIMMING POOL.
•MICROBIAL LIFE CAN SURVIVE ON THE COOLING RODS OF A NUCLEAR REACTOR.
•MICRO-ORGANISMS HAVE BEEN BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE AFTER BEING FROZEN IN PERMA-FROST FOR THREE MILLION YEARS.
•OUR OLDEST RADIO BROADCASTS OF THE 1930S HAVE ALREADY TRAVELLED PAST 100,000 STARS.
•Living with animals in harmony with nature :
•TIMES ANIMALS HELPED SCIENTISTS SOLVE BIG MYSTERIES
•They may not wear lab coats, but creatures big and small can help scientists study global warming, cancer, earthquakes, and more.
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•Ground squirrels aid astronauts
•Weightlessness can have a profound effect on the human body. Astronauts who return from even brief visits to space suffer from significant muscle and bone loss and spend weeks regaining their strength. For clues into how to remedy this issue, scientists are looking closely at the Artctic ground squirrel, a furry rodent that awakens from months’ long hibernation with no noticeable difference in muscle or bone. “If we can understand how they do it, we can replicate it in humans,” University of Alaska at Fairbanks biochemist Kelly Drew tells The Washington Post.
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•Narwhals monitor climate change
•Scientists hoping to record the effects of climate change on the frigid waters of Greenland’s Baffin Bay enlisted the help of narwhals, the so-called “unicorns of the ocean” known for their single 9-foot tusks and ability to withstand freezing water. In 2010, University of Washington marine biologist Kristin Laidre and her team attached thermometers and satellite transmitters to 14 narwhals and tracked the whales while they spent the winter in the Bay. The resulting data comprised the most comprehensive collection of water temperature ever recorded for the area. You won’t believe these 13 creepy real experiments that sound like science fiction.
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•Zebrafish uncover cancer secrets
•Surprisingly, zebrafish and humans have a substantial number of genes in common, including APC, a gene associated with colon cancer. The transparent black-and-white minnows also reproduce frequently and develop into adults in a matter of days, allowing scientists like David Jones, a cancer researcher at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, to study their developing cells. “There is no limit to the impact this little fish can have on unraveling the mysteries of human disease,” Jones tells The Oklahoman.
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•Rats reveal land mines
•In Mozambique, Thailand, Cambodia, and other countries, hidden landmines left over from decades of conflict still dot the landscape, preventing development and slowing economic growth. Luckily, Tanzania-based organization Apopo may have found a four-legged solution. The aid group trains Gambian pouched rats to sniff out landmines, which are later deactivated. The rats are light enough not to detonate the mine and “can reliably check the ground faster than a human with a metal detector,” Zacarias Chambe, an Apopo deminer, tells The Economist.
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•Wild animals predict earthquakes
•A fascinating study in Peru may confirm the widely-held belief that animals detect earthquakes weeks before they hit. Over a 23-day period before the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that hit south of Lima on October 28, 2011, scientists recorded five or fewer animal sightings per day, compared to five to 15 sightings previously. In the week before the earthquake, experts observed no animal movements. “Animals have the potential to be reliable forecasters of earthquakes and could be used alongside other monitoring systems,” Rachel A. Grant, the lead researcher, tells Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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•Leeches reveal which animals are in a forest
•In a dense forest, you probably can’t spot all the animals living there. That’s why scientists are turning to leeches and bugs to teach them about the forest’s animals. Parasites contain DNA from the animals they feed on, so researchers hope that studying them will help them study mammal diversity in Papua New Guinea without tracking down the animals themselves.
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•Parrots poked holes in accepted theories
•Scientists strapped tiny goggles on a parrotlet, then had it fly through a laser. When the results came out, the scientists realized the vortexes of air moved differently than established scientific theories would have predicted. “All three models we tried out were very inaccurate because they make assumptions that aren’t necessarily true,” Stanford University graduate student Diana Chin tells Wired.
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•Whales show the secret to longevity
•As the longest-living mammal in the world, bowhead whales could hide anti-aging secrets for humans. Researchers believe the key to living up to 211 years old was the whales’ lack of cancer—which is even more impressive given the fact that with 2,000 times as many cells as humans, they should have a much higher risk of cancer. Scientists are trying to find a clue in their genomes to what keeps them ticking.
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•Kingfishers inspired bullet trains
•When Japanese engineers invented crazy-fast 200-mile-an-hour bullet trains, they didn’t account for the sonic boom the trains would create when leaving tunnels. To silence their trains, scientists took a cue from kingfishers, whose pointed beaks let them dive into the water without making a splash. With new, long noses, the highly efficient trains are way quieter and finally meet noise standards.
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•Sheep and goats predict volcanic eruptions
•By tracking goats and sheep in Italy, German scientist Martin Wikelski discovered the livestock could predict volcanic eruptions four to six hours before they hit. They’d wake up and pace nervously, then move to safe areas—the more vegetation a spot had, the more likely it was that lava had missed it before.
•simple science experiments you can do at home
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•Science can be a little intimidating. Whether it’s the latest research in quantum mechanics or organic chemistry, sometimes science can make your head spin.
•But you don’t have to be go through 8 years of school or work in a high-tech lab to do science.
•There are plenty of experiments you can do at home. You might even have a few of the materials just lying around the house.
•Here are a few easy ways for you to see science in action.
•Tornado in a bottle
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•You can create your own tornado in a bottle. All you need is two bottles, a tube to connect the bottles, and some water.
•When you whirl the liquid in the top bottle, it creates a vortex as it drains into the bottom bottle. That’s because as the water flows down, air must flow up, creating a spiraling tornado.
•You can even add glitter, food dye, or lamp oil to the bottle to make the tornado even cooler.
•Rainbow in a glass
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•This experiment takes advantage of density to create a rainbow in a glass. When you add sugar to a liquid, it causes the solution to become more dense. The more sugar you add, the more dense the solution is.
•If you have four different solutions that are all different colors and densities, the colors will layer on top of each other — the denser, more sugary solutions will sit on the bottom and the lightest will sit on the top.
•Gooey slime
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•When you mix glue, water, and a little bit of food coloring, then add some borax, a gooey slime forms. That’s because the glue has something called polyvinyl acetate in it, which is a liquid polymer. The borax links the polyvinyl acetate molecules to each other, creating one large, flexible polymer: slime.
•Pasta rocket
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•Believe it or not, you can create a very simple hybrid rocket engine using nothing but some yeast, hydrogen peroxide, a jar, fire and ... a piece of uncooked pasta.
•When you mix the yeast and hydrogen peroxide together, they react and create pure oxygen gas. When this gas is funneled through a piece of pasta, all you need is a little bit of fire and you’ve got yourself a pasta rocket.
•Homemade lava lamp
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•Alka-seltzer is great if you’re suffering from heartburn or an upset stomach. But you probably didn’t know that it’s also great if you’re looking to create your own homemade lava lamp.
•Because oil and water have different densities and polarities, when you mix them together, the water sinks to the bottom. When you add food coloring, which is water based, it will sink to the bottom as well.
•If you crumble in an alka-seltzer tablet, it reacts with the water, causing colored droplets of water to rise to the top where they then pop, release air, and sink back to the bottom.
•This creates a similar show to what you’d see in a lava lamp.
•Instant ice
•In order for water to become ice, it needs a nucleus in order for solid crystals to form. Usually, water is loaded with particles and impurities that enables ice to form. But purified water isn’t. Because of this, purified water can reach an even colder temperature before becoming solid.
•If you throw an unopened bottle of purified water into the freezer for a little less than three hours, the bottle will be chilled well below the temperature at which regular water freezes.
•When you pour this super-cooled water onto a piece of ice, it provides the water with nuclei, causing it to freeze instantly.
•Ferromagnetic fluid
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•This experiment makes it easy to see magnetic fields in action. All you need is some iron oxide, some water, and a jar.
•When you place an extremely powerful magnet along the outside of the jar, the iron filings are attracted to it, piling up, and following the magnet as you move it around.
•Baking soda volcano
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•In this experiment, a chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar creates « lava » bursting out of a model volcano.
•As the reaction produces carbon dioxide gas, pressure builds up inside a plastic bottle hidden inside the volcano until the gas bubbles and erupts.
•CREEPY REAL EXPERIMENTS THAT SOUND LIKE SCIENCE FICTION
•Scientists growing human brains in mice? It sounds like science fiction, but it’s happening right now.
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•Pig bladders regrowing human limbs
•Scientists have discovered that tissue from pig bladders can be dried into a powder called extracellular matrix and used to regrow human fingers. While typical mammals heal injuries by growing scar tissue, which prevents any future cell regrowth, the cells in the lining of pig’s bladder contain a protein that stimulates a total regrowth of tissue, similar to how lizards can regrow their tails. So far the treatment has been used to reattach severed fingers, develop new fingertips, and even help regenerate the destroyed muscles of an injured Iraq War veteran.
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•Goats producing spider silk
•Scientists have been able to insert spider silk genes into goats. Why? The goats’ milk then contains the protein responsible for the silk, which could then be harvested in large quantities. Scientists hope to be able to use the spider silk, which can be up to five times stronger than steel, to enhance products ranging from artificial limbs to bulletproof vests.
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•Human brain cells growing in fetal mice
•Scientists have injected human embryonic stem cells into the brains of fetal mice still in the womb. After the mice were born, the human brain cells developed along with the mouse brain cells, proving that human stem cells can develop into human brain cells in another living animal. Scientists believe this technology could advance research on human brain disorders and improve testing of experimental medications.
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•RFID implants tracking where you go
•Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips have been implanted in pets for years to help identify and return them if lost. But tracking people? The FDA has approved implantation in humans, meaning soon prisons, hospitals, and companies could use the chips to track people’s locations, medical history, and to grant or deny access to rooms and documents. Many state correctional facilities are already using the technology to monitor the inmates’ behavior and location.
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•Extinct animals brought back to life
•Scientists have brought the genetic material of the Tasmanian tiger, extinct since 1936, back to life by splicing it into the DNA of a lab mouse. They have yet to successfully clone an extinct animal, although they’re working hard at developing a 21st century woolly mammoth using well-preserved 10,000-year-old blood.
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•Cyber-beetles developed for surveillance
•Funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), scientists at the University of California have implanted electrodes in giant flower beetles that allow them to wirelessly signal the beetles to turn, take off, or hover mid-flight. The Department of Defense hopes to use these technological terrors to assist with search and rescue missions and for government surveillance.
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•Cows producing milk with human proteins
•A human-cow hybrid sounds like bizarre science-fiction, but a Dutch biotech company might be bringing this phenomenon to your table sooner than you think. Scientists have genetically engineered cows so their milk contains the human protein lactoferrin, most commonly found in human breast milk. The protein fights a wide range of infections and is an excellent immune system booster; the researchers hope to create dairy products using this protein-packed milk with similar health benefits and nutrients.
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•Living bacon growing in labs
•Imagine a world where bacon could be grown endlessly! Technology now allows researchers to use pig stem cells to grow pig muscle cells. The results are structurally identical to pork that’s currently consumed, although the muscles do require exercise to become palatable. Lab-grown meat could have a huge impact on the planet, including feeding the hungry and reducing environmental waste from processing plants. We bet you didn’t know that these world-changing discoveries resulted from complete accidents.
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•Robots eating biomass
•The Energy Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) fuels itself by using claws and chainsaws to chop down biomass that is then burned in an interior furnace and turned into steam energy. The robot was heavily criticized after false reports claimed it could feed on human corpses, forcing the Robotic Technology Inc. to release a statement that the robot is strictly vegetarian. It is funded by an agency of the Department of Defense, who hope the robot will be able to perform long-range missions without needing manual refueling.
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•Humanoid robots that putter around fixing spaceships? It may sound like something out of a galaxy far, far away, but it’s actually happening right in Earth’s orbit! A few years ago, NASA developed the Robonaut, a robotic torso, head, and arms designed to help astronauts on the International Space Station with menial or life-threatening tasks. The success of the bot has been mixed—it spent a few years on the ISS cleaning things, doing tedious research tasks, and sending Earth-dwellers updates via Twitter. But then in early 2014, an attempt to upgrade it actually caused it to stop working as efficiently. In spring of 2018, Robonaut will be returning to Earth for repairs.
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•Genetically modified pet pigs
•You’ve probably heard the hog horror stories: an unsuspecting person (like this guy!) adopts a precious-looking tiny pig. They salesperson has assured them—or perhaps they’ve read on the Internet—that it’s a type of animal called a “teacup” or “mini” pig, and that it will stay tiny just like a small dog. But then, a few months later, their house is home to a noisy porker the size of a mastiff. With the exception of a few very rare cases, “teacup pigs” are a total sham. Or…at least they used to be.
•BGI, a genomics institute in China, has figured out a way to alter the genetic makeup of a type of pig called a Bama pig, causing the pigs to remain permanently puny. The experiment was originally developed as a way to model human diseases, since pigs are more genetically similar to humans than mice are, but the scientists decided that they would begin selling the pigs for the hefty price of $1600. They even promised that they could engineer the pigs’ coat colors to fit each paying customer’s wishes. Some other scientists, though, were concerned about the ethics of the project and its effects on the animals’ well-being. In July 2017, the company revealed that they were no longer going to market the pigs to consumers.
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•Dogs with super strength
•Could Underdog become more than just a comic-book fiction? Here’s a bizarre experiment that toes the line between amazing and terrifying: dogs with twice the normal muscle mass. In 2015, genetic engineers at China’s Nanjing University developed a way to delete the myostatin gene, which slows muscle growth in animals, from dog embryos. The resulting power pups, Hercules and Tiangou, became the first-ever dogs with edited genes. Scientists hope the experiment will help lead to a treatment for human diseases like muscular dystrophy.
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•Lasers that can turn Earth invisible
•Whether or not we’re alone in the universe remains one of the cosmos’ biggest unsolved mysteries. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to figure out what to do just in case there are some little green men out there that turn out to be not-so-friendly. Astronomers at Columbia University assessed the way we Earthlings find other planets. When we find a star somewhere out there in the cosmos, we look for tiny dimmings in its brightness, which can indicate that a planet is orbiting it. So the astronomers proposed that, by using lasers to counteract our own sun’s dimness, we could hide ourselves from anyone looking. They claimed that, not only could be theoretically do it, we do indeed have the technology capable of doing it. Cloaking an entire planet? Sounds like sci-fi to us, but there’s a chance it could become a reality. While science has accomplished a lot, there are still lots of baffling mysteries that have yet to be solved.
•SCIENCE “FACTS” THAT ARE ACTUALLY NOT TRUE
•How many do you still believe?
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•Fact or fiction?
•Science is hard enough to understand, especially when there are so many “facts” floating around that aren’t actually true. You’ve probably heard more than half of the facts below. Here’s the real science behind them. To help your brain grow even more, here are some weird facts that most people don’t know.
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•Myth: Water conducts electricity
•While this is a science myth, it doesn’t mean you should bring your toaster in the bath with you. The reason you shouldn’t swim in a lightning storm doesn’t have to do with the water itself. Pure water is actually an insulator, which means it doesn’t conduct electricity. The danger comes from the minerals and chemicals in it, which are made up of electrically-charged ions. While pure water is theoretically safe around electricity, it’s nearly impossible to find in the real world because even distilled water has ions.
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•Myth: Blood is blue in your body
•A widely shared myth is that blood is blue until it is exposed to air or replenishes its oxygen. Because veins are a greenish-blue, that theory sounds reasonable enough. But the fact is, human blood looks the same in your body as outside: red. That hue is brighter when it’s oxygen-rich, and darker when it needs that oxygen replenished, but it’s red all the same. The tissue covering your veins affects how the light is absorbed and scattered, which is why the blood circulating your body looks blue. Here are some other crazy things you never knew about your body.
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•Myth: Dinosaurs were scaly beasts
•The giant, scaly lizards you see in Jurassic Park probably don’t look that close to what actual dinosaurs looked like. While scientists are still debating what the oldest and biggest species were covered with, one thing is for sure: At least some had feathers. Velociraptor arm fossils have bumps that look just like the ones keeping modern birds’ wings in place, and the bones of a Siberian species discovered in 2014 were surrounded by imprints of feathers. While some scientists argue larger species like the Tyrannosaurus rex didn’t need big feathers, others theorize that they had at least some form of light feathering, like how elephants are mammals but don’t have thick fur. You’ll think that these 75 mind-blowing facts are made up (but they aren’t).
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•Myth: Humans only use 10 percent of their brains
•The idea of unlocking hidden brain power might make a compelling storyline for a movie, but it simply doesn’t work that way in real life. One fact playing into the myth is that 90 percent of brain cells are “white matter” that help neurons survive, and only ten percent is the “grey matter” of neurons in charge of thinking. But that white matter could never be used for brain power, so claiming 90% of our brain is wasted is like saying you waste peanuts when you throw out the shells. Any fMRI scan will show you that even saying a few words lights up way more than ten percent of your brain. Scientists haven’t uncovered any area of the brain (much less 90% of it!) that doesn’t affect thought, movement, or emotion in some capacity. Light up 100% of your brain with these amazingly difficult brain games.
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•Myth: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure you can see from the moon
•Interestingly, this myth has been around at least since 1932, when a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! cartoon deemed the Great Wall of China to be “the mightiest work of man—the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon.” Of course, that was almost 30 years before a machine would touch down on the moon, so the claim was entirely unfounded. Astronauts have now confirmed that even the Great Wall actually can’t be seen from space, except at low altitudes. Even at those (relatively) low heights, it’s actually easier to see roads and plane runways, whose colors don’t blend into the ground like the Great Wall’s do. Not that the landmark isn’t impressive—find out what it’s really like to repair the Great Wall of China.
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•Myth: Chameleons change color to match their surroundings
•Yes, chameleons can change color by stretching and relaxing cells that contain crystals, which affects how the light is reflected. They can’t change to any color to match their surroundings, though, and their color changes don’t have much to do with camouflage. Instead, chameleons use the crystals mainly for communication (dark colors signal aggression, like when a female doesn’t want to mate), but also temperature control (lighter colors reflect the heat). The dull brown and green “resting colors” of chameleons blend in with their surroundings until they switch it up, so they’re actually more camouflaged before they change color. Other animals are masters at hiding too.
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•Myth: Neanderthals were a less evolved human ancestor
•First of all, let’s get one thing straight: Neanderthals aren’t ancestors to modern humans. The two species lived at the same time, mostly in different areas of the globe. When the species did cross paths, there’s even evidence that they interbred. But evidence doesn’t suggest they were cognitively inferior to humans. Fossils show Neanderthals made tools, used fire, cleaned their teeth, ate medicinal plants, buried their dead, and maybe even cared for their sick and wounded. Scientists no longer think Homo sapiens wiped out their Neanderthal cousins. Neanderthals likely were already dying out as the climate changed, while modern humans’ trade networks, diverse diets, and innovative tools helped them survive. You probably never learned these science facts in school.
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•Myth: Earth is the only planet with water
•Of course, we have yet to find any intelligent life living off interstellar water, but H2O isn’t unique to Earth. Dark streaks that change on Mars suggest there isn’t just ice on the Red Planet—liquid saltwater likely flows on it. What’s more, NASA discovered that beneath a layer of ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa, there’s an ocean containing twice as much water as we have on Earth. Could faraway planets with water sustain intelligent life? Only time will tell. Here are some more crazy facts about the earth you never learned in school.
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•Myth: It takes seven years to digest chewing gum
•Don’t freak out if you can’t find a trashcan and need to swallow your gum. The truth is that your body can’t digest gum, not even in seven years. That doesn’t mean it sticks inside your system, though. It will pass through your digestive system without being broken down, then come out in the bathroom like anything else. If kids swallow too much, the gum could block their intestines, but that’s extremely rare. If you’ve already spit your gum out, here’s how to get it off your carpet.
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•Myth: Goldfish have three-second memories
•Fish are smarter than you think. One study found the freshwater fish African Cichlid could remember the feeding zone of an aquarium after moving to a different tank for 12 days. Lest you think goldfish are any different, another study looked specifically at goldfish and whether they could tell the difference between two different classical songs. They weren’t quick learners, but after more than 100 sessions, the fish would bite a bead associated with the correct song 75% of the time. If their memories were really three seconds, that kind of training wouldn’t be possible. Here are some more science trivia questions most people get wrong.
• Myth: A penny dropped from the Empire State building could kill
•The story goes that even an innocent penny dropped from the 1,250-foot-tall Empire State Building would build up enough speed on the way down to kill a bystander below. In reality, though, it wouldn’t do much damage—if any. First of all, air resistance called “drag force” would mean the penny would stop accelerating at some point, and reach its max speed about 50 feet from its drop point, according to Scientific American. By the time it reached the ground, it would be moving just 25 miles per hour. That might sting, but it wouldn’t be enough force to break your skull. The TV show MythBusters took the theory to an extreme and shot a penny at 3,000 feet per second, but even that wasn’t strong enough to break bones. While you’ve got that penny in hand.
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•Myth: Ostriches bury their heads in the sand
•The birds would die of suffocation if they actually stuck their heads underground when scared. Instead, they actually lie with their head and neck flat against the ground if a predator is approaching. Their light-colored head and neck blend in with the ground, which could explain why people assumed their heads were underground from faraway, according to the San Diego Zoo. For more animal facts.
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•Myth: Opossums sleep hanging by their tails
•You’ve probably seen cartoons—maybe even photos—of opossums lounging upside-down from their tails. While opossum tails are strong enough to grasp branches and even hold the animals’ weight for a short period, adults are too heavy for their tails to support them for long, so they can’t stay like that while sleeping. These favorite facts that you’ve always believed are also actually false.
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•Myth: Sugar makes kids hyper
•Don’t blame the cake if your kid is acting out at a party. The “sugar high” theory started in 1978, when one study found that kids with hyperkinesis, a hyperactivity disorder, had low blood sugar, which, weirdly enough, can be a sign of eating too much sugar. That study was later discredited when researchers realized that the “abnormally low” blood sugar was actually considered normal. Since then, double-blind studies (the scientific gold standard) have shown that sugar doesn’t make kids any more hyper than a placebo. If anything, it’s probably your own expectations. One 1994 study found that after five- to seven-year-old boys took a placebo, the moms who were told their sons had eaten a large dose of sugar were more likely to say their kid was acting hyper. Your kid might also just be excited to let loose with their friends at a party.
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•Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice
•Anyone familiar with lightning rods could probably already tell you there’s nothing stopping lightning from hitting the same spot twice. The Empire State Building, for example, once endured eight strikes in 24 minutes during a storm. Even without a lightning rod, there’s nothing keeping lightning away from the spot that just got hit. In fact, the features that made the spot likely to get hit once—height, presence of standing water, or terrain shape, for example—would be just as attractive to a second bolt, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory.
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•Myth: Common belief in the Middle Ages was the Earth was flat, but it’s really a perfect sphere
•Surprise! Both parts of this myth are false. Scholars have known the Earth is round for thousands of years. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras first suggested the idea around 500 B.C., though his thought process had to do with the fact that he thought spheres were the most perfect shape. Still, Aristotle actually found physical evidence backing up his predecessor’s theory. By the time the first century A.D. rolled around, any educated Greek or Roman believed in a round planet. When Christopher Columbus took on his voyage, the fear was that the oceans would be too big, not that he’d fall off the face of the Earth. In perhaps the biggest twist, though, Earth isn’t a perfect sphere; the North and South Poles are flattened slightly. Don’t miss these other 18 lessons your history teacher lied about.
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•Myth: Genes determine race
•You might think people who look superficially different would have big differences in their genes, but that’s not the case. According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, humans share 99.9 percent of their genes with each other. Even that 0.1 percent doesn’t have any racial markers. In fact, a groundbreaking 2002 study revealed there is more genetic diversity between people of African descent than between Africans and Eurasians. You can use your genes to trace your ancestors’ geography, but that doesn’t directly tie in to race. Case in point: Sickle cell anemia isn’t a general “African” disease, as it’s normally described; it’s more common in West Africans, but it’s also widespread among Mediterranean, Arabian, and Indian populations.
•PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS THAT WENT HORRIBLY WRONG
•Science has given us amazing breakthroughs, but some researchers have been responsible for horrifying studies—here are some of the worst
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•UCLA schizophrenia medication experiment
•In 1983, researchers at UCLA began studying 50 patients suffering from schizophrenia. The aim: To figure out if symptoms of the disorder, such as lack of concentration, delusions, and hallucinations, would improve by taking patients off their medications. As the New York Times reports, one de-medicated patient committed suicide and another threatened to kill his parents. Critics pointed to a serious breach of ethics when the researchers failed to warn subjects how much worse their symptoms might get. It’s crucial for investigators to consider “the way we treat our participants,” says historian of psychology Cathy Faye, PhD.
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•Minnesota starvation experiment
•Researchers at the University of Minnesota experimented on conscientious objectors during World War II, to understand the effects of food deprivation. The Journal of Nutrition explains that the men were semi-starved for three months, then “re-fed” for several more. Although the men claimed the effects—a 25 percent loss of body weight plus irritability and depression—were worth it for their contributions to science, some continued to binge-eat and experience crippling depression after the study concluded; one subject chopped off three of his fingers.
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•British Army captain “Billy” Clegg-Hill was arrested for homosexuality in 1962—when it was still considered a mental illness—and a crime in the United Kingdom—and subjected to electroshock as a means to “cure” him; this aversion therapy was supposed to make him feel repulsed by his attraction to men. He died three days into the treatment, in part due to lack of blood flow to the brain. Those who actually survived aversion therapy in its heyday reported feeling “poisoned” and incapable of intimacy.
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•The Monster Study
•Is stuttering a brain disorder or a learned response? This question led University of Iowa researcher Mary Tudor to conduct speech experiments on 22 orphan children in 1938. Non-stutterers were told they actually did stutter; the children devolved into poor students and fearful speakers—one even ran away from the orphanage, according to the New York Times. The study proved an utter failure—its outcomes were contrary to what researchers expected to find—and those who heard about it later nicknamed it the Monster Study. “In the search for scientific objectivity, we often lose sight of…participants as real people,” says Dr. Faye. Check out these other medical interventions that harmed more than they helped.
•( 6 Strange Medical Treatments Doctors Thought Would Work
•For 2,400 years, patients have believed that doctors were doing good; for 2,300 years, they were wrong, according to historian David Wootton, in Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages. Here, the recently published book reveals some wacky treatments once considered cutting-edge.
•Toothaches
•In ancient Egypt, a dead mouse was placed on the tooth of a person in dental distress. In ancient Rome, toothaches were treated by rubbing one’s mouth with a hippopotamus’s left tooth and eating the ashes of a wolf’s head, wrote Pliny the Elder.
•Lice
•One remedy from 13th-century surgeon Jehan Yperman: Smear the person with a paste of mercury, ashes, the spit of a child, and lard. We’re fairly certain that won’t work..
•Cancer
•In 1880, the medical journal the Lancet published a letter from a doctor that hailed getting struck by lightning as a miracle cure. It cited the story of a farmer hit by a bolt that rendered him unconscious. When he awoke, his cancer was in remission. The writer predicted “frictional electricity” would be a “powerful therapeutic agent in the dispersion of cancerous formations.”
•Depression
•Nineteenth-century doctors prescribed the “blue pill” for many issues—even Abraham Lincoln was believed to have taken it for “melancholy.” No, it wasn’t Viagra. The pill contained mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Taken two or three times a day, it would have delivered a dose nearly 9,000 times today’s accepted levels.
•Stuttering
•A person stammered because his tongue was too short or incorrectly attached to his mouth, posited French doctor Hervez Chegoin in 1830. He thought only “mechanical means” could fix the issue and did surgeries for it.
•Schizophrenia
•After World War II, psychiatrists gave insulin to plunge a patient with mental illness into a coma and then brought him back. The insulin deprived the brain of fuel, which killed brain cells. This procedure supposedly reduced patients’ hostility and aggression).
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•The Stanford Prison Experiment
•In a now-famous contentious 1971 experiment on imprisonment, 35 college students were enlisted to play guards and 35 others acted as prisoners in a basement at Stanford University. Within 24 hours, “guards” had violently quelled a “prisoner” uprising and turned to blatantly authoritarian tactics; 12 hours after that, prisoners began to exhibit emotional disturbances and rage. The study came to an abrupt end after five days when, the lead researcher says, it became clear “we had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation.”
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•The Unabomber and Harvard’s humiliation studies
•Would we have had a Unabomber without the infamous Harvard University humiliation studies? In 2000, an article in the Atlantic proposed that psychological research conducted beginning in 1959 on subjects, including Theodore John Kaczinsky, may have led, at least indirectly, to the three deaths and 23 injuries from the Unabomber’s attacks from the late 1970s through the ’90s. “Personally abusive” assaults on study participants’ psyches were designed to break down their egos and may have contributed to what Kaczinsky’s defense lawyers maintained was his “paranoid mind.” These experiments were so creepy that they sound like science fiction.
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•Harlow’s Pit of Despair
•It seems impossible now, but in the 1950s, psychologist Harry Harlow placed baby monkeys in isolation for a year just to prove that children need their mothers’ love. The infant rhesus monkeys suffered various tortures in isolated confinement, and they went on to develop severe psychosis and depression. Though Harlow’s work was heralded at the time, it was eventually shut down for ethics violations.
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•Milgram obedience experiment
•The atrocities of World War II led to many psychological studies, including Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram’s experiment: He was trying to understand the “just following orders” excuse of Nazi soldiers who committed atrocities. In the study, “teachers” zapped “learners” who were sitting in electrified chairs when they made mistakes. Not surprisingly, the learners experienced high stress—sweating, trembling, and stuttering; three suffered uncontrollable seizures. These disturbing history facts were never taught in schools.
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•Tearoom trade
•These days, no researcher can run a study without “Informed consent”—they must alert volunteers to any potential risks in a study. But the idea is relatively new: In Laud Humphrey’s 1970 study on anonymous hookups in so-called “tearooms,” Humphrey adopted a false identity to spy on some 100 men. He collected sexual data—as well as identities, addresses, and other personal information—on his unwitting subjects at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in some states. “The sensitive data that Humphreys covertly gathered wielded the potential to destroy the lives and families of the subjects,” explains an article in UC Santa Barbara’s sociology newsletter.
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•Electroshock therapy on ‘schizophrenic’ children
•In the 1940s and 50s, Loretta Bender was heralded as a revolutionary child psychiatrist. Her reputation came through administering electroshock therapy and causing severe seizures in more than 500 supposedly schizophrenic children—some of them under the age of 3. A number of her subjects detailed the horrors they experienced as a result: Deteriorating mental state, memory loss, and self-harm; one 9-year-old subject attempted suicide twice.
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•CIA mind control experiments
•The CIA has been implicated in a number of illegal mind-control experiments that went horribly wrong for the subjects. During the Cold War, the spy agency experimented with torture in the form of Chinese brainwashing tactics. CIA investigators also gave subjects LSD, heroin, and mescaline without knowledge, let alone consent. The agency also used electric shock on people: All of the experiments were done in the name of improved interrogation tactics and increased resistance to torture. The result for the volunteers were hallucinations, paranoia, comas, insanity, and death.
•ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERIES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
•From penicillin and anesthesia to saccharin and silly putty, chance played a major role in some of the world’s great inventions.
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•Accidental discoveries
•Some things weren’t meant to be, but in the end, turned about to be something great. Read on to learn about how these happy accidents were first discovered. Check out the most amazing space discoveries from the last decade.
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•Penicillin
•Inventor: Alexander Fleming
•Year: 1928
•What Happened: Halfway through an experiment with bacteria, Alexander Fleming up and went on vacation. Slob that he was, he left a dirty petri dish in the lab sink.
•Big Discovery: When he got back, he found bacteria had grown all over the plate, except in an area where mold had formed.
•As a Result: That discovery led to two things: 1) penicillin and 2) Mrs. Fleming hiring a maid. Few other inventions can top that one, though these famous inventions from every state may rank right up there!
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•Anesthesia
•Inventor: Horace Wells
•Year: 1844
•What Happened: In its salad days, nitrous oxide was strictly a party toy, since it made people howl like hyenas. But a friend of the dentist took too much of the stuff at a laughing-gas stage show and gashed his leg.
•Big Discovery: The friend hadn’t realized he’d hurt himself.
•As a Result: Nitrous oxide became an early form of anesthesia. Check out these real words that were mistakenly invented.
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•Saccharin
•Inventors: Constantin Fahlberg and Ira Remsen
•Year: 1879
•What Happened: After spending the day studying coal tar derivatives, Fahlberg left his Johns Hopkins laboratory and went to dinner.
•Big Discovery: Something he ate tasted particularly sweet, which he traced to a chemical compound he’d spilled on his hand. Best of all, it turned out to be calorie-free.
•As a Result: He cut Remsen and the university out of millions of dollars when he secretly patented the breakthrough discovery, saccharin.
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•The Microwave
•Inventor: Percy Spencer
•Year: 1946
•What Happened: With the end of World War II, the Raytheon engineer was looking for other uses for the magnetron, which generated the microwaves for radar systems. While Spencer was standing next to the device one day, a chocolate bar in his pocket melted.
•Big Discovery: The magnetron worked even better on popcorn.
•As a Result: Orville Redenbacher became very rich. Here are the foods that were also invented by accident.
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•Viagra
•Inventors: Scientists at Pfizer
•Year: 1992
•What Happened: A Welsh hamlet was ground zero for a test on a pill to fight angina. Unfortunately for the afflicted, it had little success against the disease.
•Big Discovery: Though it didn’t work, the men taking part in the study refused to give up their medicine.
•As a Result: The scientists switched gears and marketed the drug, Viagra, for a very different purpose. These 13 NASA discoveries changed science textbooks.
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•Chewing Gum
•Inventor: Thomas Adams
•Year: 1870
•What Happened: He was experimenting with chicle, the sap from a South American tree, as a substitute for rubber. After mounting failures, the dejected inventor popped a piece into his mouth.
•Big Discovery: He liked it!
•As a Result: Adams New York No. 1 became the first mass-produced chewing gum in the world..
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•Silly Putty
•Inventor: James Wright
•Year: 1943
•What Happened: During the war years, the General Electric engineer combined silicone oil and boric acid in an attempt to find a cheap alternative to rubber for tank treads, boots, etc.
•Big Discovery: It didn’t work. But the scientists had a blast bouncing and stretching his mistake, when they weren’t using it to transfer comics onto paper.
•As a Result: Kids had a blast playing with the Silly Putty too.
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•Botox
•Inventors: Alastair and Jean Carruthers
•Year: 1987
•What Happened: The couple were using small doses of a deadly toxin to treat ‘crossed eyes’ eyelid spasms and other eye-muscle disorders when they noticed an interesting side effect.
•Big Discovery: Wrinkles magically disappeared.
•As a Result: The expressionless face became the ‘it’ look, thanks to Botox.
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•Brandy
•Inventor: A Dutch shipmaster
•Year: 16th century
•What Happened: He used heat to concentrate wine in order to make it easier to transport, with the idea of adding water to reconstitute it when he arrived.
•Big Discovery: Concentrated wine is better than watered-down wine.
•As a Result: ‘Burnt wine,’ or ‘brandewijn’ in Dutch, became a big hit. Call it brandy, since after a few drinks of the stuff, there’s no way you can pronounce brandewijn so a bartender can understand what you’re ordering.
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•Inventor: William Perkin
•Year: 1856
•What Happened: He was intent on discovering a cure for one of the deadliest diseases in the world, malaria.
•Big Discovery: While trying to replicate the malaria fighter quinine in his laboratory, Perkin inadvertently discovered the color mauve instead.
•As a Result: Perkin forgot about malaria and made a mint establishing the synthetic dye industry.
•INVENTORS WHO REGRETTED THEIR INVENTIONS
•What do Labradoodles, Mother’s Day, and emoticons have in common? Their creators rue the day they thought them up.
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•Some ideas are better left as ideas
•Have you ever thought up something and then later decided it wasn’t your best idea? So have these people—the only difference is, millions of people have either used or been affected by the products of their thoughts. Oops! Scroll through to find out who wishes they could take back what they made. And while you’re at it.
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•Ethan Zuckerman, creator of the pop-up ad
•When one of his advertising clients, a major car company, freaked out after their ad appeared on a page celebrating … well, a certain kind of sex we can’t mention here, Ethan Zuckerman came up with a way to get ads in front of the eyeballs of consumers without seeming to be associated with the content on the page. Thus, he wrote in an essay for The Atlantic, “We ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: The pop-up ad. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”
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•Wally Conron, creator of the Labradoodle
•In the 1980’s, Wally Conron, the puppy-breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia, was tasked with creating a non-shedding guide dog for a blind woman whose husband was allergic to dogs. The result was a cross between a Golden Labrador Retriever and a Standard Poodle called a Labradoodle, now the most sought-after hybrid dog in the world. You’d think Conron would be happy, right? Wrong. Everyone’s now now trying to create their own hybrid breeds: Goldendoodles (Golden Retriever/Poodle), Schnoodles (Miniature Schnauzer/Poodle), Cavoodless (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle), Roodles (Rottweiller/Poodle), Yorkiepoos (Yorkshire Terrier/Poodle), Shihpoos (Shih Tzu/Poodle) … The result, according to Psychology Today? The poodle crosses suffer various ailments: Problems with their eyes, hips, elbows, even epilepsy. “I opened a Pandora’s box, that’s what I did,” Conron told Psychology Today. “So many people are just breeding for the money. So many of these dogs have physical problems, and a lot of them are just crazy.” These are the most popular dog breeds in the country.
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•Anna Jarvis, creator of Mother’s Day
•To her dying day, Anna Jarvis couldn’t stand Mother’s Day. It had nothing to do with her feelings for her mother, whom she adored. After all, that’s why she came up with the idea of having a day devoted to mothers everywhere. Jarvis was even excited when the first day was celebrated on May 10, 1908. She didn’t attend the first event, held in the Grafton, West Virginia church where her mother taught Sunday School. But she did send 500 white carnations in her honor. What turned her off was how quickly the day became commercialized. Mental Floss says she was so put off that she dubbed the florist, greeting card, and confectionery industries “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest and truest movements and celebrations.”
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•John Sylvan, creator of the K-Cup
•It seems everyone has a Keurig coffee maker, right? “I don’t have one,” John Sylvan told The Atlantic. “They’re kind of expensive to use. Plus it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make.” You’d think that Sylvan would have all the money and time in the world. After all, he’s the guy who invented the Keurig K-Cups, those ubiquitous single-serve plastic coffee pods. But what really puts him off his creation is that the pods aren’t recyclable or biodegradable, so there are literally tons filling up landfills. “I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it,” he admits. But, lo! Good news for Mr. Sylvan: Keurig now offers varieties of pods that are recyclable, although some argue that even these are hard to recycle.
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•Mikhail Kalashnikov, creator of the AK-47
•During World War II, Russian firepower could not keep up with that of Germany’s. So Mikhail Kalashnikov, who served in a tank unit during the beginning of the war and had already invented improvements for tanks, set about building a rifle to compete against the Nazis. His automatic weapon proved durable, lightweight, and extremely popular. Too popular, as far as he was concerned, as it became a favorite of terrorists and warlords the world over. He told The Guardian, “I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work—for example a lawn mower.”
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•Scott Fahlman, creator of the emoticon
•Emoticons, emojis, “stickers” … that’s how many of us communicate with the outside world. Why use words when we can use cute pictures? Who would have a problem with that? Scott Fahlman, that’s who. The computer science professor created emoticons as joke markers to let someone know the email or text sender is kidding. But things have changed. “Sometimes I feel like Dr. Frankenstein,” he complained to the Wall Street Journal. “My creature started as benign but it’s gone places I don’t approve of.”
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•Albert Einstein, whose theories helped create the atomic bomb
•Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 was the roadmap scientists needed to build the atomic bomb. And, assuming that the Nazis were well on their way to building their own A-Bomb, he was glad to help, even writing a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 urging him to pursue the bomb. But the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki horrified Einstein. In 1947, he lamented to Newsweek that if he had “known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing.” Next, check out some more of the most ironic inventions ever.
•CHAPTER 37 : SOME SHOCKING FUN FACTS
•HISTORY LESSONS YOUR TEACHER LIED TO YOU ABOUT
•Alternative facts have always been with us, and they’ve always been used to cover up uncomfortable truths. Here’s some history you’ll want to rewrite in your memory.
•Rosa Parks was not sitting in the white-only section
•No one can deny that Rosa Parks played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights movement by refusing to move to the back of the bus for being African American, but one can deny she was sitting in the whites-only section. Back on that late December day in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, History.com confirms that Ms. Parks was actually sitting in the first row of the middle section for African Americans—the “colored” section. But when more passengers boarded, the bus became packed and a white man was left standing. The driver then demanded Parks and three other African American passengers move further back so this man could take their seats. As the story goes, Rosa wouldn’t stand for it—and that earns her a spot in the ranks of pioneering women who changed history
•The Emancipation Proclamation only freed some slaves
•If you thought this historical executive order put the final kibosh on slavery you’d be wrong. “Students think that it ‘freed the slaves,’ but in reality it only applied to those areas still controlled by the Confederacy and so didn’t actually free the slaves directly,” explains William D. Carrigan, chair and professor of history at Rowan University. “What it did was allow the slaves to ‘free themselves’ by running away to Union lines or the North (which between 500,000 and 700,000 did).” Carrigan explains that it was the 13th Amendment that actually put a final end to slavery. However, it wasn’t until December 1865, eight months after Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse, that the 13th Amendment was ratified. If you can ace this quiz of how well you know the amendments to the Constitution, you probably knew this already!
•The practice of Chinese foot-binding was not only about catching a man
•Women have historically gone to extreme measures to meet cultural standards of beauty to attract the opposite sex, from wearing tight corsets to walking in heels. In China this standard of beauty was achieved by foot-binding. A young girl’s bones were broken and her feet tightly bound so that her “lotus feet” now appeared small and dainty. In their research book Bound Feet, Young Hands, authors Lauren Bossen and Hill Gates reveal that some girls’ feet were bound at a very young age not to catch a husband, but to force them to work. “What’s groundbreaking about our work is that [foot-binding was] not confined to the elite,” Laurel Bossen, the book’s co-author, told HuffPost. The study, Bossen added, dispels the view that the goal was only to try to please men.
•The authors interviewed over 1,800 women across China to uncover that foot-binding was prevalent among many peasant families to create immobility for girls so that they would stick around doing handwork that families depended on for selling goods.
•The Thanksgiving holiday commemorates a tragedy
•Thankfully, this holiday has become one of heart-warming stories. Thanksgiving sure didn’t start off happy. According to Ramona Peters, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, quoted in the Indian Country Today Media Network, President Lincoln promoted the celebration of a happy meal between the Pilgrims and Indians to create a feeling of harmony and bring together the country after the Civil War. But there was nothing harmonious about how the Thanksgiving holiday came about—the massacre of an entire Indian tribe. In 1636, when a murdered man was discovered in a boat in Plymouth, English Major John Mason and his soldiers blamed the Pequot Indians. They then killed 400 of them in retribution, including women and children. The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Newell, proclaimed: “From that day forth, shall be a day of celebration and thanks giving for subduing the Pequots.” Less the kind of thankfulness story we read about in grammar school or share over turkey and pumpkin pie and more one of these disturbing historical facts you’ll wish weren’t really true.
•The Titanic didn’t sink because it hit an iceberg
•People have long been fascinated with the tragedy of the unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg in 1912. Turns out it may not have been the iceberg that took the Titanic down in the North Atlantic, but a roaring fire. In a recent analysis of photos found in an attic that were taken by the ship’s electrical engineer experts have determined there was a fire burning in the ship’s hull unnoticed for three weeks before the collision. It took 12 men to try to contain the flames, but to no avail. By the time the Titanic hit the iceberg, the damage to the hull was too far gone and ship’s lining was torn open. In the 2017 documentary Titanic: The New Evidence, journalist Senan Molony said: “The official Titanic inquiry branded [the sinking] as an act of God. This isn’t a simple story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice and criminal negligence.”
•George Washington chopped down the term of his Presidency, not a cherry tree
•Misinformation about Washington has made the rounds with school children and adults over the years, mostly about his teeth and chopping down his father’s cherry tree. Washington certainly wasn’t showing off a set of pearly whites when he smiled, but nor were his teeth made from wood, rather they were a combination of gold, ivory, lead, and human and animal teeth. And the cherry tree chopping tale never happened at all. That story grew out of a myth included in The Life of Washington, a book by Mason Locke Meems, George Washington’s first biographer. Then another writer, William Homes McGuffey, repeated the story in his children’s reader. So as the story goes although Washington couldn’t tell a lie, we’ve been telling one about him for over two hundred years.
•“Most students sadly know very little about why George Washington was so admired in his day,” says history professor William Carrigan. “They are more likely to know about the false stories of the cherry tree, etc. than about the fact that he was widely admired for resigning his commission after the Revolutionary War and stepping down after two terms as president.” That cherry tree story firmly belongs in the realm of myths about U.S. presidents that just aren’t true.
•Alexander Graham Bell didn’t invent the telephone
•On the ABC show Shark Tank, the ‘sharks’—aka investors—are big on asking entrepreneurs if they’ve obtained a patent on their product. Rightly so as without a patent an idea or invention could be claimed by someone else. Back in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell didn’t need to watch Shank Tank to get their message: He wasn’t the inventor of the telephone like we were all taught—he was the first to patent it. Turns out Bell was actually one of several men who were working on the telephone idea at the same time, but he got to the patent office before them. However, in 2002 U.S. Congress recognized an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell. The Guardian reported, “Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognize a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.”
•The resolution declared Meucci’s “teletrofono”, demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell even though it was Bell who took out a patent 16 years later.
•“It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” the resolution stated.
•Anne Boleyn wasn’t sporting six digits
•If Housewives of the Tudors were a thing, Anne Boleyn would certainly have been its star. For over four hundred years rumors have been flying when it comes to Henry VIII’s second wife. Not only did her husband cut ties with the Catholic Church to obtain a divorce and marry her, he eventually cut off her head for cheating on him. But like a reality show on steroids Anne Bolelyn’s saga didn’t end there. Speculation that she was a witch simmered over the years fueled by rumors she had six fingers on one hand. In a book written decades later by the Catholic propagandist Nicholas Sander he wrote the queen “…had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand, six fingers.” He also noted she hid an ugly cyst on her neck. Back then moles and other imperfections like extra fingers were the sign of the devil or witchcraft. Turns out Sanders had a vendetta against Anne’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I and may have made it all up. Plus people who actually hung out with the queen described her as a looker. According to History.com, George Wyatt, a biographer who spoke to Anne’s former attendants, noted that she did have several moles and an extra nail on the little finger of her right hand, but no sixth digit. And when a doctor exhumed the supposed burial site at the Tower of London back in the 19th century, none of the bodies showed any sign of an additional finger.
•Pocahontas wasn’t crushing on John Smith
•Disney had it all wrong. Pocahontas and John Smith never had a thing going. In fact, Pocahontas was only about eight years old when John Smith arrived, and was later married to another young Indian warrior who eventually died according to tribal oral histories as well as The True Story of Pocahontas, by members of the Mattaponi Tribe. Supposedly she had a baby that was given to relatives before she was forced into captivity at about 15 or 16 years of age. As Buck Woodard, a cultural anthropologist and former director of the American Indian Initiative at Colonial Williamsburg told Indian Country Today: “At a very young age, Pocahontas helped establish a relationship between the Algonquin and the English.” It was said there was a mutual admiration between her and Smith, who later described her as unrivaled in wit and spirit, but that’s where the love story ends—their “romance” is one of the famous moments in history that never actually happened.
•Columbus took a shortcut and lucked out
•Ah, Columbus. He proved the world wasn’t flat and discovered America to boot. Wrong. That’s not exactly what happened although we’ve been teaching it that way in schools for years and years. Truth is no one in 1492 believed the Earth was flat, according to the Washington Post. Columbus was just trying to prove you could get from Europe to China by sailing west rather than east. His shortcut plans got derailed when he hit land and discovered a whole new continent in the process. He ended up an esteemed player in the founding of America. The thing is, Columbus never even landed in what would become the United States—he actually landed in the Caribbean. Basically, Columbus is the basis of a whole host of things you learned in school that aren’t true anymore.
•The Wright brothers weren’t the first to earn their wings
•This brother team from Dayton, Ohio, did come up with the first truly controllable aircraft, we’ll give them that, but the real claim for first in flight fame goes to a German immigrant named Gustav Whitehead that occurred in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 2013, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, which calls itself the world’s foremost authority on aviation history, named the August 1901 flight by Whitehead as the first successful powered flight in history, according to flyingmag.com. Jane reviewed evidence from aviation researcher John Brown that Whitehead may have made one and possibly two flights in a small monoplane of his own design (and powered by a tiny motor also of his own design) as early as 1901—two full years before the Wright Brothers.
•Charles Lindbergh was not the first to cross the Atlantic by air
•Many people have a fear of flying, but “Lucky Lindy” certainly knew the tricks to ease one’s flying nerves. After all, Charles Lindbergh did complete the 34-hour grueling flight from New York to Paris all by himself. But most people think he was also the first to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. Actually, he was around the 85th man to do so. The honor for number one goes to British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown who back in 1919 flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy biplane before crash landing in a bog. Still, it wasn’t a small feat to cross the Atlantic by airplane between two major international cities on your own. This was sans autopilot and Redbull so Lindy had to stay wide awake the 34 hours it took to fly there. And don’t forget about going to the bathroom? Maybe Lindy wasn’t so lucky after all.
•Henry Ford wasn’t an inventor of the car
•Henry Ford made cars better. He made cars cheaper. And faster. And like electric cars being built today, these were all revolutionary feats that changed the automotive marketplace. But unlike what some folks think, he did not invent the car. It was German mechanical engineer Karl Benz who designed and built the first practical automobile powered by an internal-combustion engine. The original car, Benz’s three-wheeled Motorwagen, first ran in 1885. And there were others after him. Ford did not start building his first car until 1886. However, it was Ford’s ingenuity in building larger factories with moving production lines to mass produce cars that made them affordable to the masses. Although he may not have invented the car, he certainly had a large hand in fueling America’s love story with the automobile. The true story behind Henry Ford’s cars is one of the facts about America you won’t find in history books.
•Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb
•Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, he developed it. There is a huge difference. “Edison was in a very competitive race where he borrowed—some said stole—ideas from other inventors who were also working on an incandescent bulb,” explained Ernest Freeberg, author of The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America, to U.S. News & World Report. In his book, Freeberg shows that the light bulb reflected the work of many inventors, rather than Edison’s lone genius. “What made him ultimately successful was that he was not a lone inventor, a lone genius, but rather the assembler of the first research and development team at Menlo Park, N.J.”
•Washington’s Delaware crossing was in a much bigger boat
•Hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is one of America’s best-known paintings. Artist Emanuel Leutze depicted a glory filled crossing on a tipsy rowboat. In reality, it was probably a 60-foot-long flatboat ferry, guided by cable, according to the New York Times, and crowded with dozens of troops, and cannons and horses. In the painting Washington’s face is lit by lantern and torch against a night sky, but weather records show the crossing happened during a northeaster. More likely the ferry had to cut through thick layers of ice on the Delaware without a glowing sky to guide them nor a wide river to travel. The records are more in keeping with a dead-of-night crossing at a section of the river less than 300 yards wide. And the flag in the Leutze painting? Well that was another liberty taken by the artist—the Stars and Stripes was not adopted until after the crossing. That’s definitely the root of some U.S. war trivia questions most people get wrong.
•Hamilton may not have been the abolitionist portrayed on Broadway
•Although Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical Hamilton, tried to remain true to the character as possible, experts have raised concerns that the musical over-glorifies the man, inflating his opposition to slavery. In the show’s last song, his widow, Eliza, sings that Hamilton would have “done so much more” against slavery had he lived longer. But would he have? Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, said in an interview “that while Hamilton publicly criticized Jefferson’s views on the biological inferiority of blacks, his record from the 1790s until his death in 1804 includes little to no action against slavery.” She believes race and slavery are invoked directly in the show mainly to underline Hamilton’s “goodness,” especially in contrast to Jefferson. But Hamilton the ardent lifelong abolitionist, she said, is “an idea of who we would like Hamilton to be.”
•Paul Revere didn’t ride alone
•Paul Revere did alert the colonies that the British were coming, but he wasn’t the only loud mouth. There were many riders who went out the night of April 18 to warn the colonists of the British forces. Four men and one woman made late night rides, alerting the early Americans of what dangers lay ahead; Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott, Israel Bissell, William Dawes, and Sybil Ludington.
•What’s interesting about that particular situation is neither Revere nor any of the other riders were remembered by history for their actions on April 18, 1775 until Henry Wadworth Longfellow wrote his poem in April 1860, just shy of 85 years later. And it wasn’t until the Colonial Revival Movement of the 1870s that Longfellow’s poem brought Revere to fame. So he’s definitely one of the historical figures you’ve been picturing wrong.
•The War of the Worlds broadcast did not cause a panic
•It’s widely believed that this highly realistic radio play about aliens invading earth caused a national panic attack. (It was based on H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds.) This couldn’t be further from the truth. It turns out that not a lot of people even tuned in. Plus, the broadcast provided disclaimers regarding the show’s fiction throughout.
•According to Slate,”Far fewer people heard the broadcast—and fewer still panicked—than most people believe today. How do we know? The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey. ‘To what program are you listening?’ the service asked respondents. Only 2 percent answered a radio ‘play’ or ‘the Orson Welles program,’ or something similar indicating CBS. None said a ‘news broadcast,’ according to a summary published in Broadcasting. In other words, 98 percent of those surveyed were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. This minuscule rating is not surprising. Welles’ program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time—ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show.”
•Slate also argues that there’s no data to support the idea that many radio listeners heard about the broadcast and tuned in during it. And it points out that “several important CBS affiliates (including Boston’s WEEI) preempted Welles’ broadcast in favor of local commercial programming, further shrinking its audience.”
•So how did the story of the “panic” grow over the years? Slate blames newspapers, which allegedly “seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.”
•Einstein never flunked algebra
•Unless you have dyscalculia, a type of math learning disability, telling Mom and Dad that you’re flunking math because you’re a genius like Albert Einstein is sure to backfire for many reasons. No eye-rolling please, but seriously did the man who came up with an alternate proof for the Pythagorean theory as a teenager really fail math? Nope. In fact, when Einstein heard the myth he just laughed it off and said that he had already mastered differential and integral calculus by 15. According to the New York Times, his academic records contained in a collection of the great theorist’s papers confirmed that he was a child prodigy, remarkably gifted in mathematics, algebra and physics, a ”brilliant” violin player who got high marks in Latin and Greek. But his inability to master French was the bane of his school days, and may have been chiefly responsible for him failing college entrance examinations. So if you can’t parlez-vous français, you might be able to use the Einstein excuse—but not if you fail to solve for X.
•Princess Anastasia didn’t make it out alive
•For many years it was believed that Princess Anastasia the daughter of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, may have survived the brutal 1918 assassination of her family. However, in 2007 genetic testing determined that she did not escape the massacre. On the night of July 16, 1918, she and her family were executed in Yekaterinburg, Russia. In 1991, a forensic study identified the bodies of her family members and servants, but not hers or her brother Alexei’s. The 2007 DNA test of a second grave identified both of their bodies. In response to numerous movies made about Anastasia surviving (20th Century Fox, we’re looking at you) and women claiming to be Anastasia, it’s easy to see how the legacy of her surviving stuck around for so long—and became one of the greatest lies that made history.
•President Lincoln wasn’t all that when it came to opposing slavery
•A PBS film called The Abolitionists tells the story of five abolitionist leaders who arguably did more than Lincoln to end slavery.”There’s this perception that good old Lincoln and a few others gave freedom to black people. The real story is that black people and people like [Frederick] Douglass wrestled their freedom away,” Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a historian who is featured in the film, told CNN.
•Eric Foner, a historian and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, also told CNN that “it was not Lincoln who originated the Thirteenth amendment, it was the abolitionist movement.” According to Foner it wasn’t until 1864 that Lincoln changed his mind and favored the amendment.
•Finally passed in the Senate on April 8, 1864, the bill didn’t clear the House until January 31, 1865, when enough Democrats added their votes. Almost a year later, on December 18, 1865, the required three-quarters of states had ratified the amendment, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States. In the end Lincoln was just trying to hold the Union together.
•The Dred Scott decision outraged the North, but it wasn’t for not freeing Scott
•Dred Scott was a slave whose owner, an army doctor, had spent time in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory at the time of Scott’s residence. In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in a free state and a free territory for a prolonged period of time. It took 11 years for his case to reach the Supreme Court. The court held that Scott was not free based on his residence in either Illinois or Wisconsin because he was not considered a person under the U.S. Constitution. In the opinion of the justices, black people were not considered citizens when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. According to the majority opinion, Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person without due process of law.
•“Most folks think that the North was outraged because the decision did not free Dred Scot from slavery,” says William D. Carrigan, chair and professor of history at Rowan University. “But only abolitionists cared about that outcome. Many more Northerners were outraged at the decision because it said that Congress could not restrict slavery in the territories at all (as had been done for many years, starting in 1820 with the Missouri Compromise). All of these common lies about history are definitely the reason behind these history questions that everyone gets wrong.
CHAPTER 38 : FACTS ABOUT AMERICA THAT MOST AMERICANS DON’T KNOW
•From little-known trivia about presidents to amazing facts about the land we walk on, these facts about America will blow you away.
•Bckground : The Barbary slave trade refers to slave markets on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. The Ottoman provinces in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous.
•European slaves were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the eastern Mediterranean.
•The Ottoman eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. As late as the 18th century, piracy continued to be a « consistent threat to maritime traffic in the Aegean »
•Extent
•
•Turk and clergyman with Christian slaves, Jan Luyken, 1684
•In his 2003 book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800, Ohio State University history professor Robert Davis states that most modern historians minimize the white slave trade. Davis estimates that slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli alone enslaved 1 million to 1.25 million Europeans in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th (these numbers do not include the European people who were enslaved by Morocco and by other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean Sea coast). Roughly 700 Americans were held captive in this region as slaves between 1785 and 1815. However, to extrapolate his numbers, Davis assumes the number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates remained roughly constant for a 250-year period, stating:
•There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers - about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.
•Other historians have challenged Davis’ numbers. Peter Earle cautions that the picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe and black people from western Africa.
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•Christian prisoners are sold as slaves on a square in Algiers, Jan Luyken, 1684
•Middle East expert and researcher John Wright cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation. A second book by Davis, Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean, widened its focus to related slavery.
•The authorities of Ottoman and pre-Ottoman times kept no relevant official records, but observers in the late 1500s and early 1600s estimated that around 35,000 European slaves were held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli and Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Italy.
•From bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured. From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids on seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore in Ireland were abandoned following a raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone lost 466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates.
•While Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured, their primary goal was to capture non-Muslim people for sale as slaves or for ransom. Those who had family or friends who might ransom them were held captive; the most famous of these was the author Miguel de Cervantes, who was held for almost five years - from 1575 to 1580. Others were sold into various types of servitude. Captives who converted to Islam were generally freed, since enslavement of Muslims was prohibited; but this meant that they could never return to their native countries.
•Sixteenth- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul’s additional slave imports from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700. The markets declined after Sweden and the United States defeated the Barbary States in the Barbary Wars (1800-1815). A US Navy expedition under Commodore Edward Preble engaged gunboats and fortifications in Tripoli in 1804. A British diplomatic mission to Algiers led to the Dey to agree to release some Sardinian slaves. However, the moment the British left, the Dey ordered the Sardinians massacred; the same fleet joined by some Dutch warships returned and delivered a nine-hour bombardment of Algiers in 1816 leading to the Dey accepting a new agreement in which he promised to end his slavery operations. Despite this, the trade continued, only ending with the French conquest of Algeria (1830-1847). The Kingdom of Morocco had already suppressed piracy and recognized the United States as an independent country in 1776.
•Origins
•Further information: Slavery in antiquity and Saqaliba
•The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age. The Barbary Coast increased in influence in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire took over as rulers of the area. Coupled with this was an influx of Sephardi Jews and Moorish refugees, newly expelled from Spain after the Reconquista.
•With Ottoman protection and a host of destitute immigrants, the coastline soon became reputed for piracy. Crews from the seized ships were either enslaved or ransomed. Between 1580 and 1680, there were in Barbary around 15,000 renegades, Christian Europeans who converted to Islam, and half of the corsair captains were in fact renegades. Some of them were slaves that converted to Islam but most had probably never been slaves and had come to North Africa looking for opportunity.
•Rise of the Barbary pirates
•Further information: History of slavery in the Muslim world
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•The bombardment of Algiers in 1682, by Abraham Duquesne.
•After a revolt in the mid-17th century reduced the ruling Ottoman Pashas to little more than figureheads in the region, the towns of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and others became independent in all but name. Without a large central authority and its laws, the pirates themselves started to gain much influence.
•In 1785 when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli’s envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, they asked him what right he had to take slaves in this way. He replied that the « right » was « founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise ».
•Pirate raids for the acquisition of slaves occurred in towns and villages on the African Atlantic seaboard, as well as in Europe. Reports of Barbary raids and kidnappings of those in Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and as far north as Iceland exist from between the 16th to the 19th centuries. It is estimated that between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by pirates and sold as slaves in Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli during this time period. The slave trade in Europeans in other parts of the Mediterranean is not included in this estimation.
•Famous accounts of Barbary slave raids include a mention in the diary of Samuel Pepys and a raid on the coastal village of Baltimore, Ireland, during which pirates left with the entire populace of the settlement. The attack was led by a Dutch captain, Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, also known as Murad Reis the Younger. Janszoon also led the 1627 raid on Iceland. Such raids in the Mediterranean were so frequent and devastating that the coastline between Venice and Málaga suffered widespread depopulation, and settlement there was discouraged. In fact, it was said that « there was no one left to capture any longer. »
•The power and influence of these pirates during this time was such that nations including the United States paid tribute in order to stave off their attacks. Supplies from the Black Sea appear to have been even larger. A compilation of partial statistics and patchy estimates indicates that almost 2 million Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles were seized from 1468 to 1694. Additionally, there were slaves from the Caucasus obtained by a mixture of raiding and trading. 16th- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul’s slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700.
•Decline
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•A US Navy expedition under Commodore Edward Preble engaging gunboats and fortifications in Tripoli, 1804.
•In the first years of the 19th century, the United States, allied with European nations, fought and won the First and the Second Barbary Wars against the pirates. The wars were a direct response of the American, British, French and the Dutch states to the raids and the slave trade by the Barbary pirates against them, which ended in the 1830s when the region was conquered by France. The Barbary slave trade and slave markets in the Mediterranean declined and eventually disappeared after the European occupations.
•After an Anglo-Dutch bombardment in 1816 of Algiers on 27 August, led by Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, disabled most of the Pirate fleet, the Dey of Algiers was forced to agree to terms which included the release of the surviving 1,200 slaves (mostly from Sardinia) and the cessation of their practice of enslaving Europeans. After being defeated in this period of formal hostilities with European and American powers, the Barbary states went into decline.
•The Barbary pirates refused to cease their slaving operations, resulting in another bombardment by a Royal Navy fleet against Algiers in 1824. France invaded Algiers in 1830, placing it under colonial rule. Tunis was similarly invaded by France in 1881. Tripoli returned to direct Ottoman control in 1835, before falling into Italian hands in the 1911 Italo-Turkish War. As such, the slave traders now found that they had to work in accordance with the laws of their governors, and could no longer look to self-regulation. The slave trade ceased on the Barbary coast in the 19th and 20th centuries or when European governments passed laws granting emancipation to slaves.
•The word razzia was borrowed via Italian and French from Maghrebi Arabic ghaziya (« raiding »), originally referring to slave raids conducted by Barbary pirates.
•America the beautiful
•With 50 states and a nearly 250-year history, there’s plenty about Our Majestic nation that will amaze and awe you. Read on to learn more about U.S. politics, geography, notable citizens and more. Find out the most historic landmark in every state.
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•SECOND BARBARY WAR
•The Second Barbary War (1815) or the U.S.–Algerian War was fought between the United Statesand the North African Barbary Coast states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. The war ended when the United States Senate ratified Commodore Stephen Decatur’s Algerian treaty on December 5, 1815.However, Dey Omar Agha of Algeria repudiated the US treaty, refused to accept the terms of peace that had been ratified by the Congress of Vienna, and threatened the lives of all Christian inhabitants of Algiers. William Shaler was the US commissioner in Algiers who had negotiated alongside Decatur, but he fled aboard British vessels during the Bombardment of Algiers (1816). He negotiated a new treaty in 1816 which was not ratified by the Senate until February 11, 1822, because of an oversight.
•After the end of the war, the United States and European nations stopped paying tribute to the pirate states; this marked the beginning of the end of piracy in that region, which had been rampant in the days of Ottoman domination during the 16th–18th centuries. The western nations built ever more sophisticated and expensive ships which the Barbary pirates could not match in numbers or technology.
•The First Barbary War (1801–05) had led to an uneasy truce between the US and the Barbary states, but American attention turned to Britain and the War of 1812. At the prompting of Britain, the Barbary pirates returned to their practice of attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea and ransoming their crews to the United States government. At the same time, the major European powers were still involved in the Napoleonic Wars, which did not fully end until 1815.
•At the conclusion of the War of 1812, however, the United States returned to the problem of Barbary piracy. On 3 March 1815, Congress authorized deployment of naval power against Algiers, and the squadron under the command of Commodore Stephen Decatur set sail on 20 May. It consisted of USS Guerriere (flagship), Constellation, Macedonia, Epervier, Ontario, Firefly, Spark, Flambeau, Torch, and Spitfire.
•War
•Shortly after departing Gibraltar en route to Algiers, Decatur’s squadron encountered the Algerian flagship Meshuda and captured it in the Battle off Cape Gata, and they captured the Algerian brig Estedio in the Battle off Cape Palos. By the final week of June, the squadron had reached Algiers and had initiated negotiations with the Dey. The United States made persistent demands for compensation, mingled with threats of destruction, and the Dey capitulated. He signed a treaty aboard the Guerriere in the Bay of Algiers on 3 July 1815, in which Decatur agreed to return the captured Meshuda and Estedio. The Algerians returned all American captives, estimated to be about 10, in exchange for about 500 subjects of the Dey. Algeria also paid $10,000 for seized shipping. The treaty guaranteed no further tributes by the United States and granted the United States full shipping rights in the Mediterranean Sea.
•Aftermath
•In early 1816, Britain undertook a diplomatic mission, backed by a small squadron of ships of the line, to Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers to convince the Deys to stop their piracy and free enslaved European Christians. The Beys of Tunis and Tripoli agreed without any resistance, but the Dey of Algiers was less cooperative, and the negotiations were stormy. The leader of the diplomatic mission, Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, believed that he had negotiated a treaty to stop the slavery of Christians and returned to England. However, just after the treaty was signed, Algerian troops massacred 200 Corsican, Sicilian and Sardinian fishermen who had been under British protection thanks to the negotiation. This caused outrage in Britain and Europe, and Exmouth’s negotiations were seen as a failure.
•As a result, Exmouth was ordered to sea again to complete the job and punish the Algerians. He gathered a squadron of five ships of the line, reinforced by a number of frigates, later reinforced by a flotilla of six Dutch ships. On 27 August 1816, following a round of failed negotiations, the fleet delivered a punishing nine-hour bombardment of Algiers. The attack immobilized many of the Dey’s corsairs and shore batteries, forcing him to accept a peace offer of the same terms that he had rejected the day before. Exmouth warned that if the terms were not accepted, he would continue the action. The Dey accepted the terms, but Exmouth had been bluffing since his fleet had already spent all its ammunition.
•A treaty was signed on 24 September 1816. The British Consul and 1,083 other Christian slaves were freed, and the U.S. ransom money repaid.
•After the First Barbary War, the European nations had been engaged in warfare with one another and the U.S. with the British. However, in the years immediately following the Second Barbary War, there was no general European war, which allowed the Europeans to build up their resources and challenge Barbary power in the Mediterranean without distraction. Algiers and Tunis were seized and colonized by France in 1830 and 1881, respectively.
•Second Barbary War
•Part of the Barbary Wars
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•Decatur’s Squadron off Algiers
•United States
• Regency of Algiers
•Commanders and leaders
•James Madison
•Stephen Decatur
• Omar Agha
• Reis Hamidou †
•Strength
•3 frigates
•3 brigs
•2 schooners
•2 sloops•5 frigates
•7 smaller warships
•Casualties and losses
•40 killed and wounded•53 killed
•Many wounded
•486 captured
•2 ships captured
•1 ship sunk
DateJune 17–19, 1815
LocationMediterranean Sea
ResultAmerican victory
HLLELUJAH !
•The victory !
•And Glory !
•A brand new Awesome beggining.
•Things most Americans don’t know :
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•The current flag was designed by a 17-year-old
•Our current 50-star flag was designed as part of a high school project by 17-year old Robert Heff. It was 1958, and there were only 48 states at the time but Heft had a hunch Hawaii and Alaska would soon be granted statehood.
•His teacher gave him a B- but went on to update the grade to an A after Heft submitted his design to the White House, eventually leading to a call from President Eisenhower that it had been selected as the official U.S. flag.
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•They call it Lake Superior for a reason
•Everyone knows Lake Superior is big (they don’t call it one of the Great Lakes for nothing, after all) but few people know exactly how large it really is. Not only is Lake Superior the largest freshwater lake in the world, but it holds three quadrillion gallons of water. That’s enough liquid to completely cover both North and South America under a foot of water. It’s no wonder Lake Superior has been the site of so many shipwrecks.
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•We love our pizza
•It’s no secret that Americans love pizza, however, it might surprise you to learn that we eat enough pizza every day to cover 100 acres. Total it up and that’s 3 billion pizzas a year. Sadly, no official data is available regarding how many of those pies were consumed due to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ “Two Pizza Rule.”
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•Ol’ man river
•“Ol’ Man River” is a famous song from Show Boat and as it happens, America knows a thing or two about old rivers. Although its exact age isn’t known, the New River, which flows from the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina to Virginia and West Virginia, is thought by most scientists to be the oldest in North America. Many believe the New River is older than the continent of North America itself.
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•Someone is still collecting a Civil War pension
•The Civil War ended in 1865, but Irene Triplet is still collecting a pension. Her father served in the war which entitles Triplet, who is now almost 90 years old, to a survivor’s benefit of $73.13 a month. One can only imagine Triplet has seen a great deal in her life and knows all about the triumphs and tragedies only military families can understand.
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•Americans are a generous bunch
•According to the World Giving Index, the United States is the most generous country in the world, based on a tally of charitable donations, volunteer hours, and a track record of reaching out to help others. Before you open your wallet, find out the charities where your donation goes the farthest.
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•Where to shoot hoops with RBG
•Being a supreme court justice is undoubtedly a stressful job. One way they let off a little steam is with a friendly game of basketball. A storage room on the top floor of the Supreme Court was converted into a basketball court. Justices and their clerks shoot hoops there. And you thought there could be no other ways Ruth Bader Ginsberg could make history.
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•The Constitution wasn’t original
•If you thought that Ben Franklin and the founding fathers came up with the constitution all by themselves you’d be wrong. They actually modeled it after the constitution of the Iroquois confederacy of Native American tribes. It’s just one of many facts about Native Americans you didn’t learn in history class.
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•We don’t have an official language
•Most people assume English is the official language of the United States but the truth is, although that might be the case in many of the states, the federal government has never declared an official language. Not English or anything else. This is one of the 16 history questions everyone always gets wrong.
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•You might be surprised by the oldest city
•Many people assume Jamestown, Virginia is the oldest city in the United States, but the reality is Jamestown is merely the oldest English settlement. The oldest city in the United States is actually St Augustine, Florida. The area was originally claimed for Spain by famed explorer Ponce De Leon in 1513; the United States took control in 1821. That’s why St. Augustine is one of the 16 best U.S. cities for history buffs.
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•the first book printed in America Sotheby’s to auction worlds most valuable book, New York, America - 12 Apr 2013 The Bay Psalm Book, the first book written and printed in America, is going under the hammer for an estimated $15-30 million (£9.7-19.5 million). Sotheby’s New York will auction one of the 11 surviving copies in a dedicated auction on 26 November 2013. From the collection of the Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts, the proceeds of the sale will benefit the church’s mission and ministry. Unseen on the marketplace for more than two generations, the book has become too rare to collect. The book will be on display in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries from 12-14 April, before embarking on a travelling exhibition in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles in the coming months. The book will return for exhibition in New York in adavance of the auction. Worldwide Chairman of Sotheby’s Books Department, David Redden said ’This modest little book embodies the values that created our nation’ political freedom and religious liberty.
•That’s an old book
•The book believed to be the first-ever to be printed in America was called Bay Psalm Book, published way back in 1640. In 2013, one of the 11 copies known to be still in existence sold at auction for $14.2 million. Needless to say, the Bay Psalm Book is one of the most expensive books in the world.
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•Thanksgiving was when?
•You may think it’s a fact that Thanksgiving was always held on the fourth Thursday of November, but that’s not the case. The holiday was held on several different dates until Abraham Lincoln declared that it would henceforth be held the fourth Thursday in November of every year in 1863. This day was honored by every subsequent president until FDR moved it to the third Thursday of November in 1939 to extend the Christmas season. After many complaints, he realized his mistake and moved it back to the fourth Thursday two years later; that’s when we celebrate it today
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•Eleanor Roosevelt was groundbreaking
•Eleanor Roosevelt is known as a groundbreaking first lady in many regards and generations later, still considered to be a role model. Perhaps one of her most memorable was holding her own press conference, something no first lady had done before. More memorable still? She only invited female reporters to attend.
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•Independence Day could have been on July 2
•One of the things many people don’t know about Independence Day is that Congress officially declared its independence from England on July 2, 1776. We celebrate the holiday on the fourth of July because this is the day that John Hancock became the first man to sign the document.
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•Women rock it in space
•If you were thinking the astronaut who has spent the most time in space was a man, you’d be wrong. That honor belongs to a woman. Astronaut Peggy Whitson has spent the most cumulative time in space, just one of 13 amazing facts about the women of NASA.
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•Don’t stand too close to this volcano
•Geologists consider Mt Kilauea in Hawaii to be the most active volcano in the world because it has been erupting continuously for more than 35 years. The longest period the volcano has been inactive was the 18 years between 1934 and 1952.
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•Sacagawea was a new mom
•Sacagawea is well-known for her important contribution as an interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Discovery Corp expedition in1805-1806. What many people forget is that Sacagawea gave birth just two months before the expedition and took her newborn son with her on the dangerous journey.
•Her husband, who was also part of the expedition, was paid $500.33 and 320 acres for his work. Sacagawea received nothing. Sacagawea is one of many untold stories of Native American heroes.
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•Mustangs were imported
•There is perhaps no creature that encapsulates the image of the old American west more than the wild mustang. But mustangs aren’t actually native to the United States. They are descendants of Spanish or Iberian horses which were brought here during the 16th century.
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•Dinosaurs loved it here
•The United States has not only found the most dinosaur fossils, but it also has the most variety. Although the finds have been scattered throughout the country, most of them were in desert areas, where vegetation isn’t likely to grow and fossils remain more accessible since they are covered by nothing but sand and rock, as opposed to trees and soil. If you’d like to see dinosaur bones without digging for them.
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•The words on the Liberty Bell
•Did you know the word Pennsylvania is spelled wrong on the Liberty Bell? Actually, spelled wrong is probably a bit harsh: in 1752, when the bell was made, it was one of several acceptable spellings. Our forefathers also made some glaring grammar mistakes in the Constitution.
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•George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth
•Most of us have heard at one time or another that George Washington had teeth made of wood but this isn’t true. Although he did rely on dentures due to losing his teeth early in life, forensic research has proved that his teeth were made from a combination of donkey, horse, and human teeth one of the facts of President George Washington.
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•A crowd cheers for aviatrix Amelia Earhart as she boards her single-engine Lockheed Vega airplane in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, for the trip back to London on . Earhart became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean when she finished her 2,026 mile journey on May 21, 1932 in under 15 hours after departing from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. Earhart vanished mysteriously over the Pacific during her attempted round-the-world flight in 1937 Amelia Earhart Solo Flight, Londonderry, United Kingdom »
•Amelia Earhart was more accomplished than you realize
•Amelia Earhart has seized the hearts and imagination of the country for decades. It seems every year a new conspiracy theory emerges about her disappearance. Unfortunately, all this mystery and intrigue tend to overshadow her achievement. Although it’s well-known that she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, many people lose sight of the fact that she was the second person, male or female, to fly solo across the Atlantic, period, behind Charles Lindbergh.
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•In this photo provided by the Library of Congress, Harriet Tubman in seen in a photograph dating from 1860-75. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. are sponsoring legislation to bring a statue of Harriet Tubman to the U.S. Capitol Building Tubman Statue US Capitol - 19 Apr 2006
•Harriet Tubman was a war hero
•Harriet Tubman escaped slavery but that wasn’t enough to satisfy her, not when so many other people were still enslaved. She became a conductor for the Underground Railroad, putting her life on the line to lead hundreds of human beings to their freedom.
•What many people don’t know is that Tubman also fought and led soldiers in the Civil War. In fact, she was the first woman to lead an armed excursion in the war, and successfully liberated 700 slaves in the Combahee River Raid.
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•North American Bison ‘cherokee’ With Her Three-week-old Calf ‘apache’ At London Zoo. North American Bison ‘cherokee’ With Her Three-week-old Calf ‘apache’ At London Zoo
•Bison are huge
•The largest mammal in all of North America is the bison: The males are up to 6 feet tall and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. If you want to see bison in the wid, there are nearly 5,000 of them in Yellowstone National Park, which is the only place to serve as a continuous home to the bison since prehistoric times.
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•The Wright brothers at the International Aviation Tournament Belmont Park Long Island N.Y. Oct. 1910. Historical Collection »
•The Wright Brothers never went to college
•Wilbur and Orville Wright, better known as the Wright Brothers, famously invented the airplane, which might lead you to believe they were a highly educated pair, but in actuality, neither of them graduated college. The invention brought the brothers fame and fortune, so, fortunately, they didn’t live to become one of these inventors who regretted their inventions.
•
•Taking African Slaves On Board A Slave Ship circa 1830 Historical
•The story of the Clotilda
•The Clotilda, believed to be the last known slave ship to arrive in the United States, was smuggled into the country in 1860 when slavery was still legal but importing new slaves was outlawed, on the eve of the Civil War. The captain oversaw the transfer of his unwilling passengers to a second boat before burning and sinking the Clotilda. In 2019, the wreckage of the Clotilda was discovered in Alabama.
•
•Bells Mill Road Bridge Philadelphia built 1820
•You’ve got to see this bridge
•The oldest bridge in the United States is the Frankford Avenue Bridge in Philadelphia. The 73-foot stone bridge was erected in 1697, which makes it older than America itself. It was reconstructed in 1893 and is still in use today. The Frankford Avenue Bridge is one of 14 of America’s fascinating, lesser known-bridges.
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•Washington Dc Usa - the White House. Souvenir Pack Miniature Collectors Photographic Cards Washington Dc, Usa - the White House
•George Washington never lived in the White House
•Although George Washington chose the site of the White House in 1791, he never got to live in it. John and Abigail Adams were the first president and first lady to move into the White House, and it was still under construction at the time. Since then, every subsequent president has resided in the White House while in office.
•
•Close-up on Benjamin Franklin
•They didn’t tell you the truth about Ben Franklin
•You’ve probably heard that Benjamin Franklin wanted the sturdy turkey to be our national bird instead of the majestic bald eagle. It’s an interesting story, but it’s not true. Franklin wrote his daughter a letter, stating that he thought the Great Seal looked more like a turkey than a bald eagle and from there, went on to philosophize about the attributes of both birds. This letter became the source for the turkey instead of the eagle myth.
•
•A crispy sticky double stacked smore cooked over an open fire at a summer bbq
•S’mores are an American food
•S’mores are camping classic and they were invented right here in the USA. They are said to have been invented by Loretta Scott Crew and in 1927, the recipe was published for the first time in Girl Scouts book. If you like s’ mores and camping.
•
•The Presidents of the United States, designed by C.H.H. Billings, Engraving by D. Kimberly, 1842 VARIOUS
•Presidents and Virginia are a thing
•The United States is a mighty big country, yet for some reason, one state has produced an inordinate amount of presidents. Eight U.S. presidents were born in Virginia. (As it’s one of the 13 original colonies, Virginia has an edge over younger states.) Next in line is Ohio, with seven presidents born there, and New York with five
•
•Old books in the Library of Vienna
•This library is old
•The Darby Free Library in Pennsylvania is the oldest continuously operating library in the country. Originally opened by Quakers in 1743 it has been serving community members who enjoy the free things they can do with their library card for more than 275 years. These are the most impressive libraries in every state.
•
•Banquet Scene in Mammoth Cave in Mammoth Cave National Park Kentucky Usa. the Underground Dining Room Was Able to Seat 500 People. . Unattributed Postcard Banquet in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, Usa, 1915
•Talk about a big cave
•Situated in the Green River Valley, Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky is home to the largest known natural cave system on the planet, with over 400 miles of cave explored. After you visit the cave system,
•
•Barbie and Ken dolls from Mattel are displayed at the American International Toy Fair, in New York Toy Fair Mattel, New York, USA
•The real-life Barbie and Ken were siblings
•The diminutive Barbie is arguably the most famous doll in America, which makes sense since it came from California, where Ruth Handler invented the doll in 1959 and named it after her daughter, Barbara. It might not surprise you to learn that Handler also had a son named Ken. This is what Barbie looked like the decade you were born.
•
•Colorful fireworks in the night sky
•We’ve been setting off fireworks on July 4th for hundreds of years
•The traditional Fourth of July celebration started in 1777, one year after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Large celebrations took place in Pennsylvania and Boston and included fireworks. When fireworks became available to the public in 1783, the tradition spread even further. These cities have some of the most spectacular Fourth of July fireworks shows.
•
•This photo was taken moments before U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt began his historic fireside chat to the American people on . He spoke to the nation on radio from the White House in Washington, D.C. Roosevelt explained in simple language the measures he is taking to solidify the nation’s shaky banking system. The speech had a resounding success: millions of Americans began making bank deposits once again FDR FIRESIDE CHAT
•FDR served a long time
•Franklin D. Roosevelt served as president longer than anyone else: He served four terms and from 1933 to 1945. During that time he started the Social Security program, levied heavier taxes on the rich, and implemented the New Deal programs. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1951, now limits presidents to serving two full terms.
•
•Denali (also known as Mount McKinley, its former official name) is the highest mountain in North America at 20,310ft. Located in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, USA
•Denali is one tall mountain
•The highest mountain peak in the United States is Denali, formerly called Mt McKinley. It stands at more than 20,310 feet tall If you want to see Denali in person, it’s the site of a National Park with over six million acres of land to explore. Check out these other National Parks which are off the beaten path.
•
•Christopher Columbus Italian Navigator 1446-1506 Historical Collection
•Columbus never set foot on mainland North America
•Most people think Columbus landed in North America, but what you probably never learned about Columbus is that the explorer never set foot on the mainland. The only New World sites visited by Columbus were the Carribean Islands and parts of Central America and South America.
•
•The James-younger Gang (l-r): Cole Younger Jesse James Bob Younger Frank James circa 1870 Historical Collection
•Frank and Jesse James were in it for themselves
•There are perhaps no criminals in American history more notorious than Frank and Jesse James. Popular folklore paints them as Robin Hood-like bandits who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but there is no evidence this is true. The truth is the James Brothers committed their robberies for personal gain, and worse yet, sometimes murdered people in the process. These are the most notorious criminals in every state.
•
•Daily Mail - 04 May 1896 Old newspapers »
•Long live the newspaper
•The oldest continuously-run newspaper in the United States is The Hartford Courant, known originally as The Connecticut Courant. The paper has been published since 1764 and the first issue was only four pages long. The newspaper recently digitized its archives, allowing historians to study issues from 250 years ago. This is the real reason old newspapers turn yellow.
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•Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada: Aerial view of tourists visiting the Niagara River, Niagara Gorge, Horseshoe Falls, and Table Rock. »
•Niagra Falls was the first state park in the United States
•Niagra Falls is one of the most iconic waterfalls in the world. In 1885, Niagra Falls State Park became the first state park established in the country. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park in New York City.
•
•Miners washing for gold using a cradle in the: Californian gold fields. Wood engraving published Paris, 1849, the year of the Californian Gold Rush VARIOUS
•Seattle owes a great deal to the Gold Rush
•Seattle is known for an economy that largely revolves around the tech industry, but there was a time it owed its prosperity to the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle, it seemed, was ideally situated for prospectors to obtain their provisions before heading up to Alaska, leading to a booming economy that allowed the city to grow. If you plan to visit Seattle, you’ll be relieved to learn that SeaTac airport is one of the most reliable in the country.
•
•Lincoln cabinet officers: William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. VARIOUS
•That’s a lot of money
•The largest currency denomination circulated is the $10,000 bill. Unlike most other bills, it didn’t picture a president, but rather treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase, who went on to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court starting in 1864. If you haven’t seen a $10,000 bill floating around, there’s a reason for that. The government stopped producing them in 1969.
•
•Alexander Hamilton, by John Trumbull, 1804-06, American painting, oil on canvas. This painting is one of a series of Hamilton portraits Trumbull painted from 1804 to 1808, from Joseph Ceracchis marble sculpture of 1794.
•Alexander Hamilton established our first bank
•Alexander Hamilton established the first federal bank in Philadelphia in 1971, aptly named First Bank. Although the building is now a park service office, the history behind it and the gorgeous, columned exterior still make it a major tourist attraction.
•
•Hollywood, Los Angeles: c. 1924 A sign advertises the opening of the Hollywoodland housing development in the hills on Mulholland Drive overlooking Los Angeles. The white building below the sign is the Kanst Art Gallery, which opened on April 1, 1924 VARIOUS »
•Hollywood has been making movies for more than 100 years
•There’s a reason Hollywood is synonymous with the movies; Hollywood has been making films for over 100 years. The first movie made in Hollywood was The Count of Monte Cristo in 1908, although the movie was also partly filmed in Chicago. The first movie made entirely in Hollywood was a 1910 short film called, In Old California. If you’re a fan of the movies, you should plan your next vacation in one of these hotels where your favorite movies and TV shows were filmed.
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•Suffragettes picketing the Senate Office Building in Washington in 1918. Left to right: Mildred Gilbert, Pauline Floyd, Vivian Pierce. They display a banner, How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty? Historical Collection.
•Women had to fight for basic rights
•The 19th amendment to the constitution, which finally gave women the right to vote, was passed by Congress in 1919 and ratified in 1920. It was a moment that changed women’s history forever. Not only did women finally have the right to vote, but the amendment also gave them the right to own property.
•
•Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913-2005), American Civil Rights activist. Booking photo taken at the time of her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger on 1 December 1955. History.
•Rosa Parks knew exactly what she was doing
•Many people like to portray Rosa Parks as an ordinary woman who was simply too tired to give up her seat on the bus to a white person in Alabama. But this narrative sells her short. The truth is Rosa Parks in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus, she was already a leader in Civil Rights Movement who went on to help organize and plan the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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•US 100 Obverse Art, Front Lit, Black Background, Magnified, Federal Reserve Note.
•You owe your bifocals to Ben Franklin
•Ben Franklin was famously one of the Founding Fathers of our country, but he was also a revered inventor and scientist. His inventions included bifocals, the Franklin stove, the urinary catheter, and swimming fins. He is also one of the people who signed the U.S. Constitution.
•
•Corn Field With Cloudy Sky
•We grow a lot of corn
•Corn is the most widely grown produce in the United States. In fact, in 2019, U.S. farmers produced a mind-blowing 91.7 acres of corn. That’s enough to fill 69 million football fields. If corn could talk, this is what it would tell you.
•
•The Pilgrim Fathers boarding the ‘Mayflower’ for their voyage to America. After painting by Bernard Gribble. VARIOUS
•There are millions of descendants of the Mayflower
•In American folklore, perhaps no group of immigrants looms larger than the passengers of the Mayflower. In fact, the Mayflower pilgrims are so ingrained in our culture it’s easy to forget that they were real people. Today we have living proof of this, as there are an estimated 10 million Americans and 35 million worldwide descendants of the Mayflower. Amongst the most famous are John Adams, Julia Child, Humphrey Bogart, and Norman Rockwell.
•Chapter 39 : skin color
•There’s no difference just influence ,we’re a family,there’s good people and the bad ones it’s obvious, that’s all , so we don’t have to disguss this subject.
Note: this point is about all the world live as one and we all share traditions, respect each other, share energie, ideas , stories, learn to live together, the main purpose of our existence.
•CHAPTER 40 : HISTORICAL FACTS YOU’LL WISH WEREN’T REALLY TRUE
•History is stranger than fiction... and often grosser and creepier too.
•
•King Tut’s parents were most likely siblings
•Once you’ve finished shuddering with disgust, here’s what researchers know about the boy king and his family. His father was almost definitely Akhenaten, who preceded Tut as pharaoh in the fourteenth century BC. The identity of his mother is pretty much unknown, but recent DNA samples from his and other mummies have revealed that she was probably one of Akhenaten’s sisters. King Tut was rather frail and suffered from a bone disorder, perhaps due to his parentage. Incestuous relationships, though, weren’t out of the ordinary in ancient Egypt, a fact which is not exactly reassuring. Despite Tut’s health issues, and his short life even by the standards back then (he died at 19), he’s gone down in history as one of Egypt’s most famous and wealthiest pharaohs.
•
•ABRAHAM LINCOLN BEING ASSASSINATED BY JOHN WILKES BOOTH
•Someone tried and failed to save Abraham Lincoln—and his life just got darker from there
•You’re probably familiar with the 1860s illustration The Assassination of President Lincoln. But who’s that pair sharing the private box with the ill-fated president and his wife? The man on the far left, rushing into action, is Major Henry Rathbone. President and Mrs. Lincoln specifically asked him and his fiancée, Clara Harris, to accompany them to the theater. After Booth fired the shot, Rathbone tried to tackle him to the ground, but Booth was able to get free by slicing Rathbone in the arm with a dagger. Rathbone was never free of the memory and guilt of that night, and he reportedly felt responsible for letting Booth get away. In the years to come, he experienced a myriad of health issues, from stomach ailments to heart palpitations, and his mental state deteriorated as well. On December 23, 1883 (18 years after the assassination), he attacked and killed Clara, now his wife, and attempted to kill himself. He would spend the rest of his life in a mental institution.
•
•Man suffering from tertiary Syphilis. From Jules Rengade Le Grands Maux et les Grands Remedes, Paris, c1890
•In 1494, Europe experienced the
•closest thing to a real-life zombie outbreak
•Italy’s Renaissance period has a major, though little-known, dark side. Sailors returning from the New World brought with them a massive outbreak of syphilis, which spread through an entire French army. The troops then brought what would become known as “the great pox” to the rest of Europe. With no such thing as antibiotics back then, the disease was able to spread unchecked—and its effects were nasty. The skin on victims’ faces would essentially rot away from the disease’s grisly ulcers. In some cases, the noses, lips, or other body parts of the affected people were essentially gone, and several of the victims eventually died from the disease. So while there was a lot to love about the Renaissance in Europe, the concurrent syphilis outbreak was basically the real-world version of the zombie apocalypse. No big deal. These are the famous moments in history that never actually happened.
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•dirty shovel on a wooden surface
•19th-century New Englanders dug up a young woman’s body… because they thought she was a vampire
•You’ve undoubtedly heard of the Salem Witch Trials, but what about the “Rhode Island Accused Vampire”? In the late 1800s, a bout of tuberculosis (then called “consumption”) struck Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and the residents didn’t know what to make of it. Since its victims tended to look sunken, pallid, and drained, people assumed that they’d fallen prey to vampires. So, naturally, a “vampire hunt” soon commenced. When members of an Exeter, Rhode Island family began dying of consumption one after the other, the other townspeople decided that someone in the family must be “feeding” on the others. Even after the mother, Mary Brown, and her two daughters had died, the townspeople decided to exhume the dead bodies, suspecting that one might, in fact, be “undead.”
•Brown’s 19-year-old daughter Mercy had died much more recently than her family members, so her body was in much better condition. Her heart even still contained some decayed blood—a sure sign of vampirism, in those days. So, to prevent her from “striking” again, they burned her heart and liver and mixed the ashes with water. They then gave the concoction to another affected townsperson as a “cure.” Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
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•Thomas Edison Inventor Thomas Edison’s talking doll is displayed at the American Enterprise exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on the National Mall, in Washington. A wide variety of materials have been pulled together in this exhibit, which opens July 1st, to tell the story of American business, capitalism and innovation from the mid-1700 to the present
•Thomas Edison created a seriously creepy baby doll
•For all of his successful inventions, Thomas Edison did experience a pretty major failure when he tried to create the first-ever talking dolls. His 1877 development of the tinfoil phonograph was a major breakthrough in terms of sound recording, and the endless possibilities for this technology were not lost on Edison. In 1890, thanks to the development of the wax cylinder, he was able to produce a line of baby dolls. With wooden bodies, porcelain heads, and miniature phonographs in their chests, the dolls were unlike anything the world of toys had ever seen—or heard—before. The phonographs played back recordings of young women reciting nursery rhymes like “Hickory Dickory Dock” and “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”
•And if ever there were dolls that deserved their own horror flick, it was these. The old, garbled technology, the shrill voices, and the dolls’ eerie faces combine to make them into nightmare fuel for us today. (Take a listen if you dare.) But that’s not actually the reason the dolls were unsuccessful. Their failure was due more to several different things; the pieces were easy to lose, the sound didn’t last long and was hard to understand, and the mini phonographs were highly breakable. And, finally, the dolls were simply expensive.
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•An old womans dentures found on a dresser in an old abandoned house
•Dentures used to be made from the teeth of dead soldiers
•Why have false teeth when you can have real teeth?! That must have been the mentality of nineteenth-century dentists. They combated the outbreak of tooth decay with makeshift dentures—ivory base plates with real human teeth attached. Scavengers were already looting corpses from the Battle of Waterloo for their teeth, and now they could sell the teeth to dentists. The dentists would boil the choppers, cut off the roots, attach them to ivory plates, and sell them to customers. Mental Floss doubts that the customers had any idea where the teeth came from. Whether that makes it more or less creepy is up to you to decide
•
•Cat and phone
•Researchers once turned a cat into a telephone. A live cat.
•We know what you’re thinking: “You’ve got to be kitten me!” Well, unfortunately not. In 1929, a pair of scientists at Princeton University wanted to test how the auditory nerve perceives sound. Their test subject was a heavily sedated, but alive, cat. The scientists, Ernest Wever and Charles Bray, cut out part of its brain and attached one end of a telephone wire to its auditory nerve and the other end to a receiver. When Bray said something into the cat’s ears, Wever could hear him through the receiver in a soundproof room. Though it might just seem like a sick experiment, it actually did have some beneficial effects; many researchers believe it helped lead to the development of cochlear implants. As for the feline-turned-phone, it incredibly survived the experiment… but Wever and Bray didn’t release it back into the world. Instead, they killed it to see if the experiment would work on a dead cat. It didn’t. Learn about some more of the weirdest science experiments of all time.
•
•2017:Eastern China, Jiujiang was hit by heavy rain, and many urban areas were flooded. The vehicles were flooded, and the citizens risked their passage on flooded roads.
•Boston experienced a deadly molasses flood
•This makes the Boston Tea Party look tame. In January of 1919, an enormous molasses tank burst in the North End of Boston. While a molasses flood might sound like a scene from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, it was no laughing matter. The tank contained—and released—nearly two and a half million gallons of the sticky substance, which surged through the streets at a whopping 35 miles per hour. It was essentially a full-on tidal wave, reaching nearly fifteen feet tall and killing twenty-one people. A hundred and fifty more people were injured, and buildings and houses were knocked from their foundations. Emergency responders had trouble reaching the victims since they had to clamber through the sticky sludge. It took Bostonians weeks to clean up the mess, and many residents would claim that, in the summer heat, they could smell the sickly-sweet odor of molasses even years later. Don’t miss these tricky U.S. war history questions most people never get right.
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•old and obsolete computer on old wood table with concrete wall background, vintage color tone
•A computer once did in 40 seconds what took a mathematician an entire lifetime
•Say it isn’t so! While not gross or scandalous, this history fact is still something of a downer. William Shanks, a nineteenth-century mathematician, spent his entire life calculating the digits of pi. He successfully calculated the first 527 digits, and found another 180 digits, though those calculations were incorrect. But calculating the first 527 digits is still impressive… or, rather, it was in 1873. In 1958, a computer calculated that same number of digits in less than a minute…and then calculated another ten thousand. Perhaps it’s better poor Shanks wasn’t alive to see that. If it’s any consolation, though, humans did invent that computer. These are the most bizarre coincidences throughout history.
•
•Act Two - Ines in Love with Vasco Da Gama Delivers Him From Imprisonment by the Inquisition But Only by Consenting to Marry Don Pedro first performed 1865 »
•A king made his subjects worship the corpse of his beloved
•This case of star-crossed lovers got weird fast. In fourteenth-century Portugal, the king’s son, Don Pedro, fell in love with Inês de Castro. There were only a couple of problems with this: for one, his father, King Afonso IV, did not approve, because Inês was illegitimate. For another, Don Pedro was married. His father had arranged for him to marry a noblewoman named Constanza, and Inês was Constanza’s lady-in-waiting. When Don Pedro refused to stop seeing her, the king had her killed. When Don Pedro acceded to the throne two years later, he exhumed her body, had it clothed in royal dress, and “crowned” her queen. According to historical legend, he made the other nobles all kiss her hand as a sign of their devotion. These are the history questions everyone gets wrong.
CHAPTER 41 : STRESS
CAN STRESS CAUSE CANCER?
Stress is part of your body’s normal reaction to a perceived threat. And it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can drive you to accomplishing things and help you avoid potentially dangerous situations.
But too much stress can have a big impact on your physical and emotional health, leading some experts to take a look at the possible role of stress in the development of cancer.
So, CAN stress cause cancer? The answer isn’t clear yet. Read on to learn about the common theories about the link between cancer and stress, the existing evidence, and how stress might affect existing cancer.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF STRESS
Before diving into the relationship between stress and cancer, it’s important to understand what stress involves and the different forms in can take.
When your brain recognizes something as a possible threat or danger, a combination of nerve and hormone signals are sent to your adrenal glands. In turn, these glands produce hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, that kickstart the stress response.
ACUTE STRESS
Acute stress is what most people imagine when they talk about stress. It’s typically short-lived and triggered by specific situations.
These might include:
•needing to slam on your brakes to avoid hitting a car that’s pulled in front of you
•having an argument with a family member or friend
•being in traffic that’s causing you to be late to work
•feeling pressure to meet an important deadline
Acute stress can cause several physical symptoms, including:
•rapid heart rate
•increased blood pressure
•quick breathing
•muscle tension
•increased sweating
These effects are usually temporary and resolve once the stressful situation is over.
CHRONIC STRESS
Chronic stress happens when your stress response is activated for prolonged periods of time. It can wear you down both physically and emotionally.
Examples of things that can lead to chronic stress include:
•living in a dysfunctional or abusive home situation
•working a job that you hate
•having frequent financial trouble
•living with a chronic illness or caring for a loved one who does
Compared to acute stress, chronic stress can have long-term effects on your physical and emotional health.
Over time, chronic stress can contribute to:
•heart disease
•digestive issues
•anxiety and depression
•weight gain
•problems sleeping
•difficulties concentrating or remembering things
•fertility problems
•weakened immune system
POPULAR THEORIES ABOUT STRESS AND CANCER
There are a lot of theories about how stress could possibly contribute to a person’s risk of developing cancer.
Here’s a look at some of the big ones:
•Continuous activation of the stress response and exposure to the associated hormones could promote the growth and spread of tumors.
•The immune system can be important for finding and eliminating cancer cells. But chronic stress can make it harder for your immune system to carry out these tasks.
•Prolonged stress could lead to a state of inflammation that may contribute to cancer risk.
•Stress can prompt people to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as smoking, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, or overeating. All of these can increase your risk of developing cancer.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
The relationship between stress and cancer is the source of many ongoing studies. Here’s a snapshot view of some relevant findings.
One 2013 reviewTrusted Source of 12 studies assessed work stress and how it relates to cancer risk. They found that work stress wasn’t associated with overall cancer risk. Further, work stress wasn’t linked with the development of specific cancers, such as those of the prostate, lung, and breast.
However, a more recent 2017 studyTrusted Source investigated the past levels and duration of job stress experienced by more 2,000 men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer. It found that perceived workplace stress was associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer.
A large 2016 studyTrusted Source of 106,000 women in the United Kingdom looked at whether frequent stress or negative life events affected their risk of breast cancer. In the end, the study didn’t find consistent evidence to suggest that frequent stress factors into someone’s breast cancer risk.
Overall, there still isn’t enough conclusive evidence to definitely say whether stress causes cancer or even increases someone’s risk.
INDIRECT VS. DIRECT CAUSES
Even in cases where there does appear to be a link between stress and cancer, it’s still unclear whether stress contributes directly or indirectly.
For example:
•Someone under chronic stress takes up smoking as a means of relief. Is it the stress or the smoking that increases their risk of cancer? Or is it both?
•Someone experiences chronic stress for several years while caring for a family member with cancer. Down the line, they develop cancer themselves. Was stress a factor? Or was it genetics?
As experts begin to better understand both cancer and stress individually, we’ll likely learn more about how the two relate to each other, if at all.
THE EFFECTS OF STRESS ON EXISTING CANCER
While it’s unclear whether stress causes cancer, there is some evidence that stress can have an effect on existing cancer by speeding up tumor growth and metastasis. Metastasis occurs when cancer spreads from its initial location.
A 2016 studyTrusted Source in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer exposed mice to chronic stress. The investigators found that after five weeks, the stressed mice had larger tumors and a reduced survival rate. Their immune systems were also significantly weakened.
A 2019 studyTrusted Source examined human breast tumor cells implanted in mice. Researchers found an increase in the activity of receptors for stress hormones in sites were metastasis occurred. This suggests that the activation of these receptors by stress hormones could play a role in metastasis.
TIPS FOR REDUCING STRESS
Regardless of whether stress causes cancer, there’s no doubt that stress affects your overall health.
Protect your physical and emotional well-being with these tips:
•Set priorities and boundaries. Determine what needs to be done now and what can wait a little bit. Learn to turn down new tasks that may overextend or overwhelm you.
•Take time to cultivate your relationships with loved ones.
•Burn off steam keep your heart healthy with regular exercise.
•Try out relaxation techniques such as yoga, deep breathing, or meditation.
•Make sleep a priority. Aim for seven to eight hours per night.
If these tips aren’t cutting it, remember that most of us can use a little help from time to time. Don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health professional if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Stress is a natural response that your body has to perceived threats. Stress can be acute or chronic. Having chronic stress can put you at risk for a variety of health conditions, such as heart disease and depression.
Whether or not chronic stress puts you at risk of developing or causes cancer is unclear. Some studies indicate that it does and others that it doesn’t. Stress may be just one of many factors contributing to the development of cancer.
SIMPLE WAYS TO RELIEVE STRESS AND ANXIETY
Stress and anxiety are common experiences for most people. In fact, 70% of adults in the United States say they feel stress or anxiety daily.
Here are simple ways to relieve stress and anxiety.
1. EXERCISE
Exercise is one of the most important things you can do to combat stress.
It might seem contradictory, but putting physical stress on your body through exercise can relieve mental stress.
The benefits are strongest when you exercise regularly. People who exercise regularly are less likely to experience anxiety than those who don’t exercise (1).
There are a few reasons behind this:
•Stress hormones: Exercise lowers your body’s stress hormones — such as cortisol — in the long run. It also helps release endorphins, which are chemicals that improve your mood and act as natural painkillers.
•Sleep: Exercise can also improve your sleep quality, which can be negatively affected by stress and anxiety.
•Confidence: When you exercise regularly, you may feel more competent and confident in your body, which in turn promotes mental wellbeing.
•Try to find an exercise routine or activity you enjoy, such as walking, dancing, rock climbing or yoga.
Activities — such as walking or jogging — that involve repetitive movements of large muscle groups can be particularly stress relieving.
SUMMARY
Regular exercise can help lower stress and anxiety by releasing endorphins and improving your sleep and self-image.
2. CONSIDER SUPPLEMENTS
Several supplements promote stress and anxiety reduction. Here is a brief overview of some of the most common ones:
•Lemon balm: Lemon balm is a member of the mint family that has been studied for its anti-anxiety effects.
•Omega-3 fatty acids: One study showed that medical students who received omega-3 supplements experienced a 20% reduction in anxiety symptoms.
•Ashwagandha: Ashwagandha is an herb used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat stress and anxiety. Several studies suggest that it’s effective .
•Green tea: Green tea contains many polyphenol antioxidants which provide health benefits. It may lower stress and anxiety by increasing serotonin levels.
•Valerian: Valerian root is a popular sleep aid due to its tranquilizing effect. It contains valerenic acid, which alters gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors to lower anxiety.
•Kava kava: Kava kava is a psychoactive member of the pepper family. Long used as a sedative in the South Pacific, it is increasingly used in Europe and the US to treat mild stress and anxiety (6Trusted Source).
Some supplements can interact with medications or have side effects, so you may want to consult with a doctor if you have a medical condition.
Shop for ashwagandha, omega-3 supplements, green tea, and lemon balm online.
SUMMARY
Certain supplements can reduce stress and anxiety, including ashwagandha, omega-3 fatty acids, green tea and lemon balm.
3. LIGHT A CANDLE
Using essential oils or burning a scented candle may help reduce your feelings of stress and anxiety.
Some scents are especially soothing. Here are some of the most calming scents:
•Lavender
•Rose
•Vetiver
•Bergamot
•Roman chamomile
•Neroli
•Frankincense
•Sandalwood
•Ylang ylang
•Orange or orange blossom
•Geranium
Using scents to treat your mood is called aromatherapy. Several studies show that aromatherapy can decrease anxiety and improve sleep.
SUMMARY
Aromatherapy can help lower anxiety and stress. Light a candle or use essential oils to benefit from calming scents.
4. REDUCE YOUR CAFFEINE INTAKE
Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, chocolate and energy drinks. High doses can increase anxiety .
People have different thresholds for how much caffeine they can tolerate.
If you notice that caffeine makes you jittery or anxious, consider cutting back.
Although many studies show that coffee can be healthy in moderation, it’s not for everyone. In general, five or fewer cups per day is considered a moderate amount.
SUMMARY
High quantities of caffeine can increase stress and anxiety. However, people’s sensitivity to caffeine can vary greatly.
5. WRITE IT DOWN
One way to handle stress is to write things down.
While recording what you’re stressed about is one approach, another is jotting down what you’re grateful for.
Gratitude may help relieve stress and anxiety by focusing your thoughts on what’s positive in your life.
SUMMARY
Keeping a journal can help relieve stress and anxiety, especially if you focus on the positive.
6. CHEW GUM
For a super easy and quick stress reliever, try chewing a stick of gum.
One study showed that people who chewed gum had a greater sense of wellbeing and lower stress .
One possible explanation is that chewing gum causes brain waves similar to those of relaxed people. Another is that chewing gum promotes blood flow to your brain.
Additionally, one recent study found that stress relief was greatest when people chewed more strongly.
SUMMARY
According to several studies, chewing gum may help you relax. It may also promote wellbeing and reduce stress.
7. SPEND TIME WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Social support from friends and family can help you get through stressful times.
Being part of a friend network gives you a sense of belonging and self-worth, which can help you in tough times.
One study found that for women in particular, spending time with friends and children helps release oxytocin, a natural stress reliever. This effect is called “tend and befriend,” and is the opposite of the fight-or-flight response.
Keep in mind that both men and women benefit from friendship.
Another study found that men and women with the fewest social connections were more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety .
SUMMARY
Having strong social ties may help you get through stressful times and lower your risk of anxiety.
8. LAUGH
It’s hard to feel anxious when you’re laughing. It’s good for your health, and there are a few ways it may help relieve stress:
•Relieving your stress response.
•Relieving tension by relaxing your muscles.
In the long term, laughter can also help improve your immune system and mood.
A study among people with cancer found that people in the laughter intervention group experienced more stress relief than those who were simply distracted.
Try watching a funny TV show or hanging out with friends who make you laugh.
SUMMARY
Find the humor in everyday life, spend time with funny friends or watch a comedy show to help relieve stress.
9. LEARN TO SAY NO
Not all stressors are within your control, but some are.
Take control over the parts of your life that you can change and are causing you stress.
One way to do this may be to say “no” more often.
This is especially true if you find yourself taking on more than you can handle, as juggling many responsibilities can leave you feeling overwhelmed.
Being selective about what you take on — and saying no to things that will unnecessarily add to your load — can reduce your stress levels.
SUMMARY
Try not to take on more than you can handle. Saying no is one way to control your stressors.
10. LEARN TO AVOID PROCRASTINATION
Another way to take control of your stress is to stay on top of your priorities and stop procrastinating.
Procrastination can lead you to act reactively, leaving you scrambling to catch up. This can cause stress, which negatively affects your health and sleep quality.
Get in the habit of making a to-do list organized by priority. Give yourself realistic deadlines and work your way down the list.
Work on the things that need to get done today and give yourself chunks of uninterrupted time, as switching between tasks or multitasking can be stressful itself.
SUMMARY
Prioritize what needs to get done and make time for it. Staying on top of your to-do list can help ward off procrastination-related stress.
11. TAKE A YOGA CLASS
Yoga has become a popular method of stress relief and exercise among all age groups.
While yoga styles differ, most share a common goal — to join your body and mind.
Yoga primarily does this by increasing body and breath awareness.
Some studies have examined yoga’s effect on mental health. Overall, research has found that yoga can enhance mood and may even be as effective as antidepressant drugs at treating depression and anxiety.
However, many of these studies are limited, and there are still questions about how yoga works to achieve stress reduction.
In general, the benefit of yoga for stress and anxiety seems to be related to its effect on your nervous system and stress response.
It may help lower cortisol levels, blood pressure and heart rate and increase gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter that is lowered in mood disorders.
SUMMARY
Yoga is widely used for stress reduction. It may help lower stress hormone levels and blood pressure.
12. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness describes practices that anchor you to the present moment.
It can help combat the anxiety-inducing effects of negative thinking.
There are several methods for increasing mindfulness, including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, yoga and meditation.
A recent study in college students suggested that mindfulness may help increase self-esteem, which in turn lessens symptoms of anxiety and depression.
SUMMARY
Mindfulness practices can help lower symptoms of anxiety and depression.
13. CUDDLE
Cuddling, kissing, hugging and sex can all help relieve stress.
Positive physical contact can help release oxytocin and lower cortisol. This can help lower blood pressure and heart rate, both of which are physical symptoms of stress.
Interestingly, humans aren’t the only animals who cuddle for stress relief. Chimpanzees also cuddle friends who are stressed.
SUMMARY
Positive touch from cuddling, hugging, kissing and sex may help lower stress by releasing oxytocin and lowering blood pressure.
14. LISTEN TO SOOTHING MUSIC
Listening to music can have a very relaxing effect on the body.
Slow-paced instrumental music can induce the relaxation response by helping lower blood pressure and heart rate as well as stress hormones.
Some types of classical, Celtic, Native American and Indian music can be particularly soothing, but simply listening to the music you enjoy is effective too.
Nature sounds can also be very calming. This is why they’re often incorporated into relaxation and meditation music.
SUMMARY
Listening to music you like can be a good way to relieve stress.
15. DEEP BREATHING
Mental stress activates your sympathetic nervous system, signaling your body to go into “fight-or-flight” mode.
During this reaction, stress hormones are released and you experience physical symptoms such as a faster heartbeat, quicker breathing and constricted blood vessels.
Deep breathing exercises can help activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the relaxation response.
There are several types of deep breathing exercises, including diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, belly breathing and paced respiration.
The goal of deep breathing is to focus your awareness on your breath, making it slower and deeper. When you breathe in deeply through your nose, your lungs fully expand and your belly rises.
This helps slow your heart rate, allowing you to feel more peaceful.
SUMMARY
Deep breathing activates the relaxation response. Multiple methods can help you learn how to breathe deeply.
16. SPEND TIME WITH YOUR PET
Having a pet may help reduce stress and improve your mood.
Interacting with pets may help release oxytocin, a brain chemical that promotes a positive mood.
Having a pet may also help relieve stress by giving you purpose, keeping you active and providing companionship — all qualities that help reduce anxiety.
SUMMARY
Spending time with your pet is a relaxing, enjoyable way to reduce stress.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Although stress and anxiety may arise in your workplace and personal life, there are many simple ways to reduce the pressure you feel.
These tips often involve getting your mind away from the source of stress.
Exercise, mindfulness, music and physical intimacy can all work to relieve anxiety — and they will improve your overall work-life balance as well.
CHAPTER 42 : JEDGMENTS AND GENERALIZING
HOW WE JUDGE EACH OTHER: SOMETIMES IT’S BAD TO BE FRIENDLY AND COMPETENT
I used to worry that people were always judging me. I only stopped worrying when I realized that it was inevitable. We’re constantly taking in information about our social world, and this can involve judging people. These judgments can be super quick and automatic. Some research has even shown that we can form pretty accurate impressions of people in just a few seconds.
What kinds of judgments do we make, though? You might think that there a trillion ways to judge a person (but only 50 ways to leave your lover). For a while, though, psychologists have been pretty convinced that these judgments boil down to just a few key ones. New research has gone a step further. These studies tested whether our overall positive and negative impressions of people depend on the specific COMBINATION of these key judgments.
THE 3 KEY JUDGMENTS
For a long while, the consensus seemed to be that we make two key judgments of people: how warm they are and how competent they are. More recently, though, psychologists have expanded this. New evidence suggests that the “warmth” judgments we make are really two different judgments–MORALITY and SOCIABILITY.
Morality: when we judge someone’s MORALITY, we judge them based on how well they treat other people. Specifically, though, this judgment is about whether they treat others in “correct” and “principled” ways. Honesty, trustworthiness, and sincerity, for example, are morality judgments.
Sociability: when we judge someone’s SOCIABILITY, we judge them based on how much they treat other people in ways to promote affectionate RELATIONSHIPS. Examples of this type of judgment would be how friendly, likable, and kind, the person seems.
Competence: when we judge someone’s COMPENTENCE, we judge them based on how CAPABLE we think the person is at accomplishing his or her goals. Whenever you judge someone’s intelligence, skillfulness, and confidence, you’re making a competence judgment.
MORALITY MATTERS MOST IN JUDGING PEOPLE
Even though we form impressions of people based on all three of these key judgments, research shows that the MORALITY judgment is the most important. One study simply asked people what the most important pieces of information would be for them to form an impression of a stranger. Given the options, people were much more interested in learning about a person’s moral character than other traits.
It’s not just that people want to KNOW about a person’s moral character. When we do learn about a person’s honesty and trustworthiness, it factors into our opinions of them more than other information. Several studies have shown this to be the case.
WHAT ABOUT SOCIABILITY AND COMPETENCE?
So a big part of how we judge other people is on their moral character, and it turns out that THIS affects how we view people’s sociability and competence. New research shows that whether we think sociability or competence are POSITIVE qualities depends on whether we think the person is moral or not.
Whether a person is sociable or competent tells us about how well they can reach their goals. Whether a person is moral or not tells us what those goals ARE. So if a person has good (moral) goals, then we like her if she’s sociable and competent because we think she can achieve those goals. But if a person has bad (immoral) goals, then we DISLIKE her if she’s sociable and competent. In this case, those traits tip us off to this person being able to accomplish those immoral goals.
For example, in one study, people saw competence as a desirable quality for their FRIENDS, but they saw it as an undesirable quality for their ENEMIES.
In a new set of studies, though, Justin Landy and his colleagues tested this idea even more carefully. In one of their studies, they asked people to form impressions of a whole bunch of made-up characters. Each of these characters was simply defined by two adjectives. One adjective described the person’s moral character (e.g., “honest” or “immoral”). The other adjective described either the person’s sociability (e.g., “friendly” or “introverted”) or competence (e.g., “capable” or “unskillful”). Given this information, people then rated their overall positive or negative impressions.
Overall, people liked MORAL characters more than IMMORAL characters. That isn’t too surprising, especially given how much we care about a person’s moral character.
More interesting, though, is that people only had positive impressions of the sociable and competent characters IF those characters were also moral. People had negative impressions of sociable and competent characters when they were described as IMMORAL. In another study, it turned out that when they were immoral, competent and sociable characters were disliked just as much as incompetent and unsociable characters.[3]
And if it seems weird that all of this is based on people’s impressions of made-up characters with two-word descriptions, rest assured–another study found the same patterns when participants learned about another person by reading a more complete account of that person’s behavior.
WE’RE ALL SO JUDGY
The point of this all isn’t just a sciencey way of saying that people are really judgmental. That may be true[4], but the more important take-away for how we understand psychology is that our impressions of other people might come down to three simple judgments: their morality, sociability, and competence. Among these three, it seems that our judgments of people’s morality dominate our impressions. Above all else, we like trustworthy, ethical people more than their immoral counterparts.
But instead of just being the king of all judgments, a person’s moral character also colors how we think about their sociability and their competence. Normally we’d have positive impressions of a friendly, skillful person. If that person also seems immoral, though, their friendliness and capability make them a threat.
Just think about that guy at work. You know who I’m talking about. He gets along with people and is good at his job, but you just feel like you can’t trust him. That lack of trust could make his shmoozing and his capability all the more concerning. That’s the essence of this research. We form these distinct judgments, but how they come together to form an overall impression of someone is a little more complicated.
HOW WE JUDGE OTHERS IS HOW WE JUDGE OURSELVES
“Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.” ~Sri Chinmoy
Oh yeah, this has been a big one for me. HUGE.
I’ve had a long, tedious journey toward recognizing that many of my thoughts were based in judgments of others. I didn’t realize it for years.
I used to think I had strong opinions, was decisive, and able to “evaluate” others. I “got” people. I understood where they were coming from, their motivations, and why they said what they said and did what they did.
I was a highly skilled definer, and an even better dismisser. Once I’d figured you out, my opinions were set in stone. I didn’t leave much room for changing those opinions either. Once I’d decided, that was it. You were what you were, according to me.
With the benefit of time and hindsight, I’ve come to realize that since I was actively embracing a life of personal growth (or “working on my stuff,” as I like to call it), I somehow felt that gave me free rein to comment on what others were doing.
I’ve also realized this is a common behavior in those of us on the personal growth path.
When we are seeking change for ourselves, we sometimes feel we can comment on (or seek change for) the lives of others—about how they should behave, about what is acceptable for them, and so on.
I had some inexplicable sense of entitlement that validated my judgmental parts in behaving this way.
This criticizing behavior was, for the most part, restricted to my thoughts. Outwardly, I was generally a pretty nice gal—helpful, polite, and funny; and I had plenty of friends who liked spending time with me.
Internally though, my thoughts could be pretty acidic. The judgmental parts of me were constantly criticizing, sizing up, dismissing, and diminishing those around me.
I slowly started to become more knowledgeable about the internal criticizers as my awareness grew and my judgments diminished in response to some other issues I was tackling.
While that was a huge relief, I started to realize just how much mental space and energy I was giving those internal judges. I was shocked to recognize just how bossy and mean they could be.
I also began to wonder how much criticism these internal judges had of ME. And man, was I amazed when I started paying attention. I realized I had a pretty constant stream of internal dialogue that was just as critical of me as it was of the outside world.
That was a revelation!
This really clarified, in a new way, the idea that “the outer world is a reflection of the inner world.”
Generally, our judgment of others is an extension of self-judgment; and the self-judgment is so ingrained, so normal, we don’t even recognize it.
This was an intense experience of pulling back the curtain. It also signified the beginning of a great leap forward, in terms of transforming the critical internal dialogue, which, in turn (and in time), transformed and far diminished the judgment of others.
Here are some tools I used to transform the judgments that you may find helpful.
1. USE A PATTERN INTERRUPT.
When you catch yourself having a defining thought about someone, step back and ask, “What do I really know about this person?”
Often, the answer is a version of “not very much.” This behavior acts as a pattern interrupt, and forces you to stop and consider where the judgment is coming from.
2. SWITCH TO PRAISE.
When you hear yourself criticizing someone to others, stop and take a moment to come up with one thing you like about that person. Then praise them, out loud, for that quality.
This is another version of a pattern interrupt, and is also a reminder that they too are human, and like us all, have both attractive and not-so-attractive qualities.
3. LOOK WITHIN.
When you find yourself in one of those incessant loop thought patterns of judgment about someone else’s behaviors, ask the hard question: Do I myself exhibit this same behavior or attitude that I judge in this person?
Almost always, the answer is yes (not that one always comes to that yes easily). You probably already know that the stuff that irritates us the most about others tends to be attributes we don’t necessarily realize we ourselves have. This was the single most difficult tool I used. It was also probably the most effective.
I am pleased to report that I have massively reduced the judgmental behaviors, toward others and myself. I still consider that it’s an ongoing journey, which helps me in recognizing any rogue criticisms pretty quickly.
Most importantly, I have a completely different perspective on other people than I used to.
Keeping this in mind has been helpful; if you’re struggling with judgment of others, perhaps you will find it useful as well:
For us to judge another, we’d have to know everything about that person—their complete personality, their personal history, their belief systems, their culture, their religion, their family background, and all their past experiences, for starters.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we could possibly know all of this about another person.
At that point, since we would see that person in their totality—and we would see that all the decisions that person makes, and all the experiences they are creating, are THEIRS to make and create as they see fit, to support their lovely, complex, ever-changing growth process—there’d be nothing to judge.
.UNDERSTANDING GENERALIZATIONS AND STEREOTYPES
Max Weber wrote about the importance of verstehen, or understanding, for those investigating social reality. This means that we must understand what life is like for the individual or self before we can truly understand life at more macro levels of society such as groups, organizations, communities, and/or nation-states.
While we tend to teach this concept in relation to research methods, it can also be connected to many different aspects of social research.
How does the idea of a deep understanding of life in society connect to generalizations and stereotypes?
We make generalizations about objects in order to make sense of the world. When we see something, we want to know what it is and how to react to and interact with it. Thus seeing a flat horizontal surface held up by one or more legs, we would generalize that to be a table upon which we could put our stuff, eat a meal, or play a game.
How do we know how to come to these conclusions? By experiences we have had with these objects. These experiences gives us an understanding of what they are and how they are used. The more we have actually seen and used these objects, the more deeply we understand what they are and how they can be used.
We generalize about more than just objects; we generalize about people so that we know how to interact with them. If we see someone in a mail carrier’s clothing, we assume they work for the post office. If we see someone who looks over 80 years old, we assume they are not in the workforce anymore.
When do generalizations move into stereotypes? Stereotypes are overgeneralizations; they often involve assuming a person has certain characteristics based on unfounded assumptions..
We stereotype people based on how they look in terms of sexual orientation, gender, race, and ethnicity. We look at people and may assume they have a certain sexual orientation or that their gender is either man or woman. We may assume they are white, African , African American, Native American, Asian American, or Latino.
We may be right or we may be wrong.
We also stereotype people based on what we assume about particular categories of identity and what other characteristics are associated with those categories. Some people assume that people who look “homosexual” are sexual predators; that women are nurturing and men are violent; that white people are arrogant; African Americans are loud; Native Americans are drunks; Asian Americans are smart; and that Latinos are lazy.
These are not generalizations, they are stereotypes. They are assumptions based on unfounded ideas about these groups, not identifying particular characteristics of a group of people. They signify a gap or lack in understanding. We typically stereotype those whom we do not understand or about whom we have no knowledge.
As we move through life, if we see one individual who seems to fit the stereotype, it reinforces those ideas, while we tend to ignore others in that same group who do not fit that stereotype, as well as others in different groups that do fit that stereotype. We assume, usually because we don’t know many people like them, that they are all strangers and that they are the “them” to our “us”.
In this society, we don’t really notice people who look “heterosexual” and if we did, we wouldn’t assume that they were a sexual predator. We wouldn’t think anything about seeing women who are behaving in a nurturing way, but if we saw a woman behaving in a non-nurturing way or a man acting in a nurturing way, we might draw particular assumptions about them. If we noticed a white people who appeared to be lazy, we wouldn’t assume this one person represented a characteristic for all white people. We are more likely to define them as tired after having done some huge task or job; we would assume they had a good reason for resting.
These stereotypes can easily lead to prejudice and result in some forms of discrimination. While generalizing helps us navigate our lives, stereotyping puts us in a dangerous place in which societal members are limited from their true potential and face barriers to contributing their talents and assets to the societal mix.
Would a better understanding of people reduce stereotyping and, subsequently, prejudice and discrimination? If so, how would we do that? If not, what would be the benefit of a deep understanding of the lives of individuals in a society ?
oFinal personal conclusions and notes and summary : free small therapy
•Intelligent people suffer.
•Ideas have weight over the human brain system, So if you are a high potential person and during you career, you automatically grow up, you were a child then you became a teen and then an adult ,,, let’s say at the age of 15 , you start realizing and understanding things and truths about you life and life in general, entourage, the purpose of your existence, you get some defficulties to accept yourself and reality, but change it and improve it , transform the negative energy into a massive positive energy.
•High potential or people with asperger syndrom… suffer,personally I am a person with the Asperger’s syndrome,
The problem is this kind of people get a 100 kg instead of 30 kg, for a child is defficult, we must stop bullying this type of people , I had stupid experiences of getting bullied. We must hold it and carry on , but there’s some holes in every way and this is normal, just know where are they and cross them with the equilibrium.
•When people discover themselves they get difficulties .
•Doubts, Make the whole operation complicated, but the doubts are the flames of knowledge, but in the concept of the equilibrium, don’t be afraid of life.
•Life’s beautiful and simple, we humans are complicating it as we’re improving it, everything has its opposite, now this is a work.
•How to fix your doubts and insecurity ?
•You must keep searching and getting the right knowledge, analyse and avoid the blinded-believe.
•Keep your mind opened, analyse and clarify your beliefs, the information you get ,
•A total confidence, a real one , the equilibrium is very important ,
•Know yourself and accept it, work on it to improve it,
•Identify your good side and your bad side and work on them.
•Think logically to not feeling guilty of normal things just because of a false belief or an odd chain of false beliefs you have, this situation is weakness, for example ‘you gonna start thinking of bad thing’these thoughts cause you a mental illness , contradictions and doubts , let’s clarify things up, there’s no such things as demons and angels all of this are myths , get free to live the real life ,
•Let’s focus on our reality from humans and animals to the Mycoplasma genitalium.
•FROM AIR TO THE SHIMMERING SHORES OF VAADHOO, IN THE MALDIVES.
•Logical things that can be seen it or felt or having its resolution.
•Ain’t no such things as demons and angels, we choosse who we’ll be by our actions and thoughts,we’re responsible for everything we do,it’s up to you , you build yourself, spirits ghosts it’s just a myth,if any spirit exicts after death, surtenly i twill visit its beloved ones and family not frighting you, it’s important to make the difference, you only live once, make it beautiful, even if there’s another world you gonna live in it, don’t worry, life is so simple, otherwise you’ll be afraid of a room without light.
•And this is a kind of mental issue or illness, same concept.
•Brave people :
•As you can see, the real brains of this world is almost 30%, only 30% of the world’s population are leading this whole real world and improve it.
•What about the other 70% ? a huge percentage isn’t it ?
•Actaully this 70% are devided , there are good people and toxic people or a combination but the difference takes place depends on actions, even the 30% of the world’s brains have a negative side but also the difference is the percentage of the toxicity they have,5%,9% , you can’t know exactly but surtenly it’s a real small amount of toxicity’s percentage.
•PEOPLE MUST WAKE UP , to achieve the point of where we all live together as one in the name of humanity and living in harmony with NATURE.
•Living together by respect and good vibes of each other. Making reactions for bad actions , this is the right road of humanity.
•Everything happens inside your mind, from ideas to actions to the outside.
•Be responsible of your real consequences
•Only You who builds yourself and career
( positive,negative ).
If God wanted us to see demons or angels, we.d have seen them as neighboors and cheering beers together, or if a spirit came back to life in a mysterious way , it would probably go see its family and friends .
How does god look like ? have anyone seen it ?
Let’s say God is a creative energy, gave us the most gifts ( our body and it’s mechanism, the brain……), don’t you see the greatness ?
There are things or ideas we must put limits to them, such as god’s form, afterdeath’s life if it only exicts.
We must put our focus on the realistic things ( the right way ), a good use of the brain, some imagination, but everything with the equilibrium. ( control ).
Sometimes when we go deeper into somethings or ideas, we discover its meaning and its truth, which means live your life to the fullest and help, you must know who you help, don’t be naïve to death.
Don’t judge or keep your own judgments to yourself, which means mind your own business,
This world is based on unseen things such as energies, frequencies…
When you see a person did a wrong thing, if you judge him/her, you get the same bad energy and
vice versa.
This energy reflects itself inside your mind,
Actually bad energy leads to death and awful things.
I don’t mean that death is an awful thing, anyways
Just focus on yourself, help your partner and parents, raise a great generation if you want to have children.
To focus on yourslef doesn’t mean being selfish, when everyone’s is focusing on themselves, if any issue happens, your role of the helper takes place.
Create a group of real soulmates, enjoy sharing the same positive energy , different vibes, memories, this is really important to know your entourage.
Never give everything you know,but it doesn’t mean keeping them poor, the equilibrium and the good understanding.
Keep personal stuff.
In my life, I’ve bumped into people who were’t understanding themselves, their lives, the purpose of their existence…..
Relegious people or atheist, and this is a fact , an experience in my life, As always my curiius ass loves things like that and philosophy….,So I was giving them advices, I noticed the change in max of time of 10 months, then I started getting different sources of knowledge , I first remember me writing and studying a theory of mine , I improved it and made a mix of the most important subjects that we’re suffering with, didn’t wanna make it long so here it is , the compass theory, personally I’ve suffered of these issues, I had an experience.
So
Let’s get back to one of these subjects,
My point of view and I think it’s obvious for everyone,”religions are 100% made of humans”
Ain’t no supernatural thing was happening.
For me it’s a kind of literature and a salt of science and the modern life, but everything has its time,
Religions bad consequences are lethal, tragic ending.
Hopefully it won’t happen
Also religion is an obstacle for some evolutions,
It devides humans that’s the first negative side we all notice, but we meant to live together as one.
Lions don’t attack lions. Humans did.
Know yourself and accept it and accept everything around and make a change.
I also found a kind of people who don’t even understand their religion, isn’t that sad ?
People change and this is a gift, and the gift could be good or bad.
Know who you play with and who you don’t
Know who you trust and who you don’t
Your way of thinking shows itself on the way you act, say.
BE CAREFULL OF THE SEEDS YOU’VE PLANTED ON YOUR MIND, WHAT FRUIT YOU GONNA HAVE, YOU CAN GET PEACHES AND STRAWBERRIES OR ACKEES.
We all know the modern history of the jews and their struggles by the nazi radicalists and the nazi’s in general,relgious reasons, jealousy , a sickness of this kind of radicalists, and not only the nazi’s.
I did some researches about homophobia , i was shocked , there are countrie where being gay ( your nature ) getting arrested, it’s something illegal for them , getting bitten. But what the heck ! todays world must be changed.
Who told you that some people want to have babies, or live with the same sex , even though , they can adopt.
As a heterosexual , i won’t give a damn about your sexual orientation, it’s something natural, you can fin dit in nature, after all it’s your businss not mine. Stop ruining people’s lives.
Oh also , silence is a part of any crime , you may know that , but do you believe it ? then act.
If not us whose gonna make the change then who’s gonna make it ?
the Aliens ? Demons ? oh i forgot maybe angels ! perhaps god, god created you to be its successor.
for real we must change asap,
see somtimes we put blames on god , no this works against you , god gave you the experience of life,
parents, entourage , all this drama i personnaly fin dit negative , stay the hech away from drama , just stay realistic , the role of a reminder is so important because we as humans we forget so easilly , there’s always a solution , just work your mind.
Back to religion , I also noticed a kind of people I call them blind-believers, they take everything from the holy books as they’re 100% and believe it and live it in their reality, just like a member of taliban or an emiratian blind believer, the place doesn’t matter nowadays in the brainwashing subject,
Just open youtube and write a story of the end of the world and similar stuff, here you’re planting bad seeds, or the story and personality that i couldn’t understand it is the anti-messiah ( massih dadgal for muslims ) ,I only understood it’s the same person in different religion and in islam researches there are more details, I started doubting myself, maybe muslims are living in the future, and I am living in THE STONE AGE ! WOW
Okay I’m just living my present that’s what my compass sasys.
1. Success is in the mind. It is an attitude. A disposition. If you set your mind on earning a million dollars, you will most probably earn it. If once you earn it, you start being afraid of losing it, you will most certainly lose it. Adopt a success-driven attitude even when you reach your goals. Set up higher goals and challenge yourself.
2. Think big, act small. Small droplets will end up filling the bucket. There are no too small battles or small gains for you to wage. All victories lead to your success. Win them with pride.
3. Lead instead of playing the boss. Be a mentor, a model. You are the person with the ideas, the vision. You know where you want to go. Your collaborators should trust you and do their best to follow your trace, your footprints. Leadership is the most effective power. Use it to motivate and achieve.
4. Inverse your organizational chart. Those on top help those on the line do their job. Don’t be in the way, but be there when needed. If anything, recognizing what line managers do is a real task for you at the top.
5. Bring out the best in everyone. There is good in all of those working for you. But each one has something special about them. Tap into that to make them grow, stay motivated and be creative.
6. There is no such thing as a perfect plan. There are only imperfect -but good- plans. Waiting for perfection will cost you time and resources. Working with what is available, albeit imperfect, is not only timely, but smart.
7. The global complete approach wherein everything will fall into its place is a utopia. You don’t have time for that. Piece-meal progress, small wins are your way towards success.
8. Making mistakes is no problem. Not learning from them is the real problem. As you make your wins, you will also improve on your past errors. The more you do, the more you fall but the more you learn to avoid hurdles on the way.
9. Risk is a part of life. Be bold in your actions if you want to reach out where the others don’t go. Uncharted territories are opportunities for you to be creative and succeed.
10. Build trust. The world is full of crooks. But it’s not a reason for you not to trust anyone. You have to build trust; renew it; and reinforce mutual commitments.
11. Seek out allies. Enemies don’t stay that way forever; rivalries change, so do opportunities for growth. Recruit some old “enemies” to be your allies, partners or clients. Don’t stay in the small world of those who like you and whom you like.
12. Look for the silver linings. Problems don’t exist. What we call problems are only opportunities that are hidden behind obstacles and hurdles. Remove these to get to the goldmine.
Success does not happen overnight. It is the outcome of a lifetime of hard work. What is important is to think things through and adjust your attitudes and approaches in relation to the changes that take place in your environment. Success is the culmination of a long journey both internal and inside the business. To succeed is to change oneself, and when you change you also change those surrounding you. And Good luck.
No more religious wars for god’s, Nature’s…. sake.
But this doesn’t mean not being prepared for a danger.
For any evolution, without love and faith, is a waiste of time,
Any logical thing you really believe in will happen, patience is one of the keys you already have.
What is fear ?
Fear is the word we use to describe our emotional reaction to something that seems dangerous. But the word « fear » is used in another way, too: to name something a person often feels afraid of. People fear things or situations that make them feel unsafe or unsure. ... People tend to avoid the situations or things they fear.
Let me give you another definition and make a combination : fear i shaving less information / knowledge.
A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal. Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.
Accept death.
If you don’t accept you gonna have a false structure.
-What is god’s frequency ?
Simply it’s yiur true relationship with god,creative energy,nature,yourself. Everything’s inside you.
963 Hz Solfeggio Frequency is associated with awakening intuition and activating Pineal Gland and also called Pure Miracle Tones.It awakens our crown chakra (Sahasrara) and raises the positive energy and vibrations and helps us to connect to our very source.
If we’re living in the universe, the univers lives in us.
After all I seek for is peace, I’d rather die for peace in peace.
It’s never too late , plan and exercise,be ready for everything , keep your mind opened, only the strong survive.
Learn any good thing everyday, any music instrument, make a plan and do what you love, be the best version of yourself everyday never give up, all winners had the idea of giving up.
Don’t reach for perfection, you may never get it, by the the law of attraction it twill reach you, you can reach the moon in case you didn’t reach a star.
-modern slavery is internet abuse and being a consumer.
-think about the money and energy you spend in the name of knowledge by love, the inverse is darkness.
-Ideas and plans are powerful no matter how small or stupid the might seem.
-how the heck do religion tell people to make fun or even kill other religious people, this is a devilish plan, it's a human devider and for business and to control people and manipulate them, it's like a prison inside of a brain.
-just look at how your body fonctions and you gonna see the greatness of the creature, just be realistic.
-the missunderstandig of ideas leads good ideas to aweful actions.
-do whatever it takes, don't make excuses to shine, and stay the heck away from drama.
-a toxic person affects everything negatively.
-be your own role model, plan, act, keep it real and improve yourself everyday.
-start whatever you want , wherever you are .
-no one was born with knowledge nor art.
-anything inside your brain shows up by your actions and sayings.
-your way of thinking attracts your fruits.
-you can't reach heaven without crossing hell.
-make your hell enjoyable.
-maturity is to stop being a big baby.
-find your motive.
-without help we go down.
-be free as a bee and stick some.
-stoicism is more than a religion.
-you can't be human without knowledge, at least plant something.
-art and good knowledge are the fuel of your life and the pillars of your soul.
-everything has its opposite, the equilibrium is the point.
- life deserved being experienced and living it to the fullest, that's the real meaning of ' I am Alive '
-good knowledge's like chocolate, irresistable.
-take a deep breath for 5mins, make a logical roal and follow it with analyses,act , repeat.
-nature's massive and mysterious and beautiful.
- your hell is your conscience.
Your friend in your Darkness and Happiness
I THANK YOU ALL.