Society

A case for science

When I applied to graduate school, I was often asked what I was interested in studying. Initially, being naïve and uneducated about the nature of (graduate) education, I often answered the truth and began to enumerate the endless list of my interests: I am interested in studying humans, our psychology, our belief systems, how we operate, how we think, what we mean by soul, how religions affect our life, behavior, decisions, and actions, how compatible philosophy…
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A sketch on racial hysteria

Having attended U.S. educational programs for the past few years, it became clear to me that in racial issues, this nation is completely upside down at a system level. I have never seen as much artificial, unnatural, forced, and pathetic effort to love, respect, accept, and include minorities as in this country. As if Americans, troubled and ashamed by their racist history, today wanted to compensate for the past by pushing ethnic minorities into the…
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Culture-Christianity

– Are you a Christian? – I’m a culture-Christian. – What do you mean by that? – Well, if you ask me whether I believe, accept, and follow what the different Christian churches teach, I am certainly not a Christian. But if you are asking me whether I internalize and follow the most fundamental principles of the Judeo-Christian civilization, then I am very much Christian. – But that doesn’t mean to be a Christian, does…
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Education of what exactly?

The three major weaknesses of most American educational models: They do nothing to make students master as many languages as they can. They avoid high-quality training in arts, music, and philosophy. They despise and reject everything that is not quantifiable. As a result, up-growing generations are hermetically cut off from true human growth. Rather, they are offered a math-and-reading-based pseudo-education which is good for nothing but to be quantified.

The map of afterlife

If I were to ask a representative sample of all peoples of the world about their beliefs concerning the afterworld, they would most likely give me an answer based on their religious convictions. Consequently, if then I were to draw a map of the answers, a fairly clear geographical distribution of otherworldly beliefs would emerge on the paper. Roughly, it would appear that what happens to people after their death depends on where exactly they…
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Cats and dogs

Even though most people think that dogs are more masculine, cats are more feminine animals, and, clearly, more men are related to dogs as well as more women are found among cat owners, the truth is that cats are much more masculine than dogs, and dogs are considerably more effeminate creatures than cats. Men, due to clear evolutionary reasons, like to be providers. They like to feel that someone needs them and someone’s safety, well-being,…
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Conservative progress

Debate in college once again. This time, the topic is whether in a democratic society, citizens ought to be required to vote. Argument and counter-argument. People’s emotions are stirred up. They feel very fond of the topic. Deep ideologies, emphatic terms, and noble ideas fill the air of the auditorium, yet I can’t catch any of them. I find it impossible to get identified with the loftiness of democracy. He who advocates for the mandatory voting system bases his argument…
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Education

Schools do a great job only if they help students realize that their voice is not the only voice, their interests are not the only interests, and their ideology is not the only ideology in the world. Only if students grow able to realize that there are billions of other realities besides their individual little realities, and billions of other worlds besides their individual little worlds, can schools claim that they not only taught, but truly…
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Advanced civilization

Man is born free as an animal. Yet he consigns his life to slavery: socially, collectively, and on an individual voluntary level as well. We call the prison cells of our civilization work, education, welfare, honor, order, and social system, though by all appearances reality is no more than a broken, dysfunctional, unjust, and inhuman arrangement for existence. In its present form, work and its due compensation is a false, lying, and hazardous concept. Self-deception….
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Money and morality

Money doesn’t make one happy. Doesn’t it? Money doesn’t make you a better person. Doesn’t it? Until recently, I readily agreed with claims like these. I idealized noble poverty and humble austerity, and wanted to convince myself that money was a distracting and corrupting agent in life that had to be put strictly after moral rectitude, honesty, spirituality, and all emotional and ethical respects of human existence. I charmingly ignored that without money (most precisely, without…
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America Great Again

I usually do not consider politics worth writing about in my blog, but after extreme shocks, I feel compelled to react. Today is the second presidential debate that I am not able to watch from the beginning to the end. It would be a sinful waste of time. None of the two candidates can speak, none of the two has answers, none of the two respects those who ask them with exact, concrete answers. None…
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