Category Archives: human condition

Is it disappointed or frustrated? What is the difference?


Clarity of language reflects your clarity of thinking…
It is becoming clear that the parts that maybe are the most important ones (to you) in my articles are too new for you to hear.

I didn’t realize that I need to bring special attention to them, explain them, or they will be lost, maybe forever. And give me an unwelcome experience: frustration.

This is a great opportunity to bring some clarity to the use of two words that you, mistakenly, have been taking ans synonyms… meaning the same. They don’t.

The two words are disappointment and frustration.

They feel similar, yes, but the underlying cause is different.
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What does the 99% do that the 1% doesn’t? Bread and circus


Panem et circenses. That is Bread and circuses… in Latin, the language of ancient Rome.

Give the masses bread and circus (entertainment) and they won’t look at what you do on the top. Superficial appeasement.

In order for people to need only 1% of their brain capacity to work, one needs to distract them from activities that use more of that darn brain capacity. Because if the people did use it, the 1% would not be as high as they are… they would have competition. You.

What? Yes.

As I have said before, Wallace D. Wattles in two of his books, but especially in The Science of Getting Rich says things that other ‘new thought’ writers didn’t say. His The Science of Being Well has only one useful thought… the whole book… so its truth value is only 10%. The Science of Getting Rich has a truth value of 70%, and The Science of Being Great has a truth value of 40%.

The thinking stuff part is b.s. It is what the positive thinking attraction people dupe you with. Ignore that at all cost.
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Your physical brain and your IQ: can you get smarter?


Yesterday one of my long time students surprised me with sending me a ‘meme’ that had a quote from one of my articles.

No coincidences in the world… if you have a wide enough cone of vision you’ll know that.

We’ll explore the drama that is hidden in this sentence. Because there is drama, oftentimes tragedy there.
Sidenote: As I was looking for suitable images for this article, I was struck by the overwhelming confusion about intelligence, the brain’s role in it, meditation, and brain exercises. Most of what is written is horsh!t… truth value: 0%. 

1. So I’ll being with the word coincidence… coincidence means two things happen that are not connected… (a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.)

Someone is born on 9/11… the same day airplanes are flown into buildings… and people die. The two events are not connected.

Human nature looks for connections. Human nature is to look in the mind for connections. Not in reality, in the mind, where only the meanings live. None of the actual happenings live in the mind, only the story you made up about it.
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You don’t see… and you don’t even see that you don’t see


You don’t see… and you don’t even suspect there is anything to see

Almost all the things you want are there, already, but you can’t see… They are not hidden, they are in plain view, but you look straight at them, and to you they are invisible.

What the F… right?
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How to insult a whole subcontinent? Say you don’t like…


How to insult a whole subcontinent? Say you don’t like their food…

Back in 1970, my mother hosted a symposium on some urban planning issue… and a few American professors attended. At a dinner my mother asked me to attend, I spoke to those professors, and they liked me… This was a year before I graduated from architecture school, I was offered a scholarship to Princeton University to get another degree, in urban planning. I had no idea what urban planning was really… but regardless I said… No, thank you.

I said, Naaaay, I am not interested. The professors didn’t even blink.
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If you are not enjoying it, you are doing it wrong


If you are not enjoying it, you are not doing it right.

This is a principle… and like all the principles, it applies to everything, big or small.

If you don’t enjoy life, you aren’t doing it right.

Oy, that hurts… At least an hour a day, just after I get up in the morning, I don’t enjoy life… so I must be not doing it right.

I am going to look at that…
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Knowing is a lot like emotions… give you an eye-patch…


Knowing is a lot like emotions… give you an eye-patch… or a virtual reality eye piece.

A student of mine reacted to yesterday’s article.
Thank You Sophie,
For being my connection to reality.
Sometimes it seems the world is full of pettiness and silliness and unreality. You are like a beacon of hope and sanity, lighting a path to clarity with relentless determination.
Thank you. I am grateful to have you in my life. And thankful for your patient guidance.
In your post today you said that seeing was more important than knowing, and you said: Knowing is a lot like emotions… give you an eye-patch… or a virtual reality eye piece.
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Don’t you just hate it when you find out that you’re wrong?


I am working on this whole Vine phenomenon… that has been encouraged for the past two years very visibly… the energy of either you or me… and I will not change my mind…

The energy of ‘my way or the highway’, the energy of the Oracle that is always right, the despot, the authoritarian, the fascist, the dogmatic, the self-righteous that used to be occasional but now is the norm.

The energy of the villain…

The end of cohesion, cooperation, community, the end even of family.

The whole world, all of life, reduced to black or white, this or that, right or wrong, my way or your way, the beautiful or the ugly.

Systemic view of everything.

What is the systemic view?
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Is it curiosity or intellectual indigestion?


Input. Output. Is this what they are talking about when they want you to have life-work balance?

We are different in what fill you up…

I get filled up by contemplating.

If and when I don’t have the freedom to contemplate, I start drawing, what I need to give, from nothing.

Contemplating doesn’t make sense at first blush, and yet… there you are.

Some conversations leave me with more in my checks and balances, that I had before the conversation. Others leave me high and dry…

Reading seems like a good way to fill myself up… and yet. Unless the reading material is material for contemplation, it goes straight to fat like food that is undigested.

If you pay attention, I used some magic words that could tell you, direct you to seeing what enriches you and what robs you.

Most people run on just above empty… And yet most people are bloated, flabby, and not agile… lots of undigested stuff… from books, from even courses, conversations, even from calls with me.

Overeating, over-consuming… never digesting.

Contemplation, mulling it over, ruminating is a habit.
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Is it burnout? Is it resignation? Is it hopelessness?


It is hard to remain motivated nowadays. I watch and this year only about 4% of the people work out in the park next to where I live. Only 5% of the people do much of anything that they used to. It is hard to stay hopeful.

People look and feel burned out.

Burnout is when activities that made sense in the past, that maybe even excited you in the past are now drudgery. It can happen with anything: talking to someone, making love to someone, taking care of the garden, cooking, building a business, reading…

It’s not the what, it is the who.

You. You lost what it was…

But what was it? Without recapturing what it was, or creating something just like it, you are going to have a life of meh…

Or a life where you are going to be an excitement seeker, an addict.
It is human nature to look into the future for our mood….
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