I have published an ebook on Amazon called Occupy the Moment, which obviously has to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement and perhaps less obviously with the idea of “being in the moment.”
It’s a “99 cent book for the 99%.”
If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle app for Mac, Windows, iPhone at my Occupy the Moment web site.
I’ve described my participation with Occupy Boston in a post on The Humanist magazine’s blog, Rant & Reason
In the short-term, we do need growth to help the economy. But in the long-term, we need to limit growth to what is sustainable.
The Humanist has published my article on slowing down consumerism, which references the Seeing the Roses project.
At the Interdependence Project, there is a critique of secular Buddhism. I left this comment
We can look at this exchange in two ways, either as taking something away from Buddhism or adding something to secularism.
I’m part of a small but growing group of secularists who are trying to incorporate Buddhist practices without becoming “Buddhists.”
If any of you are around Boston, I invite you to join us at the Humanist Contemplative Group that meets at the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. Stephen Batchelor kicked off his recent book tour at the chaplaincy.
Here’s an interview I did with Dan Siegel in which we discuss this secularization of Buddhist wisdom: http://www.thenewhumanism.org/authors/rick-heller/articles/the-mindful-brain
Besides being skeptical of rebirth, I am also skeptical of “enlightenment” and “no-self.” I don’t consider “no-self” to be unscientific, but I can’t say I really understand it, and I’m not willing to accept anything on faith or authority, even something that is potentially plausible.
My main attraction to Buddhism comes from meditation, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which I think are all consistent with science and highly plausible, to the best of my understanding.
Marc Zegans has released a new album of poetry accompanied by the jazz piano of Don Parker. Sounds samples are online. Check out Marker and Parker.
This blog has been dormant, as I’m now editing The New Humanism and shifted my blogging to The New Humanism Blog.
However, UUs will be interested to read the article Doug Muder has written, A Church That Would Have You As A Member: A Humanist Guide to Unitarian Universalism. Doug, who writes for UUWorld and The Weekly Sift, provides a guide to UUism for nonbelievers, and discusses what type of nonbeliever will fit in at a UU Church and who will want start running and screaming toward the door.
Good review of the field in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
I’ve been to Quebec this summer, and there is an interesting article about its secularization, while retaining sentimental attachments to the Roman Catholic Church.
The philosopher Charles Taylor, co-chair of the accra commission, points out that Quebeckers are not the only society of lapsed Catholics to show an attachment to religious traditions without necessarily embracing the doctrine. Millions of non-practising Germans continue to pay confessional taxes, for instance, even though simply declaring themselves as non-Catholics would spare them the expense. The most secular societies in the West also “retain the vestigial public reference to God in public space,†Prof. Taylor writes in A Secular Age .
According to an American Dental Association study, there is a genetic connection between red hair and pain sensitivity.
Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color. In people with brown, black and blond hair, the gene, for the melanocortin-1 receptor, produces melanin. But a mutation in the MC1R gene results in the production of a substance called pheomelanin that results in red hair and fair skin.
The NY Times has an article, Brain Power – In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable, that discusses research on the use of intuition on threat detection, and references Antonio Damasio’s work.
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