A year or two ago I wound up eating dinner with a guy who was wearing a hat that said “Trump 2020: Make liberals cry again”. It was interesting to think of the kind of mentality he must have to sit across at dinner with someone while wearing a hat openly declaring hatred for that person while pretending to be nice and respectful. His motivation for supporting a political candidate was literally to cause other Americans to suffer and cry. It wasn’t about disagreeing on religion or economics or other…
Read MoreTag: Mental Health
Heart Disease will Kill More this Year than Coronavirus
Our reactions to the virus are wildly inconsistent with life’s other dangers NASA estimates that around 5,000 people died worldwide from various effects of nuclear power between 1971 and 2009, including meltdowns. By comparison, coal is estimated to kill 800,000 people per year. However, nuclear power is far more scary and people get far more upset about nuclear power plants in their communities. Why is that? Likewise, most of us know that airplanes are safer than cars, but we are still more terrified of them. If you really look at all…
Read More50 Life Lessons in 5 Minutes
50 Life Lessons in 5 Minutes Just some theories I try to live by. Seek out experiences, not pleasures… but don’t feel guilty about your guilty pleasures. Don’t judge others openly regardless of how horrible they are, but that doesn’t mean you have to trust them or hang out with them. Do what you need to do to get along with people. Or leave. Don’t allow emotional vampires to take advantage of you. Worry about real-world effects rather than emotions… but recognize that your emotions have real-world effects on the people around…
Read MoreRamblings About How I Cured My Depression
Ramblings About How I Cured My Depression I used to be very depressed when I was a kid, to the point where I made plans to kill myself and I think once when I was about twelve I even walked out the door with the intention of following through with it. One day in seventh grade I remember telling half the class that I wished I was dead. Someone told me that wasn’t cool to joke about and I insisted that I was not joking and I genuinely wished I…
Read MoreDo Suicidal People Deserve to be Punished?
Similar psychological issues lead to crime and suicide. Why do we treat them completely differently? I wrote this piece back around 2006 or so I think. I recently visited an old friend who happened to be having some dramatic fights with his girlfriend who was also the mother of his child. At one point she called on the phone and threatened to kill herself, and my friend responded by telling her that she was a horrible bitch, a worthless person, a horrible mother, and called her all sorts of horrible…
Read MoreHow Logic and Reason Help Me Lead a (Relatively) Fear-Free Life
Mysteriously paralyzed, my atheism kept me calm while totally vulnerable. This is the first and only time this has ever happened to me, but a few nights ago I had a very strange occurrence. I woke up at about 4:00 AM, in the near pitch-blackness of my bedroom, and found myself paralyzed. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. I tried to lift an arm, and could not, so I started trying every little part of my body that I could think of, and somehow, nothing was working. My mind…
Read MoreOur World View Determines Everything
Our World View Determines Everything Here’s me bragging about how awesome my life is I’ve been watching Ted Talks recently and decided to watch a pro-God video in the interest of being open minded. It’s by Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life which has sold more than 30 million copies. I’m not sure what happened to the video but I’m sure it’s still out there. But I wanted to mention something that he said that I absolutely, %100 agree with: “Your world view though does determine everything else…
Read MoreHow Atheism Can Be Magical
How Atheism Can Be Magical We fall in love with logic and reason as others do with God. Here’s a random comment about atheists that I found interesting and important to address: “One exasperating aspect of reading or watching the atheists’ arguments is that they are so linear, cognitive and left brained. If we were wholly left brained beings, this would make sense but we are not. There is an emotional aspect to us as well as a strong sense of intuition. When we are seriously ill, we do not respond solely…
Read MoreDual Perspectives
Dual Perspectives The power and weirdness of simultaneously holding two opposing viewpoints I watched a couple episodes of Hoarders the other day, the documentary show about those people who refuse to throw things away and find themselves buried in trash, and found myself rather shocked. I didn’t know this psychological issue was so common. If I remember correctly, they claim that it affects 3 million people. That’s more than what the experts claim is the number of people in America addicted to cocaine. It’s strange that hoarding isn’t a criminal…
Read MoreHappiness Is A Choice
This Is Scientific Proof That Happiness Is A Choice. This is an article I found that sparked my thinking about this concept. I don’t like the idea of ‘proof’ since I don’t think there is such a thing as proof since there is always the chance something in our reasoning is incorrect and I think it’s dangerous to think of things in absolutes like that. However, I do truly believe that happiness is a choice. Furthermore I believe many other things in life that people believe they are stuck with…
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