religion – My Mental Model

Where I draw the line with the right

The city I live in is relatively progressive. Not necessarily in a ‘leftist’ sorta way, but more so in a classic liberal sort of way. In this landscape, it’s difficult for right-wing nonsense to get any kind of traction. But that’s not to say that I don’t see it. I have a close friend who has started following some of the center-right media like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder. He’s been testing me with some of his nonsense. So perhaps it’s time to call it out here too.

Trans people are people. I don’t think we’d be in this free speech mess around gender pronouns if we hadn’t collectively been giant assholes to transgender people. Throughout history, we’ve treated those who we didn’t understand with contempt and history has never looked kindly upon it. It happened with people from unfamiliar cultures, it happened with people with unfamiliar skin colors, it happened with people with an unfamiliar sexuality, and it happened with trans people. Conservatism has never been on the right side of human rights because the role of conservatism is to avoid change. If those who are different are understood, accepted, and appreciated, they don’t special protections.

Full-time work needs to pay a living wage. There’s a suggestion that a minimum wage is a bad idea. Apparently, by allowing businesses to pay wages lower than the current minimum wage, workers will make more money. That open market model only works if two forces are firmly in play: A strong incentive to pay the workers as little as possible (to maximize company profits), and a strong incentive to pay the workers as much as possible (to maximize talent acquisition). If the incentive to maximize company profits is stronger than the incentive to maximize talent acquisition, there is a strong downward pressure on wages. That downward pressure can be so strong that someone working 40 hours a week may not make enough to make a living wage. If we’re in an environment where the cost of living is rising quickly, it gets even worse. And who benefits? Clearly it’s not the worker. The business will benefit from better margins, but for how long? An underpaid workforce is more of a liability than an asset. When business owners under pay their employees less, they rely more heavily on social assistance programs. These programs are funded by tax payers, and not the ones who aren’t making enough money to pay any significant tax. Paying your laborers less than what it costs them to live a middle class life is a terrible idea for any economy.

Racism still exists. Racism exists, sexism exists, ageism exists… there’s no lack of ways in which we try to generalize others to their detriment. I wish we could solve them all at once by understanding that prejudice leads to inaccurate understandings and bad decisions.. but we have to start somewhere. And I’m not interested in addressing controversial racism like who got kicked out of a Starbucks or who’s modelling a black panther costume. I’m talking about that KKK shit. That sand n*gger shit. That BUILD THE WALL shit. That is some of the ugliest behavior I’ve seen in western society and the right needs to do a better job of standing up to it. Everyone on the right wishes the moderate left would call out their more extreme counter-parts. Well everyone on the left wants the same from the right. It can’t be a, ‘sure, we all know that racism exists but it’s not the problem here.’ Without racism, we wouldn’t have Trump. Without racism, we wouldn’t have a government shutdown right now. Without racism, Fox News wouldn’t have been fear mongering around a migrant caravan. It might not be at the center of all our problems, but it does seem to make most of our problems worse. Identity politics exist on both sides, and both sides need to hold their crazies accountable.

Stop cherry picking your science. Climate change is real. Humans have contributed to it significantly. The scientific consensus here is over 99%. Why are you still arguing this? I understand if you’re a stake holder in the fossil fuel industry, but otherwise you’re just being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. Even if it wasn’t man made, our window of opportunity for maintaining an ecosystem that’s habitable for humans is closing. We should be all hands on deck, but the right is dragging their feet. If you have no interest in listening to scientists on this, then you’re about as useful as those on the far left which ignore biology to advance their gender politics agenda.

Religion. Religion exists across the political spectrum, but the right seems to have their own approach to it. The evangelicals denounced a democratic president for having an immoral character, then celebrated Trump on the basis that moral character isn’t an important consideration. The religious right also argues that abortion is a religious issue when the bible offers no such guidance beyond telling you how to do one. They’re also quick to point out all the flaws of religions like Islam, while failing to acknowledging the dark history of western religions or the issues of today. And to make it all worse, politicians are now abusing religion again, excusing their actions as some twisted act of god. Next time you see a politician say “well that’s what I believe”, look closely.

Feminism is a big deal. I’m not talking about the man-hating variety that seems to be pushing it’s way into the mainstream today. I’m talking about a movement that started centuries ago.. maybe even millennia. It’s about our species evolving to the point where men didn’t have to be hunters and gatherers, and women didn’t have to forage and care for the kids. It’s about men no longer having to go out and do hard labor and women being able to join the work force. It’s about moving past our traditional blueprints of what men and women were supposed to be, and exploring the freedom of what we can be within a modern society. One of the smartest things western society ever did was bring women into the work force. There’s still more ground to cover.

You overestimate your abilities. I used to assume that people who were wealthy were naturally hardworking and very smart. Then I started to meet some of them. Many of them were smart and many of them were hard working, but what they were more likely to have in common was an inflated sense of ego. They took responsibility for their actions, and since they were successful, they were responsible for their success. But then I would look behind them and see an incredible amount of support. More often than not, it included a good family, a private school, an ivy league education, connections, and an inheritance. Bit of a stretch to say you’re responsible for all those factors too. What I’ve noticed from the right is that tend to equate financial success with human value. Those who find a path to financial success overestimate what their contribution was to that point, and underestimate what was already in motion. And then they dismiss those who are less fortunate as lazy or uninspired.

You’re selfish. Something else I’ve noticed about the right is their tendency to be selfish, after they’ve ‘made it’. When I was younger, I wasn’t all that interested in helping my fellow human. It was about being as successful as possible, as soon as possible, and then helping my fellow human. I see a lot of people take a similar path, but when they arrive at success, they’re much less interested in helping others. Now it’s about paying the least amount of tax possible, or doing away with social assistance programs that you don’t personally use, or avoiding giving money to the homeless ‘because they’re just gonna use it on drugs anyways’. And what I find remarkable is that liberals do this too, just not when they’re poor. The rich shouldn’t give to the poor out of sympathy. The few should invest in the many, because none of us truly do anything on our own.

Your immigration policies suck. Besides the fact that they’re currently rooted in racism, they’re also shortsighted. Most people would be surprised to find that children of wealthy families make ill-equipped leaders. But it’s not that hard to understand why. When you go through adversity, you experience challenges that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Parents who have fled to the US from a harsh environment provide a powerful and unique environment for children to grow up in. That home is more likely to produce a world leader or Pulitzer prize winner than someone who was so rich that they didn’t need to bother learning the local language. Written on the statue of liberty is, ““Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where you escape from terrible conditions and are given the chance to make something of yourself. This is the secret sauce of the American immigration policy. If we close the doors to all that have made us great, and only open our doors to those who are already ‘great’, I think we’re in trouble.

You can be an argumentative dick. I know, because I used to be one too. Back in university, everyone was for gay marriage but me. I had no issues with gay people… or them getting married.. but I didn’t like that everyone was agreeing with one another on something they hadn’t really thought about. So I said I was down with them being legally married, but wasn’t OK with them appropriating a ceremony from a religion which was expressly against gay marriage. I may have had a point, but I was arguing for the sake of arguing. I see this happen from the right so often. You realize that your up against someone who hasn’t quite thought things through, and rather than help them get there, you pick them apart and try to make them feel like they don’t know what they’re talking about. Meanwhile, it’s quite possible that they had a point and just weren’t able to argue it effectively. Or maybe they had a good idea but didn’t quite know how to make it a reality. Fantastic, you won that argument.. but at what cost? At what point is the pursuit of truth more important to you than ‘winning’?

The relentless spin. If I were to guess, the right is more intelligent than the left. It’s not that a ‘right-wing’ ideology produces smarter people, it’s that intelligence lends to success,, success lends to wanting to keep things as-is, and wanting to keep things as-is lends to conservatism. You know, conserving the good life. So when the less fortunate get together and say things aren’t fair, we need change… you say that things are fair, that you’re an example of how to be successful, and to just keep working hard. But then the less fortunate notice that there are far more hardworking poor people than rich people. At the end of the day, the left might not have the best idea for how to get things done, but they are often right about what needs to be done. And no matter what they present you with, you’ll spin it to your favor. If you were up against someone who could debate you properly, you’d look absolutely foolish. But the mainstream media doesn’t provide that format so everyone’s left speaking into their echo chambers. I can’t tell you how many times colleagues of mine have tried to spin the most ridiculous Trump lies into something reasonable. Recently, they’ve started to give up.. suggesting that it’s not what he says but what he does. Well he’s behaving like the most compromised or corrupt politician in modern American history.. and you’re still trying to spin it.

You don’t want a meritocracy. I’m a big fan of equal opportunity over equal outcome. So is the right.. it’s one of their primary arguments against social security programs. The left hasn’t been able to wrap their head around the concept in a way that fits their ideology. I think the political spectrum is generally clueless about what a meritocracy really entails. For example, there’s a good chance that in a true meritocracy, most top CEOs would still be men. But you know what else happens in a meritocracy? Those responsible for educating future generations aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. But perhaps the most powerful example, in a meritocracy, inheritance wouldn’t exist. In a meritocracy, you receive resources in exchange for the creation of value. The more value you produce, the more resources you have to work with. In that model, someone like an Elon Musk would be one of the most well resourced individuals in the world while someone like Trump would be broke. But in a world where Trump can leave billions in wealth to his children.. something’s not right. In a world where future generations of your family can enjoy substantial resources despite having not created any value… something not right. In a meritocracy, Harvard isn’t filled with legacy students and lucrative internships aren’t filled with people who’s parents know an executive at the company. That whole idea of an inside track.. the powerful helping the powerful.. none of it exists.

If we could find a way to cast aside all the nonsense… from all sides of the political spectrum… and come together to be effective for the greater good… we could probably do something pretty darn special.

Intelligence Vs. Compassion

I’ve done a lot of thinking on these two ideas over the last year or so. The western world seems rather divided right now.. democrats vs. republicans.. liberals vs. conservatives.. blue vs. red.. left vs. right. When you consider how much these individuals agree on, the division seems rather silly. Yet it persists. I have no doubt that the existing political system and those within it perpetuate this division for their own gain, but there’s something more to it than that. They didn’t create that division, they’re just the ones exploiting it. There’s something that exists beneath that.. something biological.

I wrote an entry a while back on thought vs. emotion. Introspectively, I could tell that they were two different cognitive processes within my brain. It led me to suspect that they had different roles within the human experience. I understood that you couldn’t use emotion to do things like solve math problems or learn languages. I also understood that happiness wasn’t a logical thought. Seemed rather likely that the thoughtful part of the brain would pursue happiness while the emotional part of the brain allowed you to enjoy it.

Ironically, a few months later, a friend gave me a book for my birthday that discussed this topic. The book, A General Thoery of Love, was written by a small team of MDs and PhDs in clinical psychology. To my surprise, the authors were big fans of poetry, love, their families, and all the other soft stuff you might not associate with a scientific mind. I must say it was done quite well and taught me a great deal about how the mind works.

One of my biggest takeaways was how obvious evolution was in determining the fundamental structure of the human brain. The base of our brain is referred to as the reptilian brain and controls things like your vitals and balance. This also represents our most base instincts.. things relating to survival like the 4 Fs: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and… reproduction. What the reptile brain seems to lack though is any sense of compassion. I was rather surprised to find out that reptiles are known to eat their young. Apparently the part of the brain that tells us to be kind to our kin didn’t come until afterwards.

After the reptile brain came the limbic brain. It’s likely that this evolution occurred during the early evolution of mammals. The theory is that when life made the jump from laying eggs to carrying their young, the brain needed to adapt appropriately. Mammals were taking a different approach to survival, one which required them to care for their young until they were capable of fending for themselves. They needed a way to communicate. They needed to develop a language. Enter the limbic brain, the emotional center of the human brain today. The limbic brain was one of facial expressions, touch, sound, and all these other little nuances that allowed mammals to instinctively understand how one another felt. Not a language in the classic sense, but very much a language nonetheless.

The most recent evolution of the brain is the neocortex. It would be convenient to say that that the neocortex is unique to humans but it isn’t. It’s present in great apes, dolphins, elephants, and most other mammals. What seems to makes humans different is how much of brain’s mass is dedicated to the neocortex and the size of our brain relative to the size of our bodies. As one might guess, this is the part of the brain is responsible for what we typically consider to be human intelligence: logic, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness.

Effectively, through millions upon millions of years of evolution, our brain has equipped itself for survival, compassion, and intelligence. In that order. And yet the vast majority of the human brain is dedicated to its most recent addition: intelligence. That evolution has happened rather quickly considering how long it took for the other parts of the brain to develop. Nature rarely does anything by mistake.

I’m grateful for having learned all this because it’s given me a rather useful insight into the difference between thought and emotion. It’s also shown me how little the general public seems to understand or appreciate how the brain works. How often will someone talk about how they feel towards something when they’re actually thinking about it? How often will someone claim to be using their feelings to navigate something abstract? How often are we asked how we feel when we should be asked what we think? I suspect there’s something worth observing here.

As someone who prioritizes thoughtfulness, logic, and truth, I’m probably more easily frustrated by this dynamic than others. As a result, I’ve been thinking about it a fair bit and have noticed something worth sharing. Throughout the course of recorded history, I’ve noticed a shift from emotional to intelligent. I’m unsure if it’s a result of an ongoing biological evolution in the brain, or a gradual appreciation for what intelligence allows us to do. Realistically, it’s probably both. If I were to guess, natural selection favors intelligence.

Religion might be the easiest example here. Religion has existed in some shape or form for about as long as human civilization. Our brains are programmed to identify patterns, and once we do, we can’t help but use our imaginations to assign meaning to them. As soon as we were able to recognize the significance of things like the sun and stars, we couldn’t help but try to tie them into one grand narrative. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why religion is such a complex topic.. perhaps in some way, it serves as a chronology of intelligence vs. compassion.

There was a point where religion was about community and worship.. this general idea that if you were kind and compassionate to each other, your god would be kind and compassionate to you. Over time, intelligence allowed us to realize that if we were kind and compassionate to each other, that was probably all we needed. In that time, god went from an individual who was supposed to be loved or feared, to something much more abstract. Since then, religion has become less about worship and more about philosophical teachings relating to morality. Unfortunately for these religions, they often attributed their teachings to the word of god rather than what they most likely were: a reflection of how humanity understood morality at that point in history. As a result, we were put in a position where humanity’s collective understanding of morality was evolving and god’s wasn’t. How could that be. Something wasn’t right.

As the centuries went by, the intellectual crowd kept coming up with better and better reasons to stray from religion. The politics, the corruption, the lack of evidence, the logical fallacies, the tribalism… it just looked like a big pile of nope. Even the renaiisance experienced a big shift from religion to the sciences. And now, in the 21st century, religion looks to be as irrelevant as ever. The world’s brightest minds are notoriously non-religious. The vast majority of people STEM careers are non-religious. The vast majority of business and industry leaders are non-religious. The vast majority of recognized philosophers are non-religious. The only leaders that I can think of who tend to be religious are political leaders. As their actions tend to show, it’s a function of votes and job security more than loyalty to the cause.

The better we get at using the intelligent part of our brain, the better we get at discerning the difference between real and not real. As we get better at discerning between real and not real, truth and reality become increasingly important to us. As truth and reality become increasing important to us, the fictions of religion becomes much less attractive. While I think this movement away from religion is justified if not an essential part of our evolution, we should be mindful not to throw away the baby with the bath water. Religion was among the first establishments to champion the ideas of kindness, community, and morality. Those ideas are worth bringing with us to where ever we go next.

When I think about where we are now and where we go next, I can’t help but think that computers are rather central to the conversation. When I think about how computers were designed from the beginning, I can’t help but think that they were designed as an extension of our neocortex. Computers are logical by nature. If a program has a line of code which contains a logical fallacy, it creates an error. And while our computers inch towards levels of artificial intelligence that rival our own, there’s an obvious absence of emotion or survival instincts. This idea that one of humanity’s most significant creations is an extension of one of our most significant evolutionary advantages…. doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.

I’ve been thinking about writing a book for a couple year now. It’s working title is the Vulcan Republic. The idea is a mash-up between Plato’s Republic and the Vulcan philosophies from Star Trek. One takes place in the past, using logic in search of how one would create a Utopian society. The other takes place in the future where a species just like humanity embraced logic and created that utopia. Considering the path that we’ve taken over the course of our evolution, is this so unlikely? Is it so far fetched that intelligence is our guiding star?

MBTI helped me understand how strong the division is between thinkers and feelers. I know this all too well as the feelers tend to get upset with me for thinking too much and feeling too little. But then I ask them why I should feel more and think less, and they don’t have a reason. They just feel that way. As it turns out, the part of the brain that knows why things happen is the thinking part. And unfortunately for me, there are statistically more feelers than thinkers. But I suspect this is changing. I suspect that every generation, on average, has been more thoughtful than their parents’ generation. I expect that computers will help kids to learn and embrace logic faster that previous generations. I expect that the kids growing up today will respond to the highly emotional conversations around current events by learning to be more thoughtful and sensible in the way they discuss ideas with one another.

That’s a future that excites me. But it doesn’t excite everyone. The more emotional crowd aren’t always the biggest fan of computers, logic, or intelligence. I’m often faced with situations where they consider these things to be threatening. They’ll use words like empty, cold, or robotic. They seem to assume that intelligence and compassion are binary, that it’s one or the other. To that point, I think they’re wrong. I think that we could all be reminded of a simple truth: The most intelligent decision someone can make is a compassionate decision, and the most compassionate decision someone can make is an intelligent decision.

Intelligence and compassion tend to operate like a map and compass. Intelligence is a tool that helps you read the terrain and understand the most effective way to move from point A to point B. Compassion is like a compass which might not tell you much about where you are or how to get to where you want to go, but it’ll always give you a sense of direction. Too often, people will lead with unintelligent compassion, resulting in good intentions but progress in the wrong direction. Watching the social justice warriors embolden the conservative crowd reminded me of this. But at the same time, there are those who lead with intelligence and a lack of compassion which lead to productive actions which are counter-productive to humanity’s collective goals. You don’t have to look much further than Thanos or any bond villain to see how that plays out. I suspect that for real progress, we need to embrace both, and understand that when we are at our best, they are one and the same.

Nature rarely does anything by mistake… Survive. Be compassionate. Be intelligent.

Truth & Reality, and why it matters (Part 1)

Over the last few months, I’ve been bumping heads with the co-founders of my company. Since I joined, the business has grown beyond their skill-set. We’re now at the stage where we’re looking to clarify roles and responsibilities and it’s looking like I’ll receive the role of CEO after we close this capital raise. In that transition though, it’s been challenging for the co-founders to navigate what it means to give up control of their business, for the sake of a better business.

A couple months ago, we brought in an executive coach to help sort things out. Part of that process was a series of 1 on 1 interviews. During mine, we touched on something that keeps coming up in my life. Figured it was time to write about it.

One of the co-founders is a bit ‘woo woo’. She’s an awesome person in so many ways and we get along far more than we butt heads… but we do butt heads. As she would say, science and logic can’t explain everything. As I would say, any true explanation is inherently scientific and logical. I was hoping the executive coach would help bridge this gap.

When I did the 1 on 1 interview with the coach, I told her that I wished our co-founder would have a stronger appreciation for logic and my affinity for it. I told her that logic in its purest form was the pursuit of truth. She replied, “well that may be the case, but everyone lives their own truth.” I paused for a moment, having heard that a few times before. Something about living your own truth sounds noble, and righteous, and harmless. But it didn’t sound very logical. I asked her to elaborate. She said, “My favorite color is blue. That’s my truth. No matter what you or anyone else may think or feel, that is true to me.” Without thinking, I replied, “But if it’s only true for that person and nobody else, how true is it?” She replied that this was going to become a very philosophical conversation very quickly and that we should probably get back on track. I can’t help but think that we need to start making the time for these conversations.

I’ve given a considerable amount of thought to this idea of living your own truth and her example of someone’s favorite color. I’ve always weighed it against the concept of truth from Plato’s Republic which behaves as a great illuminator. One seems subjective while the other seems objective. I was always under the impression that the truth was inherently objective…

When considering the example of someone’s favorite color, I think the word truth might be a misnomer. Someone can say that their favorite color is yellow and for that to be a true statement, but does that make it a truth? Maybe this is the difference between a true statement and a universal truth. Or maybe there isn’t as much of a difference as I thought. When someone declares that they have a favorite color, as long as it is in fact their favorite color, that’s not only a true statement but a universal truth. No matter where you are in the universe or how you might look at it, that person has a singular preference towards a certain color. I guess where I struggle is in suggesting an equivalency for the truth that is someone’s favorite color, and the truth that 1 + 1 = 2. Technically speaking, both are true. But one of these is a rather arbitrary statement of someone’s preference while the other is a fundamental building block of how we understand our shared reality. I don’t think it’s fair to refer to them both as ‘truths’.

Many years ago, I was introduced to the idea of hallucinating your reality. It was novel at first, but once I gave it more thought, it made so much sense. Your body receives sensory input from our senses and our brain does its best to make sense of it. It’s why certain types of brain damage can drastically change someone’s perception of reality. It’s why hallucinogenics can change your perception of reality. It’s how cognitive differences can change your perception of reality. It’s why simple bias can change your perception of reality. Your favorite color, in this context, has nothing to do with the qualities or value of that color, and everything to do with your perception of it.

I like the acknowledgement of everyone hallucinating their own reality because it really does remind us that our understanding of reality is only as good as our ability to perceive it. It helps make sense of a wide range of perspectives and how cognitive differences can lead to honest, yet flawed interpretations. There are several cognitive disorders which cause people to hallucinate things which only exist in their reality. Is that a truth? If that hallucination only exists in their reality and nobody else’s, is it fair to refer to this as a reality? There’s a lot of validity to the old saying, ‘perception is reality’, but maybe this is where we need to work a bit more on understanding the difference between reality and our perception of it.

Perhaps truth and reality should be synonymous. From my perspective, what’s true is real and what’s real is true. And that’s separate from perception. What’s real is the shared reality we all perceive and look to understand. That’s inclusive of what each individual’s interpretation of it may be. But that doesn’t mean that someone’s interpretation of our shared reality creates our shared reality. That would be like saying that because someone’s favorite color is blue, that blue is a superior color. Yet I run into this all the time.

A few weeks ago, I was at our office with the co-founders and they brought in some special rocks. They had talked about crystal therapy before and I was skeptical but never went out of my way to rain on their parade. When they brought them out, they started talking about the energy they could feel from the rocks. Then they asked if I would like to try. I said sure, why not. I followed their directions, tried to sense something, and got nothing. I was told that I probably just didn’t have what it takes to sense that energy. I laughed it off and we moved on.

Afterwards, I reflected on why I didn’t take crystal therapy seriously. Generally speaking, it was because it wasn’t prevalent in western medicine. I assumed that studies had been conducted and no verifiable evidence was found. I had also seen more than one debunking show where someone went into a crystal healing session and came out rolling their eyes. But in this day and age, it’s not enough to rely on the opinions of others. For all the progress that western medicine has made, it’s deeply flawed in many ways. It’s no longer reasonable to assume that something is without merit just because western doctors haven’t adopted it. Reflecting on it now, that was probably never an intelligent assumption to make.

In this day and age, the world of information is at your finger-tips and it’s important to do the research ourselves. So I did.

I found a study where a group was given crystals, were asked to meditate, and report back on any positive effects they may have experienced. What they didn’t know is that some of the crystals were real and some were fake. People reporting on things like tingling sensations, warmth from the rock, or a general improvement in their well-being had no correlation with whether they were holding a genuine crystal or a fake. There was however a strong correlation between those who believed that crystal therapy was real and the perceived positive effects. That strikes me as a rather simple, yet reasonable explanation.

Here’s where things get interesting though. If perception is reality, and their bias towards the validity of crystal healing allowed them to perceive an improved well-being, is that not valid in some way? Your state of mind can be one of the most powerful factors in promoting healing within the body. If crystal therapy induces that positive state of mind, and that positive state of mind helps to heal the body, would it be fair to at least consider the crystals to be a catalyst?

This perspective seems to be the most reasonable of those that support this mode of healing but I can’t help but think that this also demonstrates the reality of crystal healing: its a practice designed to deliver placebo effects. The scientific community and western medicine are quick to dismiss placebo effects when it comes to determining the efficacy of medicine. Perhaps they’re right to do so. I think it’s important to recognize the body’s ability to heal itself and to study this element of the human design to its furthest reaches. That said, I don’t think that healing practices which have only demonstrated placebo effects under controlled conditions should be promoting themselves as ancient, mystical, new-age medicine.

I find it curious that everyone acknowledges snake oil as being a ‘fake medicine’ and that we should avoid recommending it to friends or family for its benefits. If snake oil was able to act as a catalyst for the sake of delivering placebo effects, would that change things? And if we can place crystal therapy in the same category as snake oil, why would the ‘woo woo’ crowd be so quick to embrace one yet so quick to condemn the other?

Yesterday, my co-founders showed up to our morning meeting and one of them brought out a pair of rocks which had been infused with ‘quantum energy’. Admittedly, quantum physics seems to be beyond my intelligence so I hadn’t a clue what it meant. That said, I was still skeptical that someone had ‘infused’ quantum energy into a pair of rocks that looked like they had been picked up at the beach. They both held the rocks and said they didn’t feel anything from them, and joked that infusing rocks with quantum energy seemed a bit silly. They offered the rocks over to me and I declined… something to the effect of “No… no… I”m good.” And maybe that’s where I should’ve left it. But I didn’t.

I told them about the study I had read after they brought those rocks out the last time. I said that its very difficult for me to think that something like this is real when the science behind it would strongly suggest otherwise. They reacted as if it was a personal attack. Their responses included, “Not everything can be explained by science”, “I know what I know and nothing that you can say will change my mind”, “well how do you explain psychic mediums who talk to the dead?”, “well from my perspective, science and religion are the same thing.” It was like being in the twilight zone. Worse yet, I never seem to have a chance to actually have this conversation with them. They’re always quick to say this is unproductive and we should get back to the meeting. When I suggest setting some time aside to discuss this stuff, they tell me that they’re too busy for that right now. Maybe I should just let them live in their reality while I live in mine? That doesn’t seem right either.

“Not everything can be explained with science” is a curious perspective. As far as I know, science is the practice of explaining things. That’s not to say that science can explain everything here and now. Our understanding of the universe is in its infancy. So much so that every time we make a big discovery, we illuminate that much of the unknown. But that doesn’t change that every true explanation of our reality is inherently scientific just as every true answer to the question ‘why’, is inherently logical.

“I know what I know and nothing can change my mind.” I suppose this should’ve been a red flag. Anytime someone says that their mind cannot be changed, you’re dealing with someone with a closed-mind. I wish I knew how to open those minds.

“Well how do you explain psychic mediums who talk to the dead?” I responded with psychology. I’ve seen mentalists break down the techniques that they use to work their craft and it’s absolutely fascinating. Those who seem to be the best at this have a remarkable understanding for how the human mind works. What I didn’t say though, is if someone had the ability to talk to the dead or read minds, why aren’t they putting those talents to better use? If someone legitimately had those skills, it doesn’t make sense that they would be doing palm readings for $100 a pop or doing shows in Vegas. If your intention was to make the world a better place, there are plenty of unsolved murders which the police could use a hand with. If your intentions were to make money, the stock market would be low-hanging fruit. This idea that psychics have applied their talents outside of these endeavors seems a bit convenient for me.

“Well from my perspective, science and religion are the same thing.” She has a point. In theory, science and religion are supposed to exist at the opposite ends of the spectrum. In practice, it’s much less so. I find that people often believe in science, that is, they accept it as true without understanding it. Too often, I see scientific studies with poor methodology coming to questionable conclusions. Yet to the untrained eye, this science is just as valid as any other. That’s just not true, and I can’t help but think that this misunderstanding is a catastrophic failure of the educational system. When you get people to believe in science the way they believe in religion, science becomes vulnerable to the same control mechanisms that exist in religion.

Earlier this week, a mining magnate from Australia was discovered to have been a primary source of funding for scientific studies aimed at denying climate change. Last week a study funded by the dairy industry was released outlining that dairy was once again good for you. We don’t have to go all that far back to remember the tobacco companies funding tobacco studies that suggested that tobacco was perfectly healthy. Perhaps the individuals conducting these studies were scientists in title, but I have a hard time seeing them as scientists in spirit. They were given a narrative to confirm and that’s not how science works. Science comes from a place of skepticism. You look to connect the dots to help explain how the universe works, and once you have a working theory, you do everything you can to disprove it. Once you’ve done that, then your peers look for different and perhaps more creative ways to disprove it. And if your theory is still standing after all that effort, the science community grants you a scientific consensus that says ‘yes, this is probably the best explanation available’. But even then, your theories will be continue to be tested as our knowledge of that subject and the tools available to analyze it evolves. The idea of this approach being applied to any religion seems absolutely foreign… as it should be. Religion requires belief and faith. Science requires understanding and skepticism.

I would be surprised if someone hadn’t come up with this before me, but I’m rather proud of it. I can draw a rather simple line between science and religion. Belief is to religion as understanding is to science. To take that a step further, when you present new information to someone who believes something, they’ll adjust that information to fit their existing beliefs. If you present new information to someone who looks to understand something, they’ll adjust their understanding to accommodate the new information. When someone believes in something, there’s often nothing you can say or show them that will change their mind. When someone looks to understand something, the only thing you need to show them to change their mind is evidence.

Sometimes I consider that belief is some sort of default of human cognition. You have a certain perspective of the world, you feel more comfortable around information that confirms that perspective, so you seek it out and adopt it. If your goal is to seek out information which confirms your view of the world, why would you apply the rigor of the scientific method? Why would you work so hard to prove your perspective to be untrue? My answer is simple. it’s because truth and reality matter. In part 2, I’ll try to answer why.

The Religion of Self-Help

A few weeks ago, I attended my first self-help seminar. I resisted the invite but a good friend insisted that if I went in with an open-mind, I was bound to learn something. I told him that with an open-mind, you’re bound to learn something no matter where you are. He said there was a money-back guarantee. He said that if nothing else, he was very interested to see how someone like me to would behave in an environment like that. I agreed.

I went to PSI Seminars: Basic which was a 3 day seminar with about 70 other people at a middle-tier hotel in the burbs. The group was diverse but seemed to be weighted more towards newer immigrants and the middle-class. I also noticed that while many came in with a healthy dose of skepticism, they also came looking for help in facing their own personal challenges.

The curriculum introduced several valuable concepts like game theory, personality science, and why it helps to stray from your comfort zone. It also included classics like the law of attraction and self-love. The 3 days were largely a mix of lectures, group exercises, and personal exercises. There was a lot of clapping.

When I wrapped up the weekend, I asked for my money back. It just wasn’t for me. I think that when you ask for your money back, they follow up to try and figure out why. They sent my group’s ‘micro-leader’, a 20-something nice kid who I got along well with. In our conversation, he asked me what I learned at the seminar. I told him that I learned many things, but perhaps most significant, I learned a great deal about religion. I don’t think that’s the answer he was expecting.

I grew up without religion. Both my parents went to church when they were young but they had fallen out of it by the time they had children of their own. My earliest understanding of religion was that it was unnecessary. It was easy to see that you could be a good person without religion, and that you could be a bad person with religion. I also knew that many religious teachings hadn’t aged well, leaving their supporters with out-dated values. More than anything, it seemed like religion was holding back the natural progression of morality.

As I got older, I became more spiritual and started focusing more on the intangibles of the universe which connect us all. On that journey, I started noticing that much of what I was discovering for myself already existed in religious texts. These epiphanies of mine weren’t new ideas, they were ancient ideas. They were ideas that resonated so strongly with their audience, that people built entire organizations around these ideas. This was the root of religion. Things started to make more sense. Where I once resisted religion, I was now in a place where I could understand it.

When I was younger, I came up with an idea: The Church of Good. I think this is the first time I’ve ever typed that out because I just saw the play on words. Anyways… the church of good was simply a church without religion. This would be a place where people would come to hear the inspiring stories of what real people have done to make the world a better place. It would be a place where we could learn the ideas and practices which would help us be better to one another. It would also be a place were people could find community among others who were motivated to be good people. It was supposed to be the best of religion without the worst.

That idea has sat in the back of my mind for over a decade now. For most of that time, I saw religion as toxic. But then I kept meeting people whom I admired in many ways, who also happened to be religious. How could I admire someone who lived their life according to something which I considered to be toxic? There was a disconnect. The people I admired were good, decent people. They generous when they didn’t have much, they were kind to those who weren’t kind to them, and they seemed to be more motivated by a collective good than by personal gain. Most of them looked at the organized side of religion as a formality, traditions within their tribe. For many of them, it was the least interesting part. What they all seemed to have in common though, was an appreciation for the greater good and and enjoying being part of a community that prioritized it.

For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why religion had such popularity and staying power in the face of such obvious flaws. Why couldn’t people see that they were being lied to? And manipulated? And often, for the sake of those who clearly weren’t operating in the spirit of the teachings. But then it clicked, they were learning things at church that they weren’t learning anywhere else – Important things.

When I was fired from the bank, I was forced to leave a career I had put my everything into. My world came crashing down and I experienced suffering. That experience offered me lessons about myself and my journey that would’ve been very challenging to grasp otherwise. I became a much stronger and more capable person because of it. The last time something happened like that, it was my dad who died. I noticed a pattern: that my greatest moments of growth followed my greatest moments of suffering. With that understanding, my perspective on suffering changed. Suffering was no longer to be feared or avoided, but understood, appreciated, and embraced. I mentioned this to a friend and he told me that this was a classic Buddhist teaching. Well then.

If we were to look at all the lessons learned from all the religions, I suspect we would find patterns of morality and purpose. I’m not saying that everything we’d find is something which should be taught today. What I am saying that we would find a pattern of people trying to understand how to be better to one another and a pattern of people trying to understand their place within the universe. I can’t help but think that this is the true value of religion… an opportunity to learn about the more philosophical side of the human experience.. A deeper understanding of who you are and your place in the universe.

I knew all this going into the PSI Seminar. I had even made some connections between religion and self-help before going in. Experiencing it first hand was something else.

I would imagine that for those who weren’t raised to be religious, turning to religion is an exercise in finding answers. I think self-help serves that same purpose. The people in that room were not there because everything was going well, they were in search of a better way. But many still arrived skeptical, perhaps like you would on your first day of church.

The facilitator (who happened to be a former church minister), took the stage with all the enthusiasm of a motivational speaker (or preacher). And after some icebreakers, he started getting into some very real teachings. People learned. There were ‘a-ha!’ moments. People were making breakthroughs. Trust was being earned.

There were various exercises where you were encouraged to build deep connections with those around you. Almost all were strangers who you didn’t know 48 hours ago. It was a valuable reminder that we’re more similar than we are different. It also reminded us that connecting with one another is a rather natural experience when we don’t let our personal baggage get in the way. A sense of community was being built.

A few rituals were introduced. Things like a big ‘good morning!’ response, jumping up and down yelling ‘I’m excited’, or the awkward soul-train dance party. Part of how I picked up on it was observing the volunteers. These were individuals who had done the course previously, and were coming back to observe. They were on-point with all the rituals. Culture was being established.

On the third day, PSI showed how they approached the business side of self-help. The 3 day seminar cost about $800. People who have taken the seminar are then heavily encouraged to have their friends take it. The general message seems to be, ‘look at how great it was for you and everyone else here, don’t you want this for your friends?’ The PSI: Basic seems to operate as a feeder for their second seminar, referred to as The Ranch. The Ranch is a 7 day retreat (to a ranch), and about 10x the cost of the basic. When they made the pitch for the ranch, they also made the pitch for the course after it. Then they offered to bundle the two together for a discounted price (about $9,000). They said “If you think that’s a lot of money and you’re not sure, just sign up for it. If you make the commitment, you’ll find the money.” Then they said this deal is only available for the next 20 minutes.

You’re doing what now?

After two and a half days of learning, and appreciating, and building community… where did this come from? At least the church focused on the collection plate. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing. So I piped up and asked if this was the kind of financial decision that people should probably think about for more than 20 minutes. The facilitator agreed.

During that 20 minutes, the facilitator came back up to me and offered a different answer to my question. I reminded him that regardless of what answer he wanted to provide, he knows that these are classic pressure-sales tactics. He conceded. I asked him why he went along with it. He said that whether it was the church or PSI, there were always practices that he didn’t agree with. That sounds about right.

When I was doing the follow-up interview with our micro-leader, I asked him what he thought about these tactics. He said lots of other people do the same thing. I told him he was right, that you see it everywhere from MLMs, to time-shares, to religious cults. I asked why he wasn’t more interested in holding them accountable. He spoke about all the good that PSI does for people. That being manipulated into a self-help program that turns out to be really good for you isn’t really that bad. I asked him if the end justified the means. He said no, not really.

But he found his religion.. his tribe.. where he wants to search for answers.. and I wasn’t going to change his mind.