Fire Is the Best Medicine
Just as apocalypse means revelation, so can fire be medicine and poison. “Fire medicine” confers benefits on individuals and communities.
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Science & Tech
Sentience, Not Consciousness, Is Key to the Cosmos
If the universe is conducive to sentience rather than consciousness, then a scientific model for some even more fascinating phenomena emerges.
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Our Sacred-Scientific, Psychedelic Future
Fears halted research on psychotropic compounds in the 60s. The Second Psychedelic Renaissance is now validating their psychological benefits.
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Can Social Technologists Solve the Atomization Problem?
To address rising atomization and alienation, we must account for radical inadequacy and experiment with more totalizing communities.
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Emotional Labor, Long Undervalued, Is Safe from Automation
Emotional labor is common to historically underpaid jobs held mostly by women. How will the rise of automation change the way it’s valued?
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Let a Thousand Green New Deals Bloom
We don’t need a Green New Deal so much as many green new deals.
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What Earthquakes Teach Us About Embracing Uncertainty
For natural disasters large enough to reshape society, Dr. Lucy Jones explains, “The best fit to the data is that it’s random. And we hate it. Random makes people really upset.” But such uncertainty doesn’t have to leave us feeling helpless—we should embrace the inherent chaos of the universe.
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Virtual Reality Is Not an Empathy Machine
Virtual reality can help us better understand the experiences of others but we should remain skeptical whether it can create true empathy.
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The Brain Can Be Rewired Through Meditation and Mindfulness
Neuroscience increasingly validates Buddhist practices, like meditation, which unlock the ability of the mind to change the brain.
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Economists with Physics Envy Are Harmful
Observing the acclaim physics was having, economists embraced a physical view of human behavior hoping to replicate similar success. However, unlike physics, the social nature of human beings makes any laws of behavior tentative and contextual.
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‘Enlightenment Now’ Demands a New Romanticism
There are many who say that Romanticism is dead. But the tensions between Romanticism and the soldiers of the original Enlightenment are rising up again.
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Earth’s Carrying Capacity for Human Life Is More Than You Think
The claim that earth has a carrying capacity of 7 billion is based on old concepts—misunderstanding how fertility rates and consumption work.
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