What if I told you the decision to have children is largely influenced by your fear of death and the desire to be immortal, whether you’re conscious of it or not? Would this supposition surprise or interest you? If so, keep reading. Literal and Symbolic Immortality According to Ernest Becker, all human activity is driven …
Read moreHow the Fear of Death Influences The Decision to Have Children
In the space of a few short weeks, the Covid-19 outbreak has flipped our way of life on its head. An unfeeling, unconscious, and invisible pathogen has ruthlessly undermined the large-scale human cooperative effort that we call modern globalized society. Countries closed their borders, airplanes stopped flying, bars and restaurants shut, and millions of people …
Read moreHow Covid-19 Gives Us All the Chance to Accept Impermanence
As you ascend the 300 steps of Bangkok’s Wat Saket — The Temple of the Golden Mount — you’re rewarded with stunning views of the city’s sprawling skyline. They are views that only get better the higher you climb. At the top, as the sweat drips from your forehead in Bangkok’s shirt-drenching humidity and searing …
Read moreThis Eerie Bangkok Monument is a Stark Reminder of Past Epidemics
Best Buddhism Books Buddhism is not only a religion. Buddhism is a philosophy; a way of approaching life and dealing with its ups and downs. The beauty of Buddhism is in its universality. You don’t need to be a practicing Buddhist to get something of value from it. I’ve decided to write this blog post …
Why Do You Feel Unhappy All The Time? It is a perplexing dilemma for the unlucky people who tend towards pessimism, negativity, rumination, and neuroticism as their default mental state: Why do other people seem so happy all the time? What is wrong with me that I seem to feel unhappy by default? Was it …
The Irish Cultural Love of Booze As an Irish person, it is almost a cultural more to consume a lot of alcohol in my country. When young Irish people drink on the weekend, we generally don’t do it with the sole aim of enjoying our drinks. Without wanting to speak for the few who are …
Read moreShould You Drink Alcohol? Here’s What Philosophers and Science Say
The Present Moment Entering the present moment sounds like a bit of a contradictory phrase. After all, “it is only ever now”, as the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle is fond of saying. The problem is that while we might always physically be present in whatever location our body happens to be in, mentally, most of …
My watch has been out of action for the last few days because the battery is gone. When I glanced at the little time and date section on the corner of my Windows 10 taskbar today, I was startled. It’s September 2nd apparently. My mind’s perception of time and how far it feels into this …
Read moreThe Holiday Paradox, Time Flying, and Altering Your Perception of Time
Ever Been Nostalgic for a Time You’ve Never Known? I was listening to the radio the other day and one of my favourite feel-good tunes came on. It was Tom Petty’s Learning to Fly, which is a quite simple song based on four chords. One of the reasons I like the song so much is …
Read moreExploring Anemoia: Nostalgia for a Time You’ve Never Known
[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_SOCIAL_ICONS] Do Babies Know Anything? Having recently become a father for the first time, certain questions about human nature hit me that for some reason I had never contemplated in my daily life. One of those questions was related to life’s absurdity, which I wrote about in another post. Seeing my daughter absolutely captivated by …
Read moreDo Babies Have Innate Knowledge? Exploring Human Nature