Would you rather be safe or free? Obviously, people want to say both, as many people use “free” and “safe” interchangeably when, for example, they claim that they want to be “free to go outside” during a pandemic or when a criminal is on the loose when they really want to be safe when they go outside. But freedom and safety are opposing goals mos...
Read MoreTo live your life in the most meaningful, flourishing way possible, you have to have freedom. In a modern, organized society, there is always an authority of some sort, almost always the government, that is meant to balance the freedoms and liberties of the individual with the safety and well-being of the group. The main means through which socie...
Read MoreHave your ever argued with someone whether it’s okay to walk up to someone at random and kill them? Probably not. It’s pretty clear that killing someone for no reason is morally wrong. But what if someone was killing you, raping you, or stealing from you? The answer is that the act becomes clearly moral when that person threatens your life, but...
Read MoreScience is an amazing field that allows us to test the nature of our reality and determine how the world works and what is true about the physical universe. Ethics are a wonderful concept that allows humans to live together in peace and cooperate with one another for greater growth. However, there seems to be a dreadful trend of conflating scienc...
Read MoreSelfishness is bad; altruism is good. That's probably what you've heard your whole life. Do kind things for others, and you are a good person; if you focus on yourself, you are a bad person who will live a lonely life. While there is nothing wrong with helping others, it is strange how warped people's view of these concepts have become. Let's b...
Read MoreIn The Meaning of Life, I explain how ethics are complex, situational, and subject to evolution over time. A good example of an evolving ethic is if children were ethically obligated to go into the business of their parents hundreds of years ago due to the difficulty of earning a living for a large family back then, while in more recent times it h...
Read MoreA Unified Theory of Meaning can't truly be unified if it isn't aligned or compatible with most philosophies. In this blog post, I thought I'd start to show how all philosophies have the eight core concepts of meaning embedded into their ideologies. Let's begin with Christianity, which has a lot of relevant concepts. Here are five ideas from the...
Read MoreLife can be very difficult to understand or figure out. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does evil exist? What is the right thing to do in no-win situations? Questions like these can eat up your time in deep philosophical thought trying to find the best way to either live optimally or understand why the world works the way it does.
Read MoreNote: I intentionally use contentious issues in this post to dial up your emotional state so you can feel the pull yourself that people get to change others' beliefs. I made sure to include both sides of issues so as to not inject my own views or influence anyone's beliefs but also to ensure that I triggered the emotional response of seeing a pers...
Read MoreIn my 30 years of studying psychology, philosophy, religion, and how the world works, one thing always bothered me: every system that exists to give you a comprehensive view of how life works or how you should live always lays it all out as one complete package without explaining how the concepts relate to each other. For example, if you believe t...
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