Self

Truth

Be True to Yourself, Lie to Yourself…Be Honest to Others, Lie to Others?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, September 4 2024

There’s an interesting conflict in recommendations from others around honesty: people will tell you to be honest or deceptive depending on what leads to the best outcome. Now, for those of you who have read The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose or previous blog posts on the honesty ethic, that will not be a surprise since...

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Self

Consciousness as a Meta-Capability

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 3 2024

They call it “The Hard Problem” of consciousness; it is commonly described as, “What is it like to be a bat?” Effectively, how can you break down consciousness into a definable set of components so that you can both understand consciousness and identify life forms that have it. They test the problem with various thought experiments, such as if...

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Meaning

On Value, Worth, Self-Esteem, and Objective Standards

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 27 2024

There is a major equivocation/conflation of the words “value” and “worth” going on, and wherever there is a confusion around meaning with regards to life, you know I’ll be here covering it. Let me give you some background on what is going on: millennia ago, humans were not too much more civilized than animals, and so we did have very much a...

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Self

Responsibility vs. Fault

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 13 2024

You read a lot about “blaming the victim” in modern times, usually when someone tells another person how to change their behavior to get a different result. The most famous one (because people seem to scream it all the time) is, “I shouldn’t have to dress more modestly; men shouldn’t rape!” But, to take a less controversial one, Office Space has...

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Self

You Are NOT Your Experiences

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, December 6 2023

Everyone faces adversity, challenges, and trauma in life. For example, a soldier will see horrors that they wouldn’t wish upon anyone, and a star athlete will experience inevitable injuries that will prevent them from performing at their best. Many traumas are near-unavoidable, such as childhood trauma when you are under the custodianship of your...

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Planning

Defining and Improving Your “Life Architecture”

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, September 20 2023

One of my first ever blog posts was about creating a “life architecture roadmap”—in other words, assessing the current state of your life and identifying your desired future state so that you could create a roadmap filled with practical next steps and milestones to get there. The idea is a play on Enterprise Architecture, a discipline in which...

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Growth

Change Yourself, Change the World

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 31 2023

The word “activist” has become pretty popular these days as both a profession and a way to virtue signal to everyone on social media that you are a good person who cares about others. Now, the cynics of the world will point out two things: This post isn’t going to point out specific causes and judge them nor is it going to rail against hypocrisy...

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Ethics

The Ethics of Selfishness and Altruism

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 17 2021

Selfishness 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...

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Meaning

"Who Am I, and Why Am I Here?"

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, July 1 2020

In The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life's purpose, I explain in detail how life works and how you can use that information to figure your purpose out for yourself.  However, it doesn't mention another major question, "Who am I?"  Because I wanted to keep the book focused on helping you figure out your journey, I didn't spend any time c...

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