Eldon Taylor's Blog, page 18

Ignorant Confusion

In this week’s spotlight I want to direct your attention to the nature of confusion. Believe it or not, there are actually several different forms of confusion. First there is the obvious, the recognition that you are confused about something, perhaps even where you are or what you’ve been doing. We’ve all read or seen some story of the person who wakes up after a drinking binge in someone else’s bed, and knows not where they are or who they are with. This is a state of confusion, one we might think of as induced confusion. Most of us have ...

The Trap in Blame

In this week’s spotlight I wish to address the notion of blame. Years ago I conducted the first ever double blind study utilizing subliminal communication to change the behavior of an incarcerated population. We ran some fairly extensive psychometric tests but discovered nothing new. We had high scores in self and social alienation, but that was expected. The first phase of our study was to determine what sort of messages might change the attitudes and beliefs among inmates and thereby lower hostility levels, increase reflectivity, and if we were lucky even interrupt the recidivism rates. Changing Perceptions We were working ...

Blue Lives

In this week’s spotlight I wish to take a moment to address the nature of law enforcement. We have recently seen officers literally lured to locations and then ambushed. No matter what you might think about your local police, stop for a moment and think about what sort of world we would have without them. Rule of Law History has a lot to tell us about states of lawlessness, and most of us would prefer to live in a country of laws. Unfortunately, there seems to be no limit on the hate groups today intent on killing all of us, ...

The Greatest Human Achievement of the 20th Century

In this week’s spotlight, I’d like to take a moment to discuss the recent road trip my son and I made evaluating the idea that the first moonwalk was the most significant achievement of humankind in the last century. When we asked folks for the truly greatest accomplishment of humankind in the 20th Century, almost unanimously the answer was Apollo 11’s mission to the moon. Neil Alden Armstrong’s famous quote, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” was often cited. Now for the record, Armstrong himself argued that what he really said, and in his view ...

Feeling Rational

In this week’s spotlight I wish to draw attention to the nature of some of our psychological mechanisms. I often write about the automatic nature of actions based on unconscious programs and indeed, in my book, “Gotcha! The Subordination of Free Will,” this is fleshed out in such detail that one reader reported this after reading the book, “It seems that almost everything we do is programmed in one way or another and comes from unconscious conditioning more than rational thought, and where as a professional psychologist I am aware of this, I never before beheld the total picture as ...

Mind, Not Genes, Makes the Difference

This week I wish to address the unimaginable power of the mind. I recently encountered a person who complained about his genes. He genuinely believed that he was a defective human being because his parents passed on genes that might be implicated in several disease potentials. He was certain he would encounter one or more of these diseases at some point in his life. Genetic Testing Technology today provides each of us with a look at our heritage. If you check the consumer information page of the Federal Trade Commission you will find that some companies say genetic testing, or ...

The Three Rs

This week’s spotlight is all about relationships. What kind of relationships do you have and what sort of relationships would you like to have? Most of us have family, friends, business cohorts or associates, and acquaintances that we chum around with from time to time. We rather nonchalantly, and typically unconsciously, classify these folks into different categories depending on our sense of trust and closeness. Now we also have relationships with fellow churchgoers, political parties, fund raising groups, sports organizations and so forth. We even have a sort-of relationship with the charities we choose to support. Indeed, when you examine ...

Is This the Direction of Human Evolution?

In this week’s blog I would like to spend a moment reflecting on the nature of being human. What exactly does it mean to be human? Is being human something physical, mental, metaphysical, all, or none of the above? What if tomorrow technology made it possible to connect our brains to machinery that would potentially exist indefinitely? Without our bodies, are we still human? What about our feelings, emotion and senses? What about our soul or spirit, does it all reside outside of the body or does it enter, as many say, at a certain stage of our development? Would it ...

THINK

  Before You Speak In this week’s spotlight I wish to remind us all of an idea that I have posted in my office, one that unfortunately I sometimes forget. The title to the picture in my office is THINK. The word is used as an acronym encouraging us to think before we speak. As such, the “T” stands for true—is what you’re about to say true? It’s not that hard or it shouldn’t be, but studies reveal the fact that all of us lie. It may be that we slightly exaggerate something and it can be that we just ...

New Age Science and The Badge of Credibility

  Today I wish to share something personal with you. When I was a child I imagined what it might be like to have a round table where you could bring the brightest minds together to question the nature of life. Of course you would invite the scientist, but you would also want the mystic, the philosopher, the metaphysician, and so forth. Fast-forward to some eight years ago, and I thought, why not use a radio show for exactly this purpose? I had done radio in the past going back to the late 1980s, so why not get back into ...