Eldon Taylor's Blog, page 21

The Universe as Packets of Information

Imagine a world of information packets—a world where what we label energy and mass is indeed a composition of information packets. How could we come to understand such a world? Units of Knowledge Think of the universe as intelligence. When we master an observation and express it mathematically and so forth, what we have really done is grasp some part of this intelligence. The intelligence, somewhat analogously to our own, is compiled of information units. We think of these units when it comes to our own thinking as units of knowledge, and we knit them together in order to understand ...

Prime Movers

Aristotle described the nature of the universe as a series of events that eventually leads back to a mover that is itself not moved, thus the unmoved mover. This unmoved mover is known as the Prime Mover. However, the prime movers that I have in mind are not near so esoteric or metaphysical. No—the primes I have in mind are all of those little triggers that cause us to think or act in certain predictable ways that we are not conscious of. For example, there is a study where students were provided a number of words that are associated with ...

Blank-out Voodoo

This week I would like to address a notion I think of as just another form of voodoo, and that’s the idea of blank-out. What do I mean by blank-out? No one tells this story better than Ayn Rand. Quoting Atlas Shrugged, “…they believe that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not utter—and their magic tool is the blank-out, the pretense that nothing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to identify it.” Refusal to Identify We live at a time when events like that which occurred in San Bernardino last ...

The Gift of Giving

This week I wish to address the benefits of giving. We have all just been through the Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness—sales everywhere promising price cuts like never before, shouting limited quantities, offering customer testimonials, and using every other motivational and compliance principle—urging us to buy now! Shop early and save; shop early while quantities last; prices slashed on best sellers; and more—those have been the headlines in every sort of media. And if you’re at all like most of us, you were not immune to the pitches. Our wallets all came out and we began to spend. Why? ...

Protected Freedoms or Just Protected?

This week I wish to draw your attention to something I find very disturbing, and that is the loss of certain Constitutional rights. Now we’re all familiar with the idea that some of our rights were marginalized as a result of the Patriot Act, but I’m not so sure that everyone knows just how far some of this has gone. For example, there is a facility in Chicago known as Homan Square where more than 7,000 people are questionably detained. According to a transparency lawsuit filed by the Guardian, “Police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only .094% of ...

Money

Money is the subject of this week’s blog. All together too many people want it and yet push it away because they believe that money and profit are evil. Is profit evil in your mind? Should entrepreneurs and businesses in general seek to do business at a loss, or even at some break-even point, in the name of social good? Would creativity be kindled if we but shared and shared alike—I mean what if the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world shared equally with the folks sitting at home watching TV who are ...

Spirituality as a Tool for Mind Control

This week I wish to discuss something that will no doubt bring about considerable controversy, and that is the role religion and spirituality potentially play in orchestrating mass behavior. We are all familiar with the history of the crusades and today of the holy war being carried out by some against the designated infidel. To many in the world, we in the Western civilization are indeed the infidels! As such, it is easy to witness the horrors of hard brain washing—the kind that insists heaven is but a moment away when you blow up those perverse infidels; but there is ...

Funnels

Interactive funnels exist to persuade, altering our beliefs about almost anything.

Hope

This week we focus on the subject of character. What character traits are indicative of wellbeing? In 2004 Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson published their findings regarding character in the book, “Character Strengths and Virtues.” They studied 24 character strengths. In a recent study, Scott Barry Kaufman together with Spencer Greenberg, Susan Cain, and the Quiet Revolution collected data on 517 folks looking for a correlation between character as described by Seligman and Petersen, and well-being. They found hope to be the top trait correlated with wellbeing. 1 Helplessness/Hopelessness I reported on Seligman’s work with helpless-hopeless dogs in my book, ...

Expectation Precedes Perception

This week our subject is the genie within. If you look at Goodreads for quotes from authors, the first one you find under my name says this, “The absolutely awesome incredible power of belief is the genie in your life.” Indeed, in my book, “I Believe: When What You Believe Matters,” the bottom line take-away after examining all of the science can be stated this way, “Everything you believe matters!” Negative Spiritual Beliefs Imagine this: within you there is an awesome force with a potential creative power that can express your fears and worries just as quickly as your desires ...