Earl R. Smith II's Blog, page 35

Remembrance of Things Past

It used to be that, as a youth, you committed “indiscretions”. Youthful indiscretions were an adolescent tendency and excused with the observation that, given a little time, the child would become an adult. The modern tragedy is that the child is remaining a child longer and coming to terms with the impacts of such indiscretions is a more wrenching experience. “Aged children” are capable of far more damage to the social fabric. Extended adolescence brings…

Why all social media platforms are inherently predatory, will always support predators and how you can protect yourself

Earl R. Smith II. PhD DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com I want to make it very clear at the beginning that my purpose is not to demonize the various social media platforms. The CEOs of

Free Book – Business Development

More energy and effort are put into trying to figure out how to make business development work than any other management function; including advancing the technology that is at the heart of a company’s value proposition. There are plenty of books out that that deal with the technologies and tools of business development. This is not one of them. My focus is on the human interactions that accompany the development or expansion of a business development component of your senior management team.

The Illusion of Duality

So, when I am working with a student and they encounter the idea that one should not seek happiness - that happiness and unhappiness are the same thing - things tend to get confused. And there is a reason for this. Language is the great divider into categories. Buddhism seeks to dissolve those categories into the singular human experience of being.

Fallen False Idols

One of the residuals of living more than a few decades is that you get to see how things have changed. Sure, it’s challenging to believe that your memories are an accurate representation of the way things used to be. Time and the nature of humans makes such certainties elusive.

Don’t waste your life being envious of other people

If you've been following me so far, it will not surprise you that I see the title of this chapter as something much more complex than it appears on the surface. The core question is, of course, who’s doing what to whom. The simple formulation "I envy him" has a seductive symmetry about it. But when it’s deconstructed and the pieces examined carefully, things become far from simple.

Take a Chance – Change the Dance

Once you have a clearer idea of how your life is working, start to think about the role that each step plays in forming your life experience. Habits are steps. Mostly limiting ones. Things that you do without thinking. Out of reflexes that have built up over the years. Then there are the steps that take you beyond your comfort zone. That take you into unexplored areas and bring new experiences

Zen and Ambiguity

Some decades back, a way of thinking emerged - principally in the Southwest, high desert of the United States - which was distinctly non-Western. It built on the work of people like Lotfi Zadeh. At first, they focused on something called “fuzzy logic”. There was massive opposition, particularly from the University engineering schools. The whole idea that A was A and Not Not A was so central to the dominant thinking that the proposition that A might be more or less A and a little bit B and more than a little bit C was completely unacceptable.

The Conundrum of Personality

It has been well said that humility is no substitute for a good personality. Yet the emphasis in many discussions about Zen tends to focus on the former and rather neglects the latter. I’m sure there are good reasons why this occurs but, quite frankly, I find it confusing.

A Jigsaw Puzzle in the Dark

The potential in all sentient beings is the possibility of achieving self-awareness and to integrate into that self-awareness information gathered about the encountered world and the experience of being alive. One of the tools that is developed is that of language.