Phil Mayes's Blog
April 7, 2025
I’m Writing on Substack
I’m writing on Substack now; check it out at https://philmayes.substack.com/
May 26, 2024
Why We Like Order In Our Life
“Moth and rust doth corrupt.” The nature of things to disintegrate, to devolve into chaos, has long been observed. Yet order, pattern, and structure are everywhere we look. Spider webs. Trees. Streets. Books. Time would destroy all of these, yet …
May 10, 2024
What Is The Next Stage In Evolution For Humans?
Evolution never stops, so there will be a post-human species at some point in the future, and this may arrive sooner, rather than later. Not every species lasts for millions of years like dinosaurs did. When the environment changes fast, …
April 29, 2024
What is the Fundamental Difference that Separates People Politically?
Political positions are emotional as well as rational, and depend on the degree of trust in other people. Lower trust reduces the boundary of identification and the degree of cooperation between people. Knowing the emotional reasons for political positions makes them more understandable and helps in finding acceptable solutions.Read more ›
April 20, 2024
How To Balance Individualism And Community In Society
People are neither completely social like ants, nor completely independent like most spiders. We have characteristics of both, and each attribute has its own benefits and drawbacks.Read more ›
April 13, 2024
The Two Different Ways We Navigate In The World
Language has allowed us to understand and navigate in the world, but we also rely on emotions and instincts. Much of our distress as humans is because we are receiving contradictory messages about the world. It is like listening to two radio stations at once.Read more ›
April 6, 2024
Why Language Is The Human Superpower
How can we best make sense of the world? There are a number of areas that, taken together, give a useful description of the human condition: the nature of society, how language is essential for its complexity, and further consequences …
October 15, 2023
Small War in Middle East; Climate Tipping Point Has Begun
I’m not minimizing the horror of what is happening in Israel, and I assign blame to both sides, whether the split is 90/10 or 60/40. But look at the above chart of global temperature deviations since 1850 from the NY Times …
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July 10, 2023
How Twitter and Other Social Media Will Fade Away
There is much buzz about Threads and whether it can be the successor to Twitter. Twitter has been much in the news since Musk bought it, with each of his attempts to make it profitable causing more damage to the …
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June 20, 2023
Writing Structure
In our writing group, there was at one time an ongoing discussion between two members on structure: one plotted out the entire arc before writing; the other jumped into the stream and let the story cut its own course. I …
