By Joel Bowman, on June 22nd, 2019% When I was young, many of the adults I knew would praise good deeds by saying that those who did them would receive “stars in their crowns.” The basic concept is that, although good deeds may not be rewarded in this life, they would be rewarded in the next. For a very long time now, most cultures have presupposed a life after death that would provide rewards or punishments depending on the way we lived our current life: the wicked will be punished, and the righteous will be rewarded.
The belief is understandable. Very few people are content with the . . . → Read More: Stars in Your Crown
By Joel Bowman, on February 25th, 2019% Reincarnation makes perfect sense from the standpoint of human learning. We need “do overs” to get it right. Most of us in the West (modern world), have a “one and done” view of life. We are born, grow up, grow old, and die. Then we (our souls) go either to heaven or hell, depending, or we just cease to exist. Throughout history, most people have rejected the concept of simply ceasing to exist. They want something more, so they establish religions and rituals that they think will give them a wonderful “afterlife” if they follow the right rules of behavior . . . → Read More: Reincarnation
By Joel Bowman, on May 29th, 2012% In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures
By Joel Bowman, on September 11th, 2011% In a recent article in the Huffington Post, George Lakoff (author or co-author of numerous books and articles on metaphors and other aspects of language usage), said the following about framing:
Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality, since it is what defines . . . → Read More: Framing—Again
By Joel Bowman, on June 4th, 2011% With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”:
One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”:
Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy)
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