I can never tell if my "hits" are from robots or human beings. Please do me a huge favor and leave a comment, however short, to tell me someone is out there reading this stuff ... A lot of people claim to be "spiritual" but not "religious". Lots of folks are against "religion", whatever that is. I think religion is not what people think. You may find my definition a bit odd ... In fact, sometimes I thnk a skunk smells as bad by any name. What is objectionable about "religion" is objectionable about a lot of other ways of organizing society and thought patterns. It is this core that's objectionable. It's only in the case of religion that this core seems to be essential . AUTHORITY To me, it's the blood and bones of a religion is the emphasis on authority. Most commonly, the authority is "God" but since God doesn't really exist, this boils down the authority of a hierarchy of priests. Truth defined by bureaucracy

I can never tell if my "hits" are from robots or human beings. Please do me a huge favor and leave a comment, however short, to tell me someone is out there reading this stuff ... Sigh. Another guy killed by train while fiddling with his phone . For a lot of us, flight from the simple reality of the moment can seem frantic, even fatal. It seems to be natural for us to spend our time with our heads in the fog. Music. Chat with passenger. Listen to the "news". Anything but here and now. The very essence of Zen is to pay attention . For many, the first introduction to Zen is " Zazen ". which literally means "just sitting". But Zen covers a lot of things like that, such as just walking, just eating, just driving, just listening. Obviously, there are times when "just crossing the railway tracks" would have been a life-saving lesson for one guy.

I can never tell if my "hits" are from robots or human beings. Please do me a huge favor and leave a comment, however short, to tell me someone is out there reading this stuff ... I owe Hofstadter a huge debt of gratitude for his "Surfaces and Essences" and, to a lesser extent "I Am a Strange Loop". He points out the central role that analogy plays in our thinking and, in Strange Loop, the fact that we "bootstrap" our idea of what it is to be human through an analogy between our own experience and that of others.  Our conviction that the world is full of folks like us and that we are a person such as those around us is ultimately based on analogy. We then proceed to endlessly refine this most fundamental of analogies. What is it like to be somebody else? Let me explain what it is like to be me. I wonder what it would be like to be James Bond? Or Superman? Or God? Such curiosity leads us quickly into deep trouble. By analogy, we ask ourselves how