Dismantling the Architecture of Fear

On the subject of how intelligence does NOT protect us from ego games, Dale Cipperley said: “I know a “rocket scientist” (okay he worked on satellites) and he’s an irrational dick sometimes. Skill and ability in one field that requires rational thought doesn’t mean they aren’t irrational in other aspects of their lives.

Here’s a good example. I actually had to argue the merits and reasoning about sheltering in place with someone who used to work in a clean room and has been to the ER before with pneumonia.

It’s that whole homunculus trope where there is a control room in our heads and different little idiots take turns at the wheel driving our bodies. It is almost like I can see through their eyeballs/portholes during an argument when one little asshole homunculus elbows the rational one out of the driver’s seat and screams `NO I’LL DRIVE!’”

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I’ve been stalled on my lucid dreaming. I’ve been able to get close, but not quite step over the line. That’s all right. It will happen.

In the book MASTERY George Leonard said that the reason most people never achieve real excellence in anything is that they can’t handle the long “fallow” periods where it seems nothing is happening, or even that they are regressing.

The truth is more like a souffle cooking in an oven, or a mushroom growing underground: you can’t see it, but internal integrations and growth are happening at a rapid pace. But if you open the oven to peek, or dig…