“The inner man has been created in the image of the outer.” – BF Skinner
“We live our lives, as it were, ‘inside out’, projecting the existence of an ‘I’ as separate from an external world which we try to manipulate to gain satisfaction.” – Namkhai Norbu
Introduction
Until better explanations became available, humans personified nature to explain its workings: gods with human looks and emotions have been invoked across cultures as causes behind natural processes, it was once believed that sperm housed little humans, and the mental faculty of foresight is often attributed to blind evolutionary processes that cannot anticipate future states. Fortunately, the scientific method has usurped much of the personified description of nature. Though we’ve realized personification’s inadequacy at explaining natural processes, the common understanding of our inner mental lives – themselves natural processes – hinges upon personification. We wrongly invoke personae (aka “selves”) as the causes behind human behaviour.[1] This oversimplification neglects the formative role of the environment on actions and mental states. Continue reading “Who’s in Control?”
Stories From the Ground. 