The modern adaptations of meditation largely position meditation as a way to experience peace/calm/rest and to develop self-awareness of your thoughts that allows you space to change your inner environment. These are both true and great.
But the actual, original purpose of any inward looking practice -- meditation, inquiry, contemplation -- is to discover the nature of your consciousness, to answer the question, "who or what am I?" by starting with the only part of our experience that is not changeful -- our awareness that we exist.
When you begin to try to honestly answer this question -- "when I say 'I', what am I referring to? this body? this mind? how can I know what I am, beyond a theory or thought? etc" -- it leads to a radical and yet in retrospect totally natural process of self-investigation -- turning your self-awareness upon itself -- whose end product is called self-realization, spiritual awakening or enlightenment.
If you set aside your preconceived notions and read it as a series of hypotheses that must be confirmed within your own direct experience, it will transform your experience of reality and set you on the (pathless) path to enlightenment.
Amazon for Education: We're the first marketplace that helps people discover, compare & enroll in trusted local classes (from casual classes like cooking, art & Spanish, to professional programs like finance, writing & programming).
Philosophy taught me to ask the following question: "What is the purpose of our university degree?" If the answer is: "to secure a well paying, promising job after college", then I think at worst, philosophy is on par with a wealth of other majors. Consider however that the answer might be: "to find oneself. To discover what what causes in us joy, sorrow, anger. To provide us with a lens through which we will view the rest of our lives. To equip us for the magnitude of our future mental, emotional, and physical reality (of which our occupation plays only a part). To teach us how to understand our own mind." In this case, is there any major more important? One thing I can promise is that your salary, your achievements, your success - none of these will bring you peace.
Really like the idea - have been waiting for an application that will allow teachers to become masters of their own digital pedagogical content. However, I'm not a huge fan of the attack on classrooms - perhaps it's a personal opinion, but 'needing improvement' doesn't necessarily mean 'broken', and the statement makes me question the efficacy of a service purporting to be a panacea for all the flaws in a traditional classroom.
I loved this, thanks.
The hardest part about being a creative / writer, or even entrepreneur is the high expectations set by those you admire, and the impossibility of fully imagining the amount of time it will take you to reach their level.
I don't know how true it is, or whether others agree, but I have always felt (except with work of exceptional brilliance), that I have the power (given enough work) to create work on the same level of anything I can see and appreciate - the key, I think is knowing why I appreciate it.
This was going to be my comment - I often do my on-phone reading on the subway/elevator - would be great to have an app that worked when I don't have cell phone service.
As a person with hereditary skin issues (both my dad and grandad have suffered for years, and now it's setting in for me), I'm definitely going to try it - my father and I already noticed a big shift when changing from scented to unscented shampoos and soaps - I'm willing to give the no-soap a go to calm down the rest of my skin - cheers. I'll comment again if I notice a sudden down-tick in the number of people willing to spend time with me ;)
I agree with you, Matt - I wouldn't want to just pick the first technical cofounder that could dazzle me with jargon I haven't heard.
I'm a business type, and I absolutely believe that business types with great ideas and hypotheses they want to test can hire a team to get their minimum viable product off the ground, for a very reasonable price. And, if skilled at product development, they can get quite far on this track.
Yes, of course you want to partner with a great technical co-founder, but how do you expect to attract such a hero without having proven your worth, the viability of your idea, etc.
What's a bit frustrating about this post is that it's going to paralyze a lot of perfectly good business folks with the ingenuity to get it going on their own first. I'm not saying that hiring a team is a long term strategy, but in the short term? HELL YES! YOU CAN DO IT!
I'd say every situation has an escalating set of responses, and I certainly don't believe that violence is always unacceptable, especially when nonviolent means have failed.
I'd suggest that a large part of why MLK succeeded is because Malcolm X was loudly stating the alternative.
I've never been physically bullied, as I've always been both a dork and an athlete, but I was teased relentlessly early on. My dad's advice was always to ignore, and this just didn't work well enough. That's how I discovered the power of personality - the power to fire back is (sadly) what wins respect of children.
The challenge once you've gained the skill is to reign it in - to be intentional in your response, and to sometimes decide that nonviolence, or silence IS actually the way to go.
I'm with you on the research process.
I find that what appeals to most users doesn't appeal to me, which means that even customer reviews have to be carefully read to determine what was actually positive and negative. In NYC, for instance, I never trust people who say the staff were rude - staff are typically rude if you're rude to them.
Regarding preferneces, read Gladwell's essay - The ketchup conundrum -http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html. It discusses Prego's tomato sauce and highlights something these guys are missing - the concept of customer segmentation. Different people have different preferences. Since when was a one size fits all universally appealing?
Still, I can imagine this being the lazy buyer's dream, I suppose.
Though I agree with some of the above comments that the technological innovations since 1977 haven't been altogether uninspiring, I do wonder: Who right now is funding innovation that doesn't directly have a business model tied to it? i.e., innovation for the sake of innovation, without the startup pitch, killer ceo, etc - the scientist pushing the limits for the sake of science?
Is NASA a place where this happens?
And is it frivolous to suggest that this kind of innovation without an obvious money-making scheme is important?
Interesting thought on the tax loophole closing (when considered a bit more broadly). If we must put up with high taxes, then what's the point if only the people who can afford clever accountants can find a way to shuffle money to loophole their way into lower tax brackets? I used to work for a Hollywood account, and every single actor has their own company for this reason.
Wasn't it Warren Buffet that mentioned he pays less taxes than his secretary? Or is this propaganda that I've been duped into believing?
I'm excited by the number of people who have said this about the movie, as well as the debate about 'the right education reform' that the movie has spurred. Regardless of which side each person is on, it's clear that everyone is uniting under a common goal - to improve our nations schools - and it's inevitable that we would all have slightly different approaches and goals.
What I wonder is how many people like yourself will take that sudden gnawing question and begin working towards the change you believe in. Will it create a new wave of activists, movers, shakers and changers? Or just change the popular topic of conversation at cocktail parties and social news websites?
I'm totally with you about being excited that the topic is getting the attention it deserves - if enough people are turning heads, lending a dollar and a hand, maybe we can fix the problems with our education system.
However, the hardest part about giving a lot of attention to a topic is that people who are not authorities on the subject end up with opinions about what's going on, purely based on the media or the propaganda campaigns of the bigger players.
Even in examining my own perspective, I find myself dramatically in favor of destroying the teacher's union, expanding school hours and curricula, and providing more freedom to the students, so that they can engage themselves in the subject that most interests them and appeals to their strengths. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?
But the problem with this is that I'm not an educator. I don't know what conditions are like and I don't know what the real challenges are - I just know what I'm being told by the media. Just as in a startup, we have a lot of potentially unproven hypotheses that need testing.
This then to me is the real promise of the charter school movement - not that all of them are successful (most are not - even the ones featured aren't nearly as great as they seem, as I'm finding out from working with them), but that they represent the freedom to try new things, measure them, and figure out what does work.
What scares me is that people think they have the silver bullet, rather than the silver hypothesis.
Even in making these drastic changes, if no improvement is wrought, then what?
Will people give up? Or pivot?
You said it: "Parents should be teaching these".
But how can we rely on parents to do the right kinds of teaching when there's literally no requirement to becoming a parent? I suspect that one of the things that has held schools back is a hesitation to teach things that technically fall in the domain of parenting, but as more and more studies seem to be showing, parents are often the weakest point of the child's education. I think the educational models of the future will either focus on parental education or bring even more things (like values, for instance) under the umbrella of 'schooling'.
Definitely intending to eventually - but this is a much longer term goal for me - not sure I'd be of much help in the very near future.
My long term vision is to blend traditional schooling with both practical skills (how to manage your credit, etc.) and interpersonal, soft skills (self awareness, conflict resolution, etc.) in an effort to empower students to take control of their own lives.
More specifically, I envision the future library as a place that teaches people how to learn:
- How to use online searches intelligently
- How to use online crowd-sourced resources
- How best to use online communities to gain knowledge
- How to find relevant online classes
Though I agree with some of the above comments that people will continue to benefit from the physical books, I do believe that libraries will transition to a Netflix model, where they have access to a limited number of e-books that can be loaned to e-readers for a limited time.
But the actual, original purpose of any inward looking practice -- meditation, inquiry, contemplation -- is to discover the nature of your consciousness, to answer the question, "who or what am I?" by starting with the only part of our experience that is not changeful -- our awareness that we exist.
When you begin to try to honestly answer this question -- "when I say 'I', what am I referring to? this body? this mind? how can I know what I am, beyond a theory or thought? etc" -- it leads to a radical and yet in retrospect totally natural process of self-investigation -- turning your self-awareness upon itself -- whose end product is called self-realization, spiritual awakening or enlightenment.