You never cease to completely lift me out of hopeless feelings about this insane chaos around us now. I want you to feel confident and just GOOD about your wisdom, insight, intelligence, and constant devotion to getting people to attentively pay attention to what's going on. You are a valuable voice for so many of us. Thank you. Thank you.
As a Kripalu yoga teacher and Soul Mentor for over 30 years (not the actual circus yoga), it is exactly embodied sensemaking that made me see through the lies 3 years ago! At 14 years old I nearly won a Canadian contest to be a young astronaut (Sagan was a hero of mine) but life catapulted me to explore inner space instead of outer space for the past 40 years! Thanks for all your wonderful work!
The problem with Sagan is that he was very critical and derogatory towards Velikovsky who was an excellent scholar with albeit challenging views.
Sagan continued to be influential to young people with regards to the nature of space and science while Velikosky is totally forgotten.
Sagan appears a populariser of the scientific paradigm like Bill Nye, Degrass Tyson or Brian Cox .
When Sagan writes of such things is it prescient social commentary or advanced cultural engineering?
What with the way physics and the sciences are, and their total inability to properly maintain a cohesive and robust theory I wonder if Sagan was a great scientist, a celebrity or a smooth bozo like many other scientific popularisers.
“ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
You are certainly onto something. However I feel in my gut that these discussions and thinking can and perhaps lead to something bigger and more revealing about the 'manipulation' of the human mind and time to where you might not call it 'dumbing down'. I tried to formulate a response and sound like an intelligent person, but words fail me. If I can capture my feelings in the gut at this moment that simply know there is a bigger behind-the-scenes acts of control and manipulation and transmutation happening that would shake our world. I trust that you Joe can get there and perhaps will very soon. I love your mind and how you write, you make me stop to collect my thoughts and check in to what I think is real or not.
Thank you for posting! i believe Sagan certainly hit the nail on the head in many areas. And yes we have to see a better way, as the quote goes “thoughts become things” (Mike Dooley). Some days it is hard to think the positive thoughts, but we have to get rid of the negativity and think more forward to a better, positive, collaborative future!
Thanks for reading the piece. And indeed, there is certainly a need to keep an eye on negative cycles. Leaning into a deeper felt sense of what is driving the 'negative' thoughts can be helpful too. What feeling is happening in the body during the negative thought? What emotion is felt? Sometimes when we get curious we learn more about what's happening within the body and nervous system and it can give us clues as to why something is then happening in the mind.
Insightful reflection on a big quote from Sagan. Thanks for these thoughts. I have enjoyed contemplating your ideas over the years about embodied sense making but wonder how they will make it into our culture. You see a better world and I do too, but sometimes I lose some hope.
I remember a workshop you did in your membership. It was about the biological processes linked to sensemaking or something like that, it was a big eye opener for me in terms of how I look at how my own stress affects my patience with sensemaking. I think I need to revisit that workshop.. and some of the practices. Lol
Sagan clearly was a very scientific thinker, and maybe was a bit closed off to ideas of the non material that could have been embraced. But I don’t know Sagan’s work that well. He’s right about some things for sure, other things I agree with your reflections of the dark and the light of these observations.
Thanks for reading and sahring your thoughts. Yes the workshop you're referring to is called The Physiology of Sensemaking. I plan on doing an update version actually, one that goes a bit deeper and that's slightly more refined. Within the next month or two, just finishing up my course on nervous system regulation and embodiment which will contain the baseline tools necessary for the exploration of all this work.
I can understand your sense of hopelessness, and I'd encourage you to explore it a bit. Instead of writing it off as "that's a negative thought, focus on positive ones only," lean into the sensation a bit. Where do u feel hopeless in your body? Can you sit with that and sort of be OK about it and curious at the same time? Does anything change?
Working with sensations and feelings in the body in this way can be powerful.
I generally agree with Sagan but I do not like his reference to "clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes". He is a wonderful scientist but does appear at times to be suspect of those areas of life that refer to things "not provable through the scientific method." He seems to equate these things with mental darkness and an inability to think clearly, and I take issue with that. Nikola Testa once said that when science comes to recognize the non-physical side of things as valid then science would truly advance. I think Tesla in this case was much more brilliant than Sagan!
I entirely agree with this observation you've made. I wanted to go into this but was already at 2200 words and felt I'd save it for another time. The non physical side of things is truly where our consciousness begins to expand in ways we cannot imagine while only being in cognition. Tesla was uniquely tied into a curious about that which he could not see and which in 'tuned into.' If only he was made more popular much earlier on. :)
Thanks for reading! Comfort zones are certainly worth reflecting on. In one way, comfort or feeling safe is essential to the health of our nervous system, but at the same time not having some stressors in life that challenge us reduces our ability to build capacity and resilience in the face of stress... even if that stress is a new idea.
Thank you Joe, great piece.
I think you will find this that I wrote from yesterday interesting and connects with many of the themes above.
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-great-dumbing
You never cease to completely lift me out of hopeless feelings about this insane chaos around us now. I want you to feel confident and just GOOD about your wisdom, insight, intelligence, and constant devotion to getting people to attentively pay attention to what's going on. You are a valuable voice for so many of us. Thank you. Thank you.
Love that term “embodied sensemaking”!
As a Kripalu yoga teacher and Soul Mentor for over 30 years (not the actual circus yoga), it is exactly embodied sensemaking that made me see through the lies 3 years ago! At 14 years old I nearly won a Canadian contest to be a young astronaut (Sagan was a hero of mine) but life catapulted me to explore inner space instead of outer space for the past 40 years! Thanks for all your wonderful work!
The problem with Sagan is that he was very critical and derogatory towards Velikovsky who was an excellent scholar with albeit challenging views.
Sagan continued to be influential to young people with regards to the nature of space and science while Velikosky is totally forgotten.
Sagan appears a populariser of the scientific paradigm like Bill Nye, Degrass Tyson or Brian Cox .
When Sagan writes of such things is it prescient social commentary or advanced cultural engineering?
What with the way physics and the sciences are, and their total inability to properly maintain a cohesive and robust theory I wonder if Sagan was a great scientist, a celebrity or a smooth bozo like many other scientific popularisers.
“ When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
You are certainly onto something. However I feel in my gut that these discussions and thinking can and perhaps lead to something bigger and more revealing about the 'manipulation' of the human mind and time to where you might not call it 'dumbing down'. I tried to formulate a response and sound like an intelligent person, but words fail me. If I can capture my feelings in the gut at this moment that simply know there is a bigger behind-the-scenes acts of control and manipulation and transmutation happening that would shake our world. I trust that you Joe can get there and perhaps will very soon. I love your mind and how you write, you make me stop to collect my thoughts and check in to what I think is real or not.
Thank you for posting! i believe Sagan certainly hit the nail on the head in many areas. And yes we have to see a better way, as the quote goes “thoughts become things” (Mike Dooley). Some days it is hard to think the positive thoughts, but we have to get rid of the negativity and think more forward to a better, positive, collaborative future!
Thanks for reading the piece. And indeed, there is certainly a need to keep an eye on negative cycles. Leaning into a deeper felt sense of what is driving the 'negative' thoughts can be helpful too. What feeling is happening in the body during the negative thought? What emotion is felt? Sometimes when we get curious we learn more about what's happening within the body and nervous system and it can give us clues as to why something is then happening in the mind.
Insightful reflection on a big quote from Sagan. Thanks for these thoughts. I have enjoyed contemplating your ideas over the years about embodied sense making but wonder how they will make it into our culture. You see a better world and I do too, but sometimes I lose some hope.
I remember a workshop you did in your membership. It was about the biological processes linked to sensemaking or something like that, it was a big eye opener for me in terms of how I look at how my own stress affects my patience with sensemaking. I think I need to revisit that workshop.. and some of the practices. Lol
Sagan clearly was a very scientific thinker, and maybe was a bit closed off to ideas of the non material that could have been embraced. But I don’t know Sagan’s work that well. He’s right about some things for sure, other things I agree with your reflections of the dark and the light of these observations.
Thanks for reading and sahring your thoughts. Yes the workshop you're referring to is called The Physiology of Sensemaking. I plan on doing an update version actually, one that goes a bit deeper and that's slightly more refined. Within the next month or two, just finishing up my course on nervous system regulation and embodiment which will contain the baseline tools necessary for the exploration of all this work.
I can understand your sense of hopelessness, and I'd encourage you to explore it a bit. Instead of writing it off as "that's a negative thought, focus on positive ones only," lean into the sensation a bit. Where do u feel hopeless in your body? Can you sit with that and sort of be OK about it and curious at the same time? Does anything change?
Working with sensations and feelings in the body in this way can be powerful.
A wonderful author for his time!
I generally agree with Sagan but I do not like his reference to "clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes". He is a wonderful scientist but does appear at times to be suspect of those areas of life that refer to things "not provable through the scientific method." He seems to equate these things with mental darkness and an inability to think clearly, and I take issue with that. Nikola Testa once said that when science comes to recognize the non-physical side of things as valid then science would truly advance. I think Tesla in this case was much more brilliant than Sagan!
I entirely agree with this observation you've made. I wanted to go into this but was already at 2200 words and felt I'd save it for another time. The non physical side of things is truly where our consciousness begins to expand in ways we cannot imagine while only being in cognition. Tesla was uniquely tied into a curious about that which he could not see and which in 'tuned into.' If only he was made more popular much earlier on. :)
Insightful indeed!
Thanks for reading John!
Thanks for reading! Comfort zones are certainly worth reflecting on. In one way, comfort or feeling safe is essential to the health of our nervous system, but at the same time not having some stressors in life that challenge us reduces our ability to build capacity and resilience in the face of stress... even if that stress is a new idea.
A fine balancing act :)