> A final, more pleasurable step you can take to increase your intellectual humility comes in the form of deliberately invoking in oneself the emotion of awe. Several studies have shown that awe quietens the ego and prompts epistemological openness – that is, a greater willingness to look at things differently and to recognise the gaps in one’s knowledge.
If you cannot remember the last time you experienced awe, I highly recommend seeking it out. It may be important for fostering intellectual humility, but it seems just as important for fostering a better outlook/framing on life in general and brings with it a sense of wellbeing.
After burning out and starting a sabbatical last year, I went on a road trip that provided many moments of awe: a snowy mountain sunrise in the Rockies, the Milky Way in one of the darkest spots in Utah, long hikes through the redwoods, etc.
What struck me was that I had forgotten what these feelings felt like, and that I hadn’t felt them since I was a kid.
Glimpsing them reminded me how important they are, and I’m convinced that sustainability in future work endeavors (and life in general) involves an appropriate dose of awe and wonder on an ongoing basis.
Road trips into the desert aren’t necessary to experience this either (for me anyway) - just a very effective way to guarantee the experience (again, for me). But I can find it by pondering the bigger questions about life and the sheer improbability of our existence. Dedicating some regular time to this kind of reflection has been beneficial.
And I do find that I’m more open to possibilities. But that seems like just one of the outcomes from the “nourishment” of these experiences.
> If you cannot remember the last time you experienced awe, I highly recommend seeking it out
The older I get, the more I appreciate the sheer vastness of space and the amount of stuff in it, and contrasting the size of it to our little pale blue dot. The Nihilists will say our time here is all meaningless and we'll eventually be swallowed by the Sun if we don't go star faring. We better get our act together in terms of space travel before it's too late.
We need to think long-term and occupy Mars, then taken to its logical conclusion: Von Neumann machines which populate our galaxy. That's if we're not sucked into the black hole in the center of our galaxy. But at least we gave it a shot. We outsmarted the natural cycles of the solar system and transcended it, possibly building a Dyson sphere around the Sun and then hopped to other star systems and built Dyson spheres around them.
When I was young, I knew the Universe was very big. But over the years, helped by various documentaries, YouTube videos, and various psychedelics, I surmised we are destined for something much more than mere Earth. Our spirit cries for space travel, yet at the same time it's hampered by the rape of the planet and late-stage capitalism and 'infinite growth' at all costs.
Going to the stars at all costs is similarly destructive.
This galaxy won't last forever. Even this expanse may collapse and be reborn. If matter is eternal then life will probably arise again. So relax, enjoy the ride, and do what you can to leave the place better than you found it.
It is one of those things where one can exist in a simultaneous state of being involved with the works of the world and planning for the future and realizing that it is all but an act and that on the grand scheme we are but dust.
You can also get awe in some of the more simple things of life, the full moon on a clear night or the swirl of leaves in a stream. Those are really cool.
I took a walk last night to look at the sunset, and felt a strong feeling of both awe and melancholy as I did so.
Is it really so rare to be awed by natural beauty, or just humbled by where one is in life relative to oneself in the past, and others (both more and less fortunate) in the present?
When I think of friends made, friends not present, and all of the life trajectories that I can keep track of, I feel it’s all just a long and strange trip, man.
Cheap telescopes do this for me :) I usually get them whenever I move places, nothing fancy or special, just something to star into the void and be struck with wonder.
I think there's an underappreciated reason for trying to cultivate this kind of mind.
> With eyes and mind wide open, it’s so much easier to enjoy the wonders of the world
Never occurred to me before but by constantly learning new things (instrument, rock climbing, history of Iran, sewing..) I've been cultivating a mindset of gratitude for the world and appreciation of others' abilities. I feel it has helped bring my brain slowly back into balance from being quite depressed. Focusing on learning something new was a way out.
"Invoking awe" is easy, travel to places you've never been, do things you've never done, and what not.
Richard Feynman once said "The easiest person to fool is yourself".
The real "humility" is how you'd respond when someone tell you how wrong you are. Most people response with "fight", instead of reflecting, which is the "correct spiritual" response many people should take, because logically you never know 100% of everything to be 100% sure about anything.
Are people "intellectually humble" or just more humble in general?
Many intellectual people use their intelligence and authority as a coping mechanism for poor social skills or low self esteem. As a manager + systems architect, I've worked with a lot of people who almost have PTSD from dealing with the petty tyrants in our industry, and I've been told that academia is much worse.
If you want to foster shoshin, just listen more than you speak. I've got two decades of experience and my third year interns teach me cool things all the time.
Maybe I'm living in another world, but I think it's far more likely to find people with low self esteem than overconfidence and neither is capable of being humble.
People who are proud about "staying humble" are every bit as insufferable.
Not sure why low self esteem isn’t covered as a major problem if you want to learn things. It’s as bad as over confidence, you stop yourself from learning anything remotely difficult because you talk yourself down habitually
Yep. I struggled with this a lot in high school and college. It led to poor grades and taking extra years I couldn't really afford at the time to finish college.
This was a conflict between my low self esteem and modest ambition to finish school and start a career. I worried constantly if I was really going to fail at something so simple. This generated so much distracting anxiety for me until I finally upped the dose on the usual self-medication (mostly booze) to turn my brain off and just start doing things. A few years later I finally awoke from those hazier times in a much happier place making a decent living.
Mine is definitely not a unique story, but I just wanted to agree that our culture largely ignores low self esteem because it's one of the hardest problems to fix.
This article title is what you call Orientalism. 初心 is not a mystical ancient philosophy term unknown to the West. It's "beginner's mindset" or "openness to new concepts".
Actually, knowing "openness" is more important because knowing what Big 5 personality traits are protects you from believing in MBTI.
"Shoshin" translated to English means going back to one's roots. Remembering why you're doing what you're doing, and so on. Life can get overwhelming and it's far too easy to lose track of the fundamentals.
Yes, in the same way as "evangelist" and "novice" are everyday words in English. This does not invalidate their original religious meaning. Daisetz Suzuki I'm sure was quite aware of both the everyday usage and the Buddhist origins.
"Novice" doesn't originally have religious roots; in the story of its etymology, it got sidetracked into religion.
Quite likely because the only dudes who knew Latin in the Middle Ages were in monasteries, and so they applied Latin words they learned to their circumstances. "Hey, it says here that when Romans brought in a new imported, inexperienced slave, they called them novicus. Let's use that for our newcomers! After all, we make them do chores, like slaves, LOLZ!"
Sure the root word might be Latin, (and so is a majority of European vocabulary), but the specific usage of "novice" meaning "newbie" in English, comes from the monastic orders, via French.
Monastic orders, which, in fact, did not "do stuff, like slaves, LOLZ", but were instrumental in preserving (or rediscovering) knowledge and technology from the imperial era.
And this article is mostly talking about everyday concepts like learning. But there's no denying that the idea of beginner's mind is used within Zen in a special sense. From Dogen's essay On the Endeavour of the Way:
> Because practice within realization occurs at the moment of practice, the practice of beginner's mind is itself the entire original realization.
as a Zen trainee, i am pretty sure there is no secret meaning to the otherwise normal words. beginer's mind is just that mind when you have no experience to predict what is expected next.
This narrative is way too simple. The US-American Frank Bursley Taylor proposed something like condinental drift even before Wegener. One of Wegeners early opponents, Hans Cloos, nevertheless held him in high regard. Despite his dissent from the mainstream, he received a professorship in Graz.
The opposition against him at the time was well justified. His theory lacked a convincing explanation about the driving force of plate tectonics, which he identified as tidal and centrifugal forces in his early theory. (The extent to which these forces contribute to plate tectonics is still disputed today.) It was only later (after he had drawn the harsh criticism quoted in the article) that he considered convection currents as the main driving force.
This author's example does not inspire confidence in the rest of the article:
> "Take the matter of genetically modified (GM) foods, which are overwhelmingly considered to be safe based on current scientific knowledge. Research has shown that people who hold the strongest anti-GM views, believing that they are harmful, are the most inclined to overestimate their relevant knowledge."
If I insert the genes coding the enzymatic pathway for production of a virulent mammalian toxin into a maize plant, that's going to be very unsafe, particularly if pollen from that plant can carry those genes into someone's non-GMO cornfield.
On the other hand, if I make a minor specific edit to the regulatory region upstream from a gene that controls the onset of flowering in a tomato plant, with the idea of producing an early-flowering varietal for northern climates, that's entirely safe (assuming no other accidental changes were made).
Claiming that GMO foods are 'universally acknowledged to be safe' is like claiming metallurgy is universally acknowledged to be safe. It all depends on the specific application and how it's done, e.g. heavy metal pollution is a major issue in many places because of lack of pollution controls.
Placing blind faith in governmental and corporate scientists because they wear the white coats of authority is not that different from blind obedience to the priestly caste of prior centuries. If they can't provide explanations that the educated layperson can understand, and if they can't respond to detailed criticisms of their claims, then they should not be trusted.
First, even if the author is mistaken with regards to GM foods, it's credibility with regards to shoshin shouldn't be affected (e.g. how are GMO and shoshin related??)
Secondly, your hypothetical super toxic GM food doesn't exist. He was referring to reality, not to sci-fi horror movies GM food where a mad scientist makes a maize expressing lethal bacterial toxins.
About 20 years ago 'mad scientists' were proposing introduction of Antarctic fish antifreeze proteins into strawberries and tomatoes to improve their shelf life...
> On the other hand, if I make a minor specific edit to the regulatory region upstream from a gene that controls the onset of flowering in a tomato plant, with the idea of producing an early-flowering varietal for northern climates, that's entirely safe (assuming no other accidental changes were made).
No, this is not true if someone is pointing a nuclear missile at NYC and will fire it if you "make a minor specific edit to the regulatory region upstream from a gene that controls the onset of flowering in a tomato plant". It's important that you clarify the point by also adding in the caveat excluding this case. I am also told that what you propose is unsafe in the event that there is a terrorist with a bomb who will explode in Penn Station if you make that edit.
It is important that we be precise with safety language since otherwise we may mislead people about the state of the field. Please be more responsible.
This is nonsense, it’s obvious what type of safety OP meant. I have no idea what could be irresponsible about not including contrived, ridiculous scenarios.
It’s like saying he also should have accounted for the possibility fairies will turn you into a newt if you edit a gene, or into a rabbit, or if a wizard will turn you into a newt. You can make up an infinite amount of this bs.
I can offer an analogy. Growing up in the northwestern US, I've seen firsthand how 95% of the forest in the lower 48 was harvested for timber, leaving only small pockets of primordial forest. That and global warming delivered us the runaway fire seasons we have today where summer is synonymous with poor air quality, poor water quality, erosion, loss of habitat, etc etc etc.
There are countless propaganda billboards here that say stuff like "thin the threat". The timber industry really wants to get back into wilderness areas and places designated roadless by the Clinton administration back in the 90s.
But what I think most of us want is for the timber industry to admit their guilt. Basically that would look something like a bankruptcy and a multi-billion dollar apology in the form of trusts and endowments to leave forests alone and invest in stuff like tree farms and hemp. Which will never come.
I've yet to see a major apology from GMO companies for the ways they've corrupted staple crops like wheat. We're eating processed whole grains today that were meant for animal feed (cows have 4 stomachs that can handle it, we can't), stuff like oatmeal loaded with glyphosate, and it's attacking our gut lining and causing autoimmune diseases at a scale that the previous generation can't understand.
So until there are reparations for the damage done, we simple can't trust those companies or the government agencies they've captured, or the politicians they've bought, or the court justices they've installed. The problem goes so deep in our political system that people can't even see it anymore. That's why the wealthy owners of those companies keep us divided over the merits of various remedies, so we don't wake up to the facts of how we're being manipulated into giving up our health to shave a few pennies off the price to increase their profits.
Edit: I'm struggling to find evidence for the effects of whole grain husks on the gut lining. But basically, the anti-pest compounds in grain husks make it past stomach acid, and when the villi (papillae was maybe the wrong term) in the lining of the small intestine try to eat the partially-digested proteins, it damages or kills them. The cycle of damage and repair continues through life until middle age, when the cells start losing their healing ability. Then one acquires sensitivity to wheat and other grains like I did, which I originally thought was sensitivity to legumes and nightshades:
Then the villi become sparse or die, leaving the person unable to easily absorb vitamins and minerals, sending them into chronic starvation mode and obesity:
GMOs exacerbate this by increasing the percentages of anti-pest compounds in husks. I try to avoid whole grains now after a lifetime of seeking them. If I must eat them, I try to stick to organic.
>We're eating processed whole grains today that were meant for animal feed (cows have 4 stomachs that can handle it, we can't)
Huh? Whole grains aren't "processed"; if anything they're less processed that other grains, hence the word "whole".
We can "handle" almost anything that cows can handle with their 4 stomachs, including grass. We eat lots of food that we can't digest very well, such as lettuce and other fibers. The difference between us and cows is that they derive more energy from plant matter, whereas we just poop most of it out, but it's ok because more fiber helps keep our colons clean, plus makes us feel full so we don't eat more calorie-laden foods that make us fat.
I just meant that processed foods aren't as likely to remove the husk as when people cook with flour themselves. I don't really disagree about the cow stuff, although they don't live long enough before slaughter to encounter the late digestive issues that humans are getting.
My real point was just that GMOs were advertised as decreasing the cost of feeding the world. What that meant in practice was reducing the cost of grain for livestock, since it takes 4.5-7.5 pounds of feed to make 1 pound of beef, so reducing that cost takes priority. Then those GMO crops, not meant for human consumption, cross-contaminated the crops we eat.
>although they don't live long enough before slaughter to encounter the late digestive issues that humans are getting.
What "late digestive issues"? People have been eating whole grains for thousands of years, and there's no evidence this causes any problems. Just look at people in the Mediterranean region; their diet has had such foods for ages and they're some of the healthiest people in the world, with very long lifespans.
>Then those GMO crops, not meant for human consumption, cross-contaminated the crops we eat.
There's no evidence so far that GMO crops have any bad effect on humans either. Pesticides, however... And not all GMO crops are simply designed to withstand pesticides; some are modified to make them resistant to plant diseases.
It's understandable if you haven't encountered this issue in your own life yet. It's relatively rare, but I know a ton of people (including family in the area) coming down with digestive problems like IBS and various autoimmune diseases, even as serious as multiple sclerosis (MS) in middle age.
There might be a few scientific reasons behind it. The background radiation after Fukushima was 80 times normal where I live, but that info has mostly been erased by revisionist history. But that could have injured everyone's thyroid, among other things.
To play devil's advocate, I'm also seeing more articles that IBS is caused by stress, affecting the vagus nerve and disrupting serotonin pathways in the gut and brain. That would make sense too, because western medicine can't seem to isolate a specific cause. It seems to work more like cancer, where 2 or more triggers sensitize the immune system. The closest thing I've found is the whole grain connection, where the husk gets past stomach acid and injures the lining of the small intestine, eventually leading to leaky gut and flattening of the cells in severe cases like Crohn's disease and eventually inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Once a person has leaky gut, food molecules pass through the gut lining into the blood. Then it's a roll of the dice as to how the immune system will react to molecules it's never seen before. I believe this happens in all people, but they get lucky and avoid reactions in youth.
In my case around the time I turned 40, it was sudden sensitivity to ALL of the foods I had been eating previously: wheat, milk, almonds, legumes (beans, etc), nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, etc). For other people, the proteins in wheat get confused for the ones in the thyroid, so the body starts attacking it and it goes hypo or hyper. Or they get confused with ones on the nerves, causing neuropathy and even MS. I feel that my health problems were caused by acute, unending stress over 25 years until my body made the decision to stop working for me. The main pathways were probably sleep apnea, dehydration, too much alcohol, and not knowing the inflammatory effects of food-like substances from fast food chains like Taco Baloney. All I had to do was modify my lifestyle in any way, but like you, I was unaware of the risks or in denial about the severity of the consequences, so just kept going until I crashed. That's why I keep ranting about this stuff, because our sector is at high risk, but we'll never see this on the news.
It's possible that you are struggling to find evidence because the evidence points in the other direction. For example, from the review article you linked:
"Based on all available scientific knowledge, wheat consumption is safe and healthy for the vast majority of people. There is no scientific evidence to support that the general population would benefit from a wheat-free diet."
Step 1 of fostering "shoshin" was to explain a theory or idea to someone else. Now step 2 is to stay aware of confirmation bias.
If you cannot remember the last time you experienced awe, I highly recommend seeking it out. It may be important for fostering intellectual humility, but it seems just as important for fostering a better outlook/framing on life in general and brings with it a sense of wellbeing.
After burning out and starting a sabbatical last year, I went on a road trip that provided many moments of awe: a snowy mountain sunrise in the Rockies, the Milky Way in one of the darkest spots in Utah, long hikes through the redwoods, etc.
What struck me was that I had forgotten what these feelings felt like, and that I hadn’t felt them since I was a kid.
Glimpsing them reminded me how important they are, and I’m convinced that sustainability in future work endeavors (and life in general) involves an appropriate dose of awe and wonder on an ongoing basis.
Road trips into the desert aren’t necessary to experience this either (for me anyway) - just a very effective way to guarantee the experience (again, for me). But I can find it by pondering the bigger questions about life and the sheer improbability of our existence. Dedicating some regular time to this kind of reflection has been beneficial.
And I do find that I’m more open to possibilities. But that seems like just one of the outcomes from the “nourishment” of these experiences.