The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled. "I will not worship you! You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!" another snapped back. "No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!" the third interjected, barely concealing his anger.

I'm saying the same things as that crazy fool is saying," said one of the patients. "That must mean I'm crazy too."

Leon seems to waver, eventually asking to be addressed as "Dr Righteous Idealed Dung" instead of his previous moniker of "Dr Domino dominorum et Rex rexarum, Simplis Christianus Puer Mentalis Doctor, reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth."

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Buddhist Insights for Accepting and Respecting Our Emotions

"You would certainly recognize your signature on a piece of paper, but do you know your own emotional signature? We all have one. It's our predictable way of reacting to situations. Your friends probably recognize your emotional signature better than you do. When you get into a fight with your partner, for example, they can predict just how it will go. They know if you're likely to slam a door, storm out of the house, or call your mother. They know if you'll be processing the argument for days or immediately shut down and clam up. How do they know so much? They know because they've seen it all before. Our behavior may seem spontaneous to us, but to those who know us, we're not too surprising.

Why don't we pay more attention to understanding our own patterns? We may have a solid financial plan worked out that will buy us a house and pay for our kids' college and our retirement, but we don't give much thought to getting the most benefit out of one of the most precious resources for happiness -- our emotions. Often, we just leave it to chance." More

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Winner: Happiness Can Be Had With $60,000 Yearly Income

Arguing that experience is essentially divided into the "experiencing self" and the "remembering self," Kahnemen suggests that happiness is essentially an act of deftly balancing the two. (They don't always match up, it turns out.) Here's Kahneman:

We know something about what controls satisfaction of the happiness self. We know that money is very important, goals are very important. We know that happiness is mainly being satisfied with people that we like, spending time with people that we like. There are other pleasures, but this is dominant. So if you want to maximize the happiness of the two selves, you are going to end up doing very different things. The bottom line of what I've said here is that we really should not think of happiness as a substitute for well-being. It is a completely different notion. . . .

I think the most interesting result that we found in the Gallup survey is a number, which we absolutely did not expect to find. We found that with respect to the happiness of the experiencing self. When we looked at how feelings vary with income. And it turns out that, below an income of 60,000 dollars a year, for Americans, and that's a very large sample of Americans, like 600,000, but it's a large representative sample, below an income of 600,000 dollars a year. . . .

Americans In The Egyptian Army

In 1865, after Lee signed the surrender to Grant at Appomattox, after Johnny Reb turned, dusty, tired, to wend his way to farms and villages in Mississippi, Georgia, or Alabama, after Billy Yank trudged wearily back to Iowa, Ohio, or New Hampshire, the war was not over for some officers on both sides. No, they were not ready to fight again. Rather, they liked soldiering, it was all they knew, and the United States was not the place for it--not unless they wanted to spend dreary years at some wilderness outpost on the plains or in the desert, waiting the next sutler's wagon with salted beef and whiskey to wash it down, helping them forget where they were--as they waited for some excitement such as the next hunt for Indians, who were rarely found.

Some had other ideas. Pick up and move on, they thought, but not toward the Western horizon, and instead across the waters to where the sun arose. Not to them just the East, but in those days the far, far East. Over there somewhere somebody could use a good soldier, tested in battle. One was Thaddeus Mot and he wound up fighting in the Egyptian army. You might say that he got there because Cotton was King in the South. With the War of The Rebellion, as it was then called by Northerners, cotton exports to Europe dried up. Europe turned to Egypt for her supply, and the Egyptian economy boomed. Cotton became King in Egypt, and when it was deposed the way was paved for Mot and his fellow soldiers. Here is the story.

Climate Change, Politics, & Controversy

"To what extent is climate change actually occurring? . . .

Is our planet warming up by 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees, or more? Is climate change entirely man made? And what can be done to counteract it? . . . the consequences of climate change are still hotly contested. It was therefore something of a political bombshell when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails written by British climate researchers, and published some of them on the Internet. A scandal of gigantic proportions seemed about to break, and the media dubbed the affair 'Climategate' in reference to the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Critics claimed the e-mails would show that climate change predictions were based on unsound calculations."

So what is the answer? More

John Polkinghorne: Anglican Priest & Particle Physicist

"An eminent particle physicist, John Polkinghorne helped make one of the breakthroughs that transformed modern physics: the discovery of the quark (an unseen but fundamental constituent of matter). He held the prestigious post of Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge, but in 1979, Polkinghorne surprised many with the announcement that he planned to become an Anglican priest. Author of numerous books and articles, Polkinghorne is a Knight Commander of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and the 2002 recipient of the Templeton Prize. He is founder of the International Society for Science and Religion and of the Society of Ordained Scientists."

Polinghorne was asked, Humility is an important virtue in the world’s great religions. What is its role in science?

His response: "It’s important in science in the sense that science often finds the world very surprising, and therefore, if we approach it with certain ideas in our minds, and we think we are absolutely right and feel proud of our intellectual ability, we may not be humble enough to realize that we need to change our views." More

Beyond Belief: David Albert On Our Stories About The World

Physicist David Albert, PhD, was interviewed for the movie, What The Bleep Do We know?, a film that wildly speculates on the metaphysical ramifications of modern science. He is not happy with how the interview was edited. According to a Popular Science article, he is "outraged at the final product." The article states that "Albert granted the filmmakers a near-four hour interview about quantum mechanics being unrelated to consciousness or spirituality. His interview was then edited and incorporated into the film in a way that misrepresented his views. In the article, Albert also expresses his feelings of gullibility after having been 'taken' by the filmmakers."

Recently he attended and gave a talk at Beyond Belief, an annual meeting organized by The Science Network (TSN), "which brings together a community of concerned scientists, philosophers, scholars from the humanities, and social commentators to explore the human quest for the Good Life. The Science Network shares Carl Sagan’s vision of science as a candle in the dark. TSN is committed to enlarging the constituency of reason by making programs about science."

In the video below some of his points are these:

Dean Reed, The Rock Star Who Wanted To Come In From The Cold

In 1986, the same year that Dean Reed mysteriously died, I went through Check-Point Charlie into East Berlin. American army Military Police, no problem; East German guards looked carefully at my passport and finally nodded. East Berlin was a grim place, and if you weren't paranoid it made you so. I imagined informers tailing me everywhere.

This is about a young man who went through Check-Point Charlie, defected, and never returned. He found his fortune there--celebrity and wealth--mainly because he was a propaganda tool, but then he was erased from Soviet history after he was deemed no longer useful. Speculation has it that he was considered no longer useful after he grew tired of the communist system and wanted out.