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“Our lives on this plan­et have improved in so many amaz­ing ways over the last cen­tu­ry. On aver­age, we are now health­i­er, more afflu­ent and lit­er­ate, less vio­lent and longer liv­ing. Despite these unprece­dent­ed pos­i­tive changes, clear signs exist that we are in the midst of an emerg­ing crisis–one that has not yet been rec­og­nized in its full breadth, even though it lurks just beneath the sur­face of our casu­al con­ver­sa­tions and swims in the under­cur­rents of our news feeds. This is not the well-known cri­sis that we’ve induced upon the earth’s cli­mate, but one that is just as threat­en­ing to our future. This is a cri­sis of our minds. A cog­ni­tion cri­sis Read the rest of this entry »

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I still remem­ber the time I tried to com­fort one of my best friends when her father died. Because I’d lost my own par­ents years before, I thought I under­stood her pain. But, when I offered sym­pa­thy, she balked. Her father’s death had been tran­scen­dent, filled with love and fam­i­ly con­nec­tion. She didn’t feel pain; she felt at peace. Read the rest of this entry »

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This med­i­ta­tion app is now worth $250 mil­lion and has Trump-relat­ed stress to thank (CNBC):

“Med­i­ta­tion start-up Calm was so suc­cess­ful dur­ing a chaot­ic and stress­ful 2017 that Apple rec­og­nized it as the app of the year.

“Well done, Calm,” Apple said in Decem­ber. Read the rest of this entry »

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Know Thy­self: Well-Being and Sub­jec­tive Expe­ri­ence (Cere­brum):

“Ancient Greek philoso­phers were fond of the apho­rism, “know thy­self,” inscribed above the entrance of one of the Tem­ples of Apol­lo at Del­phi. One expres­sion of this tra­di­tion, vari­ably attrib­uted to Socrates and Pla­to, is that “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing.” Anoth­er, attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle, is “to know thy­self is the begin­ning of wis­dom.” And, accord­ing to Socrates, the path to such self-knowl­edge is through inner reflec­tion, or what we now call intro­spec­tion.

Thou­sands of years lat­er, pro­fes­sions arose to help peo­ple know them­selves bet­ter Read the rest of this entry »

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This car tech makes you a bet­ter dri­ver by read­ing your mind. We gave it a test dri­ve (The Wash­ing­ton Post):

“Might the car of the future be able to read your mind?

At CES, the big tech trade show, cars dom­i­nat­ed much of the con­ver­sa­tion. But one expe­ri­ence stood out because it was so far-out: I donned an exper­i­men­tal cap from Nis­san that inter­pret­ed sig­nals from my brain with the goal of mak­ing me a bet­ter dri­ver. Read the rest of this entry »