Source: www.huffingtonpost.com | Original Post Date: October 18, 2013 –

Why do we do the things we do? Despite our best attempts to “know thyself,” the truth is that we often know astonishingly little about our own minds, and even less about the way others think. As Charles Dickens once put it, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

Psychologists have long sought insights into how we perceive the world and what motivates our behavior, and they’ve made enormous strides in lifting that veil of mystery. Aside from providing fodder for stimulating cocktail-party conversations, some of the most famous psychological experiments of the past century reveal universal and often surprising truths about human nature. Here are...

Source: www.themindunleashed.org | Original Post Date: October 9, 2014 –

The problem of studying what happens to consciousness when we die has plagued empiricists for millennia. How do we measure consciousness and how do we observe it once it leaves the body?

Researchers at the University of Southampton, UK, have found one way around this dilemma by examining the experiences of over 300 individuals from the U.S, U.K. and Australia who had undergone cardiac arrest and been declared ‘clinically dead’ before they were resuscitated and brought back to life. According to the study, published this week in the Journal of Resuscitation, nearly 40% of respondents reported some kind of ‘conscious awareness’ during the time that they were clinically dead.

MYTH 1: CONSCIOUS CEASES TO EXIST WHEN THE BODY DIES...

Source: www.ignitechannel.com | Original Post Date: May 12, 2014 –

“Paintbrush Warrior” by Mark Henson

It would be no exaggeration to say that Mark Henson is one of the greatest living visionary artists of our day. His artwork is iconic, intricate, sensual, cosmic, and profound. One can get lost in scanning his paintings to discover all of the visual details, tiny pictures-within-pictures, and hidden forms that contain not only the beauty of shape and color, but a wealth of commentary on the human condition. Like all great art, each piece speaks volumes and entices deeper and deeper exploration.

I had the pleasure to meet Mark briefly at a visionary art show in 2011, where I watched him work on “Paintbrush Warrior,” which has become one of my favorite pieces of his (see ...

Source: www.businessinsider.com | Original Post Date: May 22, 2012 –

Media outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC have a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge while NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative sources of news, according to Fairleigh Dickinson University’s newest PublicMind survey.

Researchers asked 1,185 random nationwide respondents what news sources they had consumed in the past week and then asked them questions about events in the U.S. and abroad.

On average, people correctly answered 1.6 of 5 questions about domestic affairs.

Because the aim of the study was to isolate the effects of ea...

Source: www.trueactivist.com | Original Post Date: September 29, 2014 –

Will Columbus Day soon be a thing of the past?

Measures are currently underway in Seattle, Washington which would abolish the holiday known as “Columbus Day” and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”.

In the not-so-distant past, such a thing would be unthinkable, as the propagandized version of the founding of America was widely accepted until just a few years ago. In recent years, more people have been questioning the version of history that they were told in school, and have been seeking out alternative viewpoints. Measures are currently underway in Seattle, Washington which would abolish the holiday known as “Columbus Day” and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”.

This small symbolic change highlights a paradigm shift ...