My late mother-in-law was a sweet lady, and I loved her. She always gave lip service to the belief that a variety of people was a good thing, but I know that deep down she disapproved, at least slightly, of those whose lifestyle differed from hers. How do I know? The compression of the lips, or a slight shake of the head was a dead giveaway. After much thinking about it, I have concluded that we all have a similar unstated bias. Semanticists have long known that we process reality through an unconscious filter: a dynamic pattern of attitudes, habits, internalized values, and modes of thinking. It is through this process that we relate ourselves to the world of things and people, observe and judge them, and express ourselves. Some of the contents of this filter we receive at birth - certain talents or handicaps; others from our culture – vocabularies, games, dances, greetings ,etc. As a result,...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.