Evil in the World Today
The virtue of selfishness presupposes the existence of a self. Julian Jaynes posited that the development of writing enable the creation of interior "voice." In the _Iliad_ warriors spoke to each other of being told by gods or spirits to act. But in the Odyssey, our hero is called "clever" because he is a "liar" who keeps his true motives to himself. As late at the 15th century CE, Joan of Arc thought that she "heard voices" never identifying her motivation as internal. Even today, millions of people have no voice in their heads. They routinize actions from imitation, but have no internal motivation. They have no internal experience.
(Reuters) - So you say all you want to do is to take a few minutes to sit down and think without anyone or anything bugging you? Maybe that is true. But you might be in the minority.
A U.S. study published on Thursday showed that most volunteers who were asked to spend no more than 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing but sitting and thinking found the task onerous.
"Many people find it difficult to use their own minds to entertain themselves, at least when asked to do it on the spot," said University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study appearing in the journal Science.
Researchers then had adult and college student volunteers do the same thing in their homes, and got the same results. In addition, a third of volunteers cheated by doing things like using a cellphone or listening to music.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/0...
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA report on the study here:
http://news.virginia.edu/content/doing-s...
(Reuters) - So you say all you want to do is to take a few minutes to sit down and think without anyone or anything bugging you? Maybe that is true. But you might be in the minority.
A U.S. study published on Thursday showed that most volunteers who were asked to spend no more than 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing but sitting and thinking found the task onerous.
"Many people find it difficult to use their own minds to entertain themselves, at least when asked to do it on the spot," said University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study appearing in the journal Science.
Researchers then had adult and college student volunteers do the same thing in their homes, and got the same results. In addition, a third of volunteers cheated by doing things like using a cellphone or listening to music.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/0...
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA report on the study here:
http://news.virginia.edu/content/doing-s...
