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Focus on the useful, the true and Connections
Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). Last week, I shared an excerpt titled – ‘Intertwined World’ from a book titled ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas. In this episode we highlighted that reality, for better and for worse, isn’t terrifying, but wondrous, giving every moment of life potentially hidden meaning. It flips the individualist worldview on its head. Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to’.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Focus on the useful, the true and Connections’ from the same book titled ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas.
In his book Brian points that Contrary to our instinctive beliefs, cause and effect are never simple and easy to understand: any specific outcome is dependent not only on what appear to be the major events leading up to it, but also on an array of seemingly insignificant, arbitrary, easily overlooked factors, “flukes”—some under our control, but countless others not.
Focus on the useful, the true and Connections
Modern humans master a tiny slice of the world. But by coordinating our efforts and putting those slices together, we’ve unlocked potential that was previously unimaginable. That was the great triumph of reductionism, in which it’s assumed that complex phenomena can be best understood by breaking them down into their individual parts. Understand the parts, understand the system. But the more you focus on systems as separable parts, the easier it is to ignore intertwined connections. Reductionism has proven astonishingly useful. It has helped us forge breathtaking scientific progress. But we’ve focused so much on what is useful that we’ve forgotten what is true. Connections matter as much as, if not more than, components. The more modern science puts individualism under the microscope, the less it stands up to scrutiny.
Even the scientific concept of what it means to speak of “an individual” is being revised. Some systems biologists, recognizing the interconnected, interdependent nature of our existence, have stopped referring to humans as individuals and have started referring to each person as a holobiont, which includes a core host (in our case, a human) as well as the zoo of organisms living in or around us. It may sound strange, but we are not just ourselves, but are rather a collection of human cells combined with our associated microorganisms, including fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses. The best estimates suggest we have roughly 1.3 bacterial cells inside us for every human cell. As the biologist Merlin Sheldrake put it, “There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy.” Fresh evidence is emerging that viruses affect our biological clocks, parasites alter our thoughts, and our microbiome can cause mood disorders. Scientifically, we have never been singular, though that has been impossible to know until quite recently.
The individualist mindset, of independent, authoritative control over a tamable world, makes less sense if we know that our thoughts are partly influenced by the tiny, invisible organisms that live within us.
Bewildering, but true.
Excerpt from ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas.
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book, to read book report you can click on the following link and subsequently buy your copy too:
https://humanjourney.us/mind/fluke-brian-klaas-summary
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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By Sunil RaoNamaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). Last week, I shared an excerpt titled – ‘Intertwined World’ from a book titled ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas. In this episode we highlighted that reality, for better and for worse, isn’t terrifying, but wondrous, giving every moment of life potentially hidden meaning. It flips the individualist worldview on its head. Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to’.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Focus on the useful, the true and Connections’ from the same book titled ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas.
In his book Brian points that Contrary to our instinctive beliefs, cause and effect are never simple and easy to understand: any specific outcome is dependent not only on what appear to be the major events leading up to it, but also on an array of seemingly insignificant, arbitrary, easily overlooked factors, “flukes”—some under our control, but countless others not.
Focus on the useful, the true and Connections
Modern humans master a tiny slice of the world. But by coordinating our efforts and putting those slices together, we’ve unlocked potential that was previously unimaginable. That was the great triumph of reductionism, in which it’s assumed that complex phenomena can be best understood by breaking them down into their individual parts. Understand the parts, understand the system. But the more you focus on systems as separable parts, the easier it is to ignore intertwined connections. Reductionism has proven astonishingly useful. It has helped us forge breathtaking scientific progress. But we’ve focused so much on what is useful that we’ve forgotten what is true. Connections matter as much as, if not more than, components. The more modern science puts individualism under the microscope, the less it stands up to scrutiny.
Even the scientific concept of what it means to speak of “an individual” is being revised. Some systems biologists, recognizing the interconnected, interdependent nature of our existence, have stopped referring to humans as individuals and have started referring to each person as a holobiont, which includes a core host (in our case, a human) as well as the zoo of organisms living in or around us. It may sound strange, but we are not just ourselves, but are rather a collection of human cells combined with our associated microorganisms, including fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses. The best estimates suggest we have roughly 1.3 bacterial cells inside us for every human cell. As the biologist Merlin Sheldrake put it, “There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy.” Fresh evidence is emerging that viruses affect our biological clocks, parasites alter our thoughts, and our microbiome can cause mood disorders. Scientifically, we have never been singular, though that has been impossible to know until quite recently.
The individualist mindset, of independent, authoritative control over a tamable world, makes less sense if we know that our thoughts are partly influenced by the tiny, invisible organisms that live within us.
Bewildering, but true.
Excerpt from ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas.
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book, to read book report you can click on the following link and subsequently buy your copy too:
https://humanjourney.us/mind/fluke-brian-klaas-summary
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!