Today’s post is a collection of random thoughts and questions to get you thinking. I hope you’ll find a few new ideas here, and some “mind food.” Let’s get started…

1. If we must pass through a hundred bad ideas to arrive at a good one, how much creativity have we stifled with our criticism and our avoidance of failure?

2. Failure, defeat and regrets are all in the past, and therefore exist no longer except in the mind, so if they are somehow getting in your way now, isn’t it only because you choose to put them there by focusing on the memories that perpetuate them?

3. If the purpose of fear is to prepare the body for fight or flight, is fear of any value when it is merely a response to our thoughts about the future?

4. If you consider your job as a business in which you sell your labor, how good are you doing on customer service?

5. If religions teach us to close our minds and not question certain things, while science questions everything and every scientific discovery points to new mysteries that lead to an every increasing appreciation for the wonders of the universe, isn’t there more room for spirituality in science than in religion?

6. It’s easy to see that if lenders couldn’t foreclose on mortgages and take borrowers houses, they wouldn’t lend. In fact, in places where lenders cannot easily foreclose on a home there is little lending and therefore less home ownership. It is rarely acknowledged that so many people own homes here exactly because it is so easy to lose them.

7. If voting is done to gain some representation of your interests, and it rarely accomplishes that, is it perhaps better to spend the time and effort on something which more directly promotes your interests?

8. Have you noticed that the political schemes and philosophies which hold “society” or the workers or “the good of the people” as most important produce the most violence and violations of human rights?

9. Does the love between two people consist of gazing at each other or of looking out together at something greater than themselves?

10. Given that children can be taught how to behave without a concept of morality, and that teachings about “evil” can lead to feelings of guilt which can do damage for many years, is it possible that introducing them to moral ideas too early can have some negative consequences?

11. If it is immoral to purposely hurt another person, wouldn’t it also be wrong to ever knowingly hurt yourself?

12. If fundamentalists and other religious extremists base their beliefs on faith, and their faith is never to be questioned, how will they ever know if they are wrong?

13. Is it more intelligent to have a collection of clever bits of knowledge or to be always asking smart questions?

Feel free to add your own random thoughts and thought-provoking ideas or questions below.