The New Ideas Blog

The idea of disposable religions came to me during a conversation about the difference between spirituality and religiousness. It seems that whatever the spiritual origin is, a religion cannot help but become stifling and anti-spiritual. A true spirituality should allow for truth to enter whatever it is, after all, and religions uniformly claim a final and unchanging undertstanding of the truth.

The dilemma here is that it’s helpful for people to join together to share love, lessons, and teachings, but any regular gathering based on spiritual ideas has the tendency to (more…)

The very concept of retirement is flawed. It is based on several false premises. First is the premise that at a certain age you are no longer able to provide economic value. That is clearly nonsense as shown by the many millionaire entrepreneurs and business people in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Yes, we generally get weaker and lose some abilities as we age. But there are seventy-five year-old retirees playing tennis out there, and anyone who can still think and move two fingers can do what I’m doing for a living.

Another false premise is (more…)

Last year Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, had a net worth over 9 billion dollars. Then he lost a few billion, maybe even most of it (the world went from 1,125 billionaires last year to 793 this year). With a net worth of a few hundred million, or maybe only tens of millions, on January 5th, 2009 he wrote “I’m sorry” on a piece of paper and laid down in front of a train. His mangled body was found a couple hours later.

I titled this post “false ideas” for a reason. I suspect that many reading the above true story will think it doesn’t make sense to be depressed about (more…)

I have been criticized for using extreme examples in making a point, but it is a very useful way to explore the real nature of things. I have two examples of this that follow. The imagined extreme of a language with only twelve words in it shows us the possible limitations of “moral systems,” and the extreme action of stealing from your neighbor to buy food and art points out the potential ethical problems of government programs.

The Language of Morality

Have we made a false idol of language? Whether religious or not, most of us like to think (more…)

Which is worth more; an orange or an apple? At the moment an apple costs more at the grocery store, but the question isn’t really identical to “which costs more?” After all, one or the other has more value to you even if they both were free. Or to use another example, if the price of a pen was higher than that of a computer, you would still probably consider the computer to be “worth” more than the pen - unless you were selling them. Clearly what we think of as value is not identical with “price,” nor is it always closely related.

So what is a thing worth? How do we (more…)

We seem to have such a need for them that when there are none, we begin manufacturing heroes. I was thinking about this as the press and public went crazy over Barack Obama in the days leading up to his inauguration. He rode a train along the same route that Lincoln took to Washington, and he was sworn in on the same bible as Abraham Lincoln.

I had to look into the writings of Lincoln to see what this “hero” was really about. It is clear from what I found that (more…)

I have been thinking about what I refer to as the “least understood important ideas.” These can be found in many areas of life, large and small. They are sometimes even the most important ideas in a given context, yet they are either relatively unknown by the majority of people or not explored and developed very well.

A simple example comes from the area of home loans. Most people know how a mortgage works, but there’s an often ignored idea that reveals (more…)

Ah, the American dream: Two kids, a new car, a good job, and a big new house with a pet dog to greet you at the door…

I was curious about where the idea began, so I did a bit of research. It seems that the first person to use the expression was James Truslow Adams, in his book, “The Epic of America” in 1931. He called it, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with (more…)

Zeno’s paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles involved a race between the two. The Tortoise started far ahead, since he is much slower. For the sake of the story, the tortoise doesn’t stop moving, however slowly he runs.

Now, to pass him, Achilles had to first reach the point where the Tortoise started. Of course the tortoise would then be a bit further, and Achilles had to reach that point, but when he did the tortoise would have traveled a bit further still. In fact, since space and time were (more…)

Belief suggest something absolute, but why? Isn’t it expressing a relative measurement, just like the words “hot and cold,” or “near and far?” Are “belief” and “non belief” more like “hot” and “cold?” Just as a 75 degree (Fahrenheit) day can be called hot if it comes in winter and cool if it comes in the middle of 100 degree days, does the concept of belief only have a relative meaning?

You might believe that (more…)