The New Ideas Blog

Beyond mental slavery is now published (finally). It is available at Amazon.com (just use that link), and can be ordered at your local bookstore as well. You can also read excerpts from the book at a site I set up just for that purpose. My newest site is called, naturally enough, Beyond Mental Slavery .com (and that link takes you there). What is the book about? Here’s a short description:

Are You a Mind Slave?

We like to think we control our minds. Beyond Mental Slavery demonstrates just how often our minds are actually controlling us. We are under the influence of ideas that are not really ours, biases we’re not fully aware of, and programs that cause us to react in ways that have nothing to do with our conscious goals or desires - and may even sabotage them. Research, stories and examples that the reader can verify from experience, are used throughout the book to demonstrate just how easy it is to be ordered around and misguided by various thought processes - by the same mind we believe (more…)

When talking about financial freedom, different people can mean entirely different things. For some it means getting to do what they want because they have enough money. For others it means having enough income from investments that they are free of any financial concerns.

Of course, few people are actually unconcerned about financial matters regardless of how much income they have. Some even get more worried about their finances as they get wealthier. And few people get to (more…)

There are many books out there that explain THE WAY to manage your money. The truth is we all have different habits, goals, and skills, so there is no one way to manage money. Some less common ideas are suggested below, in case you find one or two useful. I also want to announce my new website:

The Meaning Of Money

It is about the purpose of money, the philosophical issues, and all the deeper questions, although it also covers making it, saving it, investing it and such. Now, let’s look at some creative ways to manage your money.

I know two people who bought a home and (more…)

A politics of personal responsibility demands that we understand the consequences of laws or government actions that we support. We should also consider political candidates we support as our “agents” meaning we’re somewhat responsible for the choices they make since we hire or elect them. With that in mind, I have decided on a new rule for what or who I can support. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but first I have to relate the true story that inspired me to write this.

The Associated Press on September 29, 2009, reported on the case of a woman in Michigan who (more…)

Although I don’t do it as much as I used to, I still rush around at times. Rushing isn’t really about moving fast, but about a state of mind. After all you don’t call it rushing if you are relaxing in you car listening to good music while going eighty-miles-per-hour down the highway. You don’t consider it rushing if you just know how to do things efficiently and so get them done faster.

To rush is to be mentally compelled to do things faster. It is an anxious state of mind that can’t honestly be said to be necessary. Lets look at how it arises and then consider a new (more…)

It is easy to imagine that we can do the right thing, and that we can know what the right thing to do is, but is it so? We are so influenced by desires for things and what we want to be true that it colors everything we see if we allow our minds their usual ways. Let’s look at an example.

Suppose a politician long ago said “vote for me and I’ll force future generations to pay for you to quit working and relax.” People vote for him, and the “social security program” is created. To make it look fair people pay into the plan as though it is a retirement fund. But that’s for appearances only, since (more…)

Of course there are opportunities during a recession, including those listed below. In fact, many “lucky people” will prosper in these tough economic times. If you want to be one of them, you have to start to think like them.

To begin with, you might want to turn off the stream of bad news on the television. You get the picture, and there isn’t actually that much “usable” information that you can get from these sources. Believe me, you’ll hear about (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…)

Regular readers of this blog and subscribers to my Brainpower Newsletter know that I’m a believer in safe self-experimentation. In fact, I regularly recommend trying things out that do not yet have scientific evidence proving their effectiveness. After all, why would science ever look into a new supplement or technique for improving ones health or mind if their was not first some anecdotal evidence?

In the newsletter I had the “brainpower contest” going for a while (in 2007), to see what “tricks” had worked for subscribers to (more…)

Opie, our cat, stepped on my keyboard a few days ago, and the time and date appeared on the document I was working on. Now I know what the “F5″ key does. That might be a useful feature. It may seem surprising that I have never learned that before, but it is common to get used to using  things a certain way and ignoring other possibilities. How many of us actually know what every button on the television remote control is used for? (Well, not me anyhow - our’s has 80 buttons.)

That is the second time his curious paws and claws have (more…)