Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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How to Create a Nightmare
If you find the horror genre fascinating then this blog post is for you. I am about to reveal the secrets for creating your own ghoulish drama, all from the comfort of your own life. This fiendish formula works if you personally want to experience terrifying chills and thrills or if you wish to visit…
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Pumpkin Carving 2011
This year we had even more creative designs for our annual Pumpkin Carving night. The subject matter ranged even more dramatically this time, from the Chronicles of Narnia to a cup of cappuccino and even a pumpkin carving himself! Some even used a drill to make holes in the pumpkin, making a wintery snowflake effect. The night was filled with…
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Puppy Cake for Sammy
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Know Thyself
“Only when one is aware of one’s own human predicament can one then begin on the path toward personal moral development and true social betterment. A misunderstanding of the self leads to disastrous results. It fosters a degenerative forgetfulness of one’s own limited nature as well as a dehumanization of the other.” Gerson Moreno-Riaño Here’s…
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Human Insufficiency
“Perhaps the most basic [fact], one on which every community is built, is that of human insufficiency. To put it differently, every human being needs other human beings. To deny this natural fact of human existence, so Aristotle teaches, is to confirm that one is either a beast or a god. Human life occurs within…
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Healthy Introspection
Previously, I wrote about applying the TQM management philosophy to our personal growth and relationship development. In essence, this means seeing maturity as emerging from a process of acting, evaluating our successes and failures, and then making adjustments to improve our behavior as a result of the evaluation. This cycle of, “Doing, Reviewing, and Improving,”…
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Do, Review, Improve
Years ago there was a lot of talk about Total Quality Management (TQM), a management philosophy that aims to create an environment of continuous improvement. I have found the essential idea of TQM to be helpful in thinking about personal growth, and in particular, the development of relationships. While the basic concept is simple, it’s…
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Why Chastity is a Virtue
Chastity has historically been considered a virtue in almost every segment of Christianity. It has sometimes been, however, the only test of holiness for some Christians, while today there are a great number who hardly see it as necessary. I want to explore why it is a virtue and yet show that it is superficial…
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Course Adjustments and Bug Fixes
Two analogies that have helped me to better understand personal growth are airline flights and software development. The first analogy I learned from Stephen Covey. The second I gleaned from my work as a software engineer. Rather than think of growth in dichotomous terms (pass or fail) it is more helpful, and true to life,…
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Community and Culture
Why Christian community is essential to following Christ: “But what we value in a culture is the inside view – the view of the participants, whose emotions, attachments and goals are all clarified by their immersion in a shared way of life, and the web of rituals and images that has been woven into it.…
Got any book recommendations?