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Spiritual Architecture — On those things greater than ourselves

• [article] Gesticism — 26 Jan 2026
  Lots of things are happening, but anything <em>can</em> matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention. I’m not going to spend more time trying to reduce the core idea than that.
• [article] Beyond System 1 and System 2 — 13 Jun 2025
  System 1 vs System 2 is a useful shorthand, but our minds aren’t two-speed engines—they’re multi-process coalitions of specialised agents working in parallel and in series.
• [article] There is no authentic self — 11 Apr 2025
  There’s no hidden version of you. If anything, we are a collection of bits and pieces that we weave together from the stories we learn from others. You don’t need to find an authentic <em>self</em>, you need to find a story you can weave that makes you happy.
• [article] Speaking in tongues — 23 Aug 2024
  Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.
• [article] Meditating for fun and for profit — 5 Jul 2024
  Meditation generally involves either acknowledging or excluding thoughts, but can be problematic. Movement-based meditations (e.g. yoga, running) are better for people who can’t sit with themselves. More generally, many everyday activities meet the broad criteria.
• [article] Eerie coincidences aren't that eerie — 12 Nov 2023
  Your phone probably isn’t eavesdropping for ads. Your brain’s job is to highlight unexpected hits while ignoring the misses. Eerie coincidences are probably just you not noticing all the times something weird could have happened but didn’t.
• [article] On managing magic mushroom experiences — 29 Jul 2023
  Mushrooms change the balance between inside-out forces (the all-consuming neural networks that support the ‘self’) and outside-in forces (the environment and world around us). This model seems most useful in explaining the mushroom experience.
• [article] The value of ritual — 17 Mar 2023
  Rituals are often dismissed, but they’re just procedures with a purpose. We all engage in ritualistic behavior—many habits and routines meet this criteria. Redefining them through the uncomfortable lens of ritual prompts us to question our own practices and beliefs.
• [article] Mundane Cults — 27 Feb 2023
  We’ve been taught that cults are dark and scary things. But we have been fooled. The cult is a prominent building block of modern community. If you’re not in one, you’re probably doing something wrong. The question is, is the cult you’re in a cult you chose?
• [article] Abstractions as Gods — 28 Dec 2022
  We can use abstractions to get a handle on complex features of the world. By personalising centres of purpose in the world, we can better connect them to ideologies. This permits the crafting of ever more graceful solutions to our complex world.
• [article] Obscuring Banalities — 16 Dec 2022
  We often use complicated-sounding words to dress up simple ideas about the human experience. But this isn’t just self-indulgence. It’s also a desire to conform to the right ‘ways’ of knowing as well as a desire for something to point at—an enemy, so to speak.
• [article] Everything is ideology — 19 Sep 2022
  Ideologies are presented to us as distortions of reality—a synonym for ‘false belief’. But they are merely a subjective understanding of the relationship between things. In this sense, all things are ideologies. We can only choose those better or worse.
• [article] Spirituality of Mind — 29 Aug 2022
  The secular world replaced the soul with a mind in the brain. Modern science of mind finds no such thing, but a collection of mini-minds which does not stop at the body, but extends into the world. This philosophy presents us a secular spirituality, a god we can all believe in.
• [article] The origin of insight — 20 Feb 2022
  Lightbulb moments are one crucial key to creativity, and though they appear elusive, there are many ways to encourage the happy accidents that bring them into being: we must bring together the unfamiliar and the familiar.
• [article] The Value of the Sacred — 24 Aug 2021
  The sacred isn’t a social myth; a delusion of the religious. It is what happens when we bind moments of personal meaning and power to something greater than ourselves. And, without the sacred, we are left unable to transform meaning into purpose.