Purpose is popular.  How times have changed.  And science can't take the credit.  People can. But is responsibility popular?  Is it obvious to you that purpose and responsibility are very nearly the same thing?

Probably not. (But correct me by commenting below!) As a result, I can't help but notice that this emergence of purpose into consciousness has not yet got very far.  Let me explain.

Purpose is like a three-sided coin.

On one side, purpose is More...

Science has beliefs and people believe in science. Should they? Is this what was meant by freedom of belief? 

Wasn’t that one of the basic freedoms we learned at school?  Or was that freedom of speech? Or thought? Or worship?  But then speech and thought and worship are all close companions to beliefs.

I am a champion of freedom of belief and freedom of thought. So I am sensitive when these freedoms are under threat. And they are. Freedom of belief is not being threatened from the pulpit or by church-backed governments these days.  We have moved on.  Instead, it is under threat from science and politics.

Let’s leave political ideology for the moment, where people demand that politicians proclaim beliefs and they hypocritically comply.  This is so obvious and silly. 

Let’s focus on science instead. Whiter than white and disdainful of political shenanigans, science has become the new political correctness. More...

Good action counts for a lot.  But once a person has the ideology of power fixed in their head, they can never feel safe enough. Goodness flies out the window. There is never enough power, never enough wealth.  It is not the imperative of greed, it is the imperative of survival.  Technology now allows us to survive without willful cruelty and domination, but that does not make sense to power-driven individuals.  They want the power and the glory.

So what do we do about the callous power-centred leaders of most countries whose desire for control and personal wealth is unrestrained?

That’s a trick question.

“We” never do anything. 

If “we” have any influence at all, it is to sustain and support the existing social system. “We” are responsible for those leaders … for the way they think, how they got into such positions, and why they stay there.  So the British “we” is responsible for UK atrocities not the PM and cabinet; the German “we” was responsible for Nazism in Germany not Hitler; More...

Are you and your brain essentially the same thing?  There is a materialistic fashion at present to answer: "Yes. Of course, how else could it be?"  But: It could be that transcendental ideas are relevant and some medical scientists would agree.

However, in recent years scientific fellow-travellers have fallen in love with a reductionistic neuroscience.  They have no trouble writing sentences like: 

When we are deprived of sensory input, we generate images using our memory and keep our consciousness agents busy by playing back memories.  

But do «we» generate those images?  Do «I» play back memories?  Or do such things happen to me/us?  Do you reach puberty or does puberty happen to you?  Do you grow old?  Or is aging happenstance?

There is an enormous difference More...

Wherever I turn in the self-help and «transform your life» blogosphere these days, I run into the advice to "find your passion" and then do it.  What are they talking about?

The blogger never explains.  Well, she (it can be a he but it's more often a she) makes it clear that writing a blog to tell you to find your passion is her passion.  It has transformed her life: so she's made it.  And if we know what's going on in her head or life, then we will surely understand.  But that demands loads of empathy and imagination.  Just too heavy: any über-successful blogger-advisor knows the golden rule: Don't Make Me Think!

So perhaps she is just demanding that the reader use common sense: "Everybody will know what I mean.  So why bother explaining?"  Perhaps it's like obscenity. More...