On New Year’s Eve 2019, people gathered all over to celebrate the closing of one year and the beginning of the next. No on could have imagined what the coming year would bring: a global disease pandemic, social unrest, a tense relationship between law enforcement and African Americans, an unprecedented Presidential election and much more. […]
Christmas through the Ages
Most people know that the origins of Christmas go back thousands of years. Few people might not know, however, that many elements of our modern Christmas holiday date back before Christ. “Long before the appearance of an obscure wonder-worker in Palestine, the celebration of the Midwinter sun held a central place in civilizations throughout the […]
Hygge: Finding Comfort Indoors through the Winter and the Waning Months of the Pandemic
The official start of winter is usually around Dec. 21/22, but it’s already starting to feel like winter is here. Even under normal conditions, some people my have onset Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), yet coupled with a global pandemic over the past year, lock downs, and quarantines, many individuals across of the United States and […]
The Art of Not Caring: When Deciding What Matters and What Doesn’t, Sometimes It’s Better to “Not Try”
OK . . . So, the title of this article may sound a little strange. I mean, who doesn’t want to not try at something? But I recent read New York Times bestselling author Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F____” . . . and, the book, which at first did not […]
America’s Opioid Problem . . . Continued.
It’s hard to say exactly when America’s opioid epidemic began. Some argue it was in 1996 – the year Purdue Pharma released OxyContin; a powerful pharmaceutical painkiller that has undoubtedly helped fuel the nation’s opioid epidemic. By 2017, however, just three years ago, the opioid epidemic was making daily national headlines, and state, local, and […]
The Online Disinhibition Effect: How People Behave Online is Different from How They Behave in the Real World
How people behave and what they do online is different from how they behave and what they do in the real world. This should come as a shock to no one, as this phenomenon has been around for at least a generation. This applies to social media trolls in particular, but it may also apply […]
How We Learn: When It Comes to Acquiring a New Skill, Look at a Russian Psychologist’s ‘Zone of Proximal Development’
Learning, as it is often said, is a life-long endeavor. Whether a person has finished formal schooling – college, graduate school, or even completing high school or a trade school – does not mean that a person’s learning is done. Indeed, curious individuals continue to push themselves throughout their lives to acquire more knowledge, sometimes […]
The Political Mind
With the 2020 Presidential Election here, politics and political ads have seemed to be everywhere. And regardless of which candidate takes the presidential prize this week, the human brain seems to play a role in how we think about politics – whether we are aware of it or not. In his book, “The Political Brain,” […]
A Brief History of Halloween
What many of us know today as a fun, spooky holiday has roots deep in Europe’s agricultural past. Halloween has a long, storied past, and the holiday that we celebrate on October 31 each year in the United States has pre-Christian origins, a time rooted in myth, lore, and legend. Although the origins of Halloween […]
The Benefits of Being Outside Although the Northern Hemisphere is now deep into October and the COVID-19 pandemic is still ranging across the globe, one simple, time-tested tool for helping to improve our mental health is . . . just taking a walk outside, particularly in a natural landscape, if possible. With the above-mentioned challenges […]