Sloww Sunday 051: Divided Brain, Science Meets Spirituality, Wasting Years

Sloww Sunday Newsletter 051 (Feb 28, 2021) — The Divided Brain, Science Meets Spirituality, & More

Hi friends,

Sloww Sunday is a free newsletter delivering the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I came across last week.

Sloww Stuff

🆕 Coming This Week

A book summary of Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker and Premium synthesis post of all things ERE are coming soon. Jacob’s approach of systems thinking applied to lifestyle design will make you question everything about your day-to-day existence.

📚 Top Books of 2021 (so far)

Nothing seems to beat the quality of books. I’ve been trading off podcast, video, and social consumption time for more book reading time this year. Through two months, I’m very happy with this decision. And, for the first time in my life, I’m reading about a book a week. Here are my three favorite books so far:

“Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows

“The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle

“SQ21” (Spiritual Intelligence) by Cindy Wigglesworth

Modern Knowledge

🧠 The Divided Brain
(1 hr 18 mins | Vimeo)

This documentary is utterly fascinating and is inspired by the book The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Dr. Iain McGilchrist. It will blow your mind about the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and how they work together. McGilchrist believes Western civilization has been hijacked by the left hemisphere. We now need balance with the right hemisphere to move wisely into the future.

“Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” — Bob Samples

Timeless Wisdom

☯️ Science meets Spirituality with David Bohm & Jiddu Krishnamurti
(30+ videos | YouTube)

The Divided Brain documentary got me thinking about all the areas of life where we may see the differences between the two brain hemispheres: science & spirituality, ego & Higher Self, Western & Eastern civilizations, etc. This reminded me of the seemingly unlikely relationship between David Bohm (science / physics) and Jiddu Krishnamurti (spirituality / philosophy). The link above goes to a YouTube playlist of conversations between them that span nearly 25 years.

“The individual is universal and the universal is the individual. The word ‘individual’ means undivided, so we could say that very few individuals have ever existed. We could call them dividuals. Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.” — David Bohm

💭 Deep Quote

“You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” — Amos Tversky

This idea in action (inspired by 80000Hours.org): Here’s something many people do: spend 6 minutes thinking about/planning a 2-hour dinner out. But, here’s something equivalent in time usage (yet much more important in the grand scheme) that many people don’t do: spend 4,000 hours thinking about/planning a 40-year career. Hence, years wasted due to not “wasting” hours.

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Have a deep week!

Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww