Our Approach
Our mission is to search the world over - through a lot of bull - to try to find real nuggets of practical wisdom. And then gather them here in one place to talk about them.
Our approach is practical, open, non-dogmatic, no-nonsense, see-for-yourself, open-minded-yet-tough-minded, and with a "take what you like and leave the rest" type of thing.
Where do we search for answers?
We search anywhere and everywhere we can. Through mountains of information, in science, in religion, under rocks, from various grandmas - anywhere. If there's a headhunting voodoo-doctor cannibal in the bowels of a jungle who really seems to know something about relationships, we'll listen to him (or her). (And then probably get the heck out of there.)
In other words, when it comes to nuggets of wisdom, we are very cheap dates.
We'll look anywhere.
We look in science; we look in religion and spirituality.
We look in the mainstream; we look in the fringes.
We lok at old stuff and new; "ancient wisdom" and the latest fads.
We look in the ordinary and commonsense; we look in the maniacally, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy. (- because sometimes what seems "crazy" is actually hiding something truly stellar.)
We check out folks with fancy degrees and titles; we check out others who maybe never graduated kindergarten.
We use faith and doubt, thoughts and feelings, hard evidence and vague hunches, proven theories and wild speculations...
We look high and low, from rooftop to outhouse.
Basically, we don't care. We'll take it from anywhere. We just want to find it, wherever it is.
So, what happens when we find a "nugget" of wisdom that we like? For example, some of what's mentioned in our articles, or in our Products?
First of all, we gather those "nuggets" here and talk about them.
A few very important notes at this point:
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up
as a judge of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
- Albert Einstein
Per the quote above, we aren't really interested in being shipwrecked by the laughter of gods.
We aren't setting ourselves up as experts. We aren't in the school of "I'm enlightened and you're not." We spend much more of our time pilloring experts and making fun of them than we do setting ourselves up as them.
We are trying to figure all this stuff out too.
We are works-in-progress. We struggle with all of these same issues ourselves, and have made more than our share of mistakes along these lines. So it's not the case that we are "those who have found the answers" who are working to enlighten those who haven't. We are fellow-seekers who are interested in seeking alongside fellow-seekers.
That said, if we hadn't found anything worth sharing, we probably wouldn't be much help to anyone else (except maybe to offer some sympathy).
So we do find nuggets of wisdom, gather them here, and talk about them.
Then we actively try to disprove them.
We work hard to test them out and see if they're really, truly what we think they are. Maybe we get fooled, or if those nuggets are taken out of context, they stop working.
If we can't disprove them, then we keep them, as a kind of "working hypothesis" or a "provisional government" as nuggets of wisdom go. In other words, it's a temporary solution that we consider "the best we can find on this particular topic right now."
But we aren't married to it. It's like the WWF champ of wisdom-nuggets that will, at some point, hopefully be replaced by something even better.
And finally, one last important point:
Don't believe us.
Seriously. Don't believe us.
We don't want you to take anyone's word for any of this stuff. We don't want you to take our word for any of this stuff. We don't want to argue from authority, as if "we know and you don't and you need to just shut up and listen to us," aka the "God told me to tell you" approach.
Lots of other folks take this approach. We don't. We encourage you to be skeptical of that. And that includes us.
How, then, can we get anything done here?
Our goal is to:
1) Present evidence that you can examine yourself;
2) Present experiments that you can run for yourself;
3) Discuss what conclusions we can potentially draw based on that evidence or those experiments.
That's pretty much it. If we're trying to make a point, we make an effort when we can to arrange the evidence and the experiments in such a way that the conclusion is evident to you. That's what we think you should use as a practical base of knowledge to work from: what's self-evident to you, and you alone.
These are what we'd call our "axioms." Everything from math to music to physics starts with certain axioms; and what we're describing here is no different. We just want to try to articulate the axioms we're starting with in the beginning, and present the trail that every piece of evidence provides along the way.
Another, more simple way of saying this:
"We do not need theories so much
as the experience that is the source of the theory."
- R. D. Laing
Per the above, we try less to provide theories as we try to provide the experiences that are the source of the theory. (Once we provide the experiences, the theories that follow usually take care of themselves.)
Hopefully, us doing this will save you some time and energy in barking up some trees that, so to speak, don't have squirrels. (Because if you're barking up a tree, we're guessing you want a squirrel). The point is...hopefully this will save you time and energy, so your sanity, relationships, heck - your life overall - will be that much stronger. That's our hope, and that is what we're working for.
For a more in-depth version of what we're all about, click here
Check out the maniacal, drooling, awesome rantings of our adoring fans
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and if you dig it, then join up
From there, you might have some questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, glowing praise, gushing adoration . . . or you might even have your own articles, reviews, or work that you think might fit in with what we're doing here.
If that's the case, we'd love to hear from you.
So talk to us.
Onward ho!
The folks at LiveReal