What happens when the lights go out?
I remember as a child on a hot summer day awaiting an impending thunderstorm. The fluttering of my heartbeat pounded in my chest as I watched the dark clouds roll over the hills towards my home. Counting the seconds between each flash of lightning and crack of thunder.
1…2…3…BOOM!
The storm’s almost here…
1…2…BOOM!
Then naturally it would arrive. And sometimes, if we were lucky, the power would go out.
I remember those warm summer nights when the lights would go out. We’d huddle together in the living room in anticipation. Mom and dad would run downstairs to grab the flashights. We’d all get one – both of my sisters and me.
Since no power meant no TV and the three of us kids were flushed with excitement, we’d have to find a game to play.
It was in this darkness that we found our deepest connection.
When the lights go out our eyes no longer serve us. We can’t find what we’re looking for in the external world, so we naturally turn our gaze back to the inside – and its inside where we make magic.
Virus is spreading, fires in the west, hurricanes in the southeast, marching towards what’s sure to be an explosive election.
We find ourselves in the darkness.
Looking out to make sense of the world is not serving us.
Time to look within; where the light shines brightest in the darkness.
What connections might we make there? What adventures might we have? What answers might we find?
May the darkness lead us to a brighter tomorrow.
This Week’s Podcast:
I May Care, But My Brain Doesn’t with Dr. Don Vaughn, PhD, Neuroscientist & Science Communicator, VP Data & Insights at Invisibly
“Attention is the superpower of taking the machinery you already have to process the world and focusing it on what is important while turning off what’s not important.”
In this episode, I sat down with Dr. Don Vaughn, PhD in Neuroscience and current VP of Data & Insights for Invisibly, a company whose mission is to give people the tools and power to choose how they experience the digital world. Dr. Don explains a recent experiment he ran with David Eagleman to determine when our brains care about other people. We discuss the tribalism that is inherent in humans as demonstrated via neuroscience, the potential to mechanically enhance empathy, brain plasticity, attention as a super power, and the difference between compassion and empathy. We also discuss free will and consciousness – the hard problem of neuroscience.
If you or someone you know is researching or building technology to enhance human consciousness, let me know!
What I’m Reading
IDEAS
The Five Pillars of Conscious Capital, Navin Chaddha GP @ Mayfield
The State of Governance on Blockchains by Greenfield One
MARKETS
Gene Fama: Inflation is Out of the Control of Central Banks
Tokenomics of the US Dollar by Tatiana Koffman
CRYPTO
The Exchange: DeFi Trading from West to East
Don’t Fear the Reaper, Nic Carter
Comparing Insurance Like Solutions in DeFi, Hugh Karp
A Thread on NXM, Maple Leaf Capital
COVID19
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