analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

No Action Without Emotion

stuff On emotion as operating system

show:

analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental questions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • meditation isn't for everyone 30 May 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Meditation can harm you, and it isn’t for everyone. Strip the branding and it’s just trained attention—half of what you already do—so the on...
  • overengineering calming down 4 Apr 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Pop neuroscience is just “calm down” in a lab coat. The theories are scaffolding around trivial advice, attractive because they make your pr...
  • the amygdala is not the fear centre 7 Mar 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Your amygdala doesn’t decide your fear. You do. It’s not a fear centre, it’s an intensity detector, and calming it down is solving the wrong...
  • stress is good 1 Nov 2025 [audio + edited transcript] Stress isn’t broken by modern life. It’s a performance tool, and the line between fuel and harm isn’t the stressor. It’s whether you control...
  • stress and creativity 28 Mar 2025 [article] Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and...
  • giving in to fight or flight 22 Nov 2024 [article] Stress is a good thing before it’s a bad thing. It motivates us to act. We are scared of the f’s, but we don’t need to be. We should fight f...
  • why do people kill themselves? 16 Aug 2024 [article] Suicide is the interaction between personal despair and the failure of communities to provide reasons to live. We can’t answer Camus’ “one t...
  • overengineering 'calm down' 21 Mar 2024 [article] Pop-psych theories on stress often use complex jargon to describe fundamentally simple concepts. They act less to inform, and more to reassu...
  • active listening is misleading 11 Jan 2024 [article] Active listening isn’t about ticking boxes in conversation; it’s about diving into emotions to transform surface-level chit-chat into deep,...
  • no action without emotion 19 Jun 2023 [article] Our nervous system transforms senses to feelings long before they become thoughts and behaviours. One can’t talk about them in isolation. Ou...
  • solving the say-do-gap 12 May 2023 [article] To close the say-do-gap, we need to feel some ownership of the problem, we need the social support to support the change, and we need to kno...
  • a science of discontent 31 Oct 2022 [article] We regularly create ‘psychic predators’, choosing to concentrate on the uncontrollability of events or concentrating on events we can’t cont...
  • useful pharmacology 28 Jul 2022 [article] We absolutely love some drugs. Others terrify us. The difference is familiarity more than any other single thing and the result is confusion...
  • our success is not our own 23 Jun 2022 [article] The success of the people we surround ourselves with directly influences our performance and sense of accomplishment. It’s worth paying atte...
  • the five stages of grief are a lie 12 Apr 2022 [article] The five stages of grief were never supposed to be an orderly process, despite the common wisdom of many clinicians. Rather, anyone can expe...
  • the beauty of stress 30 Nov 2021 [article] Stress is one of the most valuable pieces of biological technology we own. Don’t confuse ancient lion chases with email notifications. Our r...
  • the value of the sacred 24 Aug 2021 [article] The sacred isn’t a social myth; a delusion of the religious. It is what happens when we bind moments of personal meaning and power to someth...
  • emotion and the mind 2 Jun 2021 [article] The rational mind is new, and it is weak in the face of emotion. Emotions motivate us to act, but our mind takes these visceral feelings and...
  • the loneliness epidemic 20 Sep 2020 [article]
  • the predictability of humans 15 Sep 2020 [article] The human animal is an animal first—responding adaptively to the environment around it. Humans are only unpredictable because we’re obsessed...

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