The Levers of the Soul

The mind, according to this view, is like a little person inside our heads, sitting in the control tower, receiving data from the outside and issuing commands to the body. Questions about dualism aside, what's interesting here is that the mind is in control of the body.

This way of looking at things is useful, but incomplete, because influence runs

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When designing a character, it’s often useful to think of them in terms of their theory of control. How have they learned to control the world? When unexpected change strikes, what’s their automatic go-to tactic for wrestling with the chaos? What’s their default, flawed response? The answer, as we’ve just seen, comes from that character’s core beli

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In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It le... See more

Our minds and bodies are coordinated by what we attend to and what we intend to do. By learning to consciously control these aspects of your internal experience—in conversation with others, on stage, and even on camera—you can indirectly change a lot about how you are perceived and the level of connection you can create. Instead of trying to contro

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Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the programme, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yo

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