Sublime

• Identity greatly influences our behavior. People tend to align their actions with how they see themselves.

Belief is a terrain of agreement and disagreement in ‘common mind’ only. It is not the direct evidence of simple Presence.

The empathizers struck many more deals than the control group. But the perspective-takers did even better: 76 percent of them managed to fashion a deal that satisfied both sides.

Judgments of responsibility depend upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the metaphysics of mental cause and effect.

You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.15 You can do what you decide to do—but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

“It is too often the case that people on both sides of the question debate the existence of psychic functioning on the basis of their personal belief systems rather than on an examination of the scientific data”46 [emphasis added].

This, then, is the key sleight-of-hand at the heart of our psychosocial problems: We pretend we’re in charge, both to others and even to ourselves, but we’re less in charge than we think. We pose as privileged insiders, when in fact we’re often making the same kind of educated guesses that any informed outsider could make. We claim to know our own

The more abstract people become, the more capable we are of doing them harm.

We have begun the process of revealing how the mind works and raised the possibility that your thoughts are not you.