Category: Life Lessons

Categories
Life Lessons religion science spirituality

What Science Would Be Without Religion

24967-science-without-religion-is-lame-religion-without-science-is-blind-may

By Bradley Stockwell

A few years ago if you were to have asked me whether or not religious institutions have impeded the progress of science, I would have given a vehement ‘hell yes’. I would’ve given the accounts of Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, and the many others who risked or gave their lives in the name of science as examples. However over the years I’ve learned that making such a blanket statement is rather prejudiced. This is not to say there hasn’t been significant efforts by religious institutions to repress science, but also without them, most of the principles and methodologies of modern science and medicine would’ve never been established.

The Roman Catholic Church was vital in the development of systematic nursing and hospitals, and even still today the Church remains the single greatest private provider of medical care and research facilities in the world. The Church also founded Europe’s first universities and Medieval Catholic mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Roger Bacon are considered the fathers of modern science. Furthermore, after the Fall of Rome, monasteries and convents became strongholds of academia, preserving the works of Euclid, Ptolemy, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Simplicius and many more. Clergymen were the leading scholars of the day, studying nature, mathematics and the motion of stars. And while some may blame Christianity for the Fall of Rome and decline of intellectual culture during the Middle Ages, this claim is unjustified and is a much more complex issue probably better reserved for a history class. Additionally, many forget that while the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the much more Christianized eastern half remained relatively strong and continued into the 15th century as the Byzantine Empire.

Not to focus solely on Christianity, Islam also had a part in the preservation and flourishing of science. An Arab Muslim named Ibn al-Haytham, considered to be one the first theoretical physicists, made significant contributions in the fields of optics, astronomy and mathematics, and was an early advocate that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—essentially the scientific method. Caliphs during the Islamic Golden Age established research institutes, sent emissaries around the world in search of books, then funded projects to translate, study and preserved them. Much of the Ancient Greek science we have today would have been lost and the European Renaissance hundreds of years after would not have been possible without their efforts. Also, at one time arguably, Arabic was the language of science. The “al’s” in algebra, algorithm, alchemy and alcohol are just some of the remnants.

The Islamic world also imported ideas from Hindus, which includes the Arabic numerals we still use today and the concept of zero. Also, as mentioned in a previous post, The Spirituality of Science, I see many parallels between science and Dharmic beliefs, such as reincarnation and entropy: the universe is cyclical; life and death are just different stopping points on a grand recycling process; matter, like the body, is created and recycled, while energy, like the soul, is immortal and transferred. The correlation I find most fascinating though is the Hindu concept of Brahman to the laws of thermodynamics. According to belief, Brahman is the source of all things in the universe including reality and existence; everything comes from Brahman and everything returns to Brahman; Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. You could substitute the word energy for Brahman and get a simple understanding of the applications of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. It’s funny how the world’s oldest religion, Hinduism, seemed to grasp these concepts thousands of years before science did.

In conclusion, although it’s still hard for me to look past some of the civil atrocities wrought by religious institutions—in particular when they’ve been intimately tied to a governing body, I think when you tally up the scores, science has benefited greatly from religion and any impediments are heavily outweighed. In a day when it seems popular to present everything in a dichotomous fashion—either you’re with or against us, I think it’s important to remember that for the most part, we all have what’s best in mind for humanity, and it’s when we work together that the best results are produced. Until next time, stay curious my friends.

 

Categories
business entrepreneurship Life Lessons

Why Drive-Thru Attendant is The Proudest Position I’ve Ever Held

iStock_000050405662_Large

By Bradley Stockwell

The further I progress in my adult life, the more I realize what an important role my first job had in building the foundation of it. Let’s be honest, working as a fast food drive-thru attendant just plainly sucks. It’s extremely stressful and degrading; you make minimum wage, have some horrible bosses and you go home every day smelling like greasy meat. I had everything from insults to water balloons to milkshakes to sex toys thrown at me (yes for some reason people love playing practical jokes on drive-thru attendants). I witnessed physical altercations—was even involved in one myself, auto accidents, arrests and people performing sex acts while I handed them their food (completely separate from the sex toys incident). Yet despite all this, I am continually grateful for the preview the drive-thru gave me of the real world in all its ugly and fascinating glory.

Social Skills

Customer service is an obvious requirement of a drive-thru attendant. Since food is a universal need, the walks of life I came in contact with—and had to make happy—was quite expansive. Also if you get between hungry people and their food, be prepared to see some claws come out. To avoid—or if need be remedy—angry customers, I learned there was no one-size-fits-all approach. Everyone has their own individual ticks, stresses and personalities and to succeed in customer service you need to be an excellent reader of people. As a naïve 16-year-old boy who was raised in a nice suburban community, I wasn’t so good at this in the beginning. However by the end of my two-year tenure in fast food, there wasn’t a soccer mom, senior citizen, crackhead, or corporate businessman I couldn’t charm.

Communication

As the drive-thru attendant you’re sort of the quarterback of the team. Every part of the transaction runs through your hands from taking the order, collecting the money and handing the order off to the customer. All three of these things need to be double-checked for accuracy because if something goes wrong, all the blame comes back to the customer’s only point of contact—you. While much of this was dependent on me, the food—the most important part—depended on my kitchen staff. I found out early in my fast food career that having an open line of communication with them was crucial. For me this meant I had to learn some Spanish. Repeating orders out loud in Spanish to my kitchen staff increased the accuracy of them tenfold and I can’t tell you how many times knowing a little Spanish has come in handy later in life.

Teamwork and Leadership

Additionally, I also took interest in my kitchen staff’s job roles. While my initial motivation to get behind the grill and fryer was out of curiosity, it helped me realize some of the challenges and stresses they had to deal with day-to-day—such as getting burned constantly. I even let my kitchen staff take a few cracks at the headset to understand my job also. Although we preferred our own positions in the end, it built rapport between us. Understanding and respecting how each person contributes to the team’s success as a whole was an invaluable lesson that helped me succeed later in management. But most importantly, I found working with people who respect and have a positive relationship with each other can make even the worst job very enjoyable at times.

Stress & Time Management

To this day, it’s hard to put into words the stress I felt during a lunch, or dinner rush. The headset is constantly ringing with nagging customers, orders need to be bagged, drinks need to be made, customers need to be greeted at the window, and it only took one slip for the whole thing to fall into chaos. Along with the above mentioned duties, it was also my job to make sure bags, condiments and cups were stocked and the shake machine and ice bins were regularly cleaned and filled. If these things weren’t done before a rush or shift change it meant disaster. My fellow employees, and most importantly the customers, depended on me getting these tasks done, so I quickly learned not to procrastinate them; to instead get them done in small chunks throughout the day. To also ensure rushes ran as smoothly as possible, I memorized the totals with tax for almost every combo meal and the dollar menu up to ten items that way I could fill orders while taking new ones without having to be in front of an order screen.

Optimism

My most valuable lesson sort of happened by accident. Being a musician, I began treating rushes as performances just for the fun of it. Instead of focusing on how much my job sucked, I instead focused on how many people I could make smile or laugh. If the situation was appropriate, I sang to people over the intercom, did caricature voices and just really tried to be the most entertaining drive-thru attendant I could be. I learned that when I took pride in my job—no matter how menial it was, the day went by a lot faster and at times I didn’t even want to go home.

 

Categories
Brain Science business Business Science entrepreneurship Health Life Lessons small business

5 Things That Separate Successful People From Everyone Else

albert-einstein-colored-photo

By Bradley Stockwell

Marketing Director Merchant Capital Source

As I’ve said several times before, bettering your business begins with you. Every investment in yourself is an investment in your business. If you’re looking to transform yourself into a successful business owner and entrepreneur, you need to begin acting and thinking like one—and it’s not easy. In some cases it can mean some major life and brain hacking, but once you’ve made these transformations, you’ll wonder how you ever operated any other way. If you don’t know where to begin, you’re in luck. After reading hundreds of articles, biographies, advice columns and using myself as a guinea pig, I’ve narrowed down the five essential things successful people do that others don’t. After all this research and testing you’ll be surprised to learn there’s no great secret. Success comes down to five simple things that you most likely know you should already be doing.

1. They Read More & Watch Less Television

All great thinkers and innovators read and I can’t express the difference it’s made in my life personally as someone who was once a very casual reader. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, I insist it is this. While it may be hard to start, once you’re in the habit you’ll find it’s much more fulfilling than other forms of media because neurologically it’s the healthiest thing you can consume. Numerous studies have shown reading requires, stimulates and strengthens several regions of the brain.

Television on the other hand has shown to decrease brain activity in regions that are particularly important to business owners. When watching television, brain activity switches to the right side of the brain. This is significant because the left side of the brain is responsible for logical thinking and critical analysis. It also decreases activity in your frontal lobes which is responsible for decision making. Brain scans have shown that when people watch television brain activity mirrors that of someone under hypnosis. Maybe all those rumors of television being used as a brainwashing device have some merit. While I’m not saying to stop watching television altogether it’s good to practice moderation and be selective with the programs you consume.

2. They Sleep

While it may be tempting, and sometimes necessary, to tack a few more hours onto your busy day you should calculate the repercussions sleep deprivation can have on productivity, not to mention health.

Studies have shown that reducing sleep by even 1.5 hours for one night can reduce flexible decision-making and innovative thinking by as much as 32%! Also when sleep-deprived your perceived exertion level for the same tasks done while fully awake increases by 17-19%.

I myself have read and tried many methods on supposedly how to operate on less than six hours of sleep and found unless you’re superhuman, they simply don’t work. For me personally, sleep is essential to my creative process. Some of my best ideas have come from my dreams or middle-of-the-night epiphanies. While the amount of sleep needed varies for everyone, sacrificing it for productivity, in my opinion, is counterproductive. So sleep—you’ll be healthier, happier and much more successful.

3. They Learn

Although you may not be in school anymore, there’s no reason why learning should stop. In fact I’ve found learning to be much more enjoyable outside the confines of formal education because I can learn what I want, when I want and how I want. And it doesn’t always have to be a business-related education; learning anything new creates new neural pathways in the brain and as I’ve said previously, the more neural pathways your brain has available the better it works.

Granted this doesn’t mean learning about the latest celebrity gossip is just as valuable as learning how to play an instrument. I’m sorry to tell you, but if it doesn’t feel like your brain is stretching it’s not. The reason why something is perceived as challenging is it requires you to alter your way of thinking, or neurologically speaking, to create new neural pathways.

While this is difficult, finding something you’re curious about is a great motivator. And you’ll find the more you challenge yourself, suddenly the easier and more enjoyable it becomes to learn new things. Intelligence in my opinion is much more an exercise than a gift. While you may think you don’t have enough time to educate yourself, I began dedicating just my lunch break to learning and in the last year I’ve learned how to play the piano and taught myself enough courses in physics to keep a regular blog on it. The world is a wonderful and mysterious place and I encourage you to poke and probe at it as much as possible.

4. They Write

Something you’ve probably noticed if you keep up with business publications is that most successful business owners and CEO’s write. Whether it’s in a journal, book, blog, or guest article, they do this for two reasons. One being that writing is simply a great cathartic release and the other to retain information they’ve learned.

Writing is great for your mental and emotional health. Keeping a journal can give you a safe place to vent stress and process problems. Studies have also shown it improves creativity, self-esteem and memory retention. Like reading, this can be difficult to start but I think what most people get caught up on (or at least I did at first) is that you have to make an entry every day for it to be effective. I’ve found that even one journal entry a week can suffice, however I tend to write more when my life is stressful or eventful.

Writing is also an essential adjunct to learning. It requires you to not only recall something you’ve learned but to also process and analyze its applications. In my opinion, this makes the difference between knowing and understanding something. As Einstein once said, “Any fool can know; the point is to understand.” This is the primary reason I keep regular business and physics blogs whether or not anyone actually reads them.

5. They Exercise & Eat Well

If you want to be a highly productive individual you’re going to need the right fuel. While most people say they don’t have enough time to accomplish the tasks they intend to (so they do counterproductive things like not sleeping enough), the truth most likely is they don’t have the energy to. Just like a race car can’t run off low octane fuel, successful people cannot run off low-grade food. Like any machine, your body is an energy processor and if you input high quality energy, the greater your output will be. As with all these changes it’s difficult at first, but once you make a habit of it you’ll find you’ll actually start craving healthy food over junk.

The second part of this is making your body as energy efficient as possible and that means working out. Once again, don’t get hung up on setting unrealistic goals and think you need to work out every day. You’ll be amazed at what just a little walking, or bicycle riding can do. If you’re close enough to work to commute by these methods, do so. Beginning and ending your day with a little exercise can do wonders.

The biggest nemesis to productivity is stress, hormonally known as cortisol. Your body releases cortisol when stressed and without exercise to burn that cortisol, stress compounds on itself and leads to impulsive behavior and anxiety. Exercise also releases endorphins which help you rationalize problems and increases optimism, energy and memory retention—not to mention you’ll live longer. Also while exercise may be physically exhausting, mentally it is relaxing. Treat it as your alone time to distress from work and home life.

 

Categories
Astrophysics Biology chemistry Life Lessons particle physics physics religion science spirituality

The Spirituality of Science

colonoscopy

An obviously very doped-up me after my colonoscopy 

By Bradley Stockwell

To spare you of the intimate details, I’ll just say recently I’ve had some ‘digestive issues’. Two weeks ago I had a colonoscopy to check out these issues. Although I realized the possibility that they may be caused by something serious such as cancer, when my doctor presented me with that reality, it dug in a lot more than I thought. Fortunately, it seems this world is stuck with me a little longer for all my biopsies came out okay. However during the five days in which I had to wait to hear these results, I couldn’t help but contemplate my own mortality and what death means to me as an atheist.

For lack of a better label, I am an atheist but I am not spiritual-less. I find a deep sense of sanctity and humility in the scientific observations of nature. To make clear, this post is not intended to degrade or disprove anyone’s religious faith. The world is richly diverse in beliefs, cultures and opinions and I think that’s a necessary and beautiful thing. What I do have a problem with is the contention surrounding the subject of faith and I in no part want to contribute to it. The reason I love physics so much is it seeks to find unity amongst division and I apply that same philosophy in all facets of my life. Simply, I’m presenting how I sleep at night without believing in a god(s) or an afterlife because it is an honest question I’m frequently asked.

The primary source of my peace of mind comes from the laws of thermodynamics which describes how energy behaves. The first law, the conservation of energy, states energy cannot be created nor destroyed. This law was exampled in a previous post, Flight of The Timeless Photon, on how the photon (aka energy) is transformed from hydrogen proton mass into the life-providing sunshine we all know. The energy we consume, and consequently life, is all sourced from the sun. And the sun’s energy is sourced from the matter within the universe and to find out where the universe’s energy is sourced, we would’ve had to been around during The Big Bang. However according to multiverse theorists, it’s a good chance that it may have come from the matter of a previous universe which was chopped up and scrambled by a black hole into energy. Regardless, the point I’m trying to make is energy is immortal. It is the driver of the circle of life not just here on Earth but in the entire universe. As special as you think you are, you are nothing more than a temporary capsule of mass for energy to inhabit. Death is nothing more than a dispersion of this energy and this is what I take consolation in. When I die, all the energy that was me, my personality—my soul, my body even, still remains in this world. I’m not gone; just less ordered. I am a part of what keeps the arrow of time moving forward as the universe naturally moves from a higher state of order towards a lower—the second law of thermodynamics.

The universe is very cyclical. Life and death are just different stopping points on a grand recycling process. Matter, like our bodies, is created and recycled and energy, like our souls, is immortal and transferred. If you’re familiar with Dharmic beliefs, this probably sounds familiar. It’s funny how the world’s oldest religion, Hinduism, seemed to grasp these concepts thousands of years before science did. While I’m not a practicing Hindu, nor do I plan to be, if forced to choose it would be the closest to my belief system due to the many correlations I find between it and science. One correlation I was most awestruck by was the concept of Brahman to the laws of thermodynamics (aka the laws of energy) mentioned above. According to belief, Brahman is the source of all things in the universe including reality and existence. Everything comes from Brahman and everything returns to Brahman. Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. You could substitute the word energy for Brahman and get a simple understanding of the applications of the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

If you can’t fathom the thought of an afterlife as some form of your current self, I can understand that. Once again I’m not here to convince you differently, I’m just presenting my viewpoint. However in regards to the value of life, I do hope to convince you that there is no deeper appreciation than through the eyes of science. I only stress this to debunk the perpetuated myth that science somehow devalues the beauty of this world by picking it apart. Once again, the reason I love physics is it widens the perspective of my existence through unifying the universe’s many diverse creations and movements. It connects me to the infinitely larger cosmos above yet also to the infinitely smaller universes below. I have an atomic connection to the stars, a chemical connection to the earth, a biological connection to life and a genetic connection to my fellow humans. When you see the world on so many dimensions, I can personally attest that suddenly everything becomes very interesting. Even the things we don’t give much thought to, like sunshine, weather, the way in which water ripples, or why your friend’s beer overflows when you smack the top of it with yours, become regularly appreciated with a new sense of awe and curiosity. The world becomes much more absorbing than anything a smartphone or television can provide and you find yourself wanting to experience everything it can offer. There’s no greater feeling than the intercourse between knowledge and experience. This perspective is perfectly captured by one of my idols, the great physicist Richard Feynman.

 “I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

When I finally do say goodbye to this world, I hope my friends and family will realize this is not actually the case. Everything that was me is still very much a part of this world, just partaking in a different dimension of it. The energy contained within my body will go back into the earth so that it can provide new life to the flora and fauna which kept me alive as I dined on them throughout my own life. Every joule of energy that was me will be released back into this world to live life anew. And will the unique combination of matter the winds of energy deposited as Bradley Stockwell be forgotten? Well I hope I will have done something impactful enough to be remembered by history, but if not, I can always depend on my beloved light particle, the photon, to ensure my existence will mean something. Explained in detail in my previous post, A Crash Course in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, according to relative velocity time dilation, the photon’s existence is timeless relative to ours because it moves at the speed of light. A funny thing happens to time at the speed of light—it ceases to exist, at least relative to our perception of time. That is of course until I interrupt this so-called photon’s path by absorbing it as heat and become that photon’s entire existence; forever altering the universe. And this is not the only way the photon will preserve my existence. I of course don’t absorb all the photons I come into contact with—some of them bounce off me and are collected in the photon detectors (aka the eyes) of my friends and family members. These photons then create electromagnetically charged webs of neurons, better known as memories. Well until next time, stay curious my friends!

 

Categories
business Business Science entrepreneurship Health Life Lessons

Why You Are More Valuable Than Any Salary

Image

By Bradley Dowies

Marketing Director Merchant Capital Source

Even with surmounting evidence of the importance of a good social life, getting exercise and decreasing stress, people continue to prioritize their salaries over their health. However when you apply monetary values on good health it becomes obvious that money is far from everything. A study from the Journal of Socio-Economics used “shadow pricing” (an economics term to estimate the price paid for increments of addition production) to estimate monetary values of potential life satisfaction gained by interactions with friends and family. Here’s a breakdown of what the study found:

  • Going from poor to excellent health: +$463,170/ year
  • Having a better social life: +$131,232/ year
  • A happy marriage: +$105,000/ year
  • Seeing friends and family regularly: +$97,265/ year

That means you could potentially be missing out on $796,667 worth of life satisfaction due to your time and social life consuming job. Now ask yourself again, is that long commute, or that 60 hour workweek really worth that high salary? Despite numerous scientific studies in support of this, I personally had to learn on my own and thought it more potent to share my story than to state studies.

I graduated from college in 2009 in the midst of the “Great Recession” at a time when the job market had been decimated. Although my degree was in advertising and I had intended to enter the field, I was left to make suffice with what was available, and what’s available after an occupational apocalypse? The cockroaches of the professional job market: sales positions. It seems no matter how bad things get, there’s always a need for a good salesperson. I had student loan debt and bills to pay, so at the time I felt I had no other choice. Fast forward two years and I had found financial success in my unintended sales career; I had been promoted twice and had a healthy managerial salary. While my finances were healthy, I was not. I had gained 20 pounds, I was working on average 55 hours a week and had to work most Saturdays. Most days I’d have to skip my lunch, or work while eating it and I was drinking heavily on the weekends. This was the type of atmosphere that was bred at my job; you give your life to the company, otherwise there’s hundreds of other saps willing to replace you because there’s nothing else out there and you should consider yourself fortunate to even have a job.

In late 2011, I had a life changing moment, or what I called my quarter life crisis. I had to ask, “Is this really what life is supposed to be?” After 18+ years of schooling, you get a job and learn to do one thing very well and do it everyday until you either retire, or die. While I had gained financial independence, I had lost my life in the process. I was good at my job, but my life was stagnant. I was no longer learning; no longer challenged and the adult world seemed empty. This was when I realized money would never bring me happiness, only buy the drinks I needed to cope with its misery.

The tipping point came when I was offered a very lucrative position in medical device sales in which I’d be making the coveted six-figure salary at 24 years old. After a long life contemplation I decided not only to decline the position, but to quit my career in sales altogether. Although the job offer was admittedly very tempting and everyone thought I was crazy, I knew I’d be committing my future to a life I never intended to have. I wanted to be in advertising and marketing because it was challenging to me; it was my passion, my joy; it fulfilled me.

After quitting I moved in with my grandmother and took several part-time jobs and internships throughout 2012. Also against the advice of many, I took the savings I had accumulated and traveled to Europe—something I told myself I would always do in my twenties. The trip only galvanized my commitment to the value of my life and was my motivation while I rebuilt my career over the next two years. In that time, I was able to go from a minimum wage intern to a marketing director. While I am not quite making a six-figure salary yet, I feel immeasurably richer than I ever have. My career is now based on my talents, knowledge and ideas as opposed to learned repetitive routines. Your job takes up the majority of your waking hours and if you’re miserable, or not challenged, your life will suffer. Simply summed up by Confucius “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” When I am getting paid for a passion, the work it takes to be successful seems a lot more effortless.

Along with finding a more fulfilling career path, there are a few simpler choices I’ve made that have also contributed to my success. The first was moving closer to work—close enough that I can walk, or bicycle. I never realized the difference starting your day out with a little exercise as opposed to sitting in traffic could make. Instead of struggling with other drivers on the road, I’m struggling with new ideas and planning out my day and by the time I arrive at work, my first hour of work is done. Secondly, a healthy exercise and diet regimen. Being healthy simply allows me to have the energy and mental focus I need in order to be more productive at work. Thirdly was utilizing my lunch as a time to take my mind off work. Whether it’s reading a book, or learning something new, I’ve found when I get out of the office and away from my desk I come back renewed and the second half of my day is more fruitful than if I had not. Lastly, learning and challenging yourself doesn’t have to stop just because you’re out of school. Creating new synapses in your brain helps with problem solving and creative thinking and while it’s not related to your work, you’ll inadvertently find yourself better at it.