For most of human history, religion has been a nearly universal feature of society. Anthropologists have found evidence of religious beliefs and rituals in cultures across the world, raising an intriguing question: why is the human mind so naturally drawn to religion? One explanation comes from cognitive science. The human brain evolved to recognize patterns and identify agency in the environment. For our ancestors, assuming that a rustle in the bushes was caused by a predator rather than the wind carried little cost if they were wrong, but potentially life-saving benefits if they were right. As a result, humans developed a tendency to detect purpose, intention, and agency, even when evidence is limited. Researchers also argue that our brains are natural storytellers. We seek explanations for events, especially those involving uncertainty, suffering, death, or forces beyond our control. Religion provides structured answers to many of these questions while offering narratives that help individuals make sense of their lives. Religion may also have played an important social role. According to anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, shared beliefs and rituals helped large groups of unrelated individuals cooperate. Common moral systems, traditions, and identities increased trust within communities and enabled societies to organize on scales that would otherwise have been difficult. Importantly, this does not mean religion is simply an illusion created by the brain. Cognitive scientists study why humans are predisposed toward religious belief, but they do not determine whether any particular religious claim is true or false. That question belongs to philosophy, theology, and personal faith. What research does suggest is that religion may be partly rooted in fundamental features of human cognition: our tendency to find patterns, seek meaning, cooperate in groups, and search for explanations beyond immediate experience. Sources: Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained), Justin Barrett (Why Would Anyone Believe in God?), Ara Norenza
Many people claim that hardship alone creates strong societies. History and social science suggest something more nuanced: hardship does not automatically make a society stronger. In fact, crises often weaken communities when trust is low, institutions are fragile, and people become divided. What distinguishes resilient societies is not suffering itself, but how people respond to challenges. Research by political scientist Robert Putnam on social capital highlights the importance of trust, civic engagement, and social networks. Communities where people cooperate, participate in local organizations, and feel responsible for one another tend to solve problems more effectively and recover faster from crises. Likewise, Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom demonstrated that groups can successfully manage shared resources when they develop norms of cooperation, accountability, and collective responsibility. History offers countless examples. Societies that survived wars, economic depressions, natural disasters, and political upheaval were not necessarily the toughest because they endured the most pain. They succeeded because they built institutions that people trusted, invested in education and public goods, maintained social cohesion, and adapted to changing conditions. Resilience emerged from organization and cooperation, not hardship alone. A strong society is therefore not one that glorifies struggle. It is one that transforms challenges into opportunities for learning, innovation, and collective action. Strength is found in the ability of individuals to work together, maintain trust across differences, and preserve social bonds during difficult times. In short, societies are not made strong by suffering. They are made strong by the networks, institutions, values, and relationships that allow people to face adversity together. Sources: Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone), Elinor Ostrom (Governing the Commons), OECD research on social cohesion and resilience, and United Nations frameworks on societal resilience.
What is this sorcery. I am waking up at 6AM and doing things, why
new format ✨️
to be human(e)
I am just trying to understand
this is the simulation only, no worries
meaning?
I am shadow banned. Looks like Instagram doesn't like freedom!
you are what you eat
As above, so below - it is the law
blackout in the middle of your life -
it is getting faster and faster 💨
low on sugar please
What's next for us?
Never give up
what are we?
Do not vote here
Alone again
🌀
It is spreading fast...
Post inspired by @controlremedy - what a great game.
People lost ability to talk. Even people that consider themselves open and propeople use offensive arguments when you disagree with them. Everyone is shouting, especially politics. Guys, it is our choice, it doesn't have to be like that. We can disagree and still make our future better together.
Obey
You would think that, over the years, being human would become more familiar. That wasn't the case for me.
They keep bothering me...
Somewhere between the meadow and my dreams, reality got a little blurry 🍄🌙
🔺️
rare treat, no sleep
Too many eyes. Not enough souls.
to be happy or to be sad?
Believing in God is fine, but ask yourself - what do you truly put your faith in.
...because it is not aware of itself... that's is why I exist
You can't end here. Experience is the only thing you can't doubt. Everything else, even your brain, you know through it. We've never once seen consciousness emerge from lifeless matter. We've seen correlations. Never the crossing. So maybe the brain doesn't produce consciousness. Maybe it receives it. Filters it. Narrows it down to one life. Break the radio and the music stops. The signal doesn't. And here's the part logic can't get around: you will never experience your own ending. From the inside, nothing ever stops. The Bardo Thödol says the same thing from the other side. After the last breath, the mind meets clear light, then visions, gentle and wrathful. The whole teaching is one instruction: recognize that all of it is your own mind. Not a road out. A mirror. Maybe that's all the last breath is. The moment the reflection stops pretending it isn't the light. . . .
Even the light has to die...
Good to be back 🖤
I have a scary story today… 👀📸 I trained Midjourney on my street photography and honestly, it shook me! It understood my style perfectly. Not just the look, but the rhythm, the mood, the way I frame people and moments. What scared me even more? It amplified my strongest sides so clearly that I suddenly understood my own work better than before. My mind is blown. 🤯 We are so easy to replicate… and that’s both terrifying and fascinating. BTW. You can see my photos @whz11dz
Before abstract art, much of Western art was judged by how successfully an artist could represent the visible world. A painting could function almost like a replica: a person should look like a person, a landscape like a landscape, and artistic skill was often demonstrated through perspective, anatomy, light, colour, and realistic detail. Abstract artists challenged this idea. They asked: why does art have to imitate something that already exists? Artists such as Kazimir Malevich tried to create an art that did not depend on recognizable objects. A square, line, circle, or field of colour could become the artwork itself. Instead of copying the external world, the artist could create something that came from an idea, a feeling, or a philosophy. This is why the common criticism of abstract art—“Anyone could put a line on a canvas and call it art”—does not completely work. Sometimes the artwork really is physically easy to make. Painting a simple line or square may require very little technical skill. But physical difficulty is not necessarily the point. The important question is what stands behind that simple form. Why did the artist make it? Why at that particular moment in art history? What idea does it express? What previous idea about art is it rejecting or challenging? Of course, this does not mean that every random line or square is automatically good art. Abstract art can be empty, lazy, repetitive, or uninteresting just like realistic art can be. Simplicity alone does not give a work meaning. There still needs to be thought, intention, context, or some artistic idea behind it. Malevich is a good example. His work was radical not because painting a square was technically difficult, but because he was proposing a completely different idea of what painting could be. He wanted to remove recognizable objects and reduce painting to basic forms and colours, searching for something beyond the representation of everyday reality. So the achievement of abstract art is not necessarily: “Look how difficult this was to make.” Sometimes it is: “Look how differently this asks us to think about what art is.”
memories of last summer ☀️
dream research is getting strangely concrete🌙 🧠 in 2025, researchers combined 20 sleep datasets - 505 people and 2,643 awakenings - and found that eeg activity could predict whether someone reported a conscious experience after waking, during both rem and non-rem sleep. 🎧 in another 2025 experiment, people listened to audiobooks before sleep. during later rem sleep, researchers could detect brain-activity patterns carrying information about the audiobook and blind raters could identify which audiobook someone had heard from their dream reports. 🌳 then in a small 2026 pilot, researchers repeatedly prompted people to “think of a tree” while they were falling asleep. of the 8 participants who later reached rem sleep, 4 reported the tree theme in their first rem dream. tiny study, so definitely not “dream control” yet - but it suggests that something introduced at sleep onset can sometimes carry into a later rem dream. dreams are starting to look less like random stories we disappear into - and more like experiences we can actually measure, trace, and perhaps even influence. ✨
🕊️🌍 What if peace doesn’t need everyone? What if we’re waiting for the whole world to change… when real change can begin with only a small percentage of us? There’s a famous idea known as the 3.5% rule: research into nonviolent movements found that sustained, active participation by a relatively small share of the population has sometimes been enough to bring about major political change. But wanting peace is not enough. As long as we keep believing that more weapons will make us safer, we will keep buying them. Governments will keep investing in them. Companies will keep producing them. And someone will always have an interest in keeping us afraid of one another. So maybe the real question isn’t: “Does everyone want peace?” Maybe it’s: How many of us need to stop accepting war as inevitable before the system starts to change? Peace isn’t passive. It requires us to question what we fund, what we normalize, and what we accept in the name of security. Maybe we don’t need everyone. Maybe we just need enough people willing to imagine something different — and act like it’s possible. 🕊️ I want peace. Do you?
suddenly, different world - it happens to me, all the time
A child is born somewhere between a ruined house and a border drawn long before he existed. He doesn’t know why the war started. He doesn’t know the names of the men who decided where the line should be, which god was right, or which flag should fly above his home. He only knows the sound of sirens. His parents learned the same sound when they were young. Different war, different enemy, same fear. Years pass. Governments change. Borders move. Old graves disappear under new roads, and new graves take their place. People call it history, religion, revenge, justice. For the child, it has no name. It is simply the world he was born into. And when someone finally asks who chose this world for him, the answer is uncomfortable. He didn’t. We did. Suffering of the Innocent.
time flies, guys.
After massive headache I woke up really tired and defragmented today but everyone wants something. I just want to do nothing for a day.... but for now yet another day of slavery