Dr. Bob Wachter, coiner of the term “hospitalist” and one of the most respected physicians in healthcare today, launched his blog in 2007 with the words,
It’s not like you don’t have enough to read, or that I don’t have enough to do. So, why do I blog? And why should you read?
These questions remain even more relevant today as everyone’s lives are that much more busy than they were then and information overload that much more overwhelming. The answer to why I blog and why you should read comes from the words of Albert Einstein. My favorite version of his familiar quote is:
You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.
The solution to so many of the most pressing problems we face today is consciousness: how we see the world, how we choose to experience the world, how we make meaning of it. All human happiness, all human joy, depends on these. My goal in offering thoughts, insights, and reflections on challenges of the day is nothing short of contributing to shifting consciousness: mine, yours, ours. Nothing else matters as much or can have a greater impact on improving life for all who share this planet.
I did not always believe this to be the case. Raised in a culturally Jewish and passionately atheist family, I had been firmly convinced science held all the answers to how the world worked and politics is how we worked out how we will treat each other morally and justly. Oh yes, and that religion is the opiate of the masses. I had no truck with religion as I understood it to be the cause of so much suffering imposed by human beings on our fellow human beings.
The years since have taught me the world we live in is a far more wondrous and mysterious place than most of today’s scientists are telling us. I am still a scientist. I am also a skeptic, questioning as deeply as possible the foundation of all knowledge claims about the world and the moral choices we face while living in it. I have found answers, far more surprising answers than I could have ever imagined. And yes, more questions. I write to share the startling answers I’ve found and the ever evolving questions they raise. I write to shift the very consciousness that engages these questions. I hope you will choose to read so that you, too, will join this thrilling adventure in pursuit of an unshakeable foundation for truth and how we should live. There is nothing more important than shifting the very consciousness of us all. I hope you will join me in this most imperative of all human endeavors.
“For one who believes, no proof is necessary. For the nonbeliever, no amount of proof is sufficient.”
– Saint Ignatius of Loyola
“Must it always be so?”
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