FUTURE HUMAN

Our Crisis of Heart

How compassion can strengthen our emotional responses, our minds — and our tech

Jack Kornfield
OneZero
Published in
9 min readSep 4, 2018

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Illustration: Maria Medem

Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. We have achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

—Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

InIn a recent article for Medium, Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, a brain expert at the University of California, San Francisco, brilliantly outlined the current state of the human condition: We’re in a cognition crisis, he wrote, one wrought in part by the proliferation of technology. He notes the stark rise in depression, anxiety, and attention disorders and calls for the development of new cognitive capacities — capacities we will need in order to navigate the complexities of modern life.

Etymologically, cognition is derived from the Latin cognosco, a compound of com, meaning together with, and gnosco, which means…

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Jack Kornfield
OneZero

Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk and psychologist. A teacher and activist he has been key to introducing mindfulness to the west. Jackkornfield.com