Seren Kiger

“Do a self-audit. Where in your internal life is your Primitive Mind holding the reins? What are the triggers that activate your Primitive Mind and leave you buried in fog? Where do you tend to be at your best—consistently high rung, wise, and grown up? What is it about those moments that gives your Higher Mind such a strong advantage? Can you replicate that elsewhere? Think about your beliefs. Play the “why” game with them, like an annoying four-year-old. Why do you believe what you believe? When did those ideas become your beliefs? Were they installed in you by someone else? Are they beholden to some tribe’s checklist of approved ideas? If they are authentically yours, when were they last updated? Your Primitive Mind thinks your beliefs are sacred objects carved in stone, but they’re not—they’re hypotheses written in pencil, and if you’re thinking up on the high rungs, you should probably be pretty active with the eraser.”
― Tim Urban, What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

“American poet Carl Sandburg once wrote: “When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”
― Tim Urban, What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

“The scary thing about the Republican story isn’t that there is a red political golem that does golem things like trying to grab power by breaking the rules, by enforcing conformity, by undermining trust in the electoral process. Political golems are an inevitability within any liberal democracy. The scary thing is that it’s succeeding.”
― Tim Urban, What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

“My society is currently acting like a poopy-pantsed four-year-old who dropped its ice cream”
― Tim Urban, What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies