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ALT A hand holds up the Made In Our Image issue of Big Think's print magazine beneath a stone colonnade.
ALT Inside the issue: Namir Khaliq investigates the idea of the "permanent underclass." Jasna Hodžić examines what her writing process means in the face of AI. Henry Shevlin asks: would we treat AI differently if we decide it's conscious? Thomas Moynihan meets London's new AI avant-garde. And more!
ALT The Made In Our Image issue of Big Think's print magazine. Subscribe to get your copy. bigthink.com/membership
ALT Stop chasing your “one true passion.” It might not exist. Trying to solve one’s existential dread by finding a singular purpose is a game won only by not playing. By Dan Kennedy
ALT My girlfriend and I are waiting for a friend at the airport, and I’m staring across the road at the cargo bays when it hits me. Freight. That’s what I’m meant to do with my life.
ALT “If writing were my true passion, wouldn’t I have written another book by now?” Dan Kennedy
ALT About 11 business days later, my fascination with freight fades, and I am convinced that what I am truly meant to do is drive around the West indefinitely. Like Jack Kerouac with a Volvo and a Chevron card, but unburdened by the writing part.
ALT Event card on black: Mini Philosophy Live. How to think better to live better. With Jared Henderson, author of The Work of Philosophy. Hosted by Big Think's Jonny Thomson. Wednesday, Nov. 11, 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT. For Big Think members, bigthink.com/mini-philosophy-events
ALT The UK and US editions of The Art of Enough by Jonny Thomson side by side on a navy background: a teal-and-cream cover with an engraved tree, and a bold turquoise, magenta and orange cover with a small insect.
ALT Mini-personalities: Why Carl Jung believed your “complexes” lead their own inner lives. Jung thought these autonomous entities live in your unconscious mind — often at a cost. By Stephen Johnson.
ALT “Wow, that’s probably been there for years,” once said a physical therapist as he ran a thumb over a hardened knot in my back. I was surprised. I had noticed muscle tension but never the particular knot that was contributing to it.
ALT “A psychological complex, at least as the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung understood it, is a similar phenomenon.” Stephen Johnson, Executive Editor, Big Think
ALT A complex is defined as a cluster of feelings, memories, and thoughts centered around a specific emotional theme that manifests like a knot in your psyche, often escaping your awareness.
ALT The theoretical autonomy of complexes complicates the idea of free will: it is arguably more accurate to say, as Jung did, that we can not only have complexes but also “complexes can have us.”
ALT “Every human mind contains much that is unacknowledged and hence unconscious as such, and no one can boast that he stands completely above his complexes.” Carl Jung
ALT Get the magazine. Big ideas, expert writing, and beautiful art, delivered four times a year. link.bigthink.com/membership