INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR CRITICAL THINKING INC
2 Andrew Paul Way, Greensboro, NC 27410-4185
A Nonprofit Research Institute
Tax Exempt Number: 56-2130126
I am not a fan of the big ‘solutions’ to the ‘human condition.’
If you deal with the problems of a single individual, such as yourself, you will know that the problems are not easy to deal with. ARE YOU HAPPY? Most people, if they are honest, would answer: “No, but I was.” Or: “I am happy right now, but that might change.” THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEAN: I MEAN: “Are you happy, regardless of the circumstances? Do you have a stable happiness?” YOU NEED THAT ONE FOR YOUR LIFE—ONLY THEN YOU WILL BE SAFE. Okay, someone will still be able to harm you or a loved one physically or mentally. You or a person close to you might get sick or harmed. BUT IF YOU HAVE STABLE HAPPINESS, THIS WILL SHAKE, BUT NOT THROW YOU. You need this stable happiness and must work towards it. You owe it to yourself. Be ‘egocentric.’ But since individual people, who are happy, also are part of humanity, you also improve the ‘human condition’.
THIS WEBSITE CONTAINS A CASE STUDY, which is my life. It might show you that stable happiness is possible to achieve. I am 80. Most people would feel very unhappy under my circumstances: See the pages GERMANS and AMERICANS. I can tell you, however, that I was never happier.
I SHARED ONE THING WITH MOST PEOPLE: MATH ANXIETY. And yet, I dabbled with it all my life, even studied it—got the equivalent of a Master’s degree in it—and all A’s for the courses. However, no official instruction helped me with my MATH ANXIETY. Why did I not follow my negative emotions and avoid mathematics?
The first reason was that I could pay my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with it: I shared a problem with my students. So, I knew better how to help them with it. But there was another, even better result than money: I learnt a way of thinking, which was quite different and much more effective than before. For each of the many individual students, I had written down what I had been teaching, in total about 50000 pages. The math that came out of it, was quite different from the one being taught today. But there was another pay-off: I could help people with their psychological problems much more effectively than my friend Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, could.
But this new way of reasoning could also be applied to other areas:
· Discovering secrets in history as to why Hitler could come to power in Germany: Pages AMERICANS and GERMANS
· The deepest reason for math anxiety, which no mathematician will tell you about: Page MATHEMATICS
· How to deal with dire situations: AMERICANS and GERMANS again.
· How to make predictions:
A year before the onset of COVID, I sent between 150 and 200 letters to the Washington D.C. embassies of most countries, warning them that something big was coming. Amongst other things, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin wall and the civil war in the Balkans. To my knowledge, nobody else did, although the predictors were clearly visible. Although visible, they were not perceived.
Take a look at your watch. I shall prove to you now that you do not perceive it:
At twelve o’clock, the hour and the minute hand are on top of each other. What is the exact next time they are covering each other again?
When you have solved the problem, you will perceive the watch for the first time, although you have seen it numerous times before. In perception, vision and reason are intertwined.
Issues like perception and the “slightly” greater one, such as the survival of our species, are addressed in my website, which is supposed to be a teaching tool free to everyone.
In a few words, let me tell you a little about myself:
On the way to my American citizenship, I founded the above institute and was issued a green card because it was in the National Interest of the USA. This card allowed me to work without a sponsor, whose interest I would have had to serve. To stay independent, I also did not ask for donations or grants, but financed everything with my own services and our retirement salary.
INTRODUCTION
If we look at history, it appears that humankind hates itself:
Wars, revolutions, mass killings, executions, torture, and so on.
What additional evidence for our self-hatred do we need?
But why is that? Why do we hate so much?
Humankind has not reached its potential. Animals have—and that is why they are quite peaceful with their own kind.
Humans come up with various “solutions” to unlock the promised land and declare war against all enemies of these “solutions,” which invariably prove futile because we are not “homines sapientes” (plural of our species name homo sapiens or wise man)—we are actually pretty dumb.
Occasionally, there are single individuals, in whom the light of the promised land shows itself. We call them geniuses. But in my opinion, they are just normal—how humans could be. And here is an indication of the solution. It rests with each one of us, with individuals—not governments. Our global cooperation through the internet, which could become the nervous system connecting the individuals (“nerve cells”), can secure the survival of our species while we approach our potential.
Before I give you my suggestion in this direction, let me explain my seemingly strange preoccupation with mathematics. Assume that someone has cancer. Don’t you think that the person will become preoccupied with the medication, even if s/he gets sick from it? I always got sick from mathematics, but I took it like medication. Again, another potential needs to be unlocked. This site will show how the potential of mathematics, humankind’s only unique ability, can be unlocked for all of us.
MOBILIZE YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND
What if you could
be calm and grounded,
face challenges with self-confidence,
reason before you act,
solve difficult problems effectively,
That is:
What if you could be a happy person?
We all have an unconscious mind, which is more intelligent and creative than our conscious mind. This is what Einstein and others assert in The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, a book written by mathematician Hadamard.
The question is why the unconscious mind is often not operational. A lawn mower may not be operational, not because it is broken, but because the carburetor is dirty. You have to clean it with a solvent.
If you want to ask your unconscious mind for help, you have to clean your conscious mind from confusions and contradictions first. Your requests have to be clean and clear and consistent. Only then, the unconscious mind will understand your input. But what is the best cleaning agent?
An outstanding example is the mathematics of a genius, whose work has been guided by his unconscious mind. His mathematics is very different from today's. His reasoning is informal, while today's mathematics is formal and rigorous--and boring. The mathematical part of the work of Leonard Euler (1707-1783) comprises 29 quarto volumes, which took the mathematical community more than a century to digest.
Concept behind this Website:
We all know two-dimensional puzzles, each puzzle has just one solution. Now imagine a three-dimensional puzzle which has three solutions: A chicken, a monkey, and a human. As soon as you have created them, they become alive and do their typical thing: The chicken starts scratching, the monkey screeching, and the human talking BS.
The pages of this website are a multi-dimensional puzzle with many solutions, in which the life of the individual is connected to the survival of our endangered species.
