Author Mugambi Jouet dissects the causes of deep chasms within American society from an outsider’s viewpoint.
Author: Mugambi Jouet | Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (July 26, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Culture, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?
I’d argue that we face … [ Read more ]
Author: David French | Source: National Review (June 8, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Political scientist Alexander George Theodoridis, an assistant professor at the University of California, Merced, is an expert on the hyper-polarized climate. He wrote in Scientific American, “My own research repeatedly shows that partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group.”
The consequences are that politicians are rewarded by their base for obstructionism, while punished for working … [ Read more ]
Author: Philip Perry | Source: Big Think (June 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
The person who is wrong on purpose is afraid of the vulnerability of trying at a task that may fail. In particular, afraid of the process of learning. The “indefinite approximation” Sartre mentions is the process of double-checking, doubting, asking questions, second-guessing, saying “oops”, moderating or complicating one’s views, all the millions of mental motions involved in trying to understand things accurately. The person who … [ Read more ]
Source: Otium (April 24, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
How the emergence of IQ tests contracted rather than expanding our understanding of intelligence and what we can do to transcend their perilous cultural legacy is what practicing physician, research scientist, and Pulitzer-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee explores throughout The Gene: An Intimate History — a rigorously researched, beautifully written detective story about the genetic components of what we experience as the self.
[…]
A crucial agent in … [ Read more ]
Authors: Maria Popova, Siddhartha Mukherjee | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (November 30, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Race Relations, Sociology | Anthropology
“What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or not it did?” technologist Aviv Ovadya warns.
Authors: Aviv Ovadya, Charlie Warzel | Source: BuzzFeed (February 12, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, IT | Technology, Journalism, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Psychology | Behavior
In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.
As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function … [ Read more ]
Authors: Hunter S. Thompson, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (November 4, 2013) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Career, Excerpts, Life & Society, Meaning, Personal Improvement
What follows is the text of a “sermon” that given as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ.
Author: John Metta | Source: Huffington Post (July 10, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Race Relations, Thought Starters
My question … was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?” Differently expressed,
Authors: Leo Tolstoy, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (June 3, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Meaning, Philosophy, Psychology | Behavior, Religion
How “engagement” made the web a less engaging place
Author: James Somers | Source: The Atlantic (March 21, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, IT | Technology, Journalism, Life & Society
A healthy society balances the power of respected governments in the public sector with both responsible businesses in the private sector and robust communities in what I call the plural sector — the clubs, religions, community hospitals, foundations, NGOs, and cooperatives with which so many of us engage. The plural sector, although the least recognized of the three, is large and diverse. Many of us … [ Read more ]
Author: Henry Mintzberg | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) (March2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Author Tom Nichols argues that people are angry at journalists for giving them what they want: pared-down stories tailored to them.
Authors: Brian Bethune, Tom Nichols | Source: Maclean’s (March 20, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy
Minimum-wage jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable schedules, and pay so meagerly that workers can’t save up enough to move on.
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich | Source: The Atlantic (January 13, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
“Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” This is among life’s most abiding questions and the history of human creativity — our art and our poetry and most empathically all of our philosophy — is the history of attempts to answer it.
There is no drearier, sorrier creature in nature than the man who has evaded his own
Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (September 30, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Philosophy
The Strange New Pathologies of the World’s First Rich Failed State
Author: Umair Haque | Source: Eudaimonia (January 25, 2018) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology
The influential economic theorist looks ahead to a world of virtually free energy and zero marginal cost production, and to a desperate race against climate change.
Authors: Art Kleiner, Jeremy Rifkin, Juliette Powell | Source: strategy+business (Winter2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Environment | Sustainability, Excerpts, History, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Why is a donut shop pushing bananas? Perhaps profit margins are higher on the overpriced fruit. Or maybe the shop is attempting to proclaim its good corporate citizenship by providing an uncharacteristically nutritious snack. How you feel about this — whether you’re grateful to have been prompted to make a healthier choice or irritated that even a donut shop feels the need to try to … [ Read more ]
Authors: Cass Sunstein, Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
Today’s economic and political upheavals reflect an ongoing misalignment between business and economies (on the one hand) and acceptable societal outcomes (on the other). There is still time to adjust, if we are willing to reexamine some long-held assumptions.
Authors: Blair Sheppard, Colm Kelly | Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, History, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Lines can bring fairness and order to what might otherwise be a free-for-all. There’s even a science, called queuing theory, that examines the optimal ways to make lines move equitably and efficiently. But they don’t always work that way; sometimes, they can operate to institutionalize unfairness and inequality. That’s why Arlie Russell Hochschild uses lines as a metaphor for the challenges facing contemporary American society … [ Read more ]
Author: Nitin Nohria | Source: The Atlantic (December 2, 2017) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology
The Obamas are the rare First Family to leave the White House stronger than when they arrived—never victims, even when hatefully victimized. Is it too late for the rest of us to learn how?
Author: Kim McLarin | Source: The Morning News (December 14, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations