In a new book, the writer Alan Jacobs looks at why it’s impossible for people who disagree to hold a civilized conversation.
Author: Emma Green
Source: The Atlantic (October 15, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
When people want to believe that the world is just, and that bad things won’t happen to them, empathy can suffer.
Author: Kayleigh Roberts
Source: The Atlantic (October 5, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior
You may be happy to learn that even though they are a political nightmare to pull off, U.S. tax overhauls have happened on a schedule — like clockwork, and the timer happens to go off again next year. Given that history and necessity are about to collide, Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid got curious about what tried-and-true solutions America could implement to make that next … [ Read more ]
Author: T.R. Reid
Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (September 8, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Taxation
The Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie once observed that there are “two Americas” — one at home and one abroad. The first is the America of Hollywood, work-in-progress democracy, civil rights movements and Ellis Island. The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures. The rest of the world knows both Americas. But as … [ Read more ]
Author: Suzy Hansen
Source: The Washington Post (September 8, 2017)
Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
Kate Raworth, a senior research associate at Oxford University and senior associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, wants to challenge the old ways of thinking about economics and develop sustainable new patterns for economic growth. In her book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Raworth encourages careful consideration of measurements beyond the standard gross domestic product metric. Thoughtful economic … [ Read more ]
Author: Kate Raworth
Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (June 28, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts
The Republican party has reached bottom and in their few moments of sobriety, conservatives know it.
Republicans began as the anti-slavery party in direct and vocal opposition to Southern Racism and the Know Nothings. They fought a civil war in order to change the world for the better.
Today it is the Klan and the John Birch Society cheering the Republican candidate on.
The first Republican president was … [ Read more ]
Author: Jim Wright
Source: Stonekettle Station (September 19, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
“Many people say” is what’s known as an argumentum ad populum. If we were a nation of logicians, we would dismiss the argument as dumb.
I think it’s important not to dismiss the president’s reply simply as dumb. We ought to assume that it’s darkly brilliant — if not in intention then certainly in effect. The president is responding to a claim of fact not by … [ Read more ]
Author: Bret Stephens
Source: Time (February 21, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Journalism, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
“To bother to engage with problematic culture, and problematic people within that culture, is an act of love,” wrote the poet Elizabeth Alexander in contemplating power and possibility. Krista Tippett calls such engagement generous listening. And yet so much of our communication today is defined by a rather ungenerous unwillingness to listen coupled with a compulsion to speak.
The most perennially insightful and helpful remedy for … [ Read more ]
Authors: David Bohm, Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 5, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Culture, Excerpts, Life & Society
Doctors Haidt and Graham […] argue that there is great debate over the nature of right and wrong, but that the debate is over the meaning of five moral foundations rather than over what morality is — most of the time. Those five foundations are:
Author: Scotty Hendricks
Source: Big Think (April 1, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Excerpts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Values
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
Author: Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (October 23, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Insight, Wisdom
Why are economically struggling blue collar voters rejecting a party that offers to expand public safety net programs? The reality is that the bulk of needy white voters are not interested in the public safety net. They want to restore their access to an older safety net, one much more generous, dignified, and stable than the public system – the one most well-employed voters still … [ Read more ]
Author: Chris Ladd
Source: Forbes (March 13, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy
[Tim] Ferriss distinguishes between two kinds of secrets — those we keep because we fear fleeting mortification, like accounts of embarrassing things we’ve done in sub-optimal moments, and dark secrets that paralyze us with deep shame, “the shadows we keep covered for fear of unraveling our lives.”
[…]
“It’s easy to blow things out of proportion, to get lost in the story you tell yourself, and to … [ Read more ]
Authors: Maria Popova, Tim Ferriss
Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 8, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
The Republican Party has changed since 2005. It has become the vehicle for white identity politics. In 2005 only six percent of Republicans felt that whites faced “a great deal” of discrimination, the same number of Democrats who felt this. By 2016, the percentage of Republicans who felt this had tripled.
Recent surveys suggest that roughly 47 percent of Republicans are what you might call conservative … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks
Source: The New York Times (August 29, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations, Trump
Why do we get allergies? No one has a firm answer, but what is arguably the leading theory suggests that allergies are a misfiring of a defence against parasitic worms. In the industrialised world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process.
[Ruslan] Medzhitov thinks that’s wrong. Allergies are not simply a biological … [ Read more ]
Author: Carl Zimmer
Source: Mosaic (April 6, 2015)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine
One might … say that moving minds — our own as well as those of others — is among the most effortful labor there is.
[…]
“When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to … [ Read more ]
Authors: Blaise Pascal, Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (May 20, 2015)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Excerpts
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
To understand why Trump’s Carrier stunt succeeded, it’s worth turning to a 1964 political science classic, Murray Edelman’s The Symbolic Uses of Politics. The takeaway lesson is that in politics, clear symbolic actions are often more important than results (which are often ambiguous or unclear).
[…]
Edelman’s foundational point is that most people don’t pay close attention to the details of policy, and the news media does … [ Read more ]
Author: Lee Drutman
Source: Vox (December 19, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
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
[Lakoff] understands that the way to get at people’s political opinions is by talking about values, rather than specific arguments about specific issues. He believes conservatives are much better at this than liberals and have been for a very long time. They have a much better track record of crafting political appeals by way of the appropriate value statements for their audience.
[…]
Lakoff’s core finding revolves … [ Read more ]
Authors: Daphne White, George Lakoff
Source: Berkeleyside (May 2, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Values
In 2009, I helped sketch out a marketing campaign for an internet personality and blogger named Tucker Max. With a very limited advertising budget available for the independent movie he had written and produced, we had few options for getting the word out.
Maybe it was crazy but my thinking was that one of the best ways to get young men to go see a movie … [ Read more ]
Author: Ryan Holiday
Source: Observer (February 17, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
To live with sincerity in our culture of cynicism is a difficult dance — one that comes easily only to the very young and the very old. The rest of us are left to tussle with two polarizing forces ripping the psyche asunder by beckoning to it from opposite directions — critical thinking and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (February 9, 2015)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
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
Since the election of Donald Trump, there’s been no shortage of theories as to why America’s social contract no longer seems to work—why the United States feels so divided and dysfunctional. Some have focused on how hyper-partisanship has dismantled traditional checks and balances on public decision-making, how Barack Obama’s rise to power exacerbated the racist tendencies of embittered reactionaries, and how former churchgoers have embraced … [ Read more ]
Author: Jonathan Kay
Source: The Atlantic (July 17, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Taxation
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
Frederick Douglass called it “a sacred effort,” and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address
Author: Garry Wills
Source: The Atlantic (September1999)
Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, History
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