Being contrarian isn’t hard – anyone can say the opposite of what most people believe. But being contrarian and right is extremely difficult. Those who can both go against the crowd and be correct achieve outsized rewards.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Many psychologists believe that as a species, humans are not evolved to enjoy the here and now. Rather, we are wired to time-travel mentally, mostly into the future, to consider new scenarios and try out new ideas. The social psychologist Martin Seligman goes so far as to call our species Homo prospectus.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.
Author: Chris Hedges | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. There may come a time when it will be possible for you to humiliate your worst enemy or even to defeat him, but in order to love the enemy … [ Read more ]
Author: Martin Luther King Jr. | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
Author: Colin Powell | Subjects: Career, Personal Improvement
Overactive distrust leads to a dangerous endgame of broken institutions: politics, media, religion, science, expertise itself are all more suspect than ever. Should we complain about that? Fear it? Fix it? Or is the real problem within us?
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
We are all addicted. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, work, weight-loss programs, shopping, online videos, gossip, gambling, apps, comic books, at-home delivery, or new phones—anything, really, that the heart desires—we can’t seem to calm a relentless inner urge, a longing that will not be satisfied.
The least visible but perhaps most harmful addiction is thinking ourselves right. This particular form of cognitive dependency is something we may … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
The presence of affective polarization in democratic nations has grown perceptibly since the turn of the millennium. This is the term political scientists use to describe negative feelings about political opponents. “Affective” because it is a matter of feeling: that the other side is not just divergent in views but beyond redemption, perhaps insane or evil. Actual policy differences may be less stark, but that … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Trust works, in large measure, on assumptions about who people are, not just what they do before our eyes. We trust because we cannot observe and judge everything ourselves.
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Trust
The hottest commodity of today’s online cultural ecosystem is open conflict. Chitchat on podcasts and livestreams is transfixing because it’s unruly, argumentative, and unafraid of causing offense.
Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
The so-called Breitbart Doctrine stated that “politics is downstream from culture”—that is, the ideas conveyed by popular entertainment shapes consumers’ worldviews. This proposition called for conservatives to build a shadow Hollywood that tells conservative stories and raises up conservative stars… In the long run, though, the doctrine’s biggest impact has been encouraging the right to get creative with online culture.
Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
One big mistake people repeatedly make is focusing on proving themselves right, instead of focusing on achieving the best outcome. This is the wrong side of right.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong
Any energy that goes into what doesn’t matter comes at the expense of what does.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Success / Failure
As the old aphorism puts it, Americans do the right thing only once we have exhausted every other possibility.
Author: Jon Meacham | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by … [ Read more ]
Author: Tom Nichols | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. …some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.
Author: Seneca | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
What we see is never raw reality, pure as spacetime — what we see is our interpretation of reality, filtered through the lens of our experience and our conditioned worldview. Always, the way we look at things shapes what we see; often, the lens we mistake for a magnifying glass turns out to be a warped mirror — we see others not as they are … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Perception | Observation, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
We are untender with each other because we cannot bear the terrifying difficulty of being human, vulnerable and perishable as we are.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
We will lose everything we love, including our lives — so we might as well love without fear, for to fear a certainty is wasted energy that syphons life of aliveness.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Personal Improvement, Relationships
Democracy is premised on the belief that we can trust ordinary people to make consequential decisions. It’s in some ways an enlightenment ideal premised on another enlightenment ideal: the triumph of reason and the capacities of ordinary people. To buy into it, you have to believe that people will be more loyal to principles and discernment than to leaders and groups, and in that sense, … [ Read more ]
Author: Rebecca Solnit | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Politics & Public Policy