Whatever a human being desires for themselves will not come about exactly as they first imagined it or first laid it out in their minds… what always happens is the meeting between what you desire from your world and what the world desires of you. It’s this frontier where you overhear yourself and you overhear the world. And that frontier is the only place where … [ Read more ]
Author: David Whyte | Subject: Life & Society
Republican cultural populism is bogus. The biggest change over the last four decades — the change lurking behind the mounting insecurities and resentments of the working middle class — has nothing to do with immigrants, Democrats, liberals, “socialists,” “communists,” coastal elites, women, transgender people, or any other Republican cultural bogeymen. The biggest change over the last four decades — the change that has undermined the … [ Read more ]
Author: Robert Reich | Source: Facebook | Subjects: America, Economics | Economy, International, Politics & Public Policy
Of all dangers to a nation… there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.
Author: Walt Whitman | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: International, Politics & Public Policy
Many people just need someone to feel superior to make themselves feel better. You see Americans doing it now, unfortunately, while voting against their own interests. It is that kind of shortsighted behavior that is destroying us.
Author: Octavia Butler | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
Author: Octavia Butler | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Relationships involve conflicts that can lead either to intimacy or distance, to bonding or rupturing, depending on how you handle them. How you negotiate conflict may prove to be the single most important indicator of your compatibility.
Author: Daniel Jones | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
When you can give ideas away and retain them at the same time, you can afford to be generous. In contrast, it is less easy to maintain allegiance to any number of contradictory ideas, and especially to act in line with all of them. Thus, if somebody accepts your ideas and therefore has to discard or reject competing ideas, in belief or in action, he … [ Read more ]
Author: Ulf Hannerz | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry
Abraham Maslow wisely said, “It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.” Without knowing want you want, others may define your wants for you, often not in your long-term interest. Yet, this seemingly simple question becomes complex because answering it requires an awareness of personal strengths, passions, and values. The self-reflection questions to probe what you want … [ Read more ]
Authors: Abraham Maslow, Dave Ulrich | Source: Management Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Career, Personal Improvement
A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth: it is either altogether useless or altogether miserable; if the parties continue faithfully attached to each other it is a mere ceremony — if otherwise it comes a galling fetter riveting them to wretchedness and only to be … [ Read more ]
Author: Jane Welsh Carlyle | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Love, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
Studies show that when people experience uncertainty and lack of control, they are more likely to see patterns or regularities where there are none. These patterns can range from visual illusions (such as seeing faces in the clouds) to seeing causality in random events and forming conspiracy theories. Under these circumstances people are also more likely to turn to ritualized behaviors. This is known as … [ Read more ]
Author: Dimitris Xygalatas | Source: Nautilus | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
If you let motivation dictate your actions, inertia conspires to keep you in place. Action creates progress. Progress creates momentum. Momentum creates motivation.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure
[A] public figure’s persona is a collectively created construct. It’s built by the celebrity and what they present to the media and the public, and then built by the media and the public and how they interpret and interact with the famous person. Once fans have created a personal parasocial relationship with their celebrity of choice, they will project whatever positive attributes they want onto … [ Read more ]
Author: Aja Romano | Source: Vox | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
When we’re emotionally invested not only in the narrative being bolstered by the truth-teller but in the chosen truth-teller themselves, it becomes even harder to extricate an “objective” version of reality from the version they’re dispensing because the stakes feel so high.
Author: Aja Romano | Source: Vox | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
[Truth depends] on the assumption that certain actors tell the truth, and that these actors have been authorized with the mantle of veracity in their understandings of the world and of themselves.
Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser | Source: Vox | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Thought | Inquiry
We understand our world less through reasoned deliberation of facts, and more through stories and symbols and metaphors.
Author: Stephen Duncombe | Source: Vox | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Intelligence | Knowledge, Learning, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
We always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times … [ Read more ]
Author: John O’Donohue | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Personal Improvement
No territory of life exposes both our power and our vulnerability more brightly than a beginning.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Experience, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us, because money is not changing hands.
Author: Peter D. Kaufman | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.
Author: Carl Jung | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
The biggest generator of long-term results is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure