Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.
Author: James Clear | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Reading | Writing
It’s easier to be open-minded when you aren’t feeling defensive.
Author: James Clear | Subjects: Communication, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding.
Author: James Clear | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome. The … [ Read more ]
Author: James Clear | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong. […] Understanding the truth of a … [ Read more ]
Author: James Clear | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
Books and stories are medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits.
Author: Anne Lamott | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Author: Franz Kafka | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Literature | Arts, Reading | Writing
When people reflect on what it takes to be mentally fit, the first idea that comes to mind is usually intelligence. The smarter you are, the more complex the problems you can solve— and the faster you can solve them. Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter … [ Read more ]
Author: Adam Grant | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. People believe what they’ve seen happen exponentially more than what they read about has happened to other people, if they read about other people at all. We’re all biased to our own personal history.
Author: Morgan Housel | Subjects: Insight, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.
Author: Haruki Murakami | Subjects: Communication, Personal Improvement, Relationships
If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it’s perfectly happy to do so, and doesn’t much care where the reward comes from — whether it’s pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one’s peers), or some mix of the two.
Author: Kevin Simler | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.
Author: Steven Pinker | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our … [ Read more ]
Author: Alain de Botton | Subjects: Communication, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Relationships
Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.
Author: John Kenneth Galbraith | Subjects: Change, Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
Author: Leo Tolstoy | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Personal Improvement
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct.
Author: Sigmund Freud | Subjects: Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology
But people start to wonder if our politics make sense
When religion is our best excuse for national defense
And when our citizens start saying that our wars are not okay
And Washington keeps telling them God loves the USA
And they teach us history so we can learn from our mistakes
And this generation wants to know how many years it takes
To change … [ Read more ]
Author: Griffin House | Subjects: History, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Religion
And I heard some Christians sing, what would Jesus do?
What if you were on the wrong side, would he point the gun at you?
And they read through every word of Matthew, Mark and Luke and John
So they could see if killing was the side that Christ was on
Author: Griffin House | Subjects: Military | War | Peace, Religion
There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance.
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation.
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love