21 Posts found for source_month: June

Philosophically speaking, the right has long been defined by its emphasis on the value of stability — as odd as it may seem in the era of Trump’s radically destabilizing administration.

Conservative theorists, most notably Edmund Burke, have long maintained that political flourishing depends on the existence of stable social rules developed gradually and from the bottom up over the course of generations. Those who seek … [ Read more ]

Author: Zack Beauchamp | Source: Vox (June 11, 2025) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

And that’s okay.

Author: Julie Beck | Source: The Atlantic (June 2, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

1. Accumulation. The simplest and most obvious force that forms and sustains friendships is time spent together. One study estimates that it takes spending 40 to 60 hours together within the first six weeks of meeting to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, and about 80 to 100 hours to become more than that. So friendships unsurprisingly tend to form in places where people

… [ Read more ]

Author: Julie Beck | Source: The Atlantic (June 10, 2022) | Subjects: Excerpts, Family & Friends, Life & Society

Cognitive flexibility is a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making.

[…] 

Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is … [ Read more ]

Authors: Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Victoria Leong | Source: The Conversation (June 21, 2021) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Thought | Inquiry

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will set off tectonic shifts in the American political landscape not seen since the civil-rights movement—or perhaps even the Civil War.

Author: Jeffrey Rosen | Source: The Atlantic (June2006) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Law | Legal, Politics & Public Policy

Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it’s as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance.

[…]

Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.

[…]

We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: … [ Read more ]

Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic (June 8, 2019) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Literature | Arts, Politics & Public Policy

In November 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a mob of 2,000 white men expelled black and white political leaders, destroyed the property of the city’s black residents, and killed dozens — if not hundreds — of people.

For decades, the story of this violence was buried, while the perpetrators were cast as heroes.

Source: Vox (June 20, 2020) | Subjects: History, Race Relations

In his new book, historian Rutger Bregman argues that people are actually fundamentally good.

Author: Mike Jakeman | Source: strategy+business (June 12, 2020) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

One of the most important [Shaolin] teachings is the “five hindrances of self-mastery.” These are the core mental states that prevent us from seeing clearly, making smart decisions, achieving our goals and living a happier, more harmonious life.

1. Sensual desire. Sensual desire is intertwined pleasure, and it arises when we have a deep craving for something that stimulates one or more of our five senses (vision,

… [ Read more ]

Author: Shi Heng Yi | Source: CNBC (June 17, 2020) | Subjects: Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Conservatism, as Roger Scruton reminds us, was founded during the 18th-century Enlightenment. In France, Britain and the American colonies, Enlightenment thinkers were throwing off monarchic power and seeking to build an order based on reason and consent of the governed. Society is best seen as a social contract, these Enlightenment thinkers said. Free individuals get together and contract with one another to create order.

Conservatives said … [ Read more ]

Author: David Brooks | Source: The New York Times (June 25, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

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

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

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,

… [ Read more ]

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

The bills before Congress get it wrong—what’s needed is incremental reform in a conservative direction.

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic (June 30, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy

The cost of health care in the United States is spiraling upward while politicians continue to bicker over how to fix a broken system. Elisabeth Rosenthal has a sweeping view of the problem because she has seen it from all sides. Rosenthal is a Harvard Medical School graduate who practiced emergency medicine before becoming a journalist. She covered health care and other topics for The … [ Read more ]

Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal | Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (June 2, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy

The challenge of providing affordable, high-quality health care for all Americans is the subject of furious debate in the nation’s capital. University of Pennsylvania’s Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the medical ethics and health policy department and a health care management professor at Wharton, helped craft the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration. He puts forward some ideas for improving the system in his book, … [ Read more ]

Author: Ezekiel Emanuel | Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (June 22, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy

In a Pakistani religious school called the Haqqania madrasa, Osama bin Laden is a hero, the Taliban’s leaders are famous alumni and the next generation of mujahedeen is being militantly groomed. (NOTE: written in 2000, before 9/11 occurred).

Author: Jeffrey Goldberg | Source: The New York Times (June 25, 2000) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Religion

Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive … [ Read more ]

Author: Joshua Wolf Shenk | Source: The Atlantic (June2009) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Psychology | Behavior

Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead.

Author: Matthew Stewart | Source: The Atlantic (June2006) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Business, Excerpts