When I was younger, I used to enjoy riding Pharaoh’s Fury at the Coastal Carolina fair. This big sphinx-headed boat swung back and forth on a mechanical arm, terrifying and thrilling the riders, and (in our imaginations) we thought about what it would be like if it went upside down – dumping us all out. This ride is much like how most people and cultures do their thinking about values in politics, religion, and cultural norms. We swing in one direction, then another, then back again.
Tag: action
Seek Not to Be Understood
If you make your life an interesting life, the confluence of events, the collision of unforeseen consequences, will make it an unique life — a life that will not fit in an academician’s box, a life that will not constrain you to climb into a box.
Malevolence and Misunderstanding
I am glad to report that I have lost few friends in my life. But as far as I can tell, all of the rare exceptions were driven by misunderstandings. Someone spoke rashly, which hurt someone’s feelings, which led to retaliation, which led to more hurt feelings, and so on. Or, someone acted as they thought proper, but someone else perceived otherwise, which led to offense, which led to counter-offense. The same goes for all the people I know well. They’ve lost many friends, but years later they flounder to explain the casus belli.
Lead a Life That Confuses the Archaeologists
Nonconformity is a lifelong task. But there are simple ways to bootstrap uniqueness, break out of your culture’s “zeitgeist”, and make some future historian’s job exceptionally hard.
Why so Many College Students Are In Mental Distress—And What Parents Can Do about It
More supervision and less autonomy, combined with social media influences, could be making college students more prone to anxiety and depression.
You’re All A Bunch of Socialists
A fun figure from Tetlock et al.’s “The Psychology of the Thinkable”: Background: Participants were told that the goal of the study was to explore the attitudes that Americans have about what people should be allowed to buy and sell in competitive market transactions: Imagine that you had the power to judge the permissibility and […]
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The 9/11 Attacks: Understanding Al-Qaeda and the Domestic Fall-Out from America’s Secret War
With American military personnel now entering service who were not even alive on 9/11, this seems an appropriate time to reexamine the events of September 11, 2001 – the opaque motives for the attacks, the equally opaque motives for the counter-offensive by the United States and its allies known as the Global War on Terror, and the domestic fall-out for Americans concerned about the erosion of their civil liberties on the homefront.
Customer Service as a Way of Life
I’m sitting in a lab lobby waiting to get blood drawn. The receptionist is one of the rudest people I’ve ever overheard. Every time someone checks in, every word she says is edgy and nasty and she seems to have no tone except one that makes people feel like idiots. It was like this last time I came here too. I don’t know what’s going on in her life or why this business allows her to keep her job, but it got me thinking about customer service. How is it learned?
War in All But Name as US State Department Offers Bribes to Pirates
If at first you don’t succeed, spread some money around. The Financial Times reports that the US State Department is offering cash bribes to captains of Iranian ships if they sail those ships into ports where the US government can seize them.
Codifying Our Worst Impulses: The Ideas that Started World War II
Today (9/1) is the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, the deadliest violent conflict in human history. Death tolls vary, but often reach 80 million souls. What caused it? Lists of proximate causes never end, but the only credible “root cause” is simply: ideas.