9.02.2021
For help-rejecting complainers, complaining is a way of being. They find comfort in going on ad nauseam about their plight, while giving excuse after excuse about why any suggested course of action won’t make matters any better. They don’t want help; they want your sympathy, and validation for their perception that they’re being treated unfair...
The social and environmental perils
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/27/the-social-and-environmental-perils-of-magical-thinking_partner/
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/27/the-social-and-environmental-perils-of-magical-thinking_partner/
As Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci said, we need the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.
As Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci said, we need the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.
9.01.2021
Take the loss of global biodiversity. The denialist would say, "Environmentalists exaggerate the threat of extinction just to get attention." The optimist would say: "It sounds really bad, but nature is resilient, and ecologists are resourceful. Why, just the other day they discovered a frog they thought was extinct for decades!" The magical thinker combines that optimism with a self-interest that can take root when a solution to a problem conflicts in some way with their identity or values, or simply takes too much effort and time. "Smartphones use rare-earth metals mined in biodiversity hotspots? Awful," the magical thinker would say. "I love gorillas. But as a busy working mom, I cannot give up my phone. Someone will find a safer source of metals before long." This discomforting cognitive disson....
The social and environmental perils
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/27/the-social-and-environmental-perils-of-magical-thinking_partner/
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/27/the-social-and-environmental-perils-of-magical-thinking_partner/
Third, we’ve come to dominate left-wing parties around the world that were formerly vehicles for the working class. We’ve pulled these parties further left on cultural issues (prizing cosmopolitanism and questions of identity) while watering down or reversing traditional Democratic positions on trade and unions. As creative-class people enter le.....
Over the past two decades, the rapidly growing economic, cultural, and social power of the bobos has generated a global backlash that is growing more and more vicious, deranged, and apocalyptic. And yet this backlash is not without basis. The bobos—or X people, or the creative class, or whatever you want to call them—have coalesced into an insular, intermarrying Brahmin elite that dominates culture, media, education, and tech. Worse, those of us in this class have had a hard time admitting our power, much less using it responsibly. First, we’ve come to hoard spots in the competitive meritocracy that produced us. As Eli....
8.31.2021
The bobos have coalesced into an insular, intermarrying brahmin elite that dominates culture, media, education, and tech. Two years later, Richard Florida published The Rise of the Creative Class, which lauded the economic and social benefits that the creative class—by which he meant, more or less, the same scientists, engineers, architects, financiers, lawyers, professors, doctors, executives, and other professionals who make up the bobos—produced. Enor.....
It also confirms our previous reports, covered by CTXT and The Guardian, that “greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years”. The new leak acknowledges that there is little or no room for further economic growth. The undersigned scientists and journalists have analyzed a new PA......
Leaked report of the IPCC reveals
https://mronline.org/2021/08/23/leaked-report-of-the-ipcc-reveals-that-the-growth-model-of-capitalism-is-unsustainable/
https://mronline.org/2021/08/23/leaked-report-of-the-ipcc-reveals-that-the-growth-model-of-capitalism-is-unsustainable/
2. “You’re too sensitive.” If you try to express your hurt or disappointment over something the abusive person said — perhaps a cruel remark they made about your appearance in front of your friends that they insist everyone knew was just a funny “joke” — they’ll minimize your feelings by telling you you’re overly sensitive or making a big deal out of nothing. The intent is to make you feel stupid for even trying to stand up for yourself. “Once an abusive partner has broken down the victim’s ability to trust th....
It turns out probably the most frequent victims of canceling are progressives who are canceled by other progressives. This is about dominating the information space by shutting down, chilling a whole sector of that space. So how do they do that? Well, you say something they don’t like, or say anything at all. This really can be quite random. And almost instantly, a campaign of outrage is stirred up. They’re usually organized as swaJonathan Rauch on Americas Competing.....
We had a major information revolution in the form of internet, digital media, social media. And those turned out to be designed much better for propaganda and disinformation and “canceling” than they were for truth. They did not evaluate truth in transmitting information. They simply evaluated addictiveness, which means they prioritized outrage and enticing the false conspiracy theories over truth. And then a third thing that happened, and I argue it must not be underestimated.....
8.30.2021
Me. You? What now? "I also thought: Mea culpa. For those past two decades, I’d prospered and thrived in the new political economy. And unharmed by automation or globalization or the new social contract, I’d effectively ignored the fact that the majority of my fellow Americans weren’t prospering or thriving....
That's James. "Highly empathic people process familiar music with greater involvement of the brain’s social circuitry, such as the areas activated when feeling empathy for others. They also seem to experience a greater degree of pleasure in listening, as indicated by increased activation of the reward system. “This may indicate that music is being perceived weakly as a kind of social entity, as an imagined or virtual human presence,” Wallmark said.....
But only billionaires, correct, middle-class? "In 2012, Piff’s then-colleagues Michael Kraus and Jennifer Stellar hooked volunteers up to ECG machines and showed them two short videos: a “neutral” video of a woman explaining how to construct a patio wall and a “compassion” video of children receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer. Relative to the wealthier participants, the poorer ones not only reported feeling greater compassion for the kids but also exhibited a significantly larger slowdown in heart rate from one video to the next. If affluent people are less moved by the suffering of others, they should be less likely to help those in need, and this too seems to be true both in the lab and outside it....
I've always seen and hated this about we non-poor. I still do. More than ever. Kills them. It kills us.
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