Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The tale of the lotus-eating elites destroying the honest and authentic life of the hardworking commoners is a hell of a story, and it is rooted in the reality of actual human suffering. But as a criticism of liberal democracy, it is not new and it is not true.

When was this fortunate time when people back in our respective hometowns felt that the system was fair, or that times were good, or that the “elites”—back in the ’60s and ’70s, old Protestant white males who were practically selected before birth to attend fine universities—were somehow invested in the success of the lower classes?

Not many Americans want to think very much about what it would actually mean in social or economic terms to go back and live in those Kodachrome moments in their minds.

n order for the World Happiness Report and other international happiness indexes to compare self-reports of happiness, they have to assume that people around the world define happiness and answer happiness surveys in roughly the same way. If this assumption does not hold, then happiness indexes are about as reliable as a ranking of music quality based on how much residents of each country say they like their local songs. This would indicate something about each country’s enthusiasm for their musical styles, but would provide little information about what music is objectively “best,” given differences in people’s traditions and tastes.

On first pass, the ways people around the world say they experience happiness have some obvious commonalities. One 2016 study of 2,799 adults in 12 countries found that in all the nations studied, psychological definitions of happiness—“an inner state, feeling or attitude”—dominated all others. In particular, people worldwide said they found happiness in achieving “inner harmony.”

Inner harmony might sound universal, but it can mean very different things in different places. For example, while shooting a documentary film in Denmark on the pursuit of happiness two years ago, I found that the Danes often described inner harmony in terms of hygge, which is something like coziness and comfortable conviviality. Meanwhile, I have found that Americans tend to define it in terms of their skills meeting their passions, usually in the context of work.

as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.” He said that his preparations probably put him at the “extreme” end among his peers. But he added, “A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.”

Tim Chang, a forty-four-year-old managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture-capital firm, told me, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.” He said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to.” He and his wife, who is in technology, keep a set of bags packed for themselves and their four-year-old daughter. He told me, “I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”

In 1949, Reinhold Niebuhr published a book called “Faith and History.” Niebuhr noticed a secular religion that was especially strong in the years after World War II. It was the faith that historical forces were gradually bringing about “the unification of mankind.”

Old nationalisms would fade away, many people believed. Transportation and communications technologies would unite people. Values would converge. This optimistic faith was at the heart of many postwar projects, first the United Nations and then the European Union. The idea was to create multilateral bodies that would hasten the process of convergence, harmonization and peace.

Unfortunately, this moral, cultural and political convergence never happened. In the decades since, people in different nations, even people within nations, have become less alike in at least as many ways as they have become more alike.

When I try to explain the aspirational genius of the American founding, I always refer to two documents

They’re by the famous “frenemies” of the American founding, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The second is Adams’s very short Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, dated October 11, 1798.

“parental rights,”

tapping into broader anger at the education system.

a highly effective political strategy capitalizing on the frustrations of suburban parents still reeling from the devastating fallout of pandemic-era schooling.

Stoic, dignified and comforting, the queen’s words helped anchor the country during the fretful days that followed — not the first time the monarchy has acted as a stabilizing force for the government during tumultuous events.

While these cases are about starkly different issues, they both feature privileged middle-aged men under fire for their behavior, raising age-old questions of class, entitlement and double standards.

Commentators said, half in jest, that the legal ruling against Andrew, 61, helped Mr. Johnson, 57, because it deflected attention from his grilling in the House of Commons, where opposition lawmakers accused him of lying and demanded that he resign. But both men are at the mercy of forces largely out of their control.

“And the first question this kid asked me is just … ‘What the heck does good masculinity look like?’”He grimaced.“And I’ll be honest with you: I did not have an answer for that.”

by 1958, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that “the male role has plainly lost its rugged clarity of outline.” Writing in Esquire magazine, he added, “The ways by which American men affirm their masculinity are uncertain and obscure. There are multiplying signs, indeed, that something has gone badly wrong with the American male’s conception of himself.”

today’s problems are real and well documented. Deindustrialization, automation, free trade and peacetime have shifted the labor market dramatically, and not in men’s favor — the need for physical labor has declined, while soft skills and academic credentials are increasingly rewarded

The Enchantments of Mammon by Eugene McCarraher

It is almost impossible to categorise Enchantments of Mammon. This monumental labour of love took two decades to write.

this is an extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic and a work of Christian prophecy

I prefer a more neutral phrase, which emphasizes that this ideology focuses on the role that groups play in society and draws on a variety of intellectual influences such as postmodernism, postcolonialism and critical race theory: the “identity synthesis.”

There is a way to warn about these views on identity that is thoughtful yet firm, principled yet unapologetic.

The first step is to recognize that they constitute a novel ideology — one that, though it has wide appeal for serious reasons, is profoundly misguided.

a report released on Wednesday uses a different measure: Which parts of the country have suffered the greatest number of federally declared disasters?

That designation is reserved for disasters so severe, they overwhelm the ability of state and local officials to respond. The report finds that disasters like these have become alarmingly common.

From 2011 to the end of last year, 90 percent of U.S. counties have experienced a flood, hurricane, wildfire or other calamity serious enough to receive a federal disaster declaration, according to the report, and more than 700 counties suffered five or more such disasters.

According to recent opinion polls, conducted by pollsters such as the Levada Centre which has offices in Moscow, 70-75% of respondents in Russia support the war with Ukraine. (These surveys were conducted before Mr Putin announced his mobilisation drive.

But these shocking figures are deceptive. Public opposition to the war can result in criminal prosecution, so people who are critical of the war and the regime are less likely to agree to speak to a pollster. This results in skewed samples and inflates the level of support for the war.

Two main narratives circulate. One is peddled by the best-known talk-show hosts who tell viewers that the “special operation” is part of Russia’s total and existential war with the West—which is, of course, hell-bent on obliterating Russia.

The feeling of being ni de aquí, ni de allá—from neither here nor there—is the fundamental paradox of latinidad, its very essence.

Tobar’s book should be read in the context of other works that, for more than a century, have tried to elucidate the meaning of latinidad.

In his 1891 essay “Our America,” José Martí, a Cuban writer then living in New York, argued that Latin American identity was defined, in part, by a rejection of the racism that he believed characterized the United States.

There was no fraud. They all knew there was no fraud. They all heard Gabriel Sterling’s plea to stop the madness before someone got hurt. And they all knew that in a few weeks Donald Trump would be gone, whether he believed it or not.So the most common rationale presented for sucking up to him—maintaining proximity to power—was moot!And yet, despite all that, we can fit the Republican politicos who actively resisted Trump’s cuckoo coup plot into a single homeroom.Why?

the most common rationale presented for sucking up to him—maintaining proximity to power—was moot!

despite all that, we can fit the Republican politicos who actively resisted Trump’s cuckoo coup plot into a single homeroom.

The global human population has been climbing for the past two centuries. But what is normal for all of us alive today — growing up while the world is growing rapidly — may be a blip in human history.

All of the predictions agree on one thing: We peak soon.

then we shrink. Humanity will not reach a plateau and then stabilize. It will begin an unprecedented decline.

hat is the point of arguing with someone who disagrees with you? Presumably, you would like them to change their mind. But that’s easier said than done

Research shows that changing minds, especially changing beliefs that are tied strongly to people’s identity, is extremely difficult

this personal attachment to beliefs encourages “competitive personal contests rather than collaborative searches for the truth.”