There is a long, dubious history of people separating humanity into groups based on appearance but it has consistently been arbitrary and illogical. Mostly racial groups are based on phenotypic characteristics (skin, hair, and eye color and head size and shape). The application of this simple classification is pretty obvious, especially when mapped out […]
In this fascinating discussion, Jonathan Haidt explores and increasingly divided nation and what we can do to overcome the division. There’s even an unintentional reference to the theory of concurrence from Everyone Agrees:
Everyone is libertarian . . . for themselves. The trick is getting people to be libertarian for everyone else as well. No one likes it when people to tell them what to do. Nobody wants a nagging, paternalistic busy-body constantly poking and prodding in their personal or even public life. It’s offensive to one’s sense […]
2015 was pretty bad for the concept of agreement. Religious differences spurred despicable terrorist attacks; protests across the US resulted in antagonism between racial minorities and police; and caustic political vitriol seemed to be at an all-time high across the globe. As one commentator wrote, “If you ask 100 different people how we should fix this […]
I recently rewatched one of the best financial movies of all time: Margin Call. It’s expertly acted, intensely dramatic, and has some great cinematography. There’s only one problem for a film about the 2008 financial crisis: it completely misses the root cause. Near the end of the film, it’s clear that the filmmakers see greedy […]
With the recent announcements that Playboy will stop publishing nude photographs of women, citing that with porn so ubiquitous, nudity has become passé, it’s time to revisit a discussion regarding nudity from the book Everyone Agrees. Keeping Abreast on Things On February 1, 2004, nearly 90 million Americans were shocked when they saw a female […]
At a gathering of liberty-minded young professionals the other night, someone asked if there was a way to unify all libertarians. The joking answer was, “Don’t bring up abortion.” Libertarians—more than any group of people—can find common ground on just about everything, but when it comes to the contentious issue of abortion, it seems that […]
There’s a chilling moment in “Experimenter” where Peter Sarsgaard, portraying the revolutionary psychologist Stanley Milgram, speaks to the audience. He explains that there was a time when people could give a fully human response to every situation. But more often now people don’t get to see the whole situation. People carry out small narrow specialized […]
I’m seeing a lot of #loveWins tags and colorful profile pictures on Facebook recently. That’s great, I love love and I’m a big fan of all the colors of the rainbow. A full on double rainbow all the way? fuggheddaboutit! Unfortunately, I think people are getting it wrong here. Not to be a Debbie Downer […]