Society
How to Kill Fascism
Fascism’s unifying idea also carries its death.
#23 · · politics
A Suggestion for Your Community Terms and Policies
Protect your community from including anyone realistically linked to war crimes or genocides, including former, current, and reserve members of the armed forces of implicated countries.
#22 · · politics
On Trust
How trust is active, not passive, how it’s connected with truth, and how we’re in trouble.
#21 · · philosophy
Prisoner’s Dilemma
On “tit for tat” with about 10% more forgiveness.
#20 · · philosophy
On Deciding Who We Are
When a country cannot agree to “advancing a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in Ukraine” (or other countries).
#19 · · politics, philosophy
Highlights From “On Liberty” (John Stuart Mill)
“The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A contemporary author has well spoken of “the deep slumber of a decided opinion.‘”
#18 · · philosophy, politics
Highlights From “The Psychology of Revolution” (Gustave Le Bon)
“Men judge with their intelligence, and are guided by their characters. To understand a man fully one must separate these two elements.”
#17 · · politics
Why Online Communication Is So Not-Great
Why is online communication so, meh? An approach that considers context, training, and worldviews, for a much more complicated topic.
#16 · · philosophy
Highlights From “The Social Contract” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
“The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”
#15 · · philosophy, politics
Highlights From “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (Max Weber)
“The modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: the separation of business from the household, which completely dominates modern economic life, and closely connected with it, rational book-keeping.”
#14 · · politics
Reasons to Listen to Whom You Don’t Agree With
Our culture has become one of canceling, of reacting to what we disagree with and whom we dislike by ignoring, unfollowing, blocking, banning, ostracizing. Camouflaged as non-violent protest, it can well be passive-aggressive intolerance of views and people.
#13 · · politics
People Care
It seems easy these days to lose faith in people. We’re destroying the planet, elect the least competent and least humane of our peers for presidents, kill our own people when we don’t kill people in other countries, &c.—and yet we all care.
#12 · · politics
Highlights From “The Crowd” (Gustave Le Bon)
“Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or as not less absolute errors.”
#11 · · politics
On Codes of Conduct
On the idea, the wish, the vision of us treating each other well.
#10 · · politics
Highlights From “Free Thought and Official Propaganda” (Bertrand Russell)
“Our system of education turns young people out of the schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence or to form an independent opinion.”
#9 · · politics, philosophy
Highlights From “The Communist Manifesto” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
“This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves.”
#8 · · politics, philosophy
Highlights From Martin’s “The Behavior of Crowds”
“When most of our neighbors are motivated by certain ideas, those ideas become part of the social environment to which we must adjust ourselves. In this sense they are ‘real,’ however ‘crazy.’”
#7 · · politics
Highlights From Lippmann’s “Public Opinion”
“Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see?”
#6 · · politics, philosophy
On Socialization
Several months back, to myself, I noted how we may have all already been what we’ve later wished to be: for example, authentically curious, open, unbiased, worry-free, joyful, happy, confident, loving. Then, I thought, came socialization.
#5 · · philosophy, politics
Highlights From Paine’s “Common Sense”
“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.”
#4 · · politics, philosophy
Media: The Choice Between Misinformation and Uninformation
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”—Our media, generally speaking, are not trustworthy. They are not trustworthy because of conflicts of interest…
#3 · · politics
On Conspiracy Theories
These days, many a serious inquiry into significant events leads to something marked a “conspiracy theory.” Use of the expression “conspiracy theory” has gone as far as to be used as a blanket dismissal…
#2 · · politics
A Social-Philosophical Journey in 25 Quotes
I was reviewing my Google+ posts the other day. In there I rediscovered a good number of quotes. What connected most of them were my studies. And when I looked at them I found they sort of tell a little story.
#1 · · philosophy, politics