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| Topic: Society |
12:45 pm EST, Feb 26, 2005 |
Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes. "Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you open the newspaper these days, you see it flitting around the world like a thought contagion. If we had any brains, we'd build an Iraqi C-Span so the whole Arab world could follow this process like a long political soap opera. Despite everything, the thought contagion is spreading. Why not here? Why Not Here? |
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Why Societies Need Dissent |
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| Topic: Society |
11:19 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
In this timely book, Cass R. Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often results from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out. Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense. Why Societies Need Dissent |
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| Topic: Society |
9:14 am EST, Feb 14, 2005 |
Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, "Timebends," quoted the great physicist Hans Bethe as saying, "Well, I come down in the morning and I take up a pencil and I try to think. ..." It's a notion that appears to have gone the way of the rotary phone. Americans not only seem to be doing less serious thinking lately, they seem to have less and less tolerance for those who spend their time wrestling with important and complex matters. If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on. The Public Thinker |
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Place The State - US Geography Quiz |
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| Topic: Society |
12:14 am EST, Jan 15, 2005 |
Here is the more difficult version of the "US geography" test. In this version, you must correctly place each state onto an otherwise blank map of the US. As expected, this test is considerably more difficult to "ace" than the test in which the states pile up on the map as you place them. The order of the states is still random, but it doesn't matter as much in this version of the test. On my first run-through (after having "warmed up" with the other test), I got a score of 70%, with an average error of 39 miles. If you pass this test with flying colors and have a need to feel humbled, try the World Countries tests for Europe, Asia, Africa, and South & Central America on level 8 ("expert geographer"), in which you have to rotate the countries into place. (However, the map does not go blank after each country.) Place The State - US Geography Quiz |
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The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America |
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| Topic: Society |
3:14 pm EST, Jan 9, 2005 |
The excerpt below is taken from the preface of "The Metaphysical Club," Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Winner for History. It is a remarkable fact about the United States that it fought a civil war without undergoing a change in its form of government. The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but it swept away almost the whole intellectual culture of the North along with it. It took nearly half a century for the United States to develop a culture to replace it, to find a set of ideas, and a way of thinking, that would help people cope with the conditions of modern life. That struggle is the subject of this book. There are many paths through this story. The one that is followed here runs through the lives of four people: Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey. Their ideas changed the way Americans thought -- and continue to think -- about education, democracy, liberty, justice, and tolerance. If we strain out the differences, personal and philosophical, they had with one another, we can say that what these four thinkers had in common was not a group of ideas, but a single idea -- an idea about ideas. They all believed that ideas are not "out there" waiting to be discovered, but are tools -- like forks and knives and microchips -- that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals -- that ideas are social. They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability. The belief that ideas should never become ideologies -- either justifying the status quo, or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it -- was the essence of what they taught. They taught a kind of skepticism that helped people cope with life in a heterogeneous, industrialized, mass-marketed society, a society in which older human bonds of custom and community seemed to have become attenuated, and to have been replaced by more impersonal networks of obligation and authority. But skepticism is also one of the qualities that make societies like that work. It is what permits the continual state of upheaval that capitalism thrives on. This book is not a work of philosophical argument; it is a work of historical interpretation. It describes a change in American life by looking at a change in its intellectual assumptions. Those assumptions changed because the country became a different place. As with every change, there was gain and there was loss. This story, if it has been told in the right way, should help make possible a better measure of both. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America |
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| Topic: Society |
11:30 am EST, Jan 9, 2005 |
Hell is other people, we are told. But Allan Gurganus wrote that Heaven is other people, too -- just other other people. They may be annoying, loud, clumsy people who snap at you and take your money. But they remind you -- especially if you are sated and numb, as so many are at the holidays -- that you are alive and your senses work and you are part of something bigger than your cul-de-sac. It's a nice reminder to have. Even if only once a year. Winter People |
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| Topic: Society |
7:24 pm EST, Jan 8, 2005 |
Baghdad was not the most obvious place to celebrate Passover. Until the Second World War roughly a quarter of Baghdad's population was Jewish. If you look carefully in parts of town that used to be Jewish, like Bataween, on the east bank of the Tigris, or around Rashid Street, a bustling commercial area, you can still see brickwork patterned into Stars of David. You can also see places where moulded stars have been hacked away. What you can't see are the stories. Passover in Baghdad |
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How to Move Minds & Influence People |
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| Topic: Society |
10:27 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Think about the people you need to influence. What if you could get behind their scepticism or defenses? What if they could see the world from your vantage, and enjoy the view? What if they could see just what was possible? Dont argue with them. Dont proposition them. Let a well chosen story or stories smuggle in what you need them to know. Whether you are trying to influence a single person or a room full of expectant or cynical faces, discover how to make your point, change others minds, and carry people with you. How to Move Minds & Influence People |
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| Topic: Society |
10:14 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late. The Global Baby Bust |
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Why Do Societies Collapse? |
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| Topic: Society |
9:54 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Throughout human history, societies, civilizations have prospered and collapsed over time. The reasons, obviously, have lessons for the whole of our intricately interlinked planet today. Eminent professor Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at UCLA, gave a speech at Princeton University about the collapse of ancient societies. "Why did these ancient civilizations abandon their cities after building them with such great effort? Why these ancient collapses? Why is it that some societies collapsed while others did not collapse?" Why Do Societies Collapse? |
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