Maggie Jackson writes: I didn’t intend to write a book about uncertainty. Some years ago, I set off to research a volume on the kinds of thinking needed in a speed-driven, fragmented age. Epistemic uncertainty, which arises when we recognize the limits of our knowledge, was the subject of my first chapter. I assumed that being unsure was merely a preface to good thinking, something to eradicate as swiftly as possible en route to an answer. But I soon discovered…
PsyPost reports: A recent series of studies reveals a strong connection between an individual’s tendency to feel victimized and their support for political violence. This research, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Violence, sheds light on how personal perceptions of victimhood can influence attitudes towards violent political actions. In an era where political tensions often lead to violent outbreaks, understanding the root causes of such violence is crucial. Past research has linked trauma, abuse, and relative…
Rep. George Santos in the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 7, 2023. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images By David E. Clementson, University of Georgia U.S. Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was expelled on Dec. 1, 2023 from Congress for doing what most people think all politicians do all the time: lying. Santos lied about his religion, marital status, business background, grandparents, college, high school, sports-playing, income and campaign donation expenditures. Santos’ fellow members of Congress –…
D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt write: The lament is as old as education itself: The students aren’t paying attention. But today, the problem of flighty or fragmented attention has reached truly catastrophic proportions. High school and college teachers overwhelmingly report that students’ capacity for sustained, or deep attention has sharply decreased, significantly impeding the forms of study — reading, looking at art, round-table discussions — once deemed central to the liberal arts. By some measures you are…
Jacqueline Rose writes: In response to the destruction of Gaza, it seems to be becoming almost impossible to lament more than one people at a time. When I signed Artists for Palestine’s statement last month, I looked for mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli Jews on 7 October, and then decided to settle for the unambiguous condemnation of ‘every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them’. At Independent Jewish Voices,…
Bystrov/Shutterstock By Ruth Ogden, Liverpool John Moores University Imagine the future. Where is it for you? Do you see yourself striding towards it? Perhaps it’s behind you. Maybe it’s even above you. And what about the past? Do you imagine looking over your shoulder to see it? How you answer these questions will depend on who you are and where you come from. The way we picture the future is influenced by the culture we grow up in and the…
Psypost reports: Why do some individuals find it difficult to forgive those who have wronged them? New research published in Personality and Individual Differences sheds light on this question, revealing that so-called “dark” traits can play a significant role. The findings suggest that Machiavellianism and psychopathy may hinder forgiveness by fostering vengeful thoughts. Forgiveness is a complex and deeply personal process. It involves letting go of negative feelings, thoughts, and behaviors towards someone who has caused harm. While some people…
Ryan A Bush writes: In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche published The Gay Science, a work he referred to as ‘the most personal of all my books’. It came after a series of setbacks in his life, including the weak reception of his previous work, a soured friendship, and his declining health, which caused severe migraines and vomiting, forcing him to resign from his professorial position. Yet it strikes a surprisingly cheerful tone. It’s in this book that the philosopher first penned the…
Samantha Rose Hill writes: As Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher waited in Montauban, France in the summer of 1940 to receive emergency exit papers they did not give into anxiety or despair. They found bicycles and explored the beautiful French countryside during the day and delighted in the detective novels of Georges Simenon at night. In the words of Helen Wolff: ‘Hannah, in her high-spirited way, made of this anguishing experience a kind of gift of time.’ It…
Marcel Danesi writes: Why do people believe some politicians’ lies even when they have been proven false? And why do so many of the same people peddle conspiracy theories? Lying and conspiratorial thinking might seem to be two different problems, but they turn out to be related. I study political rhetoric and have tried to understand how populist politicians use language to develop a cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars and instill hatred. This pattern goes back to antiquity…
Astra Taylor writes: Since 2020, the richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth globally — almost twice as much money as the rest of the world’s population. At the beginning of last year, it was estimated that 10 billionaire men possessed six times as much wealth as the poorest three billion people on Earth. In the United States, the richest 10 percent of households own more than 70 percent of the country’s assets. Such statistics are…
Maria Michela Sassi writes: Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm…
Zeynep Tufekci writes: The news that thousands of Burning Man festivalgoers were told to conserve food and water after torrential rains left them trapped by impassable mud in the Nevada desert led some to chortle about a “Lord of the Flies” scenario for the annual gathering popular with tech lords and moguls. Alas, I have to spoil the hate-the-tech-rich revelries. No matter how this mess is resolved — and many there seem to be coping — the common belief that…
Amanda Gefter writes: In the late nineteen-nineties, a neuroscientist named Mark Blumberg stood in a lab at the University of Iowa watching a litter of sleeping rats. Blumberg was then on the cusp of forty; the rats were newborns, and jerked and spasmed as they slept. Blumberg knew that the animals were fine. He had often seen his dogs twitch their paws while asleep. People, he knew, also twitch during sleep: our muscles contract to make small, sharp movements, and…
Carolyn Wilke writes: Young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a lab. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch — and the retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth. “What these spiders are doing seems to be resembling — very closely — REM sleep,” says Daniela Rößler, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. During REM (which stands for rapid eye…
Peter Sagal writes: [Cult expert, Daniella Mestyanek] Young doesn’t believe that anybody can be argued out of Trumpism (or any other firmly held belief). People can save only themselves, as she did [when she escaped from the Children of God]. But she argues that such self-rescues are happening all around us. “Twenty years ago,” she told me, “when I walked away from a cult, it was much rarer to meet Americans like me, who are completely estranged from their families…