Browsed by
Category: Society

Why do people invent false conspiracies when there are so many real ones to worry about?

Why do people invent false conspiracies when there are so many real ones to worry about?

George Monbiot writes: We need better terms, that distinguish wacky and often malign fairytales from the very essence of democracy: the reasoned suspicion of those who exercise power over us. I prefer to call the fairytales “conspiracy fictions” and those who peddle them “conspiracy fantasists”. An extraordinary aspect of this issue is that there’s so little overlap between conspiracy fantasists and conspiracy theorists. Those who believe unevidenced stories about hidden cabals and secret machinations tend to display no interest in…

Read More Read More

Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy on how technology shapes our world

Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy on how technology shapes our world

Bryan Norton writes: By the start of the 1970s, a growing number of philosophers and political theorists began calling into question the immediacy of our lived experience. The world around us was no longer seen by these thinkers as something that was simply given, as it had been for phenomenologists such as Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. The world instead presented itself as a built environment composed of things such as roads, power plants and houses, all made possible by…

Read More Read More

Living with the enduring pain of postcolonial trauma

Living with the enduring pain of postcolonial trauma

Farah Abdessamad writes: In 1952, the 27-year-old Frantz Fanon had just published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, his controversial and rejected doctoral thesis on the effects of racism on health. Fanon had been interning at Saint-Alban hospital in southern France when he soon noticed that medical personnel often overlooked and minimised the concern of North African patients. At that time, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (where my father was born) were either French colonies or protectorates, and these patients…

Read More Read More

Young people are getting unhappier – a lack of childhood freedom and independence may be partly to blame

Young people are getting unhappier – a lack of childhood freedom and independence may be partly to blame

Africa Studio/Shutterstock By Fiorentina Sterkaj, University of East London Experts often highlight social media and harsh economic times as key reasons why young people are getting unhappier. And while those factors are important, I would like to emphasise another. Younger generations have less freedom and independence than previous generations did. The area where children are allowed to range unsupervised outside has shrunk by 90% since the 1970s. Parents increasingly organise entertainment – ranging from play dates and sports and music…

Read More Read More

The terrible costs of a phone-based childhood

The terrible costs of a phone-based childhood

Jonathan Haidt writes: Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same…

Read More Read More

In shameless displays of social depravity, Israeli soldiers are looting Gaza homes en masse

In shameless displays of social depravity, Israeli soldiers are looting Gaza homes en masse

Oren Ziv reports: Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza have not been shy about posting videos on social media gleefully documenting their wanton destruction of buildings and humiliation of Palestinian detainees. Some of these clips were even exhibited in South Africa’s presentation at the International Court of Justice last month as evidence of genocide. But there is another war crime being readily documented by Israeli soldiers that has garnered less attention and condemnation despite its prevalence: looting. In November, the Palestinian…

Read More Read More

Why Americans suddenly stopped hanging out

Why Americans suddenly stopped hanging out

Derek Thompson writes: In its earliest decades, the United States was celebrated for its citizens’ extroversion. Americans weren’t just setting out to build new churches and new cities. Their associations were, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “of a thousand different types … religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute.” Americans seemed adept at forming social groups: political associations, labor unions, local memberships. It was as if the continent itself had imbued its residents…

Read More Read More

U.S. culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like Donald Trump

U.S. culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like Donald Trump

George Monbiot writes: Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics. Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic…

Read More Read More

A plurality of Americans are not affiliated with any religion

A plurality of Americans are not affiliated with any religion

NPR reports: When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’ A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%). Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew’s…

Read More Read More

The people of Solano County, California, versus the next tech-billionaire dystopia

The people of Solano County, California, versus the next tech-billionaire dystopia

Gil Duran writes: It is easy to mock the absurdity of California Forever, the new city that a group of tech billionaires want to build amid cattle pastures 60 miles north of San Francisco. Its wealthy backers frame the project—envisioned as a mega suburb with dense housing and walkable streets set on 60,000 rural acres—as an innovative solution to California’s housing shortage. But their bumbling and villainous antics may ensure it never gets built. The particulars of this caper veer…

Read More Read More

Musical synchronization emerges spontaneously and enhances social connectedness

Musical synchronization emerges spontaneously and enhances social connectedness

PsyPost reports: Researchers have discovered a significant link between musical synchronization and social connectedness. Analyzing the behavior of university students engaged in impromptu music-making, the study found that individuals who synchronized their musical rhythms felt a stronger sense of connection with their peers, highlighting music’s unique role in fostering social cohesion. The findings have been published in Psychology of Music. Previous studies have indicated that music can establish and maintain social bonds, but the mechanics of how this happens were…

Read More Read More

The relentless growth of degrowth economics

The relentless growth of degrowth economics

Jessi Jezewska Stevens writes: The ninth International Degrowth Conference, held in August this year in Zagreb, Croatia, opens with a provocation. Keynote speaker Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, the newly elected vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has two requests to make of the audience. The first is to figure out how to coordinate with governments of all stripes, since the climate crisis requires global unity. The second? “Maybe consider a different word.” It’s about as close to blasphemy…

Read More Read More

What we get when we give

What we get when we give

Molly McDonough writes: From where in the body might kindness flow? Folklore and belief systems far and wide point to the heart. Ancient Egyptian mythology, for example, maintained that the leap to the afterlife required a test. Before the deceased could enter, their heart had to be weighed, placed on a balance under the watchful eyes of the gods. The dead person’s heart wasn’t beating, but it wasn’t considered dead weight; it held proof of virtue. If the person had…

Read More Read More

The unbearable hubris of Elon Musk and the billionaire tech bros

The unbearable hubris of Elon Musk and the billionaire tech bros

Douglas Rushkoff writes: Even their downfalls are spectacular. Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis’s exuberant biography of the convicted fraudster – Going Infinite – into the story of a supervillain. Even his potential sentence of up to 115 years in prison seems more suitable for a larger-than-life comic book character – the Joker being carted off to Arkham Asylum – than a nerdy, crooked…

Read More Read More

The richest 1% — the ‘polluter elite’ — are plundering the planet to point of destruction

The richest 1% — the ‘polluter elite’ — are plundering the planet to point of destruction

The Guardian reports: The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says. The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to…

Read More Read More

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Science News reports: Humans regularly cooperate and share resources with other, unrelated humans in different social groups, often without any immediate, reciprocated benefits. The phenomenon has been considered unique to our species. But some bonobos appear to share this social trait, a study finds. This type of cooperation is thought to underpin human civilization. So bonobos’ ability to bond and cooperate with groups of nonrelatives across group boundaries, even when there’s no immediate payoff, may provide some insight into the…

Read More Read More