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How loneliness is tearing America apart

How loneliness is tearing America apart

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Arthur C. Brooks writes: America is suffering an epidemic of loneliness. According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.” Thirteen percent of Americans say that zero people know them well. The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that…

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You can’t characterize human nature if studies overlook 85 percent of people on Earth

You can’t characterize human nature if studies overlook 85 percent of people on Earth

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By only working in their own backyards, what do psychology researchers miss about human behavior? Arthimedes/Shutterstock.com By Daniel Hruschka, Arizona State University Over the last century, behavioral researchers have revealed the biases and prejudices that shape how people see the world and the carrots and sticks that influence our daily actions. Their discoveries have filled psychology textbooks and inspired generations of students. They’ve also informed how businesses manage their employees, how educators develop new curricula and how political campaigns persuade…

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The Exhausted Majority needs a break

The Exhausted Majority needs a break

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Sabrina Tavernise reports: As the country catches its breath after one of the most acrimonious midterm elections in years, it would be easy to conclude that all of America is hopelessly divided — a land where two angry tribes are at each other’s throats and everybody thinks about politics all the time. But the reality is far less extreme. A deep new study of the American electorate, “Hidden Tribes,” concludes that two out of three Americans are far more practical…

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Brothers mourned for their embrace of ‘joy and love and happiness’

Brothers mourned for their embrace of ‘joy and love and happiness’

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The Atlantic reports: Cecil and David Rosenthal were buried in matching caskets made of wood, each adorned with a single Jewish star. The brothers, 59 and 54, were two of the 11 Jews killed in Pittsburgh on Saturday, remembered by all as irrepressibly friendly synagogue regulars. But they were also vulnerable in a different way than the other victims of the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue: The brothers lived with profound intellectual impairment; Cecil, for example, could neither read…

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Loneliness in America

Loneliness in America

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When in cold reflection, a man concludes that his life matters to no one but himself, how are we to imagine he might still retain or develop an appreciation for the value of the lives of others? It’s easy enough to characterize Robert Bowers’ deadly attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue as a product of hate-filled political discourse fueled by the inflammatory words of a cynically divisive president and yet that doesn’t account for the abject sadness of a man who…

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As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

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The New York Times reports: President Trump is vowing to send the military to stop migrants trudging from Central America. Europe’s leaders are paying African nations to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean — and detaining the ones who make it in filthy, overcrowded camps. But Solomon Osakan has a very different approach in this era of rising xenophobia. From his uncluttered desk in northwest Uganda, he manages one of the largest concentrations of refugees anywhere in the world: more…

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Muslim groups raise thousands for Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims

Muslim groups raise thousands for Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims

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The New York Times reports: Two Muslim organizations have raised more than $130,000 to help victims and their families following the shooting massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday. The online fund-raiser was part of a broad outpouring of assistance in response to the anti-Semitic attack, which killed 11 people and left six others injured, including blood drives, vigils and a separate crowdfunding campaign that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tarek El-Messidi, a Chicago-based…

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Growing anti-Semitism stuns American Jews

Growing anti-Semitism stuns American Jews

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The New York Times reports: Until recent years, many Jews in America believed that the worst of anti-Semitism was over there, in Europe, a vestige of the old country. American Jews were welcome in universities, country clubs and corporate boards that once excluded their grandparents. They married non-Jews, moved into mixed neighborhoods and by 2000, the first Jew ran for vice president on a major party ticket. So the massacre on Saturday of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, by…

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U.S. Jews’ despair over Pittsburgh atrocity compounded by Trump’s complicity and Netanyahu’s hypocrisy

U.S. Jews’ despair over Pittsburgh atrocity compounded by Trump’s complicity and Netanyahu’s hypocrisy

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Chemi Shalev writes: When Trump said Saturday that the attack in Pittsburgh might not have been as bloody if the synagogue had hired armed guards, he was essentially blaming the Jewish victims for their own death; proving, in the process, how detached he is from the sentiments of the liberal Jewish majority, which abhors the unflinching Republican support for guns and their owners. Trump’s insensitive assertion proved to anyone who still harbored doubt that he is eminently unqualified to reassure…

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Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is a moment of reckoning for American Jews

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is a moment of reckoning for American Jews

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Jay Michaelson writes: After the 9/11 attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that countries now had to choose between fighting terror and abetting it, that there was no neutral ground. In his metaphor, you were either sitting in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section. In the wake of the worst attack on Jews in American history, all of us, but especially American Jews like me, face a similar decision. We either support Donald Trump and the movement of…

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Why the Tree of Life shooter was fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Why the Tree of Life shooter was fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

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Masha Gessen writes: A couple of hours before opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Robert Bowers, the suspected gunman, posted on the social network Gab, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Bowers had posted about it at least once before. Two and a half weeks earlier, he had linked to a HIAS…

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George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island

George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island

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On August 18,1790, during his second year in office as America’s first president, George Washington wrote: If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people. The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a…

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An alternative history of Silicon Valley disruption

An alternative history of Silicon Valley disruption

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Nitasha Tiku writes: A few years after the Great Recession, you couldn’t scroll through Google Reader without seeing the word “disrupt.” TechCrunch named a conference after it, the New York Times named a column after it, investor Marc Andreessen warned that “software disruption” would eat the world; not long after, Peter Thiel, his fellow Facebook board member, called “disrupt” one of his favorite words. (One of the future Trump adviser’s least favorite words? “Politics.”) The term “disruptive innovation” was coined…

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Games are taking over life

Games are taking over life

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Vincent Gabrielle writes: Deep under the Disneyland Resort Hotel in California, far from the throngs of happy tourists, laundry workers clean thousands of sheets, blankets, towels and comforters every day. Workers feed the heavy linens into hot, automated presses to iron out wrinkles, and load dirty laundry into washers and dryers large enough to sit in. It’s loud, difficult work, but bearable. The workers were protected by union contracts that guaranteed a living wage and affordable healthcare, and many had…

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Are there communities that are good at being good when things get bad?

Are there communities that are good at being good when things get bad?

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Margaret Paxson writes: Let’s just say that suddenly you are a social scientist and you want to study peace. That is, you want to understand what makes for a peaceful society. Let’s say that, for years in your work in various parts of the world, you’ve been surrounded by evidence of violence and war. From individual people, you’ve heard about beatings and arrests and murders and rapes; you’ve heard about deportations and black-masked men demanding your food or your life….

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Thanks to genetic genealogy, anonymity will soon become a thing of the past

Thanks to genetic genealogy, anonymity will soon become a thing of the past

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The New York Times reports: The genetic genealogy industry is booming. In recent years, more than 15 million people have offered up their DNA — a cheek swab, some saliva in a test-tube — to services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com in pursuit of answers about their heritage. In exchange for a genetic fingerprint, individuals may find a birth parent, long-lost cousins, perhaps even a link to Oprah or Alexander the Great. But as these registries of genetic identity grow,…

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