“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard … Read more
One of the important ways in which modern people differ from ancient people, is that modern society has mastered risk. That is not to say that each individual has mastered risk, but that each individual has at their disposable extremely powerful tools, passed down from great thinkers, that allows them to understand risk better than … Read more
How We Know What Isn’t So Title: How We Know What Isn’t So Author(s): Thomas Gilovich First Published: 1991 Thomas Gilovich offers a guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. Summary 1 Summary 2 Thinking: Fast and Slow Title: Thinking: Fast and Slow Author(s): Daniel Kahneman First Published: 2011 System 1 is … Read more
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins is an ambitious project that seeks to explain how and why evolution selected for the behaviors, characteristics, and ideas that are now prevalent in any society. The gene is the basic unit of evolution. It is essential information that can exist for a very long time, which is why it … Read more
In Thinking: Fast and Slow, Kahneman explains the representativeness heuristic, by giving us the example of Tom W, a fictional graduate student. Assume that you know nothing about Tom W, and you were asked to guess which major he is most likely in. I will simplify the example and include only three of these majors. … Read more
The ironic part about get-rich-quick schemes is that the people who buy into them invest many years trying to get rich “quick.” But why are they so attractive? It could have something to do with “loss aversion” – the idea that people prefer to avoid losing 100 dollars than gain 100 dollars even if there … Read more
The Illusion of Separateness The biggest taboo of all is knowing who we really are behind the mask of our self as presented to the world. Through our focus on ourselves and the world as it affects us, we have developed narrowed perception. – Alan Watts, The Book To understand what Watts is saying, we … Read more
In The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966), Rieff describes modern society as completely different from the past. Previously, society was marked by “religious man” – and then, many centuries later, by “economic man”, and now, in the current stage, by “psychological man.” And this new type of individual differs from ancestors in the way he … Read more
“Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud,” written by sociologist Philip Rieff in 1966, is a seminal work that scrutinizes the shift in societal values and the rise of psychological man in the aftermath of Freudian thought. Rieff posits that Western society, having detached from traditional religious and moral commitments, is witnessing the … Read more
A great overview of Mimetic Theory, by Wolfgang Palaver. In a systematic careful synthesis of Girard’s thought, Palaver summarizes the mimetic insights that were derived from authors such as Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Flaubert, and Proust. And finally, he shows the precise stories of the Old and New Testament that confirm Girard’s thesis. What is Girard’s … Read more