Borne recommended shutting oneself away for three days with a supply of paper, to write, “without falsehood and without hypocrisy,” about every topic that comes to mind. Borne’s idea was that men are stifled by the burden of conventional ideas, and that they do not dare to think for themselves. His aim was to free … Read more
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. These stages, often called the “Five Stages of Grief,” supposedly describe an invariant sequence of stages that all people pass through when dying (Kübler-Ross, 1969, 1974). These stages are widely accepted in medical, psychological, and nursing communities. They have permeated popular culture through movies and TV shows. In The … Read more
If you are told to picture someone who is lonely, depressed, unable to keep up with technology, dependent, forgetful, physically weak – you may imagine an older person. But many of these perceptions are false. Our impressions of the elderly are cystalized at a young age. In Snow White, one of the seven dwarves, “Grumpy”, … Read more
The idea of the midlife crisis is so prevalent that there are internet sites and businesses that are built for the purpose of mitigating it. The Midlife Club and LifeLaunch through the Hudson institute are examples. We all know what a midlife crisis is through popular culture. In American Beauty (1999), Kevin Spacey quits his … Read more
Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo is a book that explores the origins of human morality and religion. Freud argues that the primitive societies of the past were organized around a totem, or a sacred object, which was the focus of religious rituals and taboos. He suggests that these taboos were created to protect the totem … Read more
Summary In Homo Deus, Harari brings up many of the same ideas that he discussed in Sapiens – including crediting our success as a species to our ability to communicate and believe stories efficiently. But after transcending our primordial roots, our ambitions have grown. Today, the conversation about attaining immortality is not speculation, but a … Read more
The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson is the story of how money developed throughout history- and how the world was shaped and reshaped by the many financial innovations that accompanied our dependence on money. There have been countless failures in finance, but the general trend has consistently been upwards. The Foundations of Finance In … Read more
Taleb’s Incerto concludes with Skin In The Game. This book makes the argument that some people, who are not engaging directly with reality, are not capable of understanding risks. This class of people includes academics (especially in the social sciences), bureaucrats, and advisers. What these people have in common is that they are isolated from … Read more
The Time Paradox is a book by Phillip Zimbardo and John Boyd that explains how our attitudes towards time shapes the way we live our lives, who we become, and what we value. Boyd recalls a Crypt of the Capuchin Monks that he once saw, it had an inscription at the foot of a pile … Read more
A large proportion of people in the world do not have the ability to choose how they want to spend their time. The global economic machine can only function when sufficient sacrifices are made. What people sacrifice is time, it is the most precious commodity that humans have. Unless you have provided astronomical value to … Read more