5 Books That Explain Why It Seems the World Is So Messed Up - Mark Manson - Pocket. The Real Value of Money. One summer afternoon, a group of recent college graduates decided to visit their favorite professor at his home. ‘The way universities are run is making us ill’: inside the student mental health crisis. When he started working at Brunel University London 19 years ago, Terry Vass, who is now head of security, recalls that most of his work involved breaking up drunken fights outside the bars and nightclub on campus.
Over the two decades he has been in the job, he has noticed a shift. Now, an increasing number of calls are for mental health incidents. The Spiritual Crisis of the Modern Economy. Photo by Matteo Colombo / Getty.
What is happening to America’s white working class? The group’s important, and perhaps decisive, role in the 2016 presidential election sparked a slew of commentary focused on, on the one hand, its nativism, racism, and sexism, and, on the other, its various economic woes. While there are no simple explanations for the desperation and anger visible in many predominantly white working-class communities, perhaps the most astute and original diagnosis came from the rabbi and activist Michael Lerner, who, in assessing Donald Trump’s victory, looked from a broader vantage point than most. Underneath the populist ire, he wrote, was a suffering “rooted in the hidden injuries of class and in the spiritual crisis that the global competitive marketplace generates.” That cuts right to it. The Meaning of Life in a World without Work. Most jobs that exist today might disappear within decades.
As artificial intelligence outperforms humans in more and more tasks, it will replace humans in more and more jobs. Many new professions are likely to appear: virtual-world designers, for example. But such professions will probably require more creativity and flexibility, and it is unclear whether 40-year-old unemployed taxi drivers or insurance agents will be able to reinvent themselves as virtual-world designers (try to imagine a virtual world created by an insurance agent!).
And even if the ex-insurance agent somehow makes the transition into a virtual-world designer, the pace of progress is such that within another decade he might have to reinvent himself yet again. The Disease of More - Mark Manson - Pocket. Success is often the first step toward disaster.
The idea of progress is often the enemy of actual progress. I recently met a guy who, despite having a massively successful business, an awesome lifestyle, a happy relationship, and a great network of friends, told me with a straight face, that he was thinking of hiring a coach to help him “reach the next level.” When I asked him what this elusive next level was, he said he wasn’t sure, that that’s why he needed a coach, to point out his blind spots and show him what he’s missing out on. “Oh,” I said. And then stood there awkwardly for a moment, gauging how brutally honest I was willing to be with someone I just met.
“But what if there’s nothing to fix?” “What do you mean?” Why You Didn’t See It Coming. Illustration by Jackie Ferrentino.
You don’t see it coming. You probably couldn’t if you tried. The effects of large changes in scale are frequently beyond our powers of perception, even our imagination. 30 Things About Life I Wish I Had Known 10 Years Ago - Darius Foroux - Pocket. In Defense of Being Average - Mark Manson - Pocket. There’s this guy.
World-renowned billionaire. Tech genius. Inventor and entrepreneur. Athletic and talented and handsome with a jaw so chiseled it looks like Zeus came down from Olympus and carved the fucker himself. This guy’s got a small fleet of sports cars, a few yachts, and when he’s not giving millions of dollars to charities, he’s changing out supermodel girlfriends like other people change their socks. This guy’s smile can melt the damn room. Good News at Last: The World Isn’t as Horrific as You Think - The Guardian - Pocket. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right?
War, violence, natural disasters, corruption. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and we will soon run out of resources unless something drastic is done. Individualism is not a sufficient foundation for social life. After escaping an assassination attempt earlier that morning, Cicero entered the senate under armed guard.
It was 7 November 63 BCE, and the Roman Republic hovered on the brink of revolution. Good News at Last: The World Isn’t as Horrific as You Think - The Guardian - Pocket. - The Washington Post. The Trouble with Theories of Everything - Nautilus - Pocket. Whenever you say anything about your daily life, a scale is implied.
Try it out. “I’m too busy” only works for an assumed time scale: today, for example, or this week. Not this century or this nanosecond. “Taxes are onerous” only makes sense for a certain income range. Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes. Just like we went through the AOL phase before people were comfortable with web browsers. The whole pitch of AOL was, "We're easier. It's a walled garden we control. The internet's scary. You have to download a web browser. The web is weird, you want to be on AOL. " American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth. An American soldier stands before a burning oil well in Rumayla, Iraq, on March 27, 2003.
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images Donald Trump has done more to elevate the left’s critique of U.S. foreign policy than any politician in modern memory. As a presidential candidate, the mogul told Republican primary audiences that George W. Bush had lied the United States into Iraq; that said war had done a “tremendous disservice to humanity”; and that America could have saved countless lives by investing $5 trillion in domestic infrastructure instead. As commander-in-chief, Trump has suggested that there is no moral distinction between the U.S. and other great powers; that American foreign policy in the Middle East is largely dictated by the interests of arms manufacturers; and that the U.S. judges foreign regimes by their utility to American economic interests, not their commitment to human rights. What Is Existential Therapy? She laughed along with me at some of my more absurd anxieties; she even told me at times that she worried about the same things. At several points, she said, “You might not feel better after I say this,” or “Well, this isn’t comforting, but …” and proceeded to confirm my deepest fears.
No, we can’t ever know anyone else’s internal experience. The blind spot of science is the neglect of lived experience. The problem of time is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics. The first bit of the conundrum is cosmological. To understand time, scientists talk about finding a ‘First Cause’ or ‘initial condition’ – a description of the Universe at the very beginning (or at ‘time equals zero’). But to determine a system’s initial condition, we need to know the total system. We need to make measurements of the positions and velocities of its constituent parts, such as particles, atoms, fields and so forth.
This problem hits a hard wall when we deal with the origin of the Universe itself, because we have no view from the outside. Will humans wipe out humanity? - Open Future. THE importance of science in society has no greater spokesperson than Lord Martin Rees. Paradigm shifts. - The Washington Post.
The Myth of Capitalism Exposed. Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images. The Most Powerful Lesson My Cancer Taught Me About Life and Work. What Would Happen If Everyone Truly Believed Everything Is One? Bill Gates talks with Ezra Klein about global progress in 2018. How to Survive the Next Era of Tech (Slow Down and Be Mindful) Optimistic facts and charts that show the world is getting much, much better. For most Americans, these feel like bleak times. Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’ Steven Pinker Thinks the Future Is Looking Bright. The Dominican Republic Erased Birthright Citizenship. The Dominican Republic also has a long, brutal history of anti-Haitian racism. During his rule from 1930 to 1961, the fascist dictator Rafael Trujillo built a racialized concept of Dominican national identity on the fuzzy idea that the descendants of Spanish slavery on the eastern part of the island had higher levels of European ancestry than, and thus were superior to, the descendants of French slavery on the western part of the island.
Across the West powerful firms are becoming even more powerful - Competition. Business Does Not Need the Humanities — But Humans Do. Sometimes a simple story is all it takes to capture complex issues, or so it seems. Vacation is a poor substitute for leisure — Quartz at Work. The Opportunity Atlas. World economy at risk of another financial crash, says IMF. How the Next Downturn Will Surprise Us. Tim Wu says the future of humanity depends on design ethics. S Use of Your Data. 10 years after Lehman Brothers' collapse, 10 financial risks that remain. How Struggling Dayton, Ohio, Reveals the Chasm Among… American Farmers Are in Crisis. What We Should Have Learned From the 2008 Financial Crisis.
The Rise of the Inequality Industry. The Hacking of America. Why Growth Can’t Be Green. Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not. The Recovery Threw the Middle-Class Dream Under a Benz. The Scientist Who Lost America's First Climate War. The Scientist Who Lost America's First Climate War.