Alcibiades argued for libertarianism. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia Socratis, there’s an unusual mini dialogue, in which he portrays the young aristocrat Alcibiades using the Socratic Method against his guardian, the great Athenian statesman, Pericles. Pericles was the leading champion of the Democrat faction. Alcibiades seemed to want to embarrass the older statesman by catching him in a contradiction. His argument is designed to show that Pericles does not understand the essential nature of law, and also to force him to question the validity of the laws passed by the Athenian Assembly. … (Stoicism by Donald Robertson)
The evolution of anti-evolutionism. Anti-evolutionism is a quintessential and particularly pernicious type of pseudoscience. Quintessential because it is both common and characterized by many of the classic hallmarks of pseudoscience. Pernicious because it directly aims at undermining both science, and education more broadly, in accordance with its religious ideological roots. Yet, rather ironically, even anti-evolutionist tactics evolve. And even more ironically, such evolution can be documented and quantified by using the very same phylogenetic reconstruction techniques that evolutionary biologists normally employ to understand the historical relationships among biological species. A paper published a few years ago by Nicholas Matzke in Science is a splendid example of this approach. … (Skeptical Inquirer)
That numbness you’re feeling? There’s a word for it. In mid-October, a few days after the attack on Israel, a friend sent me a text from a rabbi. She said she couldn’t look away from the horror on the news but felt completely numb. She was struggling to feel even the tiniest bit useful: “What can I even do?” Many people are feeling similarly defeated, and many others are outraged by the political inaction that ensues. A Muslim colleague of mine said she was appalled to see so much indifference to the atrocities and innocent lives lost in Gaza and Israel. How could anyone just go on as if nothing had happened? A common conclusion is that people just don’t care. But inaction isn’t always caused by apathy. It can also be the product of empathy. More specifically, it can be the result of what psychologists call empathic distress: hurting for others while feeling unable to help. … (New York Times)
A hopeful reminder: you’re going to die. Ernest Becker was already dying when “The Denial of Death” was published 50 years ago this past fall. “This is a test of everything I’ve written about death,” he told a visitor to his Vancouver hospital room. Throughout his career as a cultural anthropologist, Becker had charted the undiscovered country that awaits us all. Now only 49 but losing a battle to colon cancer, he was being dispatched there himself. By the time his book was awarded a Pulitzer Prize the following spring, Becker was gone. These grim details may seem like the makings of a downer, to put it mildly, and another downer is the last thing anyone needs right now. But there is no gloom in “Denial,” no self-pity, not even the maudlin wisdom today’s illness memoirs have primed us to expect. A rare mind is at work, and you get to hang out in the workshop. Writing against the hardest stop of all, Becker managed to produce “a kind of cosmic pep talk,” as the literary critic Anatole Broyard put it in the New York Times. … (New York Times)
How to thrive in an uncertain world. A close friend’s daughter was getting married in the pandemic summer of 2021. “We can’t invite friends to the wedding,” in order to keep it small and safe, my pal told me. But she did invite friends, I learned from a Facebook post. Just not me. Feeling humiliated, I initially kept quiet. But being together grew awkward and I sensed a growing distance. And when I tried to discuss the widening rift, she called a “pause” in our relations by text and stopped reaching out for a year. My first thought was to consider the friendship ended. Something in her tone felt so final, like a breakup, case closed. But after a time I asked myself if I really knew what had happened and what she had meant by excluding me. Perhaps there was more to the story. Despite my hurt, I tried to keep the problem and my own mind open. I discovered what Rebecca Solnit calls the “spaciousness of uncertainty,” a realm of possibility. When at last my friend broke her silence with a text, I was ready to reconnect and move forward, even if I couldn’t get answers to all my questions. Meeting her rejection with unsureness gave me perspective and the courage not to shun her in turn. … (New York Times)
As always, well worth reading... I do find the intelligent design moniker hugely ironic. It would be funny if it were not so troubling, as it speaks to a broader anti-science trend in the US.😕
Great read, Massimo. I often think that given enough time, and entropic theory crosses into this metaphysical realm, everything is possible. So often in the circumstances of a perplexing situation between individuals, especially to those we are close to, we reason that giving the “space” of time may be all that is needed to let the situation resolve itself. Surprisingly, solutions often present themselves given enough time. However, the Joker in the deck of life is that there is only a finite amount of time in our lives--and in the other party’s lives. Knowing this, we react by flooring our mind’s tachometer to dangerously high revolutions per minute, and decide hastily whether to act, or not to act, without exercising our best reasoning because we do not have the luxury to give “space.” 😬🤷🏻♂️😊