“Men or women who had experienced unrequited love during adolescence were in most cases eventually able to come to terms with the experience and showed few permanent emotional scars. But for those who had been the objects of unrequited love, it was quite another matter. Many still struggled with guilt and confusion.”
Read More“Unlike members of actual BDSM subcultures, who are entirely aware of the fact that they are playing games of make-believe, purportedly ‘normal’ people in hierarchical environments typically ended up locked in a kind of pathological variation of the same sadomasochistic dynamic.”
Read MoreConsider the following quote, from an interview with then US president Barack Obama about some of the reasons why he bucked the preferences of the electorate and insisted on maintaining a private, for-profit health insurance system in America.
Read MoreThere are people in our midst who think it’s totally appropriate to use someone else’s body like a blowup doll with a pulse. If we’re ever to wake up from this nightmare on College Street, your tragedy must cease to be their fantasy.
Read MoreI have a self-righteous inner accountant in my head who loves to keep track of how much I’ve done for you, how much you’ve done for me, how much I owe you, how much you owe me.
Read More“It’s an embarrassing fact that we are often more afraid of embarrassment than a host of other discomforts, but it isn’t less true for all that. How often have you refrained from voicing hope or indignation for fear of being dismissed as childish? Oddly enough, that fear is adolescent, born of a time when few things feel worse than being regarded as less grown-up than your peers.”
Read MoreI met my black doppelgänger at a rooftop party in Baltimore. It was 2000 and we were both 25.
Read MoreIf you want to learn how to be a really good hater, let me show you the way.
Read MoreThis may be the saddest poem of 2015. It describes a reality that all no to be true but few wish to acknowledge.
Read MoreFuck you, Foucault! Our experience is always richer than our vocabulary.
Read MoreIt’s time to have an honest conversation about the sociological side-effects of talk therapy.
Read More“Know what you are, John? You’re an asshole magnet.”
Read More“The experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the educational process, at least for gifted students.”
Read More“Constant praise does bad things to human beings. It’s much like any other drug that affects our dopamine levels: provided sparingly, it induces brief sensations of warmth and happiness, but provided constantly, it induces dependency.”—Andrew Miller
Read MoreThis may be the most epic prof-student email exchange ever.
Read More“Often we ask ourselves to make absolute sense out of what just happens, and in this way, what we are practicing is suffering, which everybody practices, but strangely few of us grow graceful in.”—Tony Hoagland, “Self-Improvement,” Donkey Gospel (1998)
Read MoreThere once was a prosperous village at the foot of a mighty mountain.
Read More“If everyone on Wall Street behaved like Harry Markopolos, there would be no fraud on Wall Street—but the air would be so thick with suspicion and paranoia that there would also be no Wall Street.”
Read MoreWe simply don’t have the time or energy to question everything. Faith isn’t a choice in the modern world, it’s a necessity.
Read More“Every age produces a crop of Thrasymachuses, each one defiantly unmasking ideas of virtue as the triumph of a stronger faction that has managed to trick a weaker one into believing it. And each act of unmasking is presented as tough, and radically truthful: you may be fooled by all that noble-sounding rhetoric, but I’m bold and honest enough to see through the manipulations behind it.”
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