“Culture can overpower our innate mammalian aversions when necessary and without us knowing it.”—Joseph Henrich
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The question we’ve been trying to answer for the past half century is “How do children learn to be racist?” But that’s the wrong question. The right question is “How do they learn not to be racist?”
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“It’s not just the fault of industrialized societies; our species’ ecological impacts have a deep history.”—Joseph Henrich
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“Once when a friend of mine with a negative affective style was bemoaning her life situation, someone suggested that a move to a different city would suit her well. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can be unhappy anywhere.’”—Jonathan Haidt
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“The greater the rate of cousin marriage in a province, the higher the rates of corruption and Mafia activity.”—Joseph Henrich
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“The secret of our species’ success resides not in the power of our individual minds, but in the collective brains of our communities.”—Joseph Henrich
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“In societies with WEIRD monogamy, men are a bit like monogamous birds: getting married and becoming a father lowers a man’s testosterone. If he divorces, his T levels typically climb again.”
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“Culture can and does alter our brains, hormones, and anatomy, along with our perceptions, motivations, personalities, emotions, and many other aspects of our minds.”—Joseph Henrich
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“The analogy between what happened last week and the BLM riots is idiotic. But it is easy to see how the media and Democratic politicians have totally discredited themselves in their eyes.”—Sam Harris
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“We need to hold accountable the people that brought us to this unforgivable point. And we need to look past ourselves, our parties and disagreements, and put our democracy first.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Capitol Insurrection Speech” (January 10, 2021)
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“Stop thinking of Trump supporters merely as misguided people we need to reach out to and understand. And start thinking of them as dangerous enemies we must utterly defeat.”—Richard Feren
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These days, any simpleminded partisan with a political ax to grind can find an online community of like-minded whack-jobs who’ll happily Facebook-like every stupid thing he says.
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“Few members of AA realize that the whole idea of a spiritual awakening leading one to surrender to a ‘higher power’—a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous—can be traced to a psychedelic drug trip.”—Michael Pollan
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“What happens when vitriolic, hate-filled speech spreads online easily, with lies far outpacing the truth? When accounts can be created and amplified by bots to spread such things?”—Anna-Liisa Aunio
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When are we most likely to fall for a conspiracy theory? When it explains away an inconvenient piece of reality.
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A chilling passage from a deeply disturbing novel: Neal Stephenson’s Fall (2019).
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“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”—Donald J. Trump
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If a program of mandatory equality of result were implemented tomorrow, no group would lose more than the Jews.
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The sensible, plain-talking Stephen Harper we find in Right Here, Right Now (2019) could have beaten Justin Trudeau in the last election. If, like me, you voted Liberal last time around, this ought to give you pause. This ought to worry you. You should be losing sleep over this. Because a Conservative leader who embraced Harper’s vision, and ran on the issues outlined in this splendid book, would destroy the Liberals in the next federal election.
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Marx’s praises of capitalism are neither ironic nor paradoxical. They are part of a tradition whose goal is to make sense of suffering. Marx justified suffering in the present by showing how it was necessary to overcome suffering in the future.
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