Character strengths are positive traits that are vital for living a good life. They exist in all cultures, have moral worth, and manifest in a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. According to Peterson & Seligman (2004), the 24 universal character strengths, grouped by six core virtues, are: Wisdom: Creativity, Curiosity, Open-Mindedness, Love of Learning, Perspective Courage: Bravery, Perseverance, Honesty, Zest Humanity: Love, Kindness, Social Intelligence Justice: … [Read more...]
When Reason Needs Emotion: The Problem of Rational Foresight
You are on a good path in life when you do your true will (what you truly want), leading you towards eudaimonia (long-term well-being). Your rational true will aims at a goal and listens to reason, which calculates the outcome probabilities of actions. You use reason to estimate how potential actions will affect eudaimonia, and then you choose the path of action with the most desirable consequences. This is how you make good life decisions, right? Well, not quite... The problem of rational … [Read more...]
Why I Don’t Read the News
The news is anti-mindcoolness. With clickbaity headlines, emotional tales, and political gossip, journalists cook junk food for the mind: easy to consume and highly inflammatory. Mental inflammation is the main effect of its dull, inactionable information. If your job makes it actionable, fine; if you have control over global affairs, great; but for the rest of us, avoiding the news is a matter of mental hygiene, intellectual discipline, and opportunity costs: To read a newspaper is to refrain … [Read more...]
Is Toxic Masculinity Real? (An Analytical Approach)
What is toxic masculinity? Toxic masculinity as a concept is used in two different ways: Politically, it is an ideological weapon to denigrate manliness as a whole. Psychologically, it describes an unhealthy, destructive expression of manliness. The political perspective presupposes that there is a culture war going on in our society: feminists against traditional men. From this perspective, we could either avoid the word "toxic masculinity" in order not to submit to the feminist … [Read more...]
What Does It Mean to Be a Man? (MPC#73 with Timothy Wenger)
In this special episode of the Mindcoolness podcast, I talk with Timothy Wenger (@themaneffect) about the concept of masculinity. He's a great guy with a great project (themaneffect.com), and although our conversation is all over the place because we had too many ideas to talk about, it will give you numerous impulses for thinking about his project's guiding question: What does it mean to be a man? Episode Overview [0:00] Introduction and greetings [1:39] What is The Man Effect? [2:42] … [Read more...]
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