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...]
How to Get on Your Path and Stay on It
Do you sometimes have goals, but not enough drive and motivation to achieve them? Do you sometimes have plans, but not enough grit and perseverance to go through with them? Do you sometimes have dreams, but not enough guts and energy to make them reality? How can you get on your path and stick to it? Know that whenever you quit or even fail to start, you didn't want it badly enough. That's a simple truth. So it seems that all you can do is to fatalistically accept your state of will, whatever … [Read more...]
How to Establish Trust: Be Consistent and Aware of People’s View of Humanity
Trust as Perceived Consistency Whether I trust another person depends on three factors: what I think his goal is, what he says his goal is, and what his actions say his goal is. The more consistency I see between these three things, the more trust I feel for the person. For example, I do not trust a businessman who talks to me about my interests. Since I assume that his goal is profit, what he speaks is inconsistent with what I think his intentions are, and that creates … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 25
- Next Page »