On great minds and great men Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. I used to like that quote because it was often effective in stroking my ego. My natural inclination has always been to debate ideas, to devalue stories, and to detest gossip. Oh, what a great mind I must be! Yet what disposition of curiosity is actually revealed here? Apparently, I'm highly interested in abstract thinking, less interested in concrete events, and least interested … [Read more...]
Are You Using Your Strengths? (A Six-Week Plan to Improve Your Character)
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...]
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