Barack Obama had a few words on being “woke” and the danger of the “call out” culture.
Tag: Culture
Zuckerberg, Facebook, and “truth”
Mark Zuckerberg was testifying again on Capitol Hill about Facebook ads and “truth.”
This gets into the area of “free speech” and “fake news” and “false advertising” and at the end of it all we have a mess. But it’s not the mess Mark Zuckerberg created.
Continue reading “Zuckerberg, Facebook, and “truth””Pushing labels, rejecting labels
We have tendencies to get people “slotted” into our categories so we decide quickly if they are “in” or “out” to us.
Continue reading “Pushing labels, rejecting labels”We fear what we don’t know
It is so easy to pick on immigrants from a majority white congressional district. It is so easy to blame “the other” when you’ve never sat down with someone “in opposition” to you and had an actual conversation. These are the challenges… and too often we are not up to these challenges. (And social media makes it SO much easier to stay in opposition without getting to know someone else of a different status or opinion.) What we don’t know, or WHO we don’t know, we fear. Then, we create hyped up scenarios to then generate hyped up solutions.
Continue reading “We fear what we don’t know”The Coddling of the American Mind: Is there any HOPE?
The picture painted in The Coddling of the American Mind is harsh. We’ve truly had a lot go wrong and we’ve put a lot of fear and anxiety into our lives, and much of it that is unnecessary. Is there any hope? They give some ideas, thankfully.
First, start with childhood. Colleges definitely need work (and these two university professors know those issues), but why not start kids off better?
Here are some quick points they offer:
- Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. (Let them have some small risks early and grow the space for risk as they get older.)
- Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. (HINT: Quit watching “Criminal Minds” and “Law and Order: SVU”.)
- The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. (In other words, you can find good in a Republican AND a Democrat. Hard to believe, I know.)
- Help schools to oppose the great untruths. (Demand more recess!)
- Limit and refine device time. (Well… those first four seem doable!)
- Support a new national norm: service or work before college.
Freedom to play helps democracy
The term a few years ago was “helicopter parenting.” I’m not sure if there is a new phrase. There has to be in some cases, because it can be witnessed that parents are a LOT closer to their kids and their activities than a helicopter.
Continue reading “Freedom to play helps democracy”The balkanization of the United States
When the Soviet Union was collapsing in the last 1980s, I read an article in The Atlantic about a region I’d never heard of: the Balkans. In that article, the writer told a tale I found fantastic and almost unbelievable. His contention was that during the Cold War, it was good for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to be the big gorillas in Europe. It kept this Balkan region from exploding.
Continue reading “The balkanization of the United States”