What, Why & How do we Know ?
As a practitioner of positive psychology (and an atheist) Jonathan Haidt’s “The Happiness Hypothesis” reads at times like a spiritual self-help book, and in a sense it is, but it is supported by a mass of academic and scientific references. The Psybertron agenda has been on evolutionary psychology as a description of both epistemology (what … Continue reading “Haidt’s Happiness”
Since I see most problems as “evolutionary psychology” at root, you’ll not be surprised that I see a solution looking something like “cultural psychotherapy”, though the jury is still out on how to adminster the treatment. It was Alastair McIntosh in “Hell and High Water” (Chap 9) that prescribed “cultural psychotherapy” quoted here by Rowan … Continue reading “Cultural Psychotherapy ?”
Just read my first Terry Eagleton prompted by the Laurie Taylor interview referred to by Sam, and a number of earlier references on MoQ Discuss. First “The Meaning of Life” followed immediately by “Reason, Faith and Revolution” In the former, his Alexei Sayle-esque stand-up routine targets every variant of the use of the words meaning and … Continue reading “Terry Eagleton”
Few of us would defend Hitler as virtuous, in fact few would see him as anything other than “evil”. Adolf Hitler loved dogs and brushed his teeth, but that doesn’t mean we should hate dogs and stop brushing our teeth. Says Jared Diamond quoting a friend in “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or … Continue reading “Hitler’s Virtues ?”
Talking of working class heros, as I was in the previous post, I have just started reading Matthew Crawford’s “Shop Class a Soulcraft”. I skimmed though all the notes, references, the introduction and general structure , and so far just read the first two chapters “A Brief Case for the Useful Arts” and “The Separation of … Continue reading “Thinking and Doing”
Both Shawn and Mark at Anecdote have blogged about James Harlow Brown’s “Dangerous Undertaking: The Search for Transformation“. The book is on my reading list, but I have several others ahead of it in the pipeline at the moment, however this metaphor reinforces why it looks interesting to me. Yes, overlapping patterns of involvement in … Continue reading “The Pond Metaphor”
[Caveat – this review may not do the subject justice, but I didn’t really notice how good a read it was until I was well into it, by which point not only did I not have any notes, but I was committed to read on to a conclusion. So from memory … is the summary … Continue reading “Whatever Next ?”
Blogging Tools Comparison. Survey by Al MacIntyre (via randgaenge) confirms Blogger / Blogger Pro as the biggest with Moveable Type and Radio Userland as the most sophisticated. Whatever happened to Manila ? Includes comparative review of MT and RL, loads of blogging info sources, including a link to a Taxonomy of Blogging by Steve Outing … Continue reading “Blogging Tools Comparison”