Black Swan, White Swan
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Whether or not Covid was a true black swan event is not my focus here. I'm interested in Taleb’s more general epistemological point that what catches us off g... Read more.
Hope and Moral Repair
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It is all too easy, when in the middle of a crisis, to give up. But to fix what ails us, we don’t have to fix everything in one moment or one action. We only ... Read more.
Our Last Innocent Moment: Angry, Forever?
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Please don’t think that, to be good, you need to be quiet and agreeable and complacent. And please don’t think that any of this will be easy. But it will be... Read more.
The Bison Advantage
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How will you respond next time you face a moral challenge? Will you walk headfirst into the storm like the bison or turn and drift with it? Have you used the t... Read more.
The Renaissance of Our Hearts
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Little acts of kindness mean more than we thought and losing them means more than we might have realized. It also means we are in desperate need of a kindness r... Read more.
In the Shadow of Oedipus
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I want to take the thesis of the last essay a step further and explore what might be causing our collapse. Is it a coincidence that we are suffering in so many ... Read more.
3, 2, 1, Timber
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The old distinction between civilization and barbarism has taken on a new form in the 21st century. It is from within our own “civilized” culture that emerg... Read more.
Foxes and Hedgehogs
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The philosopher Isaiah Berlin starts his 1953 essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” with this perplexing proverb attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus. Berl... Read more.
What Killed Informed Consent?
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In more and less formal ways, COVID was the tool that transformed our supposedly inalienable right to make informed choices about our private lives into a publi... Read more.
Where Are We Now?
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I learned how easy it is for us to betray one another and how COVID exposed the fault lines in our relationships. But I also saw humanity all around. I saw hugs... Read more.
Do You Matter?
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Do facts matter? Of course they do. But facts, alone, will not answer the questions we really care about. The real ammunition of the COVID war is not informatio... Read more.
Why Is Our Education System Failing to Educate?
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Out of these early universities was born the concept of liberal arts — grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy — studies which a... Read more.