What touches us is genuine connection, speaking from the heart. That it is unexpected, and seems rare, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of our time and describes much that is wrong with our lives. But that it is so powerful, and so easy, can be our salvation.
If you want to know how people change, read this post. Change your mind, change your mood, change your life. What follows combines two of my favorite subjects: the psychology of belief and the need for radical civility in political discourse. Doesn’t sound all that sexy, I admit. But understanding why we hate ambiguity is the key to understanding how people change – or don’t. It’s also key to how we got where we are in the state of political discourse.…
It’s time to reintroduce this term: radical civility. By all things holy and otherwise, we need it. Desperately. Immediately. Please. I can’t read one more days’ worth of social media frothing full of half-truths, mostly lies, and the simple unwillingness to listen to one another, lest I go looking for the nearest bridge from which to leap. Not one more day of posting drivel that passes for well-researched argument, for repeating the deluge of argument from the internet without bothering…
If you ask a man to be more open about what he feels, beware the possibility that you might not like what he has to say. I am posting here about an article that appeared this morning on The Good Men Project titled Sex, Marriage, and the Silent Treatment. Whether you are a man or a woman, I encourage you to read it. I also encourage you to read the comments that follow it, along with the voluminous comments that have…
Like many on this eve of a new year, I am stunned at the frenetic pace of time’s passing, especially as I say goodbye to the year in which I turned 60. Reflecting from this vantage point on the breathtaking changes in the world order, I decided to respond to a question that was posed to me very recently by a reader: “Why do kids these days feel they have such a right of entitlement?” As it turns out I’ve…
Sometimes the comments posted to online articles are as important as the article itself. This morning I read a blog post at The Good Men Project titled Marriage is No Fairy Tale. I liked it when I read it, but when I read the comments I saw something I didn’t expect. I saw that readers and writers interact in a way that can be either heartwarming or painful or both at once. I also saw the degree to which we tend…
