Popular Motivational Quotes

Do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.

Stop doing what is easy or popular. Start doing what is right.

We have to do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.

Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.

Our opportunities to give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved. As we remember that “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” (Mosiah 2:17) we will not find ourselves in the unenviable position of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who spoke to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s immortal "Christmas Carol." Marley spoke sadly of opportunities lost. Said he: 'Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!' Marley added: 'Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!' Fortunately, as we know, Ebenezer Scrooge changed his life for the better. I love his line, 'I am not the man I was.' Why is Dickens’ "Christmas Carol" so popular? Why is it ever new? I personally feel it is inspired of God. It brings out the best within human nature. It gives hope. It motivates change. We can turn from the paths which would lead us down and, with a song in our hearts, follow a star and walk toward the light. We can quicken our step, bolster our courage, and bask in the sunlight of truth. We can hear more clearly the laughter of little children. We can dry the tear of the weeping. We can comfort the dying by sharing the promise of eternal life. If we lift one weary hand which hangs down, if we bring peace to one struggling soul, if we give as did the Master, we can—by showing the way—become a guiding star for some lost mariner.

Fame is a double-edged sword: It will make you gain status and popularity, but also lose motivation and creativity.

Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.

Stars don’t beg the world for attention; their beauty forces us to look up.

people who read literary fiction (as opposed to popular fiction or nonfiction) were better able to detect another person’s emotions, and the theory proposed was that literary fiction engages the reader in a process of decoding the characters’ thoughts and motives in a way that popular fiction and nonfiction, being less complex, do not.

Beauty is more popular than virtues because it is more visible than virtues.

Excellence in obscurity is better than mediocrity in the spotlight.

It should be noted, as with so many legends and popularly accepted truths created out of political motivation: There, in fact, is no evidence that the hundreds of murders historically attributed to the werewolves of Gévaudan were actually caused by wolves. As with all witchhunts, the endless battle against ignorance requires one to always keep an open mind and sharp wits when considering such rumors - especially the rumors we choose to enjoy.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

In the history of a soul’s evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured.

Stars are born out of dark moments.

Really, Hagrid, if you are holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time,' said Dumbledore, now peering sternly over his half-moon spectacles. 'Not a week has passed, since I became Headmaster of this school, when I haven't had at least one owl complaining about the way I run it. But what should I do? Barricade myself in my study and refuse to talk to anybody?

perspecticide – the active deconstruction and manipulation of popular perception – you first have to understand on a deep level what motivates

Finding yourself after many years, is a treasure like no other.

I was taught the popular folktale of racism: that ignorant and hateful people had produced racist ideas, and that these racist people had instituted racist policies. But when I learned the motives behind the production of many of America’s most influentially racist ideas, it became quite obvious that this folktale, though sensible, was not based on a firm footing of historical evidence. Ignorance/hateracist ideasdiscrimination: this causal relationship is largely ahistorical. It has actually been the inverse relationship—racial discrimination led to racist ideas which led to ignorance and hate. Racial discriminationracist ideasignorance/hate: this is the causal relationship driving America’s history of race relations.

I have not written for their pleasure... I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will I make "Ladies' books" al dilettar le femine e la plebe. I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many sweet motives, but not for their "sweet voices." I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye.

Accept that not everyone will understand you... every soul has a unique signature. It's okay to be temporarily accommodating in situations where you're being helpful and extending kindness and compassion, but you shouldn't change who you are. Live authentically, don't dumb down or dull your shine just to "fit in" or "get along" with anyone, including friends and even family you've outgrown.

That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary. The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers. The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it. There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care. Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

If you guide others out of the dark, you are a star, even if no one knows your name.

Personal interest is very rarely a powerful motive force with crowds, while it is almost the exclusive motive of the conduct of the isolated individual.

Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that terrify or attract them and become motives of action.

A popular myth is that learning is largely a matter of motivation. Increasingly, the key to effective learning in the information era is how you think, not how you feel.

Wealth won’t make you happy. Power won’t make you remarkable. Fame won’t make you honorable. Education won’t make you wise.

But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alienation is likely to be very popular--especially among people young enough to shrug off the guilt they're suppose to feel for deviating from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place. Let the old people wallow in the shame of having failed. The laws they made to preserve a myth are no longer pertinent; the so called American Way begins to seem like a dike made of cheap cement, with many more leaks than the law has fingers to plug. America has been breeding mass anomie since the end of World War II. It is not a political thing, but the sense of new realities, or urgency, anger and sometimes desperation in a society where even the highest authorities seem to be grasping at straws.

But if lifestyle ads work by the third-person effect, then there will be some products for which it makes good business sense to target a wider audience, one that includes both buyers and non-buyers.32 One reason to target non-buyers is to create envy. As Miller argues, this is the case for many luxury products. “Most BMW ads,” he says, “are not really aimed so much at potential BMW buyers as they are at potential BMW coveters.”33 When BMW advertises during popular TV shows or in mass-circulation magazines, only a small fraction of the audience can actually afford a BMW. But the goal is to reinforce for non-buyers the idea that BMW is a luxury brand.

There is no returning to the masses - once your forays into theory have borne you far enough away from them that you can perceive them and the benefits of being among them. the only return is through the process of disillusionment; one must cease to care about motivating the masses to be reunited with them. Likewise, there is no converting them - no matter how many people you come to join you at your outpost, from up close they will never look as impressive as the distant crowd.

A well-written article does not make what was written factual or something to subscribe to. Fiction does not become fact because it looks good. Fiction does not become fact because you wish it were true. Fiction does not become fact because it has turned into popular opinion. Remember this before reading the news, views, opinions or commentary.

Everyone had their own agenda. She just had to stop reacting emotionally: decipher the real motives for their behaviour without taking every word as a personal attack.

What was paramount in the apostles' earliest motives was oral proclamation of the gospel. They wanted to disseminate the word as quickly as possible.

You do not need to be perfect or popular or profitable with your endeavors. You should, however, be passionate about them.

The Need for Encouragement Is Universal; It Supersedes the Desire to be Popular or Successful”.

A star doesn’t need words to tell the world what it does; it just shines.

When studying the fundamental characteristics of a crowd we stated that it is guided almost exclusively by unconscious motives.

Inspiration finds me when the night is still and the stars appear in the desert sky.

When you wake in the morning take a moment of gratitude to remind yourself of all the blessings you have, whether they be big or small they are still yours to appreciate.

Self-discovery is a continuous action. We are meant to be ever changing and growing through the cycles of life.

I’ve always loved finding things in my environment that bring me joy and excitement! How fun it is to become aware of your surroundings!

Not to appear to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful motive.

Either we die as men, or live as legends.

Find that POSITIVE to hold on to when you're losing control. It will help ground you and bring you clarity.

Invite peaceful space into your life and remove negative energy.

Spending time with yourself is needed to quiet the other voices in your life, so you can hear your own.

Write down your goals every time you feel like you are losing focus, to remind yourself what you are fighting so hard for.

Everyone is a stranger until you choose to meet them.

A good life is doing what you love as much as you can and doing what you must as much as you should

If you have influence on other people. Dont be influenced by their hate, money, jealousy, anger and popularity .

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well. ~ William Osler

It is a great sign of emotional maturity, when you can point a finger at another person's behavior, yet also realize that there are three more fingers pointing back at you.

Always strive to do the right thing even when it isn’t a popular choice. By doing so, you become a better person.

As recently as the early 1970s, a Republican president - Richard Nixon - was willing to impose wage and price controls to rescue the U.S. economy from crisis, popularizing the notion that “We are all Keynesians now.” But by the 1980s, the battle of ideas waged out of the same Washington think tanks that now deny climate change had successfully managed to equate the very idea of industrial planning with Stalin’s five-year plans. Real capitalists don’t plan, these ideological warriors insisted - they unleash the power of the profit motive and let the market, in its infinite wisdom, create the best possible society for all.

To turn away from the lifeless preachers and publishers of the day—may involve a real cross. Your motives will be misconstrued, your words perverted, and your actions misinterpreted. The sharp arrows of false report will be directed against you. You will be called proud and self-righteous, because you refuse to fellowship empty professors. You will be termed censorious and bitter—if you condemn in plain speech—the subtle delusions of Satan. You will be dubbed narrow-minded and uncharitable, because you refuse to join in singing the praises of the “great” and “popular” men of the day. More and more, you will be made to painfully realize—that the path which leads unto eternal life is “narrow” and that FEW there are who find it. May the Lord be pleased to grant unto each of us—the hearing ear and obedient heart! “Take heed what you hear” and read!

When you decide to reclaim your personal power you'll be talked about... told that you've changed, that you've somehow "lost the plot" or that you think you're better than others; but, that's just human nature. Your job is to realize that negative comments and "backhanded compliments" say more about the person speaking them, than about who you are. When people label you, they're seeking to define you... you're above all that.

To be truly successful you have to break away from the crowds, popularity and your ego for a while. Somewhere you can work towards achieving your goals, say no to distractions and concentrate on studying and practicing.

Your Soul Family are those that are tuned in to your frequency. You sense a strong connection beyond blood or race; you’re connected by energy and vibration. Through quantum communication, they intuitively answer your silent call and show up bringing unconditional love and support at the perfect times. You share an unspoken level of understanding … they just get you and what you’re about. For those people, be thankful … they are your reminders from the Universe that on the deepest level of our existence we are one. — Kianu Starr

There can be no question to-day of a paper rich enough to allow its contributors to air their personal opinions, and such opinions would be of slight weight with readers who only ask to be kept informed or to be amused, and who suspect every affirmation of being prompted by motives of speculation.

Advertisers must spend more per person to advertise on popular TV shows relative to less popular shows, and those selling social products are willing to pay this premium to reach larger contiguous audiences. Taken to the extreme during major TV events like the Super Bowl, the majority of ads are selling social goods.31

It is unimpressive to not return what’s been borrowed. Whether you have borrowed money, folding chairs, yard tools, or a popular book, always make sure you return to another person what is rightfully theirs. Lending it to you in the first place was a gift of trust and assistance. Being slow to give back in return may be considered rude.

The popular media and conventional wisdom, including the medical profession's traditional approach to nutrition, have created and continue to perpetuate this problem through inadequate, outdated dietary counseling. Attempts to universalize dietary therapies so that one-diet-fits-all influences the flawed claims against meats and fats, thereby encouraging overconsumption of grains. Government-sponsored guides to healthy eating, such as the USDA's food pyramid, which advocates six to eleven servings of grains daily for everyone, lag far behind current research and continue to preach dangerously old-fashioned ideas. Because the USDA's function is largely the promotion of agriculture and agricultural products, there is a clear conflict of interest inherent in any USDA claim of healthful benefits arising from any agricultural product. Popular beliefs and politically motivated promotion, not science, continue to dictate dietary recommendations, leading to debilitating and deadly diseases that are wholly or partly preventable.

But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President‡ feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alienation is likely to be very popular—especially among people young enough to shrug off the guilt they’re supposed to feel for deviating from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place.

Our philosophies have tended to split the world in two: “science” deals only with “hard facts,” while the “arts” are imagined to deal in nebulous questions of inner meanings. Equally, in popular culture, inner feelings and motivations (“ discovering who you really are” or “going with your heart”) are regularly invoked as the true personal reality over against mere outward “identities.

Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. Wild and “different” as they may consider their quasi-weird products, it remains a fact that the bizarrerie is on the surface alone; and that basically they reiterate the same old conventional values and motives and perspectives. Good and evil, teleological illusion, sugary sentiment, anthropocentric psychology—the usual superficial stock in trade, and all shot through with the eternal and inescapable commonplace…. Who ever wrote a story from the point of view that man is a blemish on the cosmos, who ought to be eradicated? As an example—a young man I know lately told me that he means to write a story about a scientist who wishes to dominate the earth, and who to accomplish his ends trains and overdevelops germs … and leads armies of them in the manner of the Egyptian plagues. I told him that although this theme has promise, it is made utterly commonplace by assigning the scientist a normal motive. There is nothing outré about wanting to conquer the earth; Alexander, Napoleon, and Wilhelm II wanted to do that. Instead, I told my friend, he should conceive a man with a morbid, frantic, shuddering hatred of the life-principle itself, who wishes to extirpate from the planet every trace of biological organism, animal and vegetable alike, including himself. That would be tolerably original. But after all, originality lies with the author. One can’t write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses theme and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror—for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.

But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President‡ feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alienation is likely to be very popular—especially among people young enough to shrug off the guilt they’re supposed to feel for deviating from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place. Let the old people wallow in the shame of having failed. The laws they made to preserve a myth are no longer pertinent; the so-called American Way begins to seem like a dike made of cheap cement, with many more leaks than the law has fingers to plug. America has been breeding mass anomie since the end of World War II. It is not a political thing, but the sense of new realities, of urgency, anger and sometimes desperation in a society where even the highest authorities seem to be grasping at straws.

We’re in a period right now where nobody asks any questions about psychology. No one has any feeling for human motivation. No one talks about sexuality in terms of emotional needs and symbolism and the legacy of childhood. Sexuality has been politicized--“Don’t ask any questions!” "No discussion!" “Gay is exactly equivalent to straight!” And thus in this period of psychological blindness or inertness, our art has become dull. There’s nothing interesting being written--in fiction or plays or movies. Everything is boring because of our failure to ask psychological questions. So I say there is a big parallel between Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton--aside from their initials! Young feminists need to understand that this abusive behavior by powerful men signifies their sense that female power is much bigger than they are! These two people, Clinton and Cosby, are emotionally infantile--they're engaged in a war with female power. It has something to do with their early sense of being smothered by female power--and this pathetic, abusive and criminal behavior is the result of their sense of inadequacy. Now, in order to understand that, people would have to read my first book, "Sexual Personae"--which of course is far too complex for the ordinary feminist or academic mind! It’s too complex because it requires a sense of the ambivalence of human life. Everything is not black and white, for heaven's sake! We are formed by all kinds of strange or vague memories from childhood. That kind of understanding is needed to see that Cosby was involved in a symbiotic, push-pull thing with his wife, where he went out and did these awful things to assert his own independence. But for that, he required the women to be inert. He needed them to be dead! Cosby is actually a necrophiliac--a style that was popular in the late Victorian period in the nineteenth-century. It's hard to believe now, but you had men digging up corpses from graveyards, stealing the bodies, hiding them under their beds, and then having sex with them. So that’s exactly what’s happening here: to give a woman a drug, to make her inert, to make her dead is the man saying that I need her to be dead for me to function. She’s too powerful for me as a living woman. And this is what is also going on in those barbaric fraternity orgies, where women are sexually assaulted while lying unconscious. And women don’t understand this! They have no idea why any men would find it arousing to have sex with a young woman who’s passed out at a fraternity house. But it’s necrophilia--this fear and envy of a woman’s power. And it’s the same thing with Bill Clinton: to find the answer, you have to look at his relationship to his flamboyant mother. He felt smothered by her in some way. But let's be clear--I’m not trying to blame the mother! What I’m saying is that male sexuality is extremely complicated, and the formation of male identity is very tentative and sensitive--but feminist rhetoric doesn’t allow for it. This is why women are having so much trouble dealing with men in the feminist era. They don’t understand men, and they demonize men.

...the best thing an individual movie lover can do is have fun. No great movement can happen in popular art without pure pleasure being the motive. (...) There should be nothing dutiful about exploring these actresses, and no one needs to consider himself or herself virtuous for knowing their films. All they offer is the exhilaration of experiencing a grand movement and the satisfaction that great art grants to those who pay attention. If we enjoy their work and love their work and spend our money accordingly, all will turn out right in the end.

Many a tale of inguldgent parenthood illustrates the antique idea that when the roles of life are assumed by the improperly initiated, chaos supervenes. When the child outgrows the popular idyle of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father-who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the good and evil, so does now the father, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world. The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes-for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent consequently now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of good and evil to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in understanding the revelation of being.

The wu in wuxia means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon—usually a sword—carried by the assassin, the hero of the story. The genre became very popular during the Song Dynasty [960–1279]. These stories often depicted a soldier in revolt, usually against a corrupt political leader. In order to stop corruption and the killing of innocent people, the hero must become an assassin. So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. Although their actions are motivated by political reasons, the hero’s journey is epic and transformative—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the Tang Dynasty, a prominent poet named Li Bai wrote some verses about an assassin. This is the earliest example I know of wuxia literature. Gradually, the genre gave shape to ideas and stories that had been percolating in historical and mythological spheres. Although these stories were often inspired by real events of the past, to me they feel very contemporary and relevant. It’s one of the oldest genres in Chinese literature, and there are countless wuxia novels today. I began to immerse myself in these novels when I was in elementary school, and they quickly became my favorite things to read. I started with newer books and worked my way back to the earliest writing from the Tang Dynasty.

Avoid Most Popular Entertainment Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there’s no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.

Smith and Denton reporting on the spiritual lives of American teenagers found a common belief that, as they wryly put it, God was 'something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist', who was availabe on demand but undemanding. This has been popularly characterised as 'benign whateverism'. Its core is that we should try to be nice, kind, respectful and responsible, and by doing so achieve a state of 'feeling good, happy, secure, at peace.' Worse things might certainly be believed; but this is not enough to support a civilisation, inspire great art, induce fidelity, inculcate sanctity, motivate self-sacrifice, or lead us to insights into the nature of existence.

The Brits call this sort of thing Functional Neurological Symptoms, or FNS, the psychiatrists call it conversion disorder, and almost everyone else just calls it hysteria. There are three generally acknowledged, albeit uncodified, strategies for dealing with it. The Irish strategy is the most emphatic, and is epitomized by Matt O’Keefe, with whom I rounded a few years back on a stint in Ireland. “What are you going to do?” I asked him about a young woman with pseudoseizures. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going to get her, and her family, and her husband, and the children, and even the feckin’ dog in a room, and tell ’em that they’re wasting my feckin’ time. I want ’em all to hear it so that there is enough feckin’ shame and guilt there that it’ll keep her the feck away from me. It might not cure her, but so what? As long as I get rid of them.” This approach has its adherents even on these shores. It is an approach that Elliott aspires to, as he often tells me, but can never quite marshal the umbrage, the nerve, or a sufficiently convincing accent, to pull off. The English strategy is less caustic, and can best be summarized by a popular slogan of World War II vintage currently enjoying a revival: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” It is dry, not overly explanatory, not psychological, and does not blame the patient: “Yes, you have something,” it says. “This is what it is [insert technical term here], but we will not be expending our time or a psychiatrist’s time on it. You will have to deal with it.” Predictably, the American strategy holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic program that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: “It’s not you, it’s … no wait, it’s not me, either. It just is what it is.” Not surprisingly, estimates of recurrence of symptoms range from a half to two-thirds of all cases, making this one of the most common conditions that a neurologist will face, again and again.

I can think of only two movies with women killers we’re meant to sympathize with, and both because they’d been sexually assaulted—Thelma and Louise and Monster. And to be honest, I don’t imagine anyone would call the women in these films heroes. The popular comic book mercenary Red Sonja is, perhaps, a proper hero, but is, once again, motivated by a sexual assault. Male heroes are heroic because of what’s been done to women in their lives, often—the dead child, the dead wife. Women heroes are also heroic for what’s been done to women … to them. We build our heroes, too often, on terrible things done to women, instead of creating, simply, heroes who do things, who persevere in the face of overwhelming odds because it’s the right thing to do.

But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise—and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators’ House of Call had sprung up from a beer shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation stared it out of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.

It was Lola Simeona who served their bestseller: Soup No. 5 was a horrifying concoction of bull testes and spices, yet still was the best broth this side of the city, a popular meal for the adventurous and for those who prize umami above all. Occasionally a new customer would stagger out, pale and green all at once, because Lola Simeona was never shy about telling them exactly what they were eating, and in great detail. If it tasted good, she liked to say, then why would knowing this change anything? Lola sold Soup No. 5 regular at nearly all hours, closing at two a.m., only to begin again at nine the next day. Soup No. 5 regular was a picker-upper, a mood brightener. Soup No. 5 regular put people in cheerful temperaments, ready to face the day with optimism- a surprising side effect, given the cantankerous nature of the chef.

The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists' communications may differ for different people reoriented the FCC* analysts from a concept of "content as shared" (Berelson would later say "manifest") to conditions that could explain the motivations of particular communicators and the interests they might serve. The notion of "preparatory propaganda" became an especially useful key for the analysts in their effort to infer the intents of broadcasts with political content. In order to ensure popular support for planned military actions, the Axis leaders had to inform; emotionally arouse, and otherwise prepare their countrymen and women to accept those actions; the FCC analysts discovered that they could learn a great deal about the enemy's intended actions by recognizing such preparatory efforts in the domestic press and broadcasts. They were able to predict several major military and political campaigns and to assess Nazi elites' perceptions of their situation, political changes within the Nazi governing group, and shifts in relations among Axis countries. Among the more outstanding predictions that British analysts were able to make was the date of deployment of German V weapons against Great Britain. The analysts monitored the speeches delivered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and inferred from the content of those speeches what had interfered with the weapons' production and when. They then used this information to predict the launch date of the weapons, and their prediction was accurate within a few weeks. *FCC - Federal Communications Commission

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

The popular 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma illustrates how AI’s personalization will cause you to be unconsciously manipulated by AI and motivated by profit from advertising. The Social Dilemma star Tristan Harris says: “You didn’t know that your click caused a supercomputer to be pointed at your brain. Your click activated billions of dollars of computing power that has learned much from its experience of tricking two billion human animals to click again.” And this addiction results in a vicious cycle for you, but a virtuous cycle for the big Internet companies that use this mechanism as a money-printing machine. The Social Dilemma further argues that this may narrow your viewpoints, polarize society, distort truth, and negatively affect your happiness, mood, and mental health. To put it in technical terms, the core of the issue is the simplicity of the objective function, and the danger from single-mindedly optimizing a single objective function, which can lead to harmful externalities. Today’s AI usually optimizes this singular goal—most commonly to make money (more clicks, ads, revenues). And AI has a maniacal focus on that one corporate goal, without regard for users’ well-being.

I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. The truth is, the world was to Shakespear a great "stage of fools" on which he was utterly bewildered. He could see no sort of sense in living at all; and Dickens saved himself from the despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the world for granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it work.

The two techniques I refer to are undoing what has been done and isolating. The first of these has a wide range of application and goes back very far. It is, as it were, negative magic, and endeavours, by means of motor symbolism, to ‘blow away’ not merely the consequences of some event (or experience or impression) but the event itself. I choose the term ‘blow away’ advisedly, so as to remind the reader of the part played by this technique not only in neuroses but in magical acts, popular customs and religious ceremonies as well. [...] The same purpose may perhaps account for the obsession for repeating which is so frequently met with in this neurosis and the carrying out of which serves a number of contradictory intentions at once. When anything has not happened in the desired way it is undone by being repeated in a different way; and thereupon all the motives that exist for lingering over such repetitions come into play as well. [...] The second of these techniques which we are setting out to describe for the first time, that of isolation, is peculiar to obsessional neurosis. It, too, takes place in the motor sphere. When something unpleasant has happened to the subject or when he himself has done something which has a significance for his neurosis, he interpolates an interval during which nothing further must happen—during which he must perceive nothing and do nothing.

The formula for this brand of "historical" writing is to put the public on the inside; to let them feel the palpitations of royal and imperial lovers and to overhear their lispings and cooings. It can be argued that a man has to live somewhere, and that if his own time is so cut up by rapid change that he can't find a cranny big enough to relax in, then he must betake himself to the past. That is certainly one motive in the production of historical romance, from Sir Walter Scott to Thornton Wilder. But mainly this formula works as a means of flattery. The public is not only invited inside but encouraged to believe that there is nothing inside that differs from its own thoughts and feelings. This reassurance is provided by endowing historical figures with the sloppiest possible minds. The great are "humanized" by being trivial. The debunking school began by making the great appear as corrupt, or mean and egotistical. The "humanizers" have merely carried on to make them idiotic. "Democratic" vanity has reached such proportions that it cannot accept as human anything above the level of cretinous confusion of mind of the type popularized by Hemingway's heroes. Just as the new star must be made to appear successful by reason of some freak of fortune, so the great, past or present, must be made to seem so because of the most ordinary qualities, to which fortune adds an unearned trick or idea.

The government has a great need to restore its credibility, to make people forget its history and rewrite it. The intelligentsia have to a remarkable degree undertaken this task. It is also necessary to establish the "lessons" that have to be drawn from the war, to ensure that these are conceived on the narrowest grounds, in terms of such socially neutral categories as "stupidity" or "error" or "ignorance" or perhaps "cost." Why? Because soon it will be necessary to justify other confrontations, perhaps other U.S. interventions in the world, other Vietnams. But this time, these will have to be successful intervention, which don't slip out of control. Chile, for example. It is even possible for the press to criticize successful interventions - the Dominican Republic, Chile, etc. - as long as these criticisms don't exceed "civilized limits," that is to say, as long as they don't serve to arouse popular movements capable of hindering these enterprises, and are not accompanied by any rational analysis of the motives of U.S. imperialism, something which is complete anathema, intolerable to liberal ideology. How is the liberal press proceeding with regard to Vietnam, that sector which supported the "doves"? By stressing the "stupidity" of the U.S. intervention; that's a politically neutral term. It would have been sufficient to find an "intelligent" policy. The war was thus a tragic error in which good intentions were transmuted into bad policies, because of a generation of incompetent and arrogant officials. The war's savagery is also denounced, but that too, is used as a neutral category...Presumably the goals were legitimate - it would have been all right to do the same thing, but more humanely... The "responsible" doves were opposed to the war - on a pragmatic basis. Now it is necessary to reconstruct the system of beliefs according to which the United States is the benefactor of humanity, historically committed to freedom, self-determination, and human rights. With regard to this doctrine, the "responsible" doves share the same presuppositions as the hawks. They do not question the right of the United States to intervene in other countries. Their criticism is actually very convenient for the state, which is quite willing to be chided for its errors, as long as the fundamental right of forceful intervention is not brought into question. ... The resources of imperialist ideology are quite vast. It tolerates - indeed, encourages - a variety of forms of opposition, such as those I have just illustrated. It is permissible to criticize the lapses of the intellectuals and of government advisers, and even to accuse them of an abstract desire for "domination," again a socially neutral category not linked in any way to concrete social and economic structures. But to relate that abstract "desire for domination" to the employment of force by the United States government in order to preserve a certain system of world order, specifically, to ensure that the countries of the world remain open insofar as possible to exploitation by U.S.-based corporations - that is extremely impolite, that is to argue in an unacceptable way.

From working with black males for more than a dozen years, I can say with confidence that many black males are both lazy and irresponsible. This view isn't popular with problem profiteers who blame all black woes upon white racism or poverty, but it is true, nonetheless. The young men I work with represent just the tip of the iceberg of a far larger laziness problem within the black male population. The typical black male I work with has no work ethic, has little sense of direction in his life, is hostile toward whites and women, has an attitude of entitlement, and has an amoral outlook on life. He has no strong male role model in his life to teach him the value of hard work, patience, self-control, and character. He is emotionally adrift and is nearly illiterate-either because he dropped out of school or because he's just not motivated enough to learn. Many of the black males I've worked with have had a "don't give a damn" attitude toward work and life and believe that "white America" owes them a living. They have no shame about going on welfare because they believe whites owe them for past discrimination and slavery. This absurd thinking results in a lifetime of laziness and blaming, while taxpayers pick up the tab for individuals who lack character and a strong work ethic. Frequently, blacks who attempt to enter the workforce often become problems for their employers. This is because they also have an entitlement mentality that puts little emphasis on working hard to get ahead. They expect to be paid for doing little work, often show up late, and have bad attitudes while on the job. They're so sensitized to "racism" that they feel abused by every slight, no matter if it's intentional, unconscious, or even based in reality.

Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.

Generally speaking a view of the available economic systems that have been tested historically must acknowledge the immense power of capitalism to generate living standards food housing education the amenities to a degree unprecedented in human civilization. The benefits of such a system while occasionally random and unpredictable with periods of undeniable stress and misery depression starvation and degradation are inevitably distributed to a greater and greater percentage of the population. The periods of economic stability also ensure a greater degree of popular political freedom and among the industrial Western democracies today despite occasional suppression of free speech quashing of dissent corruption of public officials and despite the tendency of legislation to serve the interests of the ruling business oligarchy the poisoning of the air water the chemical adulteration of food the obscene development of hideous weaponry the increased costs of simple survival the waste of human resources the ruin of cities the servitude of backward foreign populations the standards of life under capitalism by any criterion are far greater than under state socialism in whatever forms it is found British Swedish Cuban Soviet or Chinese. Thus the good that fierce advocacy of personal wealth accomplishes in the historical run of things outweighs the bad. And while we may not admire always the personal motives of our business leaders we can appreciate the inevitable percolation of the good life as it comes down through our native American soil. You cannot observe the bounteous beauty of our county nor take pleasure in its most ordinary institutions in peace and safety without acknowledging the extraordinary achievement of American civilization. There are no Japanese bandits lying in wait on the Tokaidoways after all. Drive down the turnpike past the pretty painted pipes of the oil refineries and no one will hurt you.

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their “traditions”, “heritage”, and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good. In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South’s leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic. Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson’s notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculously absurd. In the deep southern tradition, Hammond’s republic was modeled on those of ancient Greece and Rome. Featuring rights and democracy for the elite, slavery and submission for inferiors. It was sanctioned by the Christian god whose son never denounced the practice in his documented teachings. It was a perfect aristocratic republic, one that should be a model for the world. George Fitzhugh endorsed and expanded upon Hammond’s argument to enslave all poor people. Aristocrats, he explained, were really the nations Magna Carta because they owned so much and had the affection which all men feel for what belongs to them. Which naturally lead them to protect and provide for wives, children and slaves. Fitzhugh, whose books were enormously popular declared he was quite as intent on abolishing free society as you northerners are on abolishing slavery.

I believe that social media, and the internet as a whole, have negatively impacted our ability to both think long-term and to focus deeply on the task in front of us. It is no surprise, therefore, that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, prohibited his children from using phones or tablets—even though his business was to sell millions of them to his customers! The billionaire investor and former senior executive at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, argues that we must rewire our brain to focus on the long term, which starts by removing social media apps from our phones. In his words, such apps, “wire your brain for super-fast feedback.” By receiving constant feedback, whether through likes, comments, or immediate replies to our messages, we condition ourselves to expect fast results with everything we do. And this feeling is certainly reinforced through ads for schemes to help us “get rich quick”, and through cognitive biases (i.e., we only hear about the richest and most successful YouTubers, not about the ones who fail). As we demand more and more stimulation, our focus is increasingly geared toward the short term and our vision of reality becomes distorted. This leads us to adopt inaccurate mental models such as: Success should come quickly and easily, or I don’t need to work hard to lose weight or make money. Ultimately, this erroneous concept distorts our vision of reality and our perception of time. We can feel jealous of people who seem to have achieved overnight success. We can even resent popular YouTubers. Even worse, we feel inadequate. It can lead us to think we are just not good enough, smart enough, or disciplined enough. Therefore, we feel the need to compensate by hustling harder. We have to hurry before we miss the opportunity. We have to find the secret that will help us become successful. And, in this frenetic race, we forget one of the most important values of all: patience. No, watching motivational videos all day long won’t help you reach your goals. But, performing daily consistent actions, sustained over a long period of time will. Staying calm and focusing on the one task in front of you every day will. The point is, to achieve long-term goals in your personal or professional life, you must regain control of your attention and rewire your brain to focus on the long term. To do so, you should start by staying away from highly stimulating activities.

As the reach of the 1619 Project grew, so did the backlash. A small group of historians publicly attempted to discredit the project by challenging its historical interpretations and pointing to what they said were historical errors. They did not agree with our framing, which treated slavery and anti-Blackness as foundational to America. They did not like our assertion that Black Americans have served as this nation’s most ardent freedom fighters and have waged their battles mostly alone, or the idea that so much of modern American life has been shaped not by the majestic ideals of our founding but by its grave hypocrisy. And they especially did not like a paragraph I wrote about the motivations of the colonists who declared independence from Britain. “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology,” that paragraph began, “is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” Later, in response to other scholars who believed we hadn’t been specific enough and to clarify that this sentence had never been meant to imply that every single colonist shared this motivation, we changed the sentence to read “some of the colonists.” But that mattered little to some of our critics. The linking of slavery and the American Revolution directly challenged the cornerstone of national identity embedded in our public history, the narratives taught to us in elementary schools, museums and memorials, Hollywood movies, and in many scholarly works as well.16 The assertions about the role slavery played in the American Revolution shocked many of our readers. But these assertions came directly from academic historians who had been making this argument for decades. Plainly, the historical ideas and arguments in the 1619 Project were not new.17 We based them on the wealth of scholarship that has redefined the field of American history since at least the 1960s, including Benjamin Quarles’s landmark book The Negro in the American Revolution, first published in 1961; Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family; and Alan Taylor’s The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832. What seemed to provoke so much ire was that we had breached the wall between academic history and popular understanding, and we had done so in The New York Times, the paper of record, in a major multimedia project led by a Black

Television’s greatest appeal is that it is engaging without being at all demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. Receive without giving. It’s the same in all low art that has as goal continued attention and patronage: it’s appealing precisely because it’s at once fun and easy. And the entrenchment of a culture built on Appeal helps explain a dark and curious thing: at a time when there are more decent and good and very good serious fiction writers at work in America than ever before, an American public enjoying unprecedented literacy and disposable income spends the vast bulk of its reading time and book dollar on fiction that is, by any fair standard, trash. Trash fiction is, by design and appeal, most like televised narrative: engaging without being demanding. But trash, in terms of both quality and popularity, is a much more sinister phenomenon. For while television has from its beginnings been openly motivated by — has been about—considerations of mass appeal and L.C.D. and profit, our own history is chock-full of evidence that readers and societies may properly expect important, lasting contributions from a narrative art that understands itself as being about considerations more important than popularity and balance sheets. Entertainers can divert and engage and maybe even console; only artists can transfigure. Today’s trash writers are entertainers working artists’ turf. This in itself is nothing new. But television aesthetics, and television-like economics, have clearly made their unprecedented popularity and reward possible. And there seems to me to be a real danger that not only the forms but the norms of televised art will begin to supplant the standards of all narrative art. This would be a disaster. [...] Even the snottiest young artiste, of course, probably isn’t going to bear personal ill will toward writers of trash; just as, while everybody agrees that prostitution is a bad thing for everyone involved, few are apt to blame prostitutes themselves, or wish them harm. If this seems like a non sequitur, I’m going to claim the analogy is all too apt. A prostitute is someone who, in exchange for money, affords someone else the form and sensation of sexual intimacy without any of the complex emotions or responsibilities that make intimacy between two people a valuable or meaningful human enterprise. The prostitute “gives,” but — demanding nothing of comparable value in return — perverts the giving, helps render what is supposed to be a revelation a transaction. The writer of trash fiction, often with admirable craft, affords his customer a narrative structure and movement, and content that engages the reader — titillates, repulses, excites, transports him — without demanding of him any of the intellectual or spiritual or artistic responses that render verbal intercourse between writer and reader an important or even real activity." - from "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young

Philip Zimbardo became one of the most popular psychologists who delved deeper into the concept of mind control. He described it as the phenomenon in which external agents or agencies alter the freedom of choice of an individual or of a group through changing the behavior, motivation, and affection of the involved party. He even specified that every individual is vulnerable to this manipulation and that nobody can be perfectly exempted from the effects of mind control.   If others

There is no social stigma attached to the frenzy, no peer motivation to slow us down. Rather it is the opposite; busy is popular currency, traded among members of modern society like a precious commodity. Busy is the silkiest cloth at the emporium, the most well-travelled spice. Living with a full schedule speedily typed into a pinging, vibrating device is a highly valued state of being. And, as with any addiction, it becomes self-perpetuating. We feel a rush from being in a rush; we take pride in the breakneck pace at which we travel through our days.

At first, Mahalo garnered significant attention and traffic. At its high point, 14.1 million users worldwide visited the site monthly.[lxxxix] But over time, users began to lose interest. Although the payout of the bounties were variable, somehow users did not find the monetary rewards enticing enough. But as Mahalo struggled to retain users, another Q&A site began to boom. Quora, launched in 2010 by two former Facebook employees, quickly grew in popularity. Unlike Mahalo, Quora did not offer a single cent to anyone answering user questions. Why, then, have users stayed highly engaged with Quora, but not with Mahalo, despite its variable monetary rewards? In Mahalo’s case, executives assumed that paying users would drive repeat engagement with the site. After all, people like money, right? Unfortunately, Mahalo had an incomplete understanding of its users’ drivers. Ultimately, the company found that people did not want to use a Q&A site to make money. If the trigger was a desire for monetary rewards, the user was better off spending their time earning an hourly wage. And if the payouts were meant to take the form of a game, like a slot machine, then the rewards came far too infrequently and were too small to matter. However, Quora demonstrated that social rewards and the variable reinforcement of recognition from peers proved to be much more frequent and salient motivators. Quora instituted an upvoting system that reports user satisfaction with answers and provides a steady stream of social feedback. Quora’s social rewards have proven more attractive than Mahalo’s monetary rewards. Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behavior.

If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity.

truth.—Things exist in precise and definite relations. Events take place according to fixed and immutable laws. Truth is the perception of things just as they are. Between truth and falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact is so, or it is not. "Truth," says Ruskin, "is the one virtue of which there are no degrees. There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimation of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain." Truth does not always lie upon the surface of things. It requires hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the superficial crust of appearance to the solid rock of fact on which truth rests. To discover and declare truth as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of the scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what other people will be pleased to hear, not what will be popular or profitable; but what as the result of careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged reflection he has learned to be the fact;—this, nothing less and nothing more, the scholar must proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact; it plants itself upon reality; and hence it speaks with authority. The truthful man is one whom we can depend upon. His word is as good as his bond. "He sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." The truthful man brings truth and man together. THE VIRTUE. Veracity has two foundations: one reverence for truth; the other regard for one's fellow-men.—Ordinarily these two motives coincide and re-enforce each other. The right of truth to be spoken, and the benefit to men from hearing it, are two sides of the same obligation.

Contrary to popular belief, there are peaks higher than Mount Everest. These are the hurdles that lie within each of us. Thank you Stephen Hawking for showing us that they are not insurmountable

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.

He could be disciplined when he wanted to be.

In the forward to Richard Dawkins’s popular book The Selfish Gene, Trivers reasoned: If . . . deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray—by the subtle signs of self knowledge—the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate versions of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.

They’d read about this in class, how stereotypes distorted, affected, reflected reality. Asians were peaceful. Gays were nonviolent. As were women. Blacks (and sometimes Mexicans) were rarely accused of hate crimes for a number of reasons, but the underlying logic was that they were naturally predisposed to violence and mischief, and so seldom was any attack on whites motivated by hate. Contrarily, it was extremely easy to claim, and prove, that a white perpetrated a hate crime. In fact, popular opinion among the liberals was that conservatives were motivated by hate in everything they did wrong: hiring practices, legal negotiations, and any criminal activity affecting blacks, Mexicans, or gays. If Denver decided that Daron had intended to send a message of terror, then Daron’s every denial must have sounded like an attempt to protect his co-conspirators.