“
Mental illness" is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.
”
”
Elyn R. Saks (Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill)
“
76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography
82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers
85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth – Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma
92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
94. Lord Byron – Don Juan
95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism
96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy
99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times
106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden
108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto
109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch
110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov
112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories
113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays
114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger
116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
”
”
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
“
The Wounded Inner Child is the primary gateway to healing and integration.
When you invite your woundedness out of subversiveness and into your awareness you finally begin to honor the past pain. You also minimize its contractive influence on your life. And you begin to offer yourself the potential of something more.
”
”
Markus William Kasunich
“
The search for fusion regularly gives rise to various symptoms. Our own psyche knows what is right for us, knows what is developmentally demanded. When we use the Other to avoid our own task, we may be able to fool ourselves for awhile, but the soul will not be mocked. It will express its protest in physical ailments, activated complexes and disturbing dreams. The soul wishes its fullest expression; it is here, as Rumi expressed it, 'for its own joy.'
Let's continue the fantasy of finding an Other willing to carry our individuation task for us. Well, in time, that Other would grow to resent us, even though he or she was a willing signatory to the silent contract. That resentment would leak into the relationship and corrode it. No one is angrier that someone doing 'the right thing' and secretly wishing for something else.
”
”
James Hollis (Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian Analysts, 79))
“
on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made.
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”
Charles W. Mills (The Racial Contract)
“
The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy."
But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.
”
”
Alexander Lowen (Fear Of Life)
“
In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
You will remember that every psychological or inner state finds some outer representation via the moving centre—that is, it is represented in some particular muscular movements or contractions, etc. You may have noticed that a state of worry is often reflected by a contracted wrinkling of the forehead or a twisting of the hands. States of joy never have this representation. Negative states, states of worry, or fear, or anxiety, or depression, represent themselves in the muscles by contraction, flexion, being bowed down, etc. (and often, also, by weakness in the muscles), whereas opposite emotional states are reflected into the moving centre as expansion, as standing upright, as extension of the limbs, relaxing of tension, and usually by a feeling of strength. To stop worry, people who worry and thereby frown too much or pucker up and corrugate their foreheads, clench their fists, almost cease breathing, etc., should begin here—by relaxing the muscles expressing the emotional state, and freeing the breath. Relaxing in general has behind it, esoterically speaking, the idea of preventing negative states. Negative states are less able to come when a person is in a state of relaxation. That is why it is said so often that it is necessary to practise relaxing every day, by passing the attention over the body and deliberately relaxing all tense muscles.
”
”
Maurice Nicoll (Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky 1)
“
Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as does the need to compete and dominate. Even nature becomes your enemy and your perceptions and interpretations are governed by fear. The mental disease that we call paranoia is only a slightly more acute form of this normal but dysfunctional state of consciousness. Not only your psychological form but also your physical form — your body — becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole contracts.
”
”
Eckhart Tolle (Practicing the Power of Now)
“
In short, a spiritual teacher needs to inject conflict into a disciple’s life. Without conflict, we remain at levels of immaturity and don’t grow spiritually. The conflict is likely asking us the question, “When are you going to grow up?” Jesus was consistently challenging his disciples by confronting them with their levels of immaturity. Within congregational life, there needs to be a kind of psychological contract between pastor and people that “sometimes I’m going to make you quite uncomfortable in my sermons and in my personal conversations with you.” We should not accept spiritual messages that just always make us feel good about ourselves—a feel-good gospel. That is going to keep us stuck at immature levels of self-insight. In order for congregations to grow, both numerically and spiritually, we will need to experience conflict at all levels of congregational life.
”
”
Roy M. Oswald (The Emotional Intelligence of Jesus: Relational Smarts for Religious Leaders)
“
He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
When studying the fundamental characteristics of a crowd we stated that it is guided almost exclusively by unconscious motives.
”
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Friendship, affection, trust—these are the things that, long before people signed contracts, long before they wrote down laws, held human societies together.
”
”
Robert Wright (The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology)
“
every actual instant of despair is to be referred back to possibility, every instant the man in despair is contracting it, it is constantly in the present tense, nothing comes to pass here as a consequence of a bygone actuality superseded. at every actual instant of despair the despairer bears as his responsibility all the foregoing experience in possibility as a present.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard (The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening)
“
Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.
”
”
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
“
most often the kinds of pains we encounter in meditative attention are not indications of physical problems. They are the painful, physical manifestations of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual holdings and contractions.
”
”
Jack Kornfield (A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life)
“
History tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as barbarians.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed on easy-going masters, but on tyrants who vigorously oppressed them.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
All controlling behavior is a contractive reaction and misuse of power exacted to make another fulfill your conscious and unconscious needs. People who control others are often protecting themselves from being controlled. It is a survival mechanism ruled by fear.
”
”
Markus William Kasunich
“
Abandoned to themselves, they soon weary of disorder, and instinctively turn to servitude. It was the proudest and most untractable of the Jacobins who acclaimed Bonaparte with greatest energy when he suppressed all liberty and made his hand of iron severely felt. It
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Two fundamental factors are at the base of this transformation. The first is the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and industrial discoveries.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
An isolated individual knows well enough that alone he cannot set fire to a palace or loot a shop, and should he be tempted to do so, he will easily resist the temptation. Making part of a crowd, he is conscious of the power given him by number, and it is sufficient to suggest to him ideas of murder or pillage for him to yield immediately to temptation.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the contrary, are quick to act. As the result of their present organisation their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
If someone thinks you’re a fucking problem, an addict, a fuck-up, and broken, they’re going to treat you differently despite all their best intentions otherwise, which can foster a slow, steady reduction, stripping away confidence
and self-love until it all becomes a repeated, entrenched story. The irony is that this contraction often occurs in the care of those
who are genuinely trying to help.
”
”
Cory Richards (The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within)
“
There are at least three different arrows of time. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time, the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Then, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes, the direction in which we remember the past but not the future. Finally, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.
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”
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
“
The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won’t limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people’s minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly.
”
”
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy)
“
The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.
”
”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (What is Mob Mentality?: 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts ... Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...)
“
He [Wilhelm Reich] challenged the puritanical ideas about sexuality in our culture. In laywoman terms, Reich believed humans store emotions in our muscles. During orgasm, muscles in the body contract, then relax, thus releasing emotions. Reich asserted that all aspects of healthy human psychology are dependent on one's sexual expression.
When you cry, laugh or feel free as a bird after coming, it is partly because you just released a bunch of yucky crap that's been building up inside your body for days, months, years, possibly your entire lifetime.
...When women function like the ocean, we live happy, healthy lives. Holding on to stuff that does not serve us in our present situation creates actual, physical blockages within our bodies...which on the individual level, manifest in bitterness, stifled creativity, sexual perversion and unwillingness to trust, love and/or touch.
Collectively-when an entire society is sexually repressed-phenomena such as war, rape, racism, greed and wholesale shitty behavior are considered acceptable.
”
”
Inga Muscio (Cunt: A Declaration of Independence)
“
For many years there have been rumours of mind control experiments. in the United States. In the early 1970s, the first of the declassified information was obtained by author John Marks for his pioneering work, The Search For the Manchurian Candidate. Over time retired or disillusioned CIA agents and contract employees have broken the oath of secrecy to reveal small portions of their clandestine work. In addition, some research work subcontracted to university researchers has been found to have been underwritten and directed by the CIA. There were 'terminal experiments' in Canada's McGill University and less dramatic but equally wayward programmes at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan and numerous other institutions. Many times the money went through foundations that were fronts or the CIA. In most instances, only the lead researcher was aware who his or her real benefactor was, though the individual was not always told the ultimate use for the information being gleaned. In 1991, when the United States finally signed the 1964 Helsinki Accords that forbids such practices, any of the programmes overseen by the intelligence community involving children were to come to an end. However, a source recently conveyed to us that such programmes continue today under the auspices of the CIA's Office of Research and Development. The children in the original experiments are now adults. Some have been able to go to college or technical schools, get jobs. get married, start families and become part of mainstream America. Some have never healed. The original men and women who devised the early experimental programmes are, at this point, usually retired or deceased. The laboratory assistants, often graduate and postdoctoral students, have gone on to other programmes, other research. Undoubtedly many of them never knew the breadth of the work of which they had been part. They also probably did not know of the controlled violence utilised in some tests and preparations. Many of the 'handlers' assigned to reinforce the separation of ego states have gone into other pursuits. But some have remained or have keen replaced. Some of the 'lab rats' whom they kept in in a climate of readiness, responding to the psychological triggers that would assure their continued involvement in whatever project the leaders desired, no longer have this constant reinforcement. Some of the minds have gradually stopped suppression of their past experiences. So it is with Cheryl, and now her sister Lynn.
”
”
Cheryl Hersha (Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country)
“
The preconventional level of moral reasoning, which develops during our first nine years of life, considers rules as fixed and absolute. In the first of its two stages (the stage of obedience and punishment), we determine whether actions are right or wrong by whether or not they lead to a punishment. In the second stage (the stage of individualism and exchange), right and wrong are determined by what brings rewards. The desires and needs of others are important, but only in a reciprocal sense—“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Morality at this level is governed by consequence. The second level of moral reasoning starts in adolescence, and continues into early adulthood. It sees us starting to consider the intention behind behavior, rather than just the consequences. Its first stage, often called the “good boy—nice girl” stage, is when we begin classifying moral behavior as to whether it will help or please. Being seen as good becomes the goal. In the second stage (the law and order stage), we start to equate “being good” with respecting authority and obeying the law, believing that this protects and sustains society. The third level of moral development is when we move beyond simple conformity, but Kohlberg suggested that only around 10–15 percent of us ever reach this level. In its first stage (the social contract and individual rights stage), we still respect authority, but there is a growing recognition that individual rights can supersede laws that are destructive or restrictive. We come to realize that human life is more sacred than just following rules. The sixth and final stage (the stage of universal ethical principles) is when our own conscience becomes the ultimate judge, and we commit ourselves to equal rights and respect for all. We may even resort to civil disobedience in the name of universal principles, such as justice. Kohlberg’s six-stage theory was considered radical, because it stated that morality is not imposed on children (as psychoanalysts said), nor is it about avoiding bad feelings (as the behaviorists had thought). Kohlberg believed children developed a moral code and awareness of respect, empathy, and love through interaction with others.
”
”
Nigel Benson (The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained)
“
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants," wrote Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. In the original and primary sense of lacks or needs, wants tend to structure our vision of government's responsibilities. The quest for security - whether economic, physical, psychological, or military - brings a sense of urgency to politics and is one of the enduring sources of passion in policy controversies.
Need is probably the most fundamental political claim. Even toddlers know that need carries more weight than desire or deservingness. They learn early to counter a rejected request by pleading, "I need it." To claim need is to claim that one should be given the resources or help because they are essential. Of course, this raises the question "essential for what?" In conflicts over security, the central issues are what kind of security government should attempt to provide; what kinds of needs it should attempt to meet; and how the burdens of making security a collective responsibility should be distributed.
Just as most people are all for equity and efficiency in the abstract, most people believe that society should help individuals and families when they are in dire need. But beneath this consensus is a turbulent and intense conflict over how to distinguish need from mere desire, and how to preserve a work - or - merit based system of economic distribution in the face of distribution according to need. Defining need for purposes of public programs become much an exercise like defining equity and efficiency. People try to portray their needs as being objective, and policymakers seek to portray their program criteria as objective, in order to put programs beyond political dispute. As with equity and efficiency, there are certain recurring strategies of argument that can be used to expand or contract a needs claim.
In defense policy, relative need is far more important than absolute. Our sense of national security (and hence our need for weapons) depends entirely on comparison with the countries we perceive as enemies. And here Keynes is probably right: The need for weapons can only be satisfied by feeling superior to "them." Thus, it doesn't matter how many people our warheads can kill or how many cities they can destroy. What matters is what retaliatory capacity we have left after an attack by the other side, or whether our capacity to sustain an offense is greater than their capacity to destroy it. The paradox of nuclear weapons is that the more security we gain in terms of absolute capability (i.e., kill potential), the more insecure we make ourselves with respect to the consequences of nuclear explosions. We gain superiority only by producing weapons we ourselves are terrified to use.
”
”
Deborah Stone (Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making)
“
To explain the origins of physical order, Ludwig connected phenomena occurring at different spatial scales, mainly atoms and gases.1 Although it makes sense today, in Ludwig’s time working across spatial scales was a practice that violated an implicit contract among scientists. Many of Ludwig’s colleagues saw science as a hierarchy of Russian nesting dolls, with new structures emerging at each level. In this hierarchy, transgressing boundaries was thought unnecessary. Economics did not need psychology, just as psychology did not need biology. Biology did not need chemistry, and chemistry did not need physics. Explaining gases in terms of atoms, although not as preposterous as explaining human behavior in terms of biology, was seen as a betrayal of this implicit deal.
”
”
Cesar A. Hidalgo (Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies)
“
One day our General Counsel went to Leslie and said: “You didn’t sign this huge contract with Disney! Why is Camille’s name on it?” Leslie responded: The person who is living and breathing the contract needs to be the person who owns and signs the contract, not a head of a function or a VP. That takes responsibility of the project away from the person who should be responsible. Obviously, I look at those contracts too. But Camille is proud of what she accomplished. This is her thing, not mine. She is psychologically invested, and I want to keep her that way. I’m not going to take ownership away from her by putting my name on the deal. Leslie was right, and we follow her example across Netflix today. At Netflix you don’t need management to sign off for anything. If you’re the informed captain, take ownership—sign the document yourself.
”
”
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
“
What are people like when their society has long lacked courts, police, governments, contracts, and even leaders, like mayors, chiefs, and elders?
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Joseph Henrich (The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous)