[Emotions]
Doe the heart have its reasons, which reason does not know? Lycurgus (d. 730 BCE): When falls on man the anger of the gods, First from his mind they banish understanding. Advice: Use your emotions, don’t let them use you
Psychology
Stephen Hicks, “A Primer on Objective Journalism” [Atlas Intellectuals]
This week of the self-paced course on Objectivity features Stephen Hicks’s primer on Objective Journalism. “Objectivity means being committed to the facts and to using one’s mind as best one can to discover and interpret them. Journalistic objectivity includes being open to all the facts, doing research to discover the facts, verifying claims, and to integrating logically
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Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics” [Atlas Intellectuals]
In this unit of our course on Objectivity we feature Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ethics. Rand was world-famous as the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness was published in 1964. In the opening essay, Rand presents a sustained argument for her ethic of rational self-interest. The full course on Objectivity: https://www.atlassociety.org/course/objectivity.
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Resentment psychology and “Madame Guillotine”
Via Roderick Long, here are the opening lines from “Madame Guillotine” (from the Scarlet Pimpernel musical): I know the gutter, and I know the stink of the street;kicked like a dog, I have spat out the bile of defeat.All you beauties who towered above me,you who gave me the smack of your rod –now I
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Online trolls’ rhetoric, Sartre’s anticipation
Anti-Semites, postmodernists, and alt-rightists as peas in a pod.
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How great artists become great: Karajan version
According to his biographer: Karajan seems to have spent the greater part of his like seeking the one thing he believed would make him completely happy: absolute mastery over his own destiny. Richard Osborne, Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music, Northeastern University Press, 1998, p. 33 Related: How other great artists became great:Igor Stravinsky
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Is Envy Worse in a Free Society? [Open College transcript]
We’re posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the eleventh: OC11: Is Envy Worse in a Free Society? “Is a free and open society more susceptible to the dangers of envy? It’s an interesting question because most often the envy charge is used against socialism, or any kind of outcome-egalitarian
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Who controls your mind? Decision and habit
Wise words from actress Alyson Hannigan: “I was in a real negative headspace for a long time. I remember the moment I became an optimist. I was walking across campus, and somebody passed me by. In my head, I insulted that person. I stopped myself and thought, ‘Why would I think something negative about a
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