Collin G Brooke
@cgbrooke
I’m a rhetoric professor in upstate NY.
Collin G Brooke
cgbrooke.substack.com
There are three major psychological weapons that combatants often transfer into culture war: scapegoating, deception, and violent threats.
Annalee Newitz • Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
The effect of conspiracy culture is the opposite of calm; it is to spread panic.
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
This is the problem beneath other problems because if we can’t agree on what’s true, then we can’t navigate out of any of our problems.”
Steven Brill • The Death of Truth
But there remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only “message” which the end can ever produce. Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est— “that
... See moreThere is a sort of magic that we are losing. If you introduce viewers to your private life, you lose the magic of distance that is core to charisma, this stardust you can never touch. There is a difference between being a godlike character and the illusion of a guy you can have a beer with. The sheer amount of access makes it less exciting.
Conor Friedersdorf • The Charisma-vs.-Charm Election
the life of thought, holding a position is like that: there’s a proper firmness of belief that lies between the extremes of rigidity and flaccidity.
Alan Jacobs • How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
when people place value on the role of evidence as a means of updating their beliefs, they are less likely to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young • Wrong
Supposedly mature adults with no sense of scale or proportionality.”
Jason Pargin • I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom
And stories make place.24 This means the metaphoric, allegorical, symbolic, and other devices that shape stories also move us and make place.