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They want you to return to work, to their simulation of happiness and community, because they’re afraid that if you don’t you might remember that there was a time when you were free.

If you submitted such work as part of an introductory statistics course, the professor would likely ask you to come to his office hours. And yet it became official policy in cities the world over.

Two truths (no lies):

1. Once you are moderately happy, it’s very hard to get any happier.

2. Everybody secretly believes they can be the exception to this rule.

ncertainty is the condition of not knowing what comes next, the fear of change that is beyond our control and likely at odds with our thriving. It is a state of worry, of insecurity, of a lack of faith in the systems that keep us alive and living. It is, so often, intolerable.

And yet, as Le Guin reminds us, uncertainty is also the only thing that m... See more

If the Amish approach to technology is radical in its application, it recognizes something plain and true: Although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values, even in the absence of a coordinated effort.

“A fundamental paradox at the core of human life is that we are highly social and made better in every way by being around people,” Epley said. “And yet over and over, we have opportunities to connect that we don’t take, or even actively reject, and it is a terrible mistake.”

I have lured my friends into some extraordinary picnics, for I hold with the French that to eat out of doors in congenial surroundings is sensible. In Afghanistan we ate high on a hill outside Kabul and watched as tribesmen moved in to attack the city; at Edfu along the Nile we spread our blankets inside that most serene of Egypt's temples; in Bali... See more