culture
The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts, as the academy has sought to “decolonise” and expand the curriculum over the past decade. And /lit/’s reaction is hardly unreasonable: there’s a difference between great books (well-written, perhaps undiscovered) and Great Books, which stay in the accepted canon because... See more
How 4chan became the home of the elite reader
We can’t address the decline in empathy without addressing the decline in attention . Empathy requires a degree of sustained focus:
When we are fragmented and distracted , we simply can’t... See more
- Paying attention to an experience someone is sharing
- Recalling experiencing a similar emotional response
- Sitting with your own and the other person’s inner state
When we are fragmented and distracted , we simply can’t... See more
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Even if, for a while, I feigned hatred of rock and roll, that only made sense on the presumption of its continued reign. Much the same could be said about liberal democracy. Today, American global hegemony looks like nothing more than a desperate reprisal of a role that must be ceded sooner or later; gone is the possibility of taking it for granted... See more
Justin E. H. Smith • My Generation, by Justin E. H. Smith
The Healing Power of Nature and Beauty: Florence Nightingale on Expediting Recovery from Illness and Burnout
Maria Popovathemarginalian.orgSterling Proffer and
excerpts from the secret of our success:
culture is smarter than we are
... See moreThe secret of our species’ success resides not in the power of our individual minds, but in the collective brains of our communities. Our collective brains arise from the synthesis of our cultural and social natures—from the fact that we readily learn from others (are cultural)
The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.
Zohar Atkins • The Liberal Arts Are Dying Because Liberalism is Dying
Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.