Understanding all behavior makes sense with sufficient information transforms how we view others. It challenges us to move beyond snap judgments and approach things with curiosity. Instead of asking, ‘why are they acting like this’ we can try, ‘what might I not know about their world?’
The theory of “anti-memes” is about how some of our most intense cultural investments are below the radar—not because they haven’t been found yet, but because that’s how they are built.
there is very little time or attention given to what you could almost call learning the art of inwardness; or a pedagogy of interiority. That’s why I find the aesthetic things, like poetry, fiction, good film, theater, drama, dance, and music, actually awaken that inside you and remind you that there is a huge interiority within you.
“If someone truly is creative and inspiring,” they write, “it will show up in how they allocate their spare time.” In job interviews, the authors advise hiring managers to ask, “What are the open tabs on your browser right now?”
Taste comes in lanes. To quote Susan Sontag again, “There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good... See more