There are some gifts, by the way, that you do not have to pay for. Gifts that come at no cost. Gifts that do not require wrapping paper. Gifts that do not contribute to climate change. Gifts that can help bring peace and harmony to the world.
The home of the Utopian impulse was architecture rather than painting or sculpture. Painting can make us happy, but building is the art we live in; it is the social art par excellence, the carapace of political fantasy, the exoskeleton of one’s economic dreams. It is also the one art nobody can escape.
Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggests that flow is conducive to optimal experience . But it doesn’t tell us anything about whether it is conducive to optimal performance . So look for flow when you want to feel better, but not necessarily when you want to do better.
Our findings suggest that mindfulness may be beneficial for reducing self-reported short-term stress for English speakers from higher-income countries.
One of the most honest accounts I’ve encountered of humanity’s relationship with nonhuman animals comes from political theorist Dinesh Wadiwel, who describes it as a state of war — not a metaphorical war, but a literal one, in which we are the aggressors. If you were an alien who knew nothing about our species, you might expect a civilization that... See more
as conversational AI agents become more interactive and personalized, they will surpass human influencers in their ability to shape our decisions without us realizing it.