Sublime

In the summer of 1971, Zimbardo took healthy Stanford students, assigned them roles as either “guards” or “inmates,” and locked them in a makeshift “prison” in the basement of Stanford University. In just days, the “prisoners” began to demonstrate symptoms of depression and extreme stress, while the “guards” began to act cruel and sadistic (the exp

In each case, a brilliant man put his company in jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else.

There’s something deep in our programming that says, “If a homicidal alpha male shows up and he’s protecting my group, regardless of what his other faults are, I’ve got to follow him.” That’s very primal programming. The demagogues—whether it’s Hitler or Milošević or Trump—manipulate people so that instead of being a German, you’re an Aryan; instea

Colonel John Boyd’s OODA loop, Three Years in Mississippi, and Herodotus’ The Persian Wars.

Unless something or somebody intervenes, he spends the rest of his life stabilizing his position and dealing with situations that threaten it: by avoiding them, warding off certain elements or manipulating them provocatively so that they are transformed from threats into justifications.