We are often sent messages that we shouldn’t feel negative emotions, so people are highly conditioned to want to change or get rid of their emotions, which leads to suppression, rumination, and/or avoidance—thus impeding our happiness.
A common view of truth aims for that which corresponds with reality. Left with nothing but our own interpretations of the world, Pragmatists, like William James and Charles Peirce, argue that the best we can do is to hold to that which works.
Professional philosophers rarely ask 'What is the meaning of life?' and when they do, they often dismiss it as nonsense.
James Joyce's concept of living in the time of chaosmos provides a powerful insight into our ability to survive, relying on both tough-minded and tender-hearted individuals. .
Freedom entails the capacity to think and to judge in private, where solitude empowers the individual to contemplate their actions and develop their conscience, to escape the cacophony of the crowd. Solitude precedes moral thinking.
Observing the acclaim physics was having, economists embraced a physical view of human behavior hoping to replicate similar success. However, unlike physics, the social nature of human beings makes any laws of behavior tentative and contextual.
Millennials are the generation who came of age during the self-esteem movement. The concept of self-esteem is losing it's currency, but are self-compassion or self-indifference better frameworks for emotional health?
The notion of whiteness and the use of color as a primary aspect of identity arose out of a particular cosmological trick.
There are many who say that Romanticism is dead. But the tensions between Romanticism and the soldiers of the original Enlightenment are rising up again.
The claim that earth has a carrying capacity of 7 billion is based on old concepts—misunderstanding how fertility rates and consumption work.
Most of physics' beautiful ideas are hard or impossible to test. When we try to rectify a perceived lack of beauty, we waste time on problems that aren’t really problems. Physicists must rethink their methods, now.
Nell Irvin Painter's book identifies some of the roots of the inequality we see today, which are based on the antiquated "science" of race theory. We can use the social construct of race to address social injustices, but what do we do with the mixed legacies of race theorists?
Each of us plays a role in becoming a culture of peace by embodying the stories we tell.
Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015. Ever-individualized notions of love, sexuality, and gender identity broaden our definition of family—but will we make room for polygamy? Should we?
Debates surrounding tribalism and bigotry abound, many focused on biased media or public policy. Agape Restaurants conceptualize food as a cultural force for realizing toleration and nurturing community—all while dining with strangers.
It's beyond disconcerting that, as president, Donald Trump has threatened nuclear war. Still, the world has been on the brink of annihilation many times before, and yet continues because of the slight edge that the forces of creation have over the forces of destruction.
Michael Meade tells a dramatic life and death story from his youth, showing how we are each shaped by compelling threads of fate and destiny woven in our souls.
Alas, all of man is but a sick herd, / Slavers, master, it is no matter, / An illness of sorts has thus been incurred.
Michael Meade introduces the role of myth in making sense of our complex and challenging world, in the first episode of Living Myth. He presents mythic stories that offer wise ways of understanding the current dilemmas of the world we live in.
We already have the technology to reverse Climate Change, but one great obstacle remains—Nori is a company that believes it can solve that problem, succeeding where political activism has not.
Drawing power from mythological stories and self-disclosure, this award-winning mentoring program transforms teens into community leaders.
We dishonor a person's memory and do ourselves a disservice when we don't also acknowledge the dead person’s flaws, faults, or missteps—in other words, embrace their whole humanity. Whether we want it or not, funerals are spaces for emotional learning, not just grieving or reinforcing cultural norms.
Her kiss leaves blood for me to fore’er taste; / (Drowning within one’s insecurities.)
Jeff Savage, a non-academic-minded-academic, discusses the challenges of growing beyond three stagnate and authoritarian systems—academia, schooling, and the organized religion of his youth.
You think I’m pretty, innocent, and sweet / Yet innocence and sweet is not what I’ve seen.
