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Eight Ways Less Is More - The Art of Strategic Slacking
You’re busy, “crazy-busy” even, so why would taking more breaks and wandering off for walks during the working day help you become less busy and more successful? Because, when done properly, less is more says Christine Carter
Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education
Sometimes I find, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me and others feel, I have to speak the truth. We can use all the euphemisms we want, but the literal truth is that schools, as they generally exist in the United States and other modern countries, are prisons. Human...
The Problem With Judgement
Many people have little trouble confessing to being hard on themselves, to being “my own worst critic” or to being a perfectionist. They are, after all, merely confessing to something that our culture upholds as a virtue: the struggle against the self. People are generally...
A Deep-Roots Strategy to Combat Hateful Ideologies: Offer Them More of What They Truly Want
"Influence is NOT about convincing people to want different things than they already want. It's about showing them that the way to get what they already want, is by following you." - Charlie Houpert Lately, I've been interested in exploring how we can apply this strategy to
Cultivating Self-Awareness in Parents
Shefali Tsabary's latest book argues that parents need to focus more on themselves and less on their children.
Living in the Future's Past
"Efficacy is the ability to produce a desired result. But are the results we're achieving, the ones we intent? Our intelligence is remaking the world before our eyes. What kind of future do you want to see?"
Want to End Sexual Harassment? Landmark Study Finds Ousting 'Bad Men" Isn't Enough
The most potent predictor of sexual misconduct goes beyond individual perpetrators.
A Psychologist Explains How People Become Anti-Authoritarians
Lyndon Johnson famously proclaimed his requirements for an appointee: “I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.” Johnson and his ass-kissers were authoritarians.
The Triumph of Triviality
Clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker asks if modern consumer society is too shallow to deal with the deepening crises facing the planet.
We Need Solidarity, Not White Guilt, to Fight Racism
The well-intentioned drive among white progressives to “check their privilege” or “take responsibility” for their unconscious biases won’t do much to fight racism. But forging real solidarity through concrete campaigns, protests, and movements can.
The Answer to Police Violence Is Not 'Reform'. It's Defunding. Here's Why.
Bias training, body cameras, community dialogues – Minneapolis has tried them all. We need a better response
15 Ways to Help Create a More Beautiful World
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” ~Margaret Mead
Being Crazy in a Sick Society Is Actually Healthy
To be normal is to be sick
How We Understand the Crisis Is Part of the Crisis
It was something I heard one dissident professor say when I was an undergraduate studying psychology in a Nigerian university. He didn’t quite say it; he whispered it. When the white men came, they brought us schools and the bible, he intoned. And then we gave them our own...
The Myth of Romantic Love May Be Ruining Your Health
Romantic love in Western societies is often portrayed in a stereotypical way: two yearning halves, who search for each other to find their complete, original state. Few find this bliss because it’s a myth, dating back to Plato. In Greek mythology, the perfect lovers were...
Welcome to the Post-Hobbesian Dystopia: A War of Everyone Against Themselves
Why should plagues of mental illness surprise us, in a world being ripped apart?
Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton: Two Figures in a Derailed World
What is the Way Out?
The Longevity of Struggle: How to Prevent Burnout From Being in Action
Are you passionate about the work that you do? What are you doing to maintain that? Being in action for the causes you are passionate about demands a lot and feeling burnt out at times is a normal reaction. Understand that experience as your innermost self calling you to tune...
Why We Should Stop Using the Word "Activist"
Contesting power isn’t a hobby or a subculture—it’s a collective project pervading all facets of our lives.
Why Our Imagination for Alien Life Is so Impoverished
It astonishes me how much we seem to know about aliens. They build technology-driven civilisations and pilot spaceships across the galaxy. They create energy-harvesting structures around their stars. They beam interstellar greetings to us. We cannot be sure that, when our own...
Ethnic Notions
Ethnic Notions is Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the...
Why Anarchists and "Anarcho"-Capitalists Can't Be allies
One things that crops up over and over when someone on the libertarian right notices the outright hostility of anarchists when he appropriates the “Anarchist” label for himself is the accusation of “harming the movement” by not being willing to look past differences and work...
Ferguson Isn't about Black Rage Against Cops. It's White Rage Against Progress.
When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police
How a White Supremacist Became a Civil Rights Activist
The story of a KKK leader’s transformation shows us that we need not live forever with the kind of violence we saw in Charleston this month.
Rage, Fear, Sadness, Fatigue: The Yoga of Darkness
“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” -Carl Jung
Human Kind
Fascinating new lines of research suggest that we are good people, tolerating bad things.
Six Myths of Positive News Reporting Debunked
Positive news reporting is often conceived as serving only as light relief or as a trivial distraction from the realities of the world. But as Jodie Jackson explains, there is a growing body of research emerging to suggest that these perceptions are unfounded
The Top 10 Flaws of  Neoclassical Economics
Neoclassical economics has severe flaws.  But since the field is captive to the monopolistic money and banking system, it is very difficult for economists who are aware of this to speak up.  If they were to speak about the flaws, their careers would be severely limited. ...
Chris Hedges: Why Israel Lies
All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas.
Conspiracy Theories Fuel Climate Change Denial and Chemtrail Beliefs
I recently wrote about geoengineering as a strategy to deal with climate change and carbon dioxide emissions. That drew comments from people who confuse this scientific process with the unscientific theory of “chemtrails.” Some also claimed the column supported 
A User's Guide for Evolutionary Well-Being
The sacred naturalist’s guide to well-being
So You're Still Being Publicly Shamed
The Right wants you to believe that a coddled, overly sensitive left is propping up cancel culture. But punitive, hyper-surveillant ways of interacting online are built into the structure of privately owned social media companies, and they’re practiced across the political...
Why Do Conspiracy Theories Flourish? Because Proven Conspiracies are Too Daunting
The greatest conspiracies are open and notorious — not theories, but practices expressed through law and policy, technology, and finance. Counterintuitively, these conspiracies are more often than not announced in public and with a modicum of pride. They’re dutifully reported...
A Temple of This Earth: Moving Beyond Redemptive Violence
(This essay is the final installment of a series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,
Shame, Guilt & the Roots of Violence
During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the...
The Case Against Grades
"I remember the first time that a grading rubric was attached to a piece of my writing….Suddenly all the joy was taken away.  I was writing for a grade -- I was no longer exploring for me.  I want to get that back.  Will I ever get that back?"-- Claire, a student (in Olson...
The Case Against Competition
When it comes to competition, we Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support. The first view holds that the more we immerse our children (and ourselves) in rivalry, the better. Competition builds character and...
Are Guns The Problem?
Intro: Tragedy, Violence and Bourgeois Discourse
Stories That Once Offered My Life Meaning No Longer Satisfy. Have You Felt This Too?
Sometimes I feel nostalgic for the cultural mythology of my youth, a world in which there was nothing wrong with soda pop, in which the super Bowl was important, in which America was bringing democracy to the world, in which the doctor could fix you, in which science was...
White Purity and The Problem with White Privilege Activism
Among other things, whiteness is a kind of solipsism. From right to left, whites consistently and successfully reroute every political discussion to their identity. The content of this identity, unsurprisingly, is left unexamined and undefined. It is the false foundation of...
It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are
The past is never dead. It’s not even past. — William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Yes, You Can Change Someone's Mind
There’s something fascinating about stories that recount a major change of heart. Like the one of C.P. Ellis, a White member of the KKK, and Ann Atwater, a Black community activist, who in 1971 were thrown together as co-chairs of a group focused on school desegregation in...
What If Most People Love Violence?
Despite years of effort and sacrifice by millions, there has not been a mass shift toward nonviolence. Perhaps what's needed is a better understanding of the dark side of the human species.
Joanna Macy On Staying Sane in a Toxic Culture
"All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given." - Joanna Macy
The Great Global Slowdown: What’s Next?
If you have a pension, or a string of ISAs, then you are watching – for the second time in a decade – your wealth destroyed. European stock markets are now 20 per cent off their peak in the middle of last year.
Until White America Looks at Tamir Rice and Sees Their Own Children, There Will Be No Racial Justice in the U.S.
He was 12, playing with a toy gun, in a locale with open-carry laws. Tamir Rice was executed for being a black boy
We Need Ecstasy and Opium in Place of Prozac and Xanax
What can doctors do to ease emotional pain? The physicians of ancient and medieval times found many plants and plant-derived substances (ie, drugs) that soothed mental as well as physical ills. Rarely did they draw a line between the psychological and physiological benefits...
What Does It Take for Activists to Get Your Attention?
For major protests today, it is standard to have a media strategy. For example, there can be individuals assigned to media liaison. The location and timing of an action can be chosen with an eye toward media schedules. Some actions are designed specifically to attract media...
An Economy of Meaning - or Bust
What economic system designs, out of all conceivable ones, might be among the best at helping us meet real needs?
Is It Possible to Love All Humanity?
Qualities like gender, ethnicity, and nationality tend to define us more than being human. What happens when we try to identify with all of humanity?
No, You Can't ‘Be the Change’ Alone
Positive thinking may be useless or even damaging, but negative thinking is unlikely to change the world for the better.
The Innovative and Creative Power of ADHD
One psychologist argues that we should consider people with ADHD to be highly imaginative people rather than people with a learning disability.
The Ferguson Syllabus
On the heels of the open letter signed by over 1,400 sociologists in the wake of the police killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown, the newly formed group Sociologists for Justice has released a list of published research that inf
Just Stop Talking About Race!!
Does talking about racism perpetuate racism?
The Problem With Society Isn't Greed. Greed Is a Symptom of a Deep Need Going Unfulfilled
A lot of people reacted to my comment on Facebook the other day that greed is more a symptom than a cause of our current system, with all its inequities. I’m asked, What is the cause of greed? First I’ll say what I think greed is: Greed is the insatiabl
No Tech Solutions for Poverty, Says Former Microsoft Researcher
I founded Tiny Spark
7 Ways to Support Friends When They're Mentally Unwell
Most of us will experience a mental health difficulty like depression, anxiety or addiction during our lives. And at some point, most of us will have a friend or family member who is mentally unwell.
Big Idea: We need a New Science of Physical Economics
It’s time we put economics into some sort of physical scientific context that makes sense.
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.  
The Faux Revolution of Mindfulness
McMindfulness is the new capitalist spirituality.