Life Changes
Healing Through Storytelling: Lessons from The Odyssey
The journey of Odysseus in Homer's 'The Odyssey' offers profound insights into healing...
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- Written by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
The GOP presidential nominee's acceptance speech was a litany of fear and resentment, a dog whistle to disaffected white Americans.
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- Written by: Robert Reich
We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016 we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together. The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others out.
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- Written by: Terry S. Kogan, University of Utah
For years, transgender rights activists have argued for their right to use the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity. In recent weeks, this campaign has come to a head.
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- Written by: Liam Kennedy, University College Dublin
A visceral sense of domestic decline is coursing through contemporary American culture and politics – and it’s become one of the central themes of this year’s presidential campaign. Donald Trump in particular has used it to stoke the inchoate anger of his supporters, telling them: “Our country is falling apart. Our infrastructure is falling apart … Our airports are, like, third world.”
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- Written by: George Diepenbrock, University of Kansas
The four key elements of ethnic culture respondents mentioned were language, food, holiday celebrations, and values. As Kelly H. Chong investigated how the couples sought to preserve ethnic traditions, food and holiday celebrations were the only cultural elements passed down among generations in a concrete way.
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- Written by: Jody Agius Vallejo, University of Southern California
Luis is an upper-middle-class American-born Latino. When I interviewed him in 2008, he told me he had spent long hours, and a substantial amount of money, restoring a classic Chevy truck.
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- Written by: Victoria Law, Waging Non Violence
The Justice Department announced that nearly 6,000 people in federal prisons will be going home early. The move, U.S. officials told the Washington Post, is an effort to both reduce overcrowding and to provide relief to people who received harsh drug war sentences over the past three decades.
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- Written by: Ervin Laszlo and Kingsley L. Dennis
The new thinking we need will not emerge all at once, in one fell swoop. It will come about—and is already coming about—as contemporary thinking is increasingly questioned. There is a step before we can embrace new ideas: it is to put the old ideas on trial.
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- Written by: Sam (George T.) Crane, Williams College
In today’s China, the philosopher Confucius is back. To mark his 2,565th birthday this September, the nation’s President, Xi Jinping, paid homage to the sage at an international conference convened for the occasion.
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- Written by: Miriam Axel-Lute, YES! Magazine
What if you asked Americans in largely "red" or Republican districts and largely "blue" or Democratic districts very specific questions about what government should do—about taxes, reproductive rights, foreign affairs, and the like, and 96 percent of the time they agreed? And 69 percent of the time there wasn't even a statistically significant difference ...
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- Written by: Molly Rusk
Why did an elementary school math problem go viral? It has to do with a new set of federal education standards known as the Common Core.
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- Written by: Stephan Lewandowsky
"...the public is currently being denied the right to be fully informed about the risks it is facing. There are many reasons for this, from “doubt-mongering” to ideologically-motivated denial. We know from much research on misinformation that people cannot dismiss “noise” or misinformation unless they are given a reason to do so."
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- Written by: Lawrence Torcello, The Conversation
Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organized campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.
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- Written by: David Jay Brown
Almost all of the medical research with psychedelic drugs to date has been focused on curing diseases and treating illnesses. Little attention has been paid to the reported ability of these remarkable substances to increase human potential, and even less attention has been paid to their reputed ability to significantly enhance all aspects of human pleasure...
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- Written by: Cecile Andrews
I read a quote from Thoreau, and his words stopped me cold: "We are all schoolmasters and the universe is our school house." As Thoreau says, this is everyone's true nature — being a teacher. I don't mean the teacher who stands up in front of a classroom. I mean someone who nurtures and inspires and encourages and guides and challenges...
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- Written by: David Jay Brown
When Timothy Leary was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer at age seventy-six, he said that he was “thrilled and ecstatic” to hear that he was going die. As much as Leary loved life, he not only accepted death but also embraced it...
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- Written by: Miles Olson
The myth of progress tells a story in which everything that came before this moment is useless and obsolete. Many will agree that the idea of progress, which is the ideological underpinning of civilization, is delusional, but still wonder where does it leave us if we...
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- Written by: Seth Farber, Ph.D.
Psychiatric heretic R. D. Laing wrote, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.” In Laing’s mind normality is insanity, whereas madness may be a path to “hypersanity.”
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- Written by: Dr. Allan G. Hunter
Before we can choose productive myths for our lives we must be sure to weed out the bogus myths first. Some of these will be very deeply rooted, and therefore harder to deal with. One of the marks of a bogus myth is that it acts like carrot-and-stick persuasion. So, for example, if we take a look at some political myths, we'll see that...
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- Written by: Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
What if changing the world started with getting to know your neighbors? Cultural creatives are proving it's not just possible—it’s already happening.
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- Written by: Barbara Hand Clow
Many people are afflicted with catastrophobia — an intense fear of catastrophes. This new word is intended to name a psychological syndrome that causes individuals and societies to think an end is coming soon. Our surface minds are filled with floating images of disaster, guilt, and suffering.
