Sunday, December 29, 2013

We’re The Good Guys | Antiwar.com Original Articles

We’re The Good Guys | Antiwar.com Original Articles:

it is hard to be a good guy when you are killing American citizens without any trial and wiping out wedding parties
Professor Michael Brenner provides a partial explanation for how otherwise sensible and moral people can be delusional about America’s role in the world. He describes it as "Ur Imperialism," a process whereby the public comes to believe certain things both about itself and the actions of its government and is resistant to alternative explanations. Brenner does not use the phrase "American Exceptionalism," but that is perhaps another bumper sticker expression that suggests the same mindset.
Brenner describes the core value of imperialism as being "permissive of actions directed at taking charge of others without their approval." He identifies a number of features of the imperialist mindset, to include "a strong sense of superiority," "a predisposition for intervention" that is largely unrelated to the cause of the intervention, comfort "with taking charge of other people," "an absence of empathy," and an inability to accept resistance or rebellion by someone being dominated as anything but "ingratitude." He also notes an inability to put oneself in anyone else’s shoes and cites the example of Iraq, where the involvement of coreligionist and neighbor Iran was denounced as destabilizing while the US dominance was considered somehow both acceptable and appropriate.


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Thursday, December 26, 2013

What We’re Reading and Writing » TripleCrisis

What We’re Reading and Writing » TripleCrisis:

The world is experiencing three simultaneous crises in finance, development, and the environment.  A number of economists are questioning the mainstream narratives and analyses of these crises.  Some of us have joined to create the Triple Crisis Blog to contribute to a more open and global dialogue around these three crises. - See more at: http://triplecrisis.com/about/#sthash.lQdCXTtR.dpuf


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Monday, December 16, 2013

A guide to happiness

Best practice: happiness!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom | Farnam Street

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom | Farnam Street:

Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994
I’m going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom—a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way.
And therefore, the talk is sort of along the lines that some behaviorist psychologists call Grandma’s rule after the wisdom of Grandma when she said that you have to eat the carrots before you get the dessert.
The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. After all, the theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you’re going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.
So, emphasizing what I sometimes waggishly call remedial worldly wisdom, I’m going to start by waltzing you through a few basic notions.

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