The Psychology of...

Have you ever learned something that was so basic you were embarrassed to admit that you just learned it? I just had one of those experiences in my study of ideologies and I have to admit I feel sort of dumb admitting it. You see, I always thought that the word ideology came from 'idea' and that ideologies were just a belief system to make sense of a basic idea, a lens through which we can see and interpret the otherwise extremely complicated world. I thought that the name of the game was finding an ideology that best fit you and then working towards making it reality. Image from The Blog of the APA That is until I made a rather obvious observation that the route word for ideology is not 'idea' it's 'ideal'. This makes a big difference. Ideologies are systems to promote and achieve a certain ideal . It's saying, I know what heaven is and I am going to try and make everyone else go there. Still, might not sound that bad. But there are some inher...

I recently listened to an episode of Sam Harris' Waking Up podcast in which he had a discussion with ex-white nationalist Christian Picciolini. They discuss Christian's drastic 180 from leading a neo-nazi skin head group to his extremely important anti-hate activism. The interview is a must listen so I will post a link here. https://samharris.org/podcasts/121-white-power/ Christian warns us that much of the left's counterattacks on white nationalists is backfiring. He argues that in the same way that the "War on Terror" lead to the development of ISIS and further cases of terrorism, the violence and marginalization of young, fairly moderate white males is making them more vulnerable to white nationalist ideologies. Screaming from the extremes isn't working. He advocates that we need to start in the middle (we all want better jobs, better health, kids to be happy) in order to humanize each other. Jon Haidt teaches us that through more interpersonal, cross-...

Parenting. We've been doing it since the beginning of humanity. Or have we? The concept of parenting has really only existed since the 1970s. It was when "experts" like myself realized they could make some money of something that pretty much everyone was doing. We could monetize one of the most vulnerable aspects of human life. The shame of being a bad parent or even worse.... being perceived as a bad parent. Think about it. I don't "brother" my sister. I don't "husband" my wife. The word parent denotes a relationship, not a verb or task. Before the experts introduced this word into our vocabulary we loved, and cared for, and disciplined, and guided, but we didn't call it "parenting". So what's the big deal? Alison Gopnik wrote a book called "The Gardener and the Carpenter" which, full disclosure, I haven't yet read. But I did listen to an interview with her done by the NPR show "Hidden Brain"...

Myths throughout time and across cultures curiously share common characters, themes, and narratives. We call these "archetypes" which exist because they are shared across humanity. There is debate as to whether this is due to there being an original story that was told to the first humans who then perpetuated these themes through history or if there is just something remarkably and transcendentally human about them. Maybe it's both. Either way, one of the most salient and common archetypal myths is the "hero's journey". It's a story that has been retold countless times in recent let alone ancient history. There is an ordinary, soon-to-be hero that receives a call to action. The hero must leave the "normal world" for an extraordinary one. S/he (although mythologically speaking it's usually a he) encounters a mentor of some kind who tests him. He experiences some kind of temptation or weakness, encounters the perceivably insurmountable be...

We are living in a politically polarized world. It's not the first time and it's probably not even as bad as it has been in the past but with internet and an information overload that is unique to human history, there is now a positive feedback loop of bias confirming "facts" on each side of the political spectrum driving people further and further from the chances of finding common ground. I recently hosted an event where three individuals vying for the leadership of a provincial party answered questions from the audience. I was terrified that nobody would ask any questions and my event would have looked elementary (I did host it in an elementary school though so perhaps there was no escaping that perception). In order to ensure that there were ample questions I made a mad dash, asking any question that came to my mind. It wasn't until I returned home that night that I realized I missed a huge opportunity to ask questions that I believed were of extreme importa...

The universe is incomprehensibly vast, Earth is densely populated, and the internet is overloaded with people trying to be seen through desperate posts and attention grabbing (not unlike this blog). It's hard enough to stand out and have an impact at work let alone in your community, country, or planet. Even the greatest minds in history have only marginally nudged humanity in one way or another. The most powerful people in the world right now still don't have enough influence to significantly shift mankind's trajectory on their own. So in the rock concert that is the world how are we supposed to whisper our way to any sort of relevance in the history books? What meaning can any of our individual lives truly have? In some ways, especially if we're looking at things from an individualistic lens, we can't really derive a whole lot of meaning from our lives on our own. That's one of the fatal flaws of the rampant individualism of our society today. It's doom...

I'm a sucker for these "pop" psychologists. They take solid psychological research and then package it in an easily digestible message for us dummies. One of the more recent psychology superstars on the scene is Adam Grant. He's only a few years older than I am and has already acclaimed national recognition as a top educator, written three smash-hit books, and has done consultation work for companies like Google and the NBA. To top it off he just recently launched a podcast through TED called Work Life which I'm certain is going to be fantastic. At the time of writing this post there has only been one episode but it's worth checking it out. In this episode, Adam interviews some folks that he wrote about in his best-selling book Originals (or it could have been Give and Take but I'm pretty sure it was Originals ). One person he interviewed in particular was billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund. One of the key...