All posts tagged: human nature

A Poem by Diane Seuss: ‘Nature Which Cannot Be Driven To’

A Poem by Diane Seuss: ‘Nature Which Cannot Be Driven To’

Published by skeptic

Illustration by Akaterini Gegisian March 20, 2024, 8:50 AM ET To drive to it is to drive through it.Like a stalker, it is in the back seat of the car.It’s in the passenger seat, and the wires of the radio.You want to think of it as a destination,a two-week break from purchase power.Though you have purchased much to get there.Certain shoes, with certain soles.Like an exile in a self-made skiffin the middle of a tortured sea, natureis what you have done to it.Nature is you, and the doing to it,and your platitudes, and the wishingyou could do more, or could have done more.Could have done—a part of speech referred to asa “modal of lost opportunities.” Natureis the parts of speech, having learned them,and having forgotten them. It is the singularpronoun you looking in the mirror,realizing you could have done more to hold onto your beauty. Who are you kidding?You were never beautiful. There was nothingto hold on to. Nature is how you were born,with a birthmark that blazed when you cried,centered right between your browslike …

Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of consciousness – their discoveries are troubling

Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of consciousness – their discoveries are troubling

Published by Sam

Is there a computer in your head? Detector built by the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1960s, used to construct an image of an active brain – Brookhaven National Laboratory Throughout history, attempts by mere mortals to plumb the inner recesses of the soul have been seen as hubristic. Shakespeare had Hamlet express this powerfully when he rages against those who “would pluck out the heart of my mystery”. He accuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of trying to play him like some kind of instrument, rather than treating him as a human being. “How unworthy a thing you make of me,” he chides. Today, there are no such taboos. Hamlet refers to himself metaphorically as “this little organ” but now we dissect the self by studying a very literal organ: the brain. Neuroscientists are trashing the long-held view that what lies deep inside can only be seen from within. A new exhibition at the Francis Crick Institute, chirpily titled Hello Brain!, celebrates this desecration of the psyche’s inner sanctum, revealing the many ways in which the …

Solzhenitsyn’s Warning for the United States

Solzhenitsyn’s Warning for the United States

Published by skeptic

While clearing out a storage room filled with books, I came across a slim volume, A World Split Apart, the text of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address. I remember listening to the speech at the time and being disconcerted by the petulant commentary it elicited. Solzhenitsyn had been in the United States only three years, having been expelled by the Soviet government and living as a recluse in Vermont. The consensus—certainly among the great and the good of Cambridge, Massachusetts—was that he was an ultranationalist, a reactionary, and, above all, an ingrate. At the time, I thought the reaction peevish and beside the point. Rereading the speech, it seems even more urgent that we pay heed to his excoriating critique of Western liberalism. Solzhenitsyn did misunderstand some of the key elements of Western, and specifically American, liberal democracy. He was no democrat, although he unreservedly opposed cruel and arbitrary government. It is true, too, that his deep religious faith and mystical belief in Russia’s destiny were and remain alien to most non-Russians. And it …

How to Have a Healthy Argument

How to Have a Healthy Argument

Published by skeptic

I’ve heard of three Thanksgiving plans that got canceled because of disagreements over the Israel-Gaza War. In one case, over the past few weeks, a guy watched as his brother’s wife posted pictures of cease-fire rallies on Facebook. Finally he texted her: “So you love Hamas now?” She was horrified. After doing Thanksgiving together for two decades, they will not be continuing the tradition this year. I could give you more examples of unproductive fights that ended plans, friendships, relationships, but we’ve all been there. In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, we focus less on the substance of any of those disagreements. Instead, we talk about how to disagree, on things big (a war) or small (how to load the dishwasher). Our guest is Amanda Ripley, the author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, and her suggestions work equally well in the personal or political arena. We also talk with Utah Governor Spencer Cox about his Disagree Better initiative. In 2020 Cox ran an unusual political ad in …

Did Humans Ever Live in Peace?

Did Humans Ever Live in Peace?

Published by skeptic

For millions of years, the river Ebro has sloshed south from Spain’s jagged Cantabrian Mountains, carving out a broad valley that is now home to one of the country’s most fertile wine regions. Between its sprawling vineyards, the landscape rises steeply to hilltop medieval towns. Laguardia is the best known, on account of its high walls, cobblestones, and cavernous wine cellars. But the town’s rustic grandeur conceals a deep history of violence. More than 2,000 years ago, Celtic tribes fought a decades-long series of wars in this region, part of a brutal last stand against the invading Romans—and for Laguardia, even those conflicts were of relatively recent vintage. Some years ago, just outside the town walls, workmen at a construction site were operating a bulldozer when one of them spotted bones sticking up through the disturbed earth. Archaeologists were dispatched to the scene. Careful brushwork revealed not one human skeleton but 90, along with pieces of more than 200 others, all dated to a little more than 5,000 years ago. A new analysis of the …

Netanyahu’s Dark Worldview – The Atlantic

Netanyahu’s Dark Worldview – The Atlantic

Published by skeptic

On Sunday, just before heading to the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Elon Musk in San Francisco. Their livestreamed rendezvous held obvious appeal for both men. The embattled Netanyahu would get to show his voters that he could command the attention of the world’s richest man. Musk would get to show the world that he had a Jewish friend, days after getting caught up in an anti-Semitism scandal on his social-media platform. The meeting was, essentially, a glorified photo op. That’s how it started, at least. At the outset, Netanyahu called Musk the “Edison of our time.” Musk returned the favor by not challenging Netanyahu’s insistence that his proposed judicial reforms—which have provoked the largest protest movement in Israel’s history—would make the country a “stronger democracy.” (“Sounds good,” the mogul replied.) The two men discussed their shared love of books and then, after about 40 minutes, wrapped up their exchange, at which point most people tuned out. But that’s precisely when things got interesting. Yair Rosenberg: Elon Musk among the anti-Semites Musk …

Can the M.F.A. Survive ChatGPT?

Can the M.F.A. Survive ChatGPT?

Published by skeptic

No question is more dreadfully pretentious than “What is art?” except possibly “Can you come see my one-person show?” Yet I’ve accepted that at some point in the course of a life, both will need to be answered. Because I’m a writer facing the advent of ChatGPT, the time for the first question is now. Most people (including some writers themselves) forget that creative writing is an art form. I suspect that this is because, unlike music or painting or sculpture or dance—for which rare natural aptitude straight away separates practitioners from appreciators—writing is something that everyone does and that many people believe they do well. I have been at parties with friends who are dancers, comedians, visual artists, and musicians, and I have never witnessed anyone say to them, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Yet I can scarcely meet a stranger without hearing about how they have “always wanted to write a novel.” Their novel is unwritten, they seem to believe, not for lack of talent or honed skill, but simply for lack …

Life Has Always Been a Performance

Life Has Always Been a Performance

Published by skeptic

Copies can be so much more appealing than their originals: Think of Andy Warhol’s silk-screened prints of Elizabeth Taylor and Mao Zedong and Jacqueline Kennedy, his hand-painted reproductions of Campbell’s soup cans. The title of Nothing Special, the Irish writer Nicole Flattery’s new novel, is itself a copy, derived, as Flattery has said, from an idea that Warhol once dreamed up for an unproduced talk show called The Nothing Special, which he envisioned to be about, well, nothing in particular. One can imagine an editor coolly slicing off the the of the original title from Flattery’s manuscript, imbuing it with that kind of muted disaffection that has become something of a trend among recent books by young Irish women writers, such as Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times. Unlike those works, though, Flattery’s novel—her first, following her 2019 short-story collection, Show Them a Good Time—looks to the past, taking place in the New York City of the 1960s and, later, the early 2010s. We follow Mae, the working-class daughter of a waitress, …