Robin Hood & Other Ethical Cheating
A brief exploration of the ethics of lying.
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The Functional Future
The Functional Future
(Dis)Honesty, the Documentary Movie – Notes
Humans are liars. A great deal of scientific research demonstrates that most people lie, especially under the “right” circumstances. Do a search for Dan Ariely, a Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, and you will find many mainstream press articles summarizing his work. This article is about the documentary, (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About
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Great Talk: Real Communication and the Empathy Dialog
Competency in basic relationship skills is a key component of moving from our dysfunctional status quo to a future of thriving on one planet’s worth of resources (one planet thriving). Building relationships and community are two necessary social technologies. The heart of these social technologies is dealing with reality instead of using avoidance. Being able
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The Four Horsemen of a Relationship Apocalypse
John Gottman’s Four Horsemen of a Relationship Apocalypse are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Replace these with healthy halos — complaints, self-compassion, realistic thinking, and negotiated breaks — for a better relationship.
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Levels of Resilience: Eggs in one basket?
How resilient do you want to be? Spread your bets among 6 levels of resilience according to how probable a particular worldview is and how confident you are about that probability.
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The Great Courses: Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations – Notes
Humans have been on the planet for 3 million years (Homo habilis), 2 million years (Homo erectus) or 200,000 years (Homo sapiens sapiens) depending on what you want to call “human”. The structure and organization of life we know as “civilization” has been around for about 8,000 years. It took us about 8,000 years to discover that our modern way of life, as possibly civilization, itself, is unsustainable (meaning that it will end). Perhaps we might consider the fact that for 96% to 99.6% of human existence (190,000 to 2.9 million years) we lived sustainably on one planet’s worth of resources. What lessons might we learn from our history to guide us once again to sustainable lifestyles, or, even better, thriving on one planet? Because writing, itself, developed with the lifestyle we call “civilization”, we never did have anything like a written owner’s manual for how our ancestors lived sustainably for so much time. Hopefully, archeology, anthropology, and related fields of study will help us create one. These are my notes from a course that may provide some clues.
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A History of the World in 100 Objects – Notes
Note: I am working on this post off-and-on right now so it is not yet complete. My motivation for diving into history is to understand how we can evolve our current culture towards one that is consistent with one planet thriving which includes the synergy between individual wellbeing, connected relationships, healing our politics, and healing
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“The Great Reckoning” by Davidson and Rees-Mogg – Notes
Short Summary The economy is bad and getting worse. Put money in diverse assets (including 5-10% in gold and silver) and insurance in multiple countries. Be prepared for government services to be provided privately (e.g., water, education, security). Divest yourself of investment real estate, especially in large cities. For maximum safety move to small, rural
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Willie Smits Restoring the World: One rainforest and village at a time
Willie Smits, born in the Netherlands but living in (and citizen of) Indonesea for the past 35 years, works in tropical Indonesia to re-establish not only forests which then increase rainfall by 25% (using only 5,000 acres) but also to re-establish the communities of people needed to make those forests permanent. Resources to learn more
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Adverse Childhood Experiences: Role in Health
What happens if we can eliminate a child’s experience of (1) crime in the home, (2) neglect, and (3) abuse (physical, mental, and sexual)? We see reductions in a host of health problems these early stressors cause with rates of return on our investment of up to 150%. Among the problems that can be reduced
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