Here we have the themes of impending catastrophe, warfare, and paranoia. Advocates of geoengineering are vilified, their motives suspect. Pragmatic explorations are redefined as ideologies. So what’s the deal?
Indignation is pretty much a knee-jerk reaction to perceived injustice and is associated with a desire to punish the guilty party. The guilty party may be seen as having too much of a good thing or too little of a bad thing.
Right now there are about 3 US workers for every retiree. By 2050, there will be 2 workers for every retiree. Also by 2050, the U.S. proportion of GDP spent on just Social Security and Medicare is projected to rise from 8.6% today to 11.5% if no changes are made in these programs.
No one likes being told they're an ideologue or that their profound observations are profoundly ideological.
Thing is, what gets you in isn't what keeps you there. The hardest part is to jump in. To place yourself within a new web of experience and influence. If monetary incentives are what it takes to make you jump, so be it. New reasons for being there will unfold as new rewards are discovered.
The effects of self-determined actions and non-actions come with varying degrees of certainty, immediacy, importance, magnitude, and vividness, as do the effects of restricting self-determined actions and non-actions.
Many employers have reported delaying capital investments because they haven't been able to find enough workers who would be able to operate and trouble-shoot their fancy new machines and equipment.
Unfortunately, new generations of Americans are falling even further behind. Despite unending school reform and the expansion of adult basic education, literacy levels of young adults are lower today than they were a decade ago.
As with the education premium, so with inequality. They have risen together.
What I found with many adult clients reading at the "basic" level (roughly, between 6th and 8th grade level) was that with intensive basic skills training, they could improve their skills even further. If they didn't have a GED, they could get one with sufficient preparation. If they already had a GED or high school diploma, they could complete vocational training or a community college program.
Roughly 45 million US adults read below the 5th grade level, including 19% of high school graduates and half of adults under the poverty line .
The downside of living in such an interconnected universe is vulnerability. Between the psychological harm subtly inflicted years ago by our nonmindful parents, to lack of inner harmony and connection with others, to the myriad of “toxins” in our environment, the world is a dangerous place.
Two recent studies compared magical thinking in mindfulness meditators and non-meditators. Meditators scored significantly higher in magical thinking than non-meditators. The study authors suggested two possible reasons for this difference between groups: the mindfulness meditators came from a Buddhist tradition that incorporated magical ideas; and/or mindfulness is associated with greater open-mindedness.
...if the point is to be non-judgmental, non-reactive, and simply aware in the moment, focused on your breath, then interrupted thoughts or feelings may just be a casualty of the practice...
The Harm Principle: "We should allow rational people to be self-determining, except possibly where autonomy should be restricted if, by doing so, we act to prevent harm to others." Don Berkich
How do we prioritize moral principles when they’re in conflict with each other? Why that way and not another way?
Activated brain areas included the insula and amygdala, which are associated with subjective “gut feelings”, disgust, reaction to norm violations, threat detection, and evaluation of trustworthiness.
Most of the individuals I’ve focused on have given some thought to this challenge and formulated basic principles on how to approach the possibility of a changing climate: keep energy cheap, reliable and widely available; focus on adaptation rather than mitigation; and, let the market do the heavy lifting. I submit it is these principles rather than “denying” climate change that elicits so much vilification from environmental activists and the progressive community.
In the past few posts I focused on 11 individuals who have been labeled deniers. As it turns out, only one of these individuals flat-out denies the existence of climate change. The others acknowledge global warming but express uncertainty about the causes, rate, magnitude, or impact of climate change.
Various public figures have been labeled climate change deniers. What are their actual positions on climate change?