Why, for instance, do men and women fatten differently, and in very different places? Why do boys gain muscle and lose fat when they go through puberty while girls gain fat and do so in specific places (hips, buttocks, breasts)? Why do women gain fat as they go through menopause, the experience Newburgh and his followers wrote off to bonbons, bridge parties, and self-indulgence? Why do people get fat in some places (double chins, love handles) and not others? What about fatty tumors known as lipomas? Why do these benign fat deposits hold on to their fat even during starvation?
It is well known in the psychological literature that humans have great difficulty with “if” in an abstract setting. A simple conditional like “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other” tends to make the human mind seize up, when questions are asked as to what evidence is relevant to the truth of the conditional. It is found, however, that performance miraculously improves if the conditional is cast in a semilegal context, or permission schema, like “If a letter is sealed, it must carry a 20-cent stamp.”
“The memorable events of history,” said [Gustav] Le Bon, “are the visible effects of the invisible changes in human thought.”
A final factor in conservatives’ success was the law. In the nation-building period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American law served the large purposes of protecting the freedom of businesses to expand the economy and spread prosperity, creating a national market by removing internal barriers, aligning state laws, and easing the progress of transport, notably railways, and insulating the states of the South from federal intrusions that might threaten their legal subordination of black Southerners.
Heroism isn’t some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it’s a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.
The startling conclusion at which they had all arrived, in different ways, was this: that the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.
Western experts at first overlooked the mounting evidence that in East Asian countries “universal masking” was a key component of their successful response. Even if the data on their efficacy was not entirely clear, the public narrative about mask-wearing from the US government was fundamentally disingenuous. Officials actively discouraged the use of masks, claiming both that they were ineffective at protecting ordinary people and that they should be reserved for doctors and nurses. But if the true purpose was to avoid the hoarding of surgical masks, couldn’t the government at least have encouraged the public to make simple cloth masks at home, when no more was needed than a T-shirt and scissors?
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