Monday, January 12, 2026
national amnesia............
It’s difficult to think of a more divisive way of addressing sensitive personnel issues, but many power bases in America had been infected with the idea that discrimination on behalf of some racial and ethnic groups was not only permissible, but commendable. A common message on campuses was that discrimination against whites, and particularly white males, was necessary to eliminate imbalances.
These beliefs, which would never have been accepted by the nation which embraced the “no one should be subjected to racial discrimination” message of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, amazingly caught hold. It was as if there was national amnesia. They were soon joined by programs that were less focused on behavior – a clear and measurable standard – than on the far more intangible and elusive issue of feelings.
-Michael Wade, from here
secure.....................
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exultation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is—is nothing, yet at the same time one with everything.
-Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
curiously........................
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-Carl Rogers, as quoted here
navigating the social world..........
My hypothesis is that psychology usually operates close to the boundary between science and baloney sandwich. The reason is that all of us believe in some sort of folk psychology. In order to navigate the social world, we have to try to predict how other people will behave. We necessarily formulate psychological theories. We end up judging an academic’s psychological theory by how well it aligns with our personal folk psychology. This creates a playing field on which it is hard to tell by the uniform who is on the scientific team and who isn’t. It is likely that none of us are fully on the scientific team.
-Arnold Kling, from here
the best test of truth............
Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment
-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, from this dissent
A conversation between...................
............John Mayard Keynes and Swiss banker Felix Somary (according to Somary) in April of 1928:
Keynes asked me what I was advising clients. 'To insulate themselves as much as possible from the coming crisis, and to avoid the markets,' I replied.
Keynes took the opposite view. 'We will not have any more crashes in our time', he insisted, and asked me in detail for my opinions about individual companies.
'I think the market is very appealing and prices are low,' said Keynes. 'And where is the crash coming from in any case?'
'The crash will come from the gap between appearances and reality. I have never seen such stormy weather gathering,' I said.
-Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
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