A few decades ago I watched a video in a class about a Black female musician answering the question how to stop all the racism and sexism in songs at a time when Eminem was using the “N” word liberally. She said she doesn’t waste her efforts on stopping others:
Continue readingTag: Persuasion
A Puff of Absurdity: Art to Guide the Masses
Can sitcoms save the day? Back in the 80s, there was a very funny show about a detective agency, Moonlighting. It was a take on the classic enemies-to-lovers trope with a very prim and efficient Maddie Hayes up against the fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants David Addison. Of course the two fall in love. In
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Just Safe Stories
Will re-branding Covid help people start acting to protect themselves from it? Maybe we need an ad campaign to kick-start public health. Outside of judicial rulings and before marketing, we had religious leaders to remind us to the best ways to survive, and before that we had stories passed down
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Legislating Kindness
If kind, other-centred behaviour isn’t entirely natural to us, then should it be legislated (more than it already is)? Many old timey philosophers agree that happiness is predicated on an increase in pleasure and decrease in pain, and that just seem like common sense. Yet all too often the choices
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Culture of Uncare or Pandemic of Inhumanity
Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe coined the term “culture of uncare” to explain intentional efforts to sever links from one another and from the environment. She calls it “severing links,” but the word that comes to mind is alienation. We’ve been alienated from our environment, from our work, from others, and from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Compassion Challenge
One of my favourite short stories is Tolstoy’s “The Godson.” It’s the story I revisit whenever I find myself thinking that this whole world has turned a wrong corner. I’ve changed a few details to make this super-abridged version make sense, taking out all the hows and whys of it
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: For all the Fierce Raindrops: Lessons that Should Have Been Learned
Changing minds on big issues takes a long time and the work never ends. Anti-drinking and driving groups appeared in the early 1980s, like MADD, typically made up of survivors or relatives of victims who saw first hand that something must be done to prevent so many disabilities and deaths.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Manufacturing Consent to Spread SARS-CoV-2
Like the political/media machine convinced citizens that invading Iraq was necessary, we’re being convinced to spread a virus that will come back to destroy our own lives. Yesterday, Arijit Chakravarty, who specializes in applying mathematical modeling to drug discovery and development, and Martha Lincoln, assistant professor of cultural and medical
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Hope or Doom: Can’t it be Both?
There’s a new type of minimizer article out about climate change: concern with it indicates a mental health disorder! It’s the same tactic people use to get the public to ignore the ongoing Covid virus. Check out Monbiot’s comments on this article. And then there’s the learn to live with
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Changing the Atmosphere
A.R. Moxon wrote about an interaction with an old friend, he calls Stove Minivan, who became a MAGA guy. At first Moxon tried to explain reality to him, but soon became frustrated: “Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Conformity Experiments
This image comes from a century ago, of course. It’s still very hard to be different, but sometimes it’s vital. When I taught a course called the Challenge of Change, I offered up a number of challenges along the way. Students who were uncomfortable participating in any of them
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Prosocial Cuing
Saving another thread from twitter, this time it’s a really short one from Dr. Lisa Iannattone: “I’m a little confused at the ‘making people feel bad about how their choices harm others is bad advocacy’ takes. Didn’t we do that with smoking? Wasn’t the ‘secondhand smoke kills’ education campaign exactly
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Unmasked People, Unmasked in Their Own Way
I think masks separate us like the families in Tolstoy’s famous opening line of Anna Karenina. You know the one: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Everyone I’ve met who wears a mask does it for more or less the same reasons:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Polite Request is NOT a Mandate.
A few parents are upset that I’m trying to “bring back masks” in schools. Some have threatened to take their kids out of our board if we force masks on them again. The motion I presented last Monday very carefully tried to assure people that I don’t want to force
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: An Ask to Mask in Class
Here’s a run-down of presenting a motion to request that students masks if they can, two weeks ago, and the final motion that was passed last night. It’s been picked up by City News, CTV News video, CTV News article, CBC News, and NewsTalk 1010. Some of the articles present it as if it’s
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Big Con – Time to Wise Up
A great quote, but unlikely from Mark Twain. From @1goodtern: Have you ever known someone find it impossible to realise and admit they were the victim of a scam? We’re seeing it now with hundred of millions of people refusing to admit they’ve been taken in by a public
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Being a Gadfly or Just a Bitch
Or perhaps we should be casual observers watching the end without comment. Hmmm…. A few years ago, a friend with a similar house as mine in a similar neighbourhood complimented my laundry line, but bemoaned the fact that it wouldn’t be possible for her to have one. As I provided
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Climate Comedies
I caught Al Franken and David Letterman’s Funny or Die series on climate change: Boiling the Frog. It’s vaguely informative and not particularly funny, but fans of either guy might be willing to check it out. They focus on what their children and grandchildren will have to live with, and
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Century of the Self – A Brief History of Psychoanalysis and Corporate Control
I just watched this four-hour doc on propaganda and social change and how we’re swimming in Freudian concepts like it or not. It’s older (2002), but it’s compelling viewing useful to weed out the ideas of Freud from those of his followers. My notes&nb…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Century of the Self – A Brief History of Psychoanalysis and Corporate Control
I just watched this four-hour doc on propaganda and social change and how we’re swimming in Freudian concepts like it or not. It’s older (2002), but it’s compelling viewing useful to weed out the ideas of Freud from those of his followers. My notes&nb…
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