Empathy is natural in human beings, as Jeremy Rifkin has pointed out – and with strong backing by recent scientific findings. Some human beings have more and some less; and some are sociopaths – roughly 1% (and usually, the ones who gravitate to positions of wealth and power, unsurprisingly) –
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Dead Wild Roses: Our Families, Technology and Having the ‘Right’ Experience
We can lump this video in with the others that attempt to shed light on issues in society that matter while discreetly hawking their wares in the background. The best form of advertising? I’m not sure, but the commercial makes space for some thinking about how generational experiences are becoming
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Opposite of Addiction is Connection
Recently I posted a quote from John Hari on addiction. See it here. I’ve also updated the post to include the video below as well. What is detailed in this TED talk is idea that we should punish and isolate addicts from society. This idea, according to Hari is about
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Michael Kimmel – On Gender and Privilege
I’m reading Kimmel’s book GuyLand and I shudder to think of what I would be if I had engaged in the sort of crap that constitutes the typical male maturation process. Filed under: Social Science Tagged: Gender, Privilege, Sociology
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: RSA Animate – The ABC’s of Persuasion
We have not featured an RSA animate here at DWR like forever, so here we go a quick hit in the qualities of persuasion you should have. Filed under: Social Science Tagged: ABC’s of Persuasion, RSA Animate, Sociology
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Social Maps of Cities – David Troy
Interesting vid from TED about the social composition of cities. I would have liked David to get into a little more detail about the methodology used to create his pretty maps. Filed under: Social Science Tagged: Maps, Sociology
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: All Hail the Mugs of Heteronormativity!
Talk about unintended veracity. Fascinating don’t you think? Consider the neat way this dovetails into how relationships in our society are structured and the expectations placed upon those who are male and those who are female. Pro-tip: The deformed cup or one that isn’t complete without the other is
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Capitalism – “Breaking” Cultural Norms (Ochobo) by Reinforcing Them.
From Sociological Images Micheal Lozano – […] Japanese fast-food has found a way to bypass the cultural stigmas that impede their profits. One food chain noticed many women would not buy their biggest-sized burgers. The culprit was ochobo, a Japanese custom that prevents women from opening their mouth widely
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Are You a Pusher?
A pox on you Game of Thrones for pushing my summer reading to the margins. Just look at the great stuff that has been gathering dust in my book-pile. This is an excerpt from Susan Brownmiller’s work titled “Femininity”. “Nancy Henley, psychologist and author of Body Politics, has written, “In
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Girls View Sexual Violence as Normal – AKA Rape Culture.
The really bestest-awesomest part of discussing rape culture with dudes (and select handmaidens of the patriarchy) is their abject denial of rape culture. Yet, objectively, the culture we live in is a rape culture and this study adds even more support to what many feminists have been saying
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Girls View Sexual Violence as Normal – AKA Rape Culture.
The really bestest-awesomest part of discussing rape culture with dudes (and select handmaidens of the patriarchy) is their abject denial of rape culture. Yet, objectively, the culture we live in is a rape culture and this study adds even more support to what many feminists have been saying
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: When Blog Comment Spam Goes Bad
You know you want it! Someone really crossed the line from whoops, to nuclear codes. One of the15,000 weekly blog spam comments that never make it to the human eyes stage on this website, accidentally made it through. Sadly, it is a compendium of all the kinds of faux-sincere blog
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Reflections on Chartres Cathedral, the death of civilization and the deification of the banal
Thinking of Chartres Cathedral, I ask myself, what, if anything, have we built in the past eight centuries, that compares to this? The iPad, computers, cell phones, the internet? Are you kidding me? You must be joking. We have more ways to amuse ourselves, yes, but when has our
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: University Advice: Never forget than boys and girls can never just be friends.
Ever wonder what it’s like being female and living through what women are expected to deal with? A small peek into some of the happenings in the grand adventure of being human and female all at the same time. “When I was seventeen and preparing to leave for university, my
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Advertising, bondage and consumerism
I turn off the mute on the radio, to check if the nauseating ads are finished and we can get back to the music, and I hear, “New York steak…” – so I mute it again immediately; and I think: Advertising = the intensification and multiplication of human wants and
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Building Trust – Sliding Door Moments
Building a good relationship doesn’t happen in an instant. The good relationship requires a stream of small, often seemingly inconsequential, choices that build attunement empathy and sensitivity to your partner’s (and yours) need. John Gottman describes the process and also touches on the idea the CL-Alt which can start a
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The rise of Bitcoin: and the challenge to the global domination of big money
The following article was written on October 25. I wanted to read it over once more before publishing it, then got busy with other things and forgot about it. In the roughly six weeks that have passed since the writing of this article, the Bitcoin prices have gone from roughly
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Marriage Behaviours that Destroy Marriages.
I thought I’d share some useful advice about relationships and marriage. It will be familiar reading to those who have taken sociology of the family. Enjoy. “John Gottman’s FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE John Gottman, Ph.D., is a well respected psychologist and marriage researcher who reports that an unhappy marriage
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: New studies show babies have basically decent impulses and are strongly driven by moral imperatives
More research shows once again that compassion, empathy and mutual aid, and an instinct toward cooperation, are innate in human beings, confirming what the great Russian biologist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin had already amply demonstrated over a hundred years ago, in his monumental work, Mutual Aid. My but our
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: NAFTA, “Free Trade” and the TPP: Fast-Track To Full Corporate Rule
“Twenty years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law. At the time, advocates painted a rosy picture of booming U.S. exports creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and economic development in Mexico, which would bring the struggling country in line with its wealthier northern
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