John Stuart on how cultural bias is a perpetuating force

vutran | June 2, 2021, 7:44 a.m.

“The fact of cultural bias, and how it perpetuates itself, is easily extrapolated from the specific case Mill was arguing against to many similar power dynamics throughout history. One group has power. They justify that power as being natural in order to keep it. That idea of naturalness becomes part of the cultural rhetoric and becomes the lens through which the powerless are viewed. The powerless struggle to change because before they can attain rights they have to change the cultural narrative.

When we take away someone’s freedom to choose where they can best contribute based on cultural biases, it does not benefit society as a whole. It does us no good “to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black instead of white, or a commoner instead of a nobleman, shall decide the person’s position through all of life.”

— John Stuart on cultural bias 

Jonh Stuart On what we lose in inequality

vutran | June 2, 2021, 7:41 a.m.

“Humans face enough natural challenges, that to cut ourselves off from any part of the available pool of brainpower costs society timely and insightful solutions to our problems—solutions that may be better than the existing ones.” 

— Jonh Stuart

Fryer on persuading people on intellectual basis alone is not enough

vutran | June 2, 2021, 7:39 a.m.

Conventional rhetoric. In the business world, this typically takes the form of PowerPoint slides filled with bulleted facts and statistics. It’s an intellectual process. But it is problematic, because while you’re trying to persuade your audience, they are arguing with you in their heads. McKee says, “If you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve only done so on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone”

— Fryer 

Shane Parrish On when we are free

vutran | June 1, 2021, 8:09 p.m.

“You’re free when no one can buy your time.” 

— Shane Parrish

Esther Perel On the way differences expressed makes all the differences

vutran | June 1, 2021, 7:46 a.m.

"When people grow apart it’s not because they have a difference of opinion necessarily, because some couples have major differences in opinion but they continue to remain deeply connected, curious about each other, respectful of who they are, and they’re not threatened by the difference of the other basically. In other couples, the slightest difference is World War III. It’s not in the difference itself, it’s in the way that people experience the difference."

— Esther Perel

Antoine de Saint‐Exupery On when we know we achieve perfection

vutran | June 1, 2021, 7:44 a.m.

“You know you’ve achieved perfection, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing to take away”

— Antoine de Saint‐Exupery

William Deresiewicz On listening to our own thinking

vutran | May 31, 2021, 8:40 p.m.

When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else. 

That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.” Notice that he uses the word lead. Leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.” 

— William Deresiewicz