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Beware! Evil Is Something That Ordinary People Can Easily Do

“Evil is something that ordinary people do, not something that only special people do.” — Roy Baumeister I want to begin with a story that has stayed with me for years because it unsettles a myth we like to believe about ourselves as people. A dear friend—an exceedingly good man and a trusted leader—once told me that he had been a participant in the obedience experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram. You’ve likely heard of these studies but hearing them through the voice of s

Jan 307 min read

How Do You Become An Ice Agent or an Anti-Ice Protestor? Us or Them? You Could Be Either More Easily Than You Think

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn One of the most dangerous myths we carry is the belief that evil lives somewhere else—in other people, other nations, other eras of history. It is comforting, but it is not true. What social psychology, history, and lived experience tell us—again and again—is that the capacity for cruelty and the capacity for courage live side by side in all of us. Which one emerges often dep

Jan 285 min read

Figuring Out Where You Stand During Turbulent Times: Nash and King Can Still Help Us

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” — Martin Luther King Jr. The Interfaith Justice Coalition is inviting me and others in the area to attend a candlelight vigil tonight for Alex Pretti. I am mulling over where I stand during this turbulent time. What wisdom do I draw on? Two stories, two incidents, from the sixties help. They were incidents that happened in my memory of the Civil Rights era that seem to rise

Jan 269 min read

Beware: The Intelligence Story We Get Wrong — and the Future We Can Lose If We Believe It

"It’s not our abilities that limit us — it’s the ceilings we agree to ." Dr. Ellen Langer (born March, 1947, researcher, author, Harvard professor) "The idea that the brain is fixed in adulthood is not only wrong - it is dangerous." Dr. Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself "Your brain is changing every moment - and you are the architect." Richard Davidson (neuroscientist, University of Wisconsin - Madison) This blog is different from my usual. I'm going to go on a ra

Oct 23, 20256 min read