- Oct 2023
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www.ted.com www.ted.com
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Boroditsky, Lera. How Language Shapes the Way We Think. Streaming Video. TED | TEDWomen 2017, 2017. https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think.
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- Aug 2023
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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Meador, Jake. “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” The Atlantic, July 29, 2023. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-church-communitiy-participation-drop/674843/.
Meador looks at how churches might offer better community as a balm to W.E.I.R.D. lifeways and toxic capitalism.
Why must religion be the source for these communal and social supports? Why can't alternate social structures or institutions handle these functions?
Is this why the religious right is also so heavily opposed to governmental social support programs? Are they replacing some of the needs and communal desires people in need have? Why couldn't increased governmental support programs be broader and more holistic in their leanings to cover not only social supports, but human contact and community building as well.
Do some of these tensions between a mixed W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D Americans cause a lot of the split political identities we see in the last few decades? What is the balm for this during the transition?
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Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
Extreme focus on financial and professional success has driven people to give less time to communal spaces and experiences including religious life.
Is this specific to America's brand of toxic capitalism or do other WEIRD economies experience this?
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- May 2023
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) countries
I love this acronym!
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- Oct 2021
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www.psychologicalscience.org www.psychologicalscience.org
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IJzerman, H., Dutra, N., Silan, M., Adetula, A., Brown, D. M. B., & Forscher, and P. (2021). Psychological Science Needs the Entire Globe. APS Observer, 34(5). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/global-psych-science
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- May 2021
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journals.plos.org journals.plos.org
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As one of the authors recently pointed out [2], the cognitive demands on a person in a low-tech, paleolithic environment equal or exceed the cognitive loads placed on members of industrialized societies.
I'll have to bump up Tyson Yunkaporta's work on my reading list, particularly the cited text:
Yunkaporta T. Sand talk: how Indigenous thinking can save the world. Melbourne, Victoria: Text Publishing Company; 2019.
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