Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
I feel that this statement is the. tool to create the most change for our world as it stands today. We at the end of the day are all human.
The roots of democracy are fundamentally grounded in mutual respect, personal responsibility, and social accountability. Yet democracy is also about giving each person a dignified voice in the decision-making processes in those institutions that guide and regulate their lives.
Today, this feels untrue of the economy and societies we live in. We are corrupted sheep being herded by social media, greedy corporations and twisted public figures. We hear what we want to hear. We believe as citizens we are being heard. This is not the realistic way of life as we know it.
When I examine the present state of American democracy, I believe we are living in one of the most terrifying moments in the history of this nation. We are experiencing a lethal and unprecedented linkage of relative economic decline (i.e., working-class wage stagnation), cultural decay, and political lethargy
In this trying time, I've never have agreed with something so saddening. This statement seems to be true no matter your political affiliations, beliefs or morals.
They failed to see how technology would not change who we are fundamentally—it could only map onto existing human characteristics.
This is something I discuss quite often. With newer generations growing up online with social media platforms like instagram, it's almost become apart of the individual themselves. A lot of people see others and themselves based on views, posts, likes, likability. Personality has become less about innate and nurtured features, but pleasing and likable unrealistic features.
that humans are wired to respond to emotional triggers and share misinformation if it reinforces existing beliefs and prejudices
This comment is very interesting because although it is very true, it also is present outside of technology. We see how history tends to repeat itself and as social psychology is the determining factor in humans searching for like-minded people, it seems that technology has only made this worse.
It is easy to imagine that, today, almost everyone in that scene would be holding a smartphone. Some would be filming their observations and posting them to Twitter and Facebook.
It's sadly true that this has become normalized in society. There are some clear cut pros and cons to the new age of technology but I feel as though it makes the "bystander effect" all the worse. We constantly see information spread like wildfire on the internet with incredible misinformation and I wonder when we will ever know if the information being brought to us by the media is valid.
How will I feel toward the end of my life if my offspring are not taken care of?
As we all know and some of us may have experienced- this idea is close to home. Life has an unexpected expiration date and it makes me consider this question as well. This is an unfortunate and all too often situation left behind for generations of children. Why are we not willing to invest into ourselves? We pay thousands of dollars to go to college and this money is never to be seen again, so why not pay yourselves? For a better and comfortable future for ourselves and our next generations.
Hershfield is a marketing professor at UCLA whose research starts from the idea that people are “estranged” from their future self. As a result, he explained in a 2011 paper, “saving is like a choice between spending money today or giving it to a stranger years from now.”
When real-life situations like retirement savings are not a topic of discussion in school or even basic education on considering your future but in a tangible way, this seems to be the result. An idea unimaginable like being "old" and what to do to prepare yourself for this stage of life is something not entirely grasped by many people.
Most of them have focused on money. When asked whether they would prefer to have, say, $150 today or $180 in one month, people tend to choose the $150. Giving up a 20 percent return on investment is a bad move—which is easy to recognize when the question is thrust away from the present. Asked whether they would take $150 a year from now or $180 in 13 months, people are overwhelmingly willing to wait an extra month for the extra $30.
This comment is interesting to me because it got me thinking about the value of the working class and the value of a dollar. As inflation continues to rise, we are so uneducated when it comes to knowing our worth as workers and this also brought up my thoughts on minimum wage. It's unfortunate that people would quickly chose the $150, and I believe this decision has everything to do with not being paid a livable wage and most people having additional expenses outside of their monthly wages.
Faced with the written page, the reader’s brain develops new capacities.
I think this statement eludes to the idea that we cannot retain as much information reading digitally versus physically. This lessens our understanding of the text making it harder to read. But, when we ready "the written page" it allows our brains to comprehend the text in a better way.
Comprehension matters, but so does pleasure
I relate with this statement because I find it to be very true in all aspects of my academic career. I tend to enjoy my classes better and comprehend the material when I get enjoyment out of the assignments and tasks given. Even when the material is uninteresting to me, I still attempt to find ways in which I can enjoy the work.
It’s true that studies have found that readers given text on a screen do worse on recall and comprehension tests than readers given the same text on paper.
I can agree that reading digitally is harder for me because I like to make written annotations in the book itself, because I learn better kinesthetically, I like to physically have the text with me for better learning.
Bryan Caplan suggested that ignorance may even be gratifying to voters. “Some beliefs are more emotionally appealing,” Caplan observed, so if your vote isn’t likely to do anything why not indulge yourself in what you want to believe, whether or not it’s true? Caplan argues that it’s only because of the worthlessness of an individual vote that so many voters look beyond their narrow self-interest: in the polling booth, the warm, fuzzy feeling of altruism can be had cheap.
This comments suggests that voters feel "better" about themselves for doing so but that individuals who decide not to vote also feel some sort of gratification for not following by everyone else's morals and emotions or even their own. He states that no matter wether these individuals decide to vote or not, they feel just by doing so in making their own decision.
Voter ignorance wouldn’t matter much if a democracy were able to weave individual votes into collective political wisdom
This comment is interesting to me because it suggests that the democracy would choose the votes they see fit to contribute to the voting system. This option seems as though this could create more bias than already exists. This would still assume some voters are superior to others and could create a negative impact altogether.
But even if retrospective voting is sloppy, and works to the chagrin of the occasional pharaoh, that doesn’t necessarily make it valueless. It might, for instance, tend to improve elected officials’ policy decisions.
I find this stance to be true to our circumstances today. Our voting system could use a major makeover. This was especially seen in the last presidential election. This also shows that when people vote heavily for certain policies, people or sometimes even laws, they hold a lot of gravity for what things are put in place.