Reposted from @thedevinroy What do you ask yourself in tough situations? đ¤
These questions are loosely based on four popular normative ethical systems: negative utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and ethics of care. I shall list a summary in the comments for each.
From the Great Courses Series, Steven Novella, M.D.lectures for a course on critical thinking called “Your Deceptive Mind”. He introduces the term “confabulation.” Although this article refers to psychopathology, it describes the less publicized neurotypical fallibility of our memories. He says that memory retrieval is better described as a constructive process, and that unlike our past beliefs in memory, we actually can “lose” memories, something hard for me to believe. Even though I have often faced complete losses of events that others remember and recount to me, I had always blamed the loss as more of a retrieval problem. But maybe the memories simply aren’t there in my brain anymore.
âConfabulations are classified into one of two categories: provoked and spontaneous. A provoked confabulation is when a patient invents an untrue story in response to a question. These tend to be quite common among patients with amnesia or dementia. A spontaneous confabulation is a more rare occurrence and involves the telling of an untrue story with no apparent motivation.â https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/confabulation/
The term âRashomon effectâ is often used by psychologists in situations where observers give different accounts of the same event,and describes the effect of subjective perceptions on recollection. The phenomenon is named after a 1950 film by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. It was with RashĹmon that Western cinema-goers discovered both Kurosawa and Japanese film in general â the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, as well as the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film the following year.
RashĹmon is an adaptation of two short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Set in the 12th century, the film depicts the trial of a notorious bandit called Tajomaru (played by Kurosawaâs frequent collaborator ToshirĂ´ Mifune), who is alleged to have raped a woman and killed her samurai husband. In flashbacks, the incident is recalled by four different witnesses â a woodcutter, a priest, theâŚ
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âYou canât always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.â ~The Rolling Stones
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The recent GOP failure marks a rare moment of demonstrated evidence that negative criticism and the opposition mindset create no value. Meanwhile, by elimination, the evidence also says that constructive criticism is more valuable for solving problems. This message is important for educators who are struggling to inspire building-wide buy-in for positive behavioral recognition in their schools, but it is also important to business leaders who have the same struggle trying to create a positive, creative culture.
Source: Leaders Need More Skills in Creativity and Appreciation | Duane Sharrock | Pulse | LinkedIn
A new study says it’s due to the ‘glass ceiling effect’
Source: Women in the Workplace Lose Ambition As Careers Progress | Fortune.com
by Duane Sharrock
There is an intersection near my town where war veterans stand with flags and banners to protest. Their numbers grow and shrink depending on the week, but some are there every Sunday. They are not bearing arms; they are armed with words and presence.
Sometimes, on the opposite corner, across from these protesters and as opposition, there is another group of protesters.
At no time, has anyone crossed the street to physically fight each other. Each side is peopled with adults–not children. They are just Americans with differing perspectives voicing their opinions and disagreements. And both groups are protesters.
Americans should never stand against protests. We should never silence protest. Protest is as American as the Boston Tea Party that rejected taxation without representation (although â340 chests of British East India Company Tea, weighing over 92,000 pounds (roughly 46 tons), onboard the Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor were smashed open by the Sons of Liberty armed with an assortment of axes and dumped into Boston Harbor the night of December 16, 1773.â https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/the-destruction-of-the-tea).
Since the Boston Tea Party and the birth of our nation, Americans have also protested oppression in its various forms. They have protested slavery, animal testing, abortion, the torture and neglect of pets, driving while intoxicated, the poisoning of water due to fracking, child labor, and more. Unlike the Civil War and the the wars that gave birth to this nation, there are still people alive who remember newsworthy protests and some of these protests have led to change. From the comforts of their own homes watching television or by participating in some direct way, some may personally remember the reactions to Richard Nixon, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights movements. Nobody gets a pass: not kings or queens, not politicians, not the rich or the powerful. Nobody. Americans have always questioned and challenged and risen up against what they believe is wrong to fight for what they believe is right.
However, history teaches that protest can take many forms. Protest includes marches, sit-ins, music festivals, documentary films, opinion essays in newspapers and other publications, but protest is also expressed through the Arts. Oliver Twist (British) and Annie, although adapted into musicals with memorable songs, protest the bad treatment of orphans. Some of our most celebrated movies are protests against the tyranny of powerful individuals, organizations, systems, and even ideas themselves. We celebrate the comedians Richard Pryor, Carol Burnett, George Carlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Wanda Sykes, Lenny Bruce, Freddie Prinze, Jane Curtain, Gilda Radner, and the hundreds of others living and dead, because of their ability to make us laugh but also for their ability to make us see things differently, to think and to question. That’s what makes us American. It is not subservience and obedience. It is our ability to question the powers that be, and it is protest.
Sometimes though, in the throes of a revolution, The Arts and their artists are often the first who are attacked for their subversiveness and their undermining of power. When you want to begin a new regime, ignoring and censoring are not enough. You have to silence the opposition beyond discrediting, since even discrediting is not enough, more extreme measures might be taken: “Writers, artists and intellectuals who were the recipients and disseminators of the “old culture” would be comprehensively eradicated. The majority of writers and artists were seen as “black line figures” and “reactionary literati”, and therefore persecuted, many were subjected to “criticism and denunciation” where they may be publicly humiliated and ravaged, and they may also be imprisoned or sent to be reformed through hard labour.” Of course, make no mistake: the murder and imprisonment and blacklisting starts with censoring and discrediting. But even before that, you need buy-in. You need agreement that one side is dangerous and inhuman, while your side, the revolutionaries, are the Good. Dehumanizing leads to the imprisonment and more radical means of silencing, while the Good side rationalize the dismissal of values and ethical behavior as necessary for the revolution.
Rights, so often, are not given freely. They almost always have to be fought for. Only after a fight do voices get heard. But before the fight, people must decide on priorities and values. People have to ask themselves, âIs this point really important enough that I stand up and stand out? Do I really want to take this risk?â
Standing up and standing out is scary. By standing up and standing out you can be seen, identified, and remembered. You can be blacklisted or boycotted. You can be publicly humiliated or physically abused. Your property can be trashed with a burning cross or defaced with painted messages. When does the childishness cross the line into cowardly terrorism? Revolutionaries tend to dismiss these questions.
The trick though is to move past the protest, past the fear of what might be said or what has been said, past the need to censor and silence, in order to begin a dialogue. In a real dialogue opinions are respected while being challenged, information is exchanged, people learn from each other. They translate their needs and wants so that they are understood. This is how greatness happens.
Make no mistake. Although there have been isolated incidents where violence has broken out, and there were a few dishonorable verbal attacks, there are millions of protesters who did not do violence and have protested with dignity. Instead of posting a meme to voice disagreement, instead of throwing money at lobbyists who represent their interests, instead of waiting for someone else to take a stand, they inconvenienced themselves by leaving their comfortable homes and traveling to their major cities to stand and walk with hundreds of thousands of wives, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, with even a few fathers, sons, and grandfathers, to say this is not how they want the President of the United States to conduct himself. They have greater expectations. They want their concerns heard and taken seriously, recognized, and understood. This tradition of protest should be honored, not discouraged. We should never encourage obedience for its own sake.
During World War II, natives on Pacific islands saw something most unusual. Strange men appeared, cleared long strips of land and built structures decorated with flags. Some of these men wore large cups over their ears, while others waved sticks and, almost magically, machines appeared from the sky carrying valuable cargo.
After the war ended, the men left and the supplies stopped coming. Some of the natives formed cargo cults which copied many of the the rituals the soldiers performed. They marched in formation, wore cups over their ears and waved sticks around. Alas, no airplanes ever came.
Clearly, the idea was patently absurd. Anybody who thinks that waving sticks will cause airplanes to appear is missing some basic principles about how air travel works. Yet many modern executives also believe by mimicking the tactics of others they will somehow achieve the same results. These âcargo cult strategistsâ donât do much better than the islanders.
To Talk Like This and Act Like That 