Psychologists and economists love to talk about the notion of two selves: present self and future self. It's a nice way to explain the tendency to have one preference about the future, but a very different preference when the future becomes the prese...
Even if you have a brain predisposed to liberalism, you might end up with some conservative friends or find inspiring conservative role models who could be very influential on you, and that could send you down a different track in life.
I do not believe that I have had an interview with anybody in twenty-five years in which the person to whom I was talking was not annoyed during the early part of the interview by my asking stupid questions.
for to have a deep attachment for a person (or a place or thing) is to have taken them as the terminating object of our instinctual responses." Separation anxiety. International Journal of Psycho-Analysts, XLI, 1-25 (1959(
Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism.
In a very real sense, Jews have to believe that Christians have missed the point about how to wait for the end, and Christians have to believe something quite similar about the Jews.
We Jews who willingly and happily confirm our covenantal status and its attendant rights and duties must take the question of mission seriously: either to accept it or reject it knowingly and with conviction.
We all, I think, believe in compassion. If you look at all the world religions, all the main world religions, you'll find within them some teaching concerning compassion.
A burdened heart doesn't equate to a lack of faith. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can heal with a simple command. The burden comes from wondering if that's His will and may it be done.
Sometimes we're so concerned about giving our children what we never had growing up, we neglect to give them what we did have growing up.
While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A.
If you have a personality predisposed to liberalism, you might gravitate more to the artsy crowd or the anti-establishment crowd. And then those peers will affect you, and they will give you values, and you will copy them.
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up - that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
If we were to abandon concern for what is true, what is false, and what remains indeterminate, the world would be totally chaotic. Even those who deny the importance of truth, on the one hand, are quick to jump on anyone who is caught lying.
Robert Wakefield: Just tell me where my daughter is. Drug Dealer: [to Seth] Don't do this shit again. Seth Abrahams: [to Robert] Don't do this vigilante thing.
I love sharing photographs and websites, I'm for all of these things. I'm for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.
Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to dra...
The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.
Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.
The Scriptures contain many stories of people who waited years or even decades before the Lord's promises came to pass. What modern believers can learn from the patience of biblical saints like Abraham, Joseph, David, and Paul is that waiting upon th...
