Matters in society that constitute problems for the stable operation of social institutions or populations and/or are recognized by significant groups as indicating the need for change in some parameter of social structure or process.
The words we use to describe the world tend to “frame” our understandings by bracketing the range of images and meanings that make sense to us. Our reasoning builds on deep emotions. Moral reasoning also rests on an emotional sense of right and wrong and the beliefs and personal relationships we hold dear. The terms … More So Much More than Warming: Misunderstanding Climate Change
Americans have a strange attitude toward education. On the one hand, we all know that a college degree can significantly increase one’s life chances for achieving, until recently, a middleclass income and a comfortable “lifestyle.” On the other hand, college has become very expensive, as well as intimidating for anyone who has experienced a typical … More Education: Societal Asset or Personal Debt
One way to gain control over institutions and violate laws is to take unprecedented actions to generate societal chaos. Demagogues know that chaos is contagious and susceptible to manipulation through fear and hatred. We tend to think that a stable society results from the existence of laws and their enforcement by police. The facts are … More Chaos, Contagion, Hatred and Compassion
On a flight home from Los Angeles, I sat next to a young woman, a millennial apparently, who busied herself the whole flight reading a very slick fashion magazine. I notice a book in the back-of-the-seat pouch in front of her. The title was Buddha’s Brain. I had seen that title somewhere, but could not … More Suffer the Children for the Politics of Evil
It had been a shock to be told a few years ago that I had so much plaque in my coronary arteries that I was in imminent danger of a heart attack or stroke. The cardiologist told me that I must immediately follow the protocols of the “standard of care” in cardiology and begin a … More The “Standard of Care” and Facts of Life
The Empty Clown Suit who became a Fake President, short of a majority by 2.8+ million votes because of the elitist Electoral College, is amazingly transparent in his routinely bombastic behavior. Narcissistic sociopaths seek both power and adulation, yet are indifferent to the effects of their behavior on others. Thus, for him the idea of … More Ethics, Law and Bulimic Bombast as Con
About ten years after being diagnosed with a non-aggressive prostate cancer and narrowly escaping the surgeon’s knife by finding a real prostate oncologist who shared all the treatment alternatives with me, then undergoing non-invasive yet pretty darn effective treatment, something entirely unrelated happened, or so it seemed. Self-Serving Medical Practice I recall the urologist who … More Seeking Sanity in Science within the Medical Establishment
Over 20,000 scientists from 184 countries have now signed on to the second warning by scientists to humanity to dial down its profligate destruction of the ecosystems and environments upon which we all depend. In a short paper, World scientists’ warning to humanity: A second notice, the writers of the second warning (the first was in 1992 … More Scientists’ Second Warning to Humanity
I’m returning this week from a 4 month sojourn in Mexico to the oldest city in the United States, Santa Fe, the capital of the North American part of the Spanish empire over 400 years ago. Shortly thereafter, I will make another quick visit to the Ultimate City – LA. I go there a couple of … More Escape from L.A.
One of the things I’ve done more of since ‘retiring’ is to write. Of course, I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. But I guess I never really wrote “for myself” before, not much anyway. Most of my writing as a professor involved community research reports, course syllabi, and caustic memoranda to … More Writing Your Mind while Living in the World
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 