Aztec virtue ethics

At its core, Aztec virtue ethics has three main elements. One is a conception of the good life as the ‘rooted’ or worthwhile life. Second is the idea of right action as the mean or middle way. Third and final is the belief that virtue is a quality that’s fostered socially.

Teach a man to fish…

In keeping with the behavioral turn in philanthropic theories of change, towards the end of Money Well Spent, Paul Brest and Hal Harvey share one of their favorite variations on the global poverty “teach a man to fish” cliché by offering, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach…

Best political discussions on sports forums

After the Social Mirror experiment, members of Roy’s lab debuted a project called FlipFeed, which exposed people on Twitter to others with different political views. Martin Saveski, the study’s lead author, says the point was to change how people felt…

Timidity around expressing honest views

I have been surprised by how there is this culture of risk-taking [in the US], particularly in business . You celebrate entrepreneurs and courage in making money and that kind of thing, but there is a general timidity when it comes to expressing one’s honest…

Vegetarianism among Taoist Christians

The Ten Covenants….Whatever the origin of this remarkable reworking of the Ten Commandments, it shaped the actual life of the Church in China by banning slaves and banning the taking of any life. It resulted in the only officially vegetarian branch of the…

The Golden Rule in translation

We have called the first [Jesus Sutra] The Sutra of the Teachings of the World-Honored One…. It tells us that it was translated into Chinese in 641…[and] the translators were experimenting with concepts for which the Chinese language did not quite have the right vocabulary……

AI and the need for love

“What’s more serious than the loss of jobs is the loss of meaning,” [Kai-Fu] Lee says. “Love is what differentiates us from AI.” And when AI begins to replace routine jobs, Lee says we need to focus our energies on creating more jobs that require love and compassion–jobs like…

Our obsession with news

Here’s Mitchell Stephens from his classic text A History of the News:

It might be surprising to learn that more than 275 years ago the English — though they had no radio, television…