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Deserve is a problematic word. For centuries, we have been justifying all sorts of awful behavior simply because we accept the belief that certain people receive more or less because they deserve it. Deserving is nice story to help make sense of the world. But the reality is, nobody actually deserves anything. The gods have not chosen any of us. The idea of people getting what they deserve might…

Carlin famously joked: School was nothing but the indoctrination center where children were sent to be stripped of their individuality and turned into an obedient, soul dead conformist member of the American consumer culture. That’s not a punchline, that’s perspective. Because his joke is not really about school, it’s about sovereignty. George’s words are a rebellious reminder about how our culture is very good at hypnotizing and dulling our…

We live in a world where stupidity is encouraged, embraced, rewarded and repeated. As if it were some kind of virtue. Everywhere we look, from individual people to mass media to large institutions, the world seems to be conspiring to put out our collective intellectual fire. Our environments are pressuring us not to think. Flip through the channels or the streams, and one thing is clear. Stupidity has become…

Barnum knew that the public didn’t mind being lied to, as long as those lies were more sensational and entertaining than the dull, everyday truth of their miserable lives. He may have been a hoaxer, but he still added something to the way the world was that made it more tolerable. As he says in his movie: Hyperbole isn’t the worst crime. Men suffer more from imagining too little…

Ellis writes in his book on anger that our irrational beliefs are what upsets us most. Especially in our relationships. If we have convinced ourselves that we must have sincere love and approval almost all the time from virtually all the people who we find significant in our lives, then we are in for a rude awakening. Because apparently, that is not the way life works. Having raged for those who…

To start the Personal Creativity Management revolution, we’re only opening Prolific to 100 people (71 slots already taken!). It’s now open to the public with an exclusive cohort of unique Founding Member slots. The cost is one dollar a month, for life.As beta users of our software platform: *You get lifetime access to the app with no restrictions. *You can use the full version of our platform, and every…

Evolution is the process of many tiny incremental changes. And it’s a beautiful thing. We suddenly find a new purpose for one or more of our parts, but without significantly diminishing the old function, and it feels like magic. Darwin’s work on natural selection says that among organisms, there is no such thing as better or worse, smart or dumb, good or bad, strong or weak. There is only…

There are people in this world whose victimhood is their primary sense of identity. They are looking for goblins in every shadow. Protesting every experience as a violation of their personal freedom. But when we try to help or console them, they get annoyed. Sometimes horribly defensive and insulted. As if to say, hey now, don’t take away my tragedy. I’m planning on dining on that for a while….

When asked if it was possible for someone to rehab on their own, my favorite television doctor made the following observation. Treatment is not a solo process. It’s an interpersonal experience, and it must be done with other people. His insight, though, is not exclusive to people with substance abuse problems. Because even if we have never taken a drink or done a drug in our life, it’s still…

There’s an employee review for a telecommunications company that has the following title: Are you killing yourself for someone who would replace you in a week? Reading this kind of remark makes me sad. Because people who give some company the best years of their life are not heroes, they’re martyrs. There is nothing noble about trying to please someone who will never be happy with you no matter…