“Putting feelings into words activates this region that’s capable of producing emotional regulatory outcomes, which could explain why putting feelings into words dampens them down.”
Category: ideas
Is Art Hardwired Into Our Genetic Code?
Dennis Dutton points out that “the pictures of landscapes that are most pleasing to most people — the scenes of pastures, copses, gentle hills, rivers, the odd furry animal and signs of human habitation, found on calendars and chocolate boxes worldwide — are what our long-ago ancestors in the Pleistocene learned to associate with a temperate climate, fresh drinking water, plentiful game and places to hide from predators.”
Will Economic Crisis Re-Energize New York’s Creative Life?
“The financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy. The extraordinary income gains of investment bankers, traders, and hedge-fund managers over the past two decades skewed the city’s economy in some unhealthy ways. Stratospheric real-estate prices have made New York less diverse over time, and arguably less stimulating.”
Maybe You Really Can Judge A Person By His Face
“The idea that a person’s character can be glimpsed in their face dates back to the ancient Greeks. […] Now the field is undergoing something of a revival. Researchers around the world are re-evaluating what we see in a face, investigating whether it can give us a glimpse of someone’s personality or even help to shape their destiny. What is emerging is a ‘new physiognomy’ which is more subtle but no less fascinating than its old incarnation.”
Are Humans Hard-Wired For Religion?
Some psychologists and anthropologists say that processes built into the human brain – different cognition for animate and inanimate objects, separate consciousness of the body and the mind, “an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere” – mean that the predisposition to religion is deep-rooted “and that atheism will always be a hard sell.”
Why Do Philosophers Live So Long?
Carlin Romano: “I therefore exited graduate school with the flinty belief that philosophers live extraordinarily long lives, a no-brainer in light of the standard personality I lazily attributed to them then… Even in the worst circumstances, philosophers didn’t go postal. They went, to speak in federal metaphorese, Social Security.”
The Catholic Church Brings Back Indulgences
“[M]any Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation).” One priest observes, “Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it… Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance. The good news is we’re not selling them anymore.”
When The Link Between Work & Identity Turns Harmful
“Over-identification with work is one of many culprits in the epidemic of recession-related anxiety and depression that mental-health providers are reporting. Fear of losing one’s house or failing to find another job are likely bigger contributors. But unlike those problems, the identity dilemma is within the individual’s power to address, requiring no lender mercy or stroke of job-hunting fortune.”
The Screening Of America
“Why is the newspaper business losing readers at an accelerated rate while television viewership is stronger than ever? Here’s a speculative idea: A tipping point has been passed in the competition between print and screen that has been under way since the beginnings of broadcast TV and now continues with video and other media.”
Why People Cheat (But Only Up To A Point)
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely: “[P]eople have two goals: We have a goal to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, and we have a goal to cheat and benefit from cheating. And we find that there’s a balance between these two goals. That is, we cheat up to the level that we would find it comfortable [to still feel good about ourselves].”