Monday, August 21, 2017

Green with Envy: What Science Tells Us About Good and Evil

I’m saying, sir, that a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. — Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Friedrich Hayek, an obscure young Viennese technocrat, was called “Mr, Fluctooations” behind his back. How did neoliberalism, his big idea, gain sway?... neoliberalism

What Science Tells Us About Good and Evil by By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Photographs by Lynn Johnson, A
“The horrific footage of a car plowing into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend—a purposeful attack that killed one person and injured many others—has sparked a national conversation about the roots of evil. The victim was protesting a rally by white supremacists, including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home,” tweeted Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah. Hostility and hatred have fueled unspeakable evil, including genocides such as the one engineered by Nazi Germany. But humankind also is capable of astonishing acts of kindness. We at National Geographic have been working on a story about what science tells us about good and evil. Given last weekend’s events, we’ve decided to publish the story now ...

Axios – ‘In the past week, confederate statues have been in the spotlight. After the “Unite the Right” rally, which was started in opposition of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, turned violent in Charlottesville, other officials across the country began removing statues in their own cities. While many statues have been up for years, some weren’t erected until after the Civil Rights Act. Here’s when Confederate memorials were erected throughout history..”
See also – This tool lets you find the Confederate monument closest to you [“To create this tool, Quartz started with the SPLC’s list of Confederate monuments then removed roads with multiple geographies or memorials with no fixed location. The list was created in 2015 and as such, some of the memorials have since been removed or are slated to be removed–when possible we indicate that such is case. When two dates are given for the creation of a monument, the older date was used to calculate its age.”]

I’m saying, sir, that a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. — Terry Pratchett, The Truth