Sublime

Our obsession with growth creates two problems. The first is that we have convinced ourselves that growth is the normal state and that it is reasonable to expect it to go on and on. That patently ridiculous idea—exactly as hopeful and deluded as the search for a perpetual motion machine—causes us to stop searching for other possibilities. While thi

The hygiene hypothesis posits that because we live in ever-cleaner surroundings, and are therefore exposed to ever fewer microorganisms, our immune systems are inadequately prepared, and so develop regulatory problems, such as allergies, autoimmune disorders, and perhaps even some cancers.

diversity officers are rapidly increasing in number and earn three times as much as the average American and more than the academic faculty.

I consider disabled people the experts about disability. I’m no longer interested in what so-called experts (nondisabled

In eighteenth-century America, Colonial society and Native American society sat, unhappily, side by side. As time went by, settlers from Europe began defecting to live with the natives. No natives defected to live with the colonials. This bothered the Europeans. They had, they assumed, the superior civilization, and yet people were voting with thei

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt chart a dramatic decrease in young people’s resilience and ability to cope with difficult ideas and hurt feelings. The authors do not belittle these struggles, but emphasize that they are a painful consequence of the acceptance of three “Great Untruths.” These are the belief that people are