MARCH 2, 2011 5:58PM

Cowards (In Defense of Fear)

If you inhabit the broadly defined range of psychological normalcy, you have a strong, visceral reaction when you see fear.  Your amygdala goes bonkers.  Your heart rate increases, you become more alert, you look for something to do.

Generally, what you want to do is help.  You want to… Read full post »

19 Comments
FEBRUARY 27, 2011 3:36PM

The Only Way Out Is Through: Notes on Saturday’s Protest

This past Saturday, the 25th, I joined about two thousand others in downtown Chicago in support of the people and protest in Wisconsin.  The Wisconsin protest you’ve certainly heard about.  The many others held on Saturday across the nation – maybe, maybe not.  Despite the… Read full post »

2 Comments
NOVEMBER 24, 2010 10:27PM

Interlude (A Full-Body Scan of Certain Tactics)

Today was the loosely organized national Opt Out Day, when air travelers were encouraged to (a) refuse the full-body scanners installed at many of our airports and (b) ask for their pat-downs to be performed in public, so that everyone would be obliged to see how degrading they are.

So what happened?&… Read full post »
20 Comments
AUGUST 22, 2010 3:19AM

Cowards (Mr. Creosote)

I’d like to return to the topic of social organization, that ferociously effective little trick that we’ve used to dominate the globe. To summarize my earlier observations: one human is a flabby nonentity that just about any forty-pound whatever-else can either take out or elude. Ten huma… Read full post »
13 Comments
AUGUST 16, 2010 5:28PM

Cowards (the Parable of the Piñata)

This is a digression into personal anecdote. It proves nothing, even by the porous standards of sociology or psychology. If there is any villain in the piece, it is me (I regard myself as such, anyway).

I am trotting it out only as a parable on a number of perils involved in/… Read full post »
5 Comments
AUGUST 14, 2010 12:02AM

Cowards (Validation)

One of the great problems in discussing cowardice in our society in toto is that what drives cowards, and what makes them, and what sustains them, is nothing that I can or wish to repudiate whole-cloth. I fully acknowledge the merit and utility (and inevitability) of self-preservation and self-intere/… Read full post »
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AUGUST 8, 2010 10:21PM

Cowards (Trust)

Individually, human beings aren’t too fearsome on the world stage. I don’t think there’s a single one of us who could take a healthy chimp in a one-on-one naked fight. Even a mid-sized dog would give a solitary human trouble.

But this is to some extent an unfair comparison, because w… Read full post »

8 Comments
AUGUST 4, 2010 5:31PM

Cowards (Introduction)

We know the story by heart. There’s this chronic loser, outcast, or other species of mediocrity. And he’s bumbling along, not too well really, sticking his fingers and elbows into anyone who has the misfortune to be too near him (friends, mostly). Then comes the crisis. His ex-girlfriend… Read full post »

4 Comments