Against Empathy

Against Empathy PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

Against Excess

Against Excess PDF Author: Mark A. Kleiman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 508

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drug-taking and drug control are alike; both are often done to excess. Against Excess shows how we can limit the damage done by drugs and the damage done by drug policies.

Up Against It

Up Against It PDF Author: Laura J. Mixon
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780765354211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Get Book Here

Book Description
Rogue artificial intelligence and a lethal resource crisis threaten an asteroid colony--with an organized crime syndicate pulling the strings. Compulsively readable and packed with challenging ideas . . .--"Publishers Weekly," starred review.

Against Empathy

Against Empathy PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

Against Humanity

Against Humanity PDF Author: Sam Dubal
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520296095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduction : against humanity -- How violence became inhuman : the making of modern moral sensibilities -- Gorilla warfare : life in and beyond the bush -- Beyond reason : magic and science in the LRA -- Interlude : Re-turn and dis-integration -- Rebel kinship beyond humanity : love and belonging in the war -- Rebels and charity cases : politics, ethics, and the concept of humanity -- Conclusion : beyond humanity, or how do we heal?

Against Depression

Against Depression PDF Author: Peter D. Kramer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143036968
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Deeply felt... [Kramer's] book is a polemic against a society that accepts depression as a fact of life." —O, The Oprah Magazine A profound look at depression by the author of The New York Times Bestseller, Listening to Prozac In his landmark bestseller Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer revolutionized the way we think about antidepressants and the culture in which they are so widely used. Now Kramer offers a frank and unflinching look at the condition those medications treat: depression. Definitively refuting our notions of "heroic melancholy," he walks readers through groundbreaking new research—studies that confirm depression's status as a devastating disease and suggest pathways toward resilience. Thought-provoking and enlightening, Against Depression provides a bold revision of our understanding of mood disorder and promises hope to the millions who suffer from it.

Hope Against Hope

Hope Against Hope PDF Author: Sarah Carr
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195139
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
A moving portrait of school reform in New Orleans through the eyes of the students and educators living it.

Against Better Judgment

Against Better Judgment PDF Author: Thomas Salem Manganaro
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813947316
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
Robinson Crusoe recognizes it is foolish to leave for the open seas; nevertheless, he boards the ship. William Wordsworth of The Prelude sees the immense poetic task ahead of him, but instead of beginning work, he procrastinates by going for a walk. Centering on this sort of intentionally irrational action, originally defined as " akrasia" by the ancient Greeks and "weakness of will" in early Christian thought, Against Better Judgment argues that the phenomenon takes on renewed importance in the long eighteenth century. In treating human minds and bodies as systems and machines, Enlightenment philosophers did not account for actions that may be undermotivated, contradictory, or self-betraying. A number of authors, from Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson to Jane Austen and John Keats, however, took up the phenomenon in inventive ways. Thomas Manganaro traces how English novelists, essayists, and poets of the period sought to represent akrasia in ways philosophy cannot, leading them to develop techniques and ideas distinctive to literary writing, including new uses of irony, interpretation, and contradiction. In attempting to give shape to the ways people knowingly and freely fail themselves, these authors produced a new linguistic toolkit that distinguishes literature’s epistemological advantages when it comes to writing about people.

Against Purity

Against Purity PDF Author: Alexis Shotwell
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145295304X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer—if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change—is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there? Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized land; how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures.

I Play Against Pieces

I Play Against Pieces PDF Author: Svetozar Gligoric
Publisher: Batsford
ISBN: 9780713487701
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Yugoslav grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric, once rated the strongest European chess player outside of Russia, has pursued a long and distinguished chess career. This highly acclaimed collection of over 100 of his best games, including classic wins against world champions and other top players such as Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Keres, Korchnoi, Larsen, Najdorf, and Reshevsky, now appears for the first time in English.The title of the book 'I Play Against Pieces' reflects Gligoric's thoroughly objective approach to chess, which has always been characterised by great clarity and logic, resulting in a wealth of model games. The fact that these games, replete with instructive tactics and strategies, are classified under openings will particularly benefit readers interested in the study of Queen's Pawn Openings as White and the King's Indian Defence and Ruy Lopez as Black of which Gligoric was a true connoisseur.

Odds Against

Odds Against PDF Author: Dick Francis
Publisher: Canelo
ISBN: 1788634861
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the New York Times–bestselling “master of crime fiction and equine thrills,” a jockey turned investigator tackles crime in the horse racing world (Newsday). Dick Francis, Edgar Award–winning master of mystery and suspense, takes you into the thrilling world of horse racing. A hard fall took hotshot jockey Sid Halley out of the horse racing game, leaving him with a crippled hand, a broken heart, and the desperate need for a new job. Now he’s landed a position with a detective agency, only to catch a bullet from some common thug. And things are about to get even more hectic. The agency is giving him a case to handle on his own. The case brings him to the door of Zanna Martin, a woman who might be just what Sid needs to get him back up and running. But he’s up against a field of thoroughbred criminals, and the odds against him are making it a long shot that he’ll even survive . . . “Dick Francis is a wonder.” —The Plain Dealer “An imaginative craftsman of high order.” —The Sunday Times “Few things are more convincing than Dick Francis at a full gallop.” —Chicago Tribune “Few match Francis for dangerous flights of fancy and pure inventive menace.” —Boston Herald “[The] master of crime fiction and equine thrills.” —Newsday “[Francis] has the uncanny ability to turn out simply plotted yet charmingly addictive mysteries.” —The Wall Street Journal “Francis is a genius.” —Los Angeles Times “A rare and magical talent . . . who never writes the same story twice.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune