Category: education
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Can mindfulness meditation make you happier?
Quite possibly. Recently, there’s been a spate of research on the effect of meditation on quality of life. According to this article from the NYT, it’s been found that 30 min. a day of mindfulness meditation can reduce overall stress, improve attention, and increase empathy for others.
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The editors of n+1 write about cultural elitism
They argue, essentially, that the term “cultural elitism” carries two opposing valences. On the one hand, the “lingering existence of a cultural elite testifies to the persistence of class privilege .” On the other hand, it is “the only thing standing between us and the full spectrum dominance of the power elite.” In its positive sense, cultural…
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The Parable of the Good Samaritan
Yesterday, I was in a hurry. I had timed things so that, assuming nothing out of the ordinary, I’d get to where I was headed a few minutes before the person I was expecting to meet would likely arrive. It was an appointment I was looking forward to (I like the person very much, and…
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Who is David Brooks?
David Brooks is a cultural and political columnist for the New York Times. He began writing there in 2003. Before then, he was Senior Editor at The Weekly Standard. If one were pressed to affix a label to him, one do worse than call him a “conservative,” but then the label wouldn’t be terribly helpful.…
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Is therapy a waste of time (and money)?
The answer, according to the psychiatrist Richard Friedman in his recent NYT op-ed entitled “When Self-Knowledge is Only the Beginning,” might very well be “yes.” In the article, he argues (1) that insight into one’s past may be neither necessary nor sufficient for living well and, more polemically, (2) that such insight might actually make your…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 