Citizenship - Carol Vincent, Professor of Sociology of Education, explores the way in which children are being taught about ‘fundamental British values’ such as democracy and tolerance. Does this government imposed requirement too easily result in a celebration of reductionist symbols and stereotypes of Britishness - 'tea and the Queen'? Also, David Bartram, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester, takes a critical look at a UK ‘citizenship process’ which subjects immigrants to a test designed to enhance their participation in British political and civic life. Does it work?
29 February 2020
Freakonomics: Is There Really a “Loneliness Epidemic”?
That’s what some health officials are saying, but the data aren’t so clear. We look into what’s known (and not known) about the prevalence and effects of loneliness — including the possible upsides.
Aeon: Marcus Aurelius helped me survive grief and rebuild my life
It’s a common misconception that to be a Stoic is to be in possession of a stiff upper lip, to be free from the tumultuous waves of one’s emotions. But what this interpretation of Stoicism gets wrong is that our emotions, even the most painful ones, need not be our enemies if we can learn to think of them as our guides. This might seem obviously false, or like the words of a person who has never encountered real suffering. But it was during one of the worst crises of my life that I found my way to Stoicism and, through Stoicism, to something that’s as close to acceptance as I think it’s possible to find on this plane of existence. [...]
Aurelius reminded me that where I was wasn’t just where I was but when – and that there was no advantage to be found in unsticking myself from time. I’d be lying if I said I learned to stop panicking immediately or instantly. But I learned to repeat to myself the instruction to ‘never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’ And I learned to take stock of the tools I had and how they could be used to solve the problems of the present rather than catastrophising the unknowns of the future.
But the passage that made the biggest difference – the passage I return to year after year, as deathiversaries or new milestones threaten to drown me in waves of grief – is a reminder that the narrative we construct around what happens to us is, ultimately, up to us. No matter how terrible what happened was, it is still our choice whether to understand our story as one of crippling defeat or a miraculous victory against the odds – even if all we do is get back up and learn to stand again.
SciShow Psych: Why Can’t I Remember My Dreams?
Everyone has dreams, but some people are better at remembering them than others. Scientists aren't sure why we dream, but remembering them has a lot to do with the activity in your brain, and with how well you sleep.
Jacobin Magazine: The Great Reformer
Palme’s background was unusual for a social democrat. A proletarian party through and through, the leadership was comprised almost entirely of men with working-class origins. Palme, in contrast, was born into an elite family and had a traditional upper-class education. [...]
Yet his international student assignment taught Palme the destructiveness and, even from an anticommunist perspective, the counter-productiveness of colonialist wars. After a visit to Malaysia, Palme wrote: “It is a strange paradox that the British government is spending millions of pounds in order to kill off a few communists in the jungle and at the same time is carefully cultivating an increasing number in the University of Malaya.” [...]
These were also the years when Palme made a name for himself as an anti-imperialist international statesman. It started with Vietnam. As early as 1965 he publicly condemned the war, and his criticism deepened under pressure from the solidarity movement. His comparison in 1972 of the US bombing of Hanoi to Guernica and Nazi atrocities outraged Henry Kissinger and prompted Richard Nixon to call him “that Swedish asshole”. [...]
To Palme, the new political and economic landscape did not imply that reformism’s potential had been exhausted. While politicians like Feldt wanted to permanently reorient the party and break with its former economic policies, much of what was done in the 1980s was in Palme’s eyes a necessary evil that would eventually bring order to the national economy. Palme’s position, Feldt explained, was “more about giving the party the opportunity, through undesirable means, to return to its former policies. We had to crawl through a tunnel. At the other end was the light.”
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