Tony Judt is dying. In less than two years, he has gone from a healthy man to a quadriplegic who relies on a machine to breathe. He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is a terrible disease, one that Judt likens to “progressive imprisonment without parole.” The body dies, but...
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In this lengthy piece, Shenk writes of a 72 year study of Harvard men and their well-being. It is an interesting read. Specialization in fields (sociology vs. biology vs. psychiatry vs…) is a good thing, but a side effect is that it has turned academia into a place that is not very welcoming to...
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Leonard Mlodinow of Caltech writes The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim concluded that survival in Nazi concentration camps depended on “one’s ability to arrange to preserve some areas of independent action, to keep control of some important aspects of one’s life despite an environment that seemed overwhelming.” Studies suggest that, even in normal conditions, to be...
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Simon Critchley, a New School philosopher, wrote a thought-provoking piece on happiness at the “Happy Days” blog at the New York Times. In it, he quotes Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s wonderful Reveries of a Solitary Stroller (also called Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Daydreams of a Solitary Walker, etc.): If there is a state where the...
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