Why are some people risk takers and others not so much? Why am I even thinking about risk in the middle of the night, might be an even better question? But risk is a funny two-edged sword that we all confront on a daily basis whether we realize it or not. Risk tolerance varies dramatically between people due to a fascinating interplay of biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Biological influences play a significant role. Some…
Every once in a while I look around me and am in awe of my situation. I spend a lot of time pondering what to do, how to feel better doing it and how to make life better doing it. That is really a silly thing since I live in a golden era, surrounded by beauty no matter which way I turn. If I did not feel so rooted in reality, I would certainly think…
Inherited wealth has been a defining feature of human societies throughout history, shaping social structures, economic systems, and political power dynamics across civilizations. In early agricultural societies, the concept of inherited wealth emerged alongside private property ownership. Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek civilizations developed sophisticated inheritance laws, with wealth typically passed down patrilineally. Roman law established detailed inheritance frameworks that influenced Western legal traditions for centuries, including concepts like wills, trusts, and legitimate heirs. The…
As I have mentioned in various past stories, I subscribe and read faithfully the National Geographic magazine. I find its array of stories extremely consistent with my interests. Those interests are about the world around us and especially about the history of our world and our species. My generation was taught Western Civilization in school and while that ethnocentrically ignored a great deal of world history (especially Eastern Civilization), it did tend to start with…
Kim and I find ourselves talking about our toy poodle, Buddy, with people who have come over for the first time and just met him, invoking a somewhat apologetic manner since Buddy can be a bit of a handful. We find ourselves saying that when we got him two years ago he was much worse and that he has really mellowed out over that time. Clearly, Buddy is getting more mature and is now a…
Kindness appears to emerge from multiple interconnected sources, both biological and cultural. From an evolutionary perspective, kindness likely developed because cooperation and mutual aid increased survival chances for our ancestors. We see similar prosocial behaviors across many species – empathy, reciprocal altruism, and care for group members. Our brains seem wired with capacity for empathy through mirror neurons and emotional contagion, allowing us to feel something of what others experience. There’s also a developmental dimension.…
It is said that we have now moved from the information economy into the attention economy. The concept of the attention economy emerged gradually through several waves of thinking. It was first articulated in 1971, when it was said that “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its…
Many people use the term purgatory without having been raised Catholic and therefore probably not really understanding the concept. Purgatory is a concept in Catholic theology referring to a state of purification after death for souls who died in God’s grace but still need to be cleansed of the temporal punishment due to sin before entering heaven. The doctrine holds that souls in purgatory are destined for heaven but must first be purified of any…
Yesterday, my old friend Mike Cobbold came down from Sacramento for a two day visit. As I have mentioned previously, I knew Mike during the last few years of high school when our respective families were stationed in Rome and we both went to Notre Dame International Prep School on the Via Aurelia. Mike lived with his parents and brother, Robert, near the school on the Via Aurelia. I was living with my mother and…
People seem to think that Rudyard Kipling, the British Nobel laureate who wrote about his experiences with colonialism, coined the phrase that “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”, but in fact it was Noel Coward in his musical, The Third Little Show (1931) where he says, “Mad dogs and Englishmen Go out in the midday sun. The Japanese don’t care to, The Chinese wouldn’t dare to, Hindoos and Argentines sleep…