Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn
Noam Chomsky is is an American professor and public intellectual who is known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called “the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. As his one of the …
Malcolm Gladwell – Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce
By far, Malcolm Gladwell is my one of favorite public speakers in terms of his speaking style. The Humorous Story Telling. Amazed how he leads his point via spaghetti sauce story. Abstract concept is hardly remembered, but story lasts in our memory for a while because it has a strong link from the beginning to …
You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions — your brain creates them
Can you look at someone’s face and know what they’re feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares …
Philosophies of self: East-West distinctions
People in the East and West really do think differently, especially when it comes to self-identity. Depending where you live, either associative or distinctive thinking will shape your sense of self. You can learn a lot about yourself by looking through the lens of a different worldview. Gish Jen presents that awareness here by comparing …
Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.”
“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn’t one.” – Wei Wu Wei Western philosophy typically conceptualizes the self as a stable, controlling entity, comparable to a pilot, while Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism argue that the self is an …