It’s an unprecedented coalition of business networks that have come together to raise our ambition. Not just to help our individual CEOs succeed, we’ll do that for sure. But to actually bring their voices together to help shift culture. So that the pushback on the BRT [Business Roundtable] from different business publications or other people […]
Any conditions that compel the teacher to take note of failures rather than of healthy growth give false standards and result in distortion and perversion.
— John Dewey,1
As we approach the middle of March 2020 with Super Tuesday behind us, the moderate candidacy of Joe Biden has gained momentum, notching ten victories. The recent spat of moderate candidates dropping out (Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Bloomberg, Steyer) alongside Elizabeth Warren’s decision to stay in for Super Tuesday (and dropping out right after) boosted Biden into the lead in delegate count, but it is unclear going forward whether he will be able to gain ground or maintain his advantage.
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
— Henry VIII (IV.ii.)
You know the old refrain, "I work like a slave?" Don't use it anymore. There really are still slaves, actual slaves-- like the ones who built the pyramids, like the ones who built America...Last week, the Boston Globe published a provocative essay by Jeff Jacoby, Slavery Then And Now. Jacoby bemoans the lack of awareness that slavery exists today.
There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal.
— Borges, “The Immortal”, IV, in The Aleph (1949)
All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
— Jorge Luis Borges
In 2017, Sociology Professor Rachel Sherman wrote Uneasy Street: The Anxiety of Affluence, a book which drew upon 50 in-depth interviews with Uber-wealthy New Yorkers in order to obtain a picture of just how they perceived their status.
Book review: Against Meritocracy. Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility by Jo Littler
by Ian Sinclair
Peace News
December 2017-January 2018
The concept of meritocracy – “a system structured around advancement of people who are selected on the basis of individual achievement” – has been a powerful idea in post-war industrialised societies, especially in the more economically unequal US and UK.
The US selection of leaders has virtually nothing to do with democratic processes and outcomes. It is useful to contrast this with the process in China. In most instances, China’s selection of leaders is far more meritocratic, successful and performance-based. In both the US and China, the process lacks transparency.
US Economic, Political, and Cultural Leadership
The selection of US economic, political and cultural leaders is based on several undemocratic procedures.
1. Inheritance via family ties
