Attention Ayn Rand fans! I’m doing a short piece on how fans of Atlas Shrugged feel about the new movie. Are you disappointed? Excited? Or What? You don’t need to have seen it. But if you have seen it (I know some of you have), I’d especially love to get your reaction, either in the comments here or by email. Thanks!
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I argued “Against aspirational exceptionalism” at The Economist, reflected on what David Foster Wallace’s depression has to tell us about neurodiversity and flourishing at Forbes, where I also followed-up on my American exceptionalism post with Josh Cohen and Joel Rogers’ argument against Richard Rorty’s case for national pride.
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Maybe you should!
Cougar Dating Expert on Sperm Wars
Also, if I can ask you a favor…
I really, really appreciate the comments you leave here about my Forbes posts, but I would appreciate them even more were you to leave them at Forbes. I know. It’s super-annoying to have to sign up for an account in order comment. But comments create conversation, and conversation attract traffic. Indeed, Forbes features posts with high-activity conversations, and that bring even more traffic, which brings me meager but badly-needed sums of money. So if you would sign up at Forbes and start leaving comments over there, I would totally owe you big time.
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If you don’t know what that question means, you should read my new Forbes post.
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Here’s my overview of a bunch of recent research on the effect of expanding freedom choice and a sense of autonomy on self-reported happiness, and how all that relates to stuff David Brooks says about the alleged opposition between freedom and commitment.
I’m really, um, happy to get a chance to dig into developments in the happiness lit since I wrote my Cato happiness paper. This vein of research on freedom and autonomy is rich and interesting. One thread that I didn’t follow in the post I’m linking relates control and autonomy to the alleged Easterlin Paradox. Why haven’t Americans become much happier even though they became much richer? I really think there’s something to the idea that the way we’ve lived and worked as we’ve become richer hasn’t had much payoff in an increased sense of autonomy. There’s a left-wing version of this argument that stresses a sort of enslavement by false consumer desire, an imagined loss of worker’s rights, and so forth. There’s something to this. But I’m stewing up version of the argument that stresses barriers to self-employment, the debt loads and like-it-or-not rootedness encouraged by the American cult of homeownership, that sort of thing. Consider this a preview. But read this post first.
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I forgot to link to this post, in which it is argued that David Brooks doesn’t even win his own potted debate on his own terms. Later today, look for a follow-up post on autonomy and happiness.
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Relatedly, but MUCH less amusingly, I write today at The Economist about “Taking humanitarian justification seriously“
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I discuss a recent discussion of this hypothesis, and what it says about evolutionary psychology, in my latest post at Forbes.
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John Lithgow, stretched
I really stretched him out, which is easy to remedy in Photoshop, but I kinda like it this way.
First double-request on Twitter, narrowly beating out Nate Dogg and Muhammed from the Facebook wiseacres.
Click for the bigness.
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Sarah Palin, Superstar
I tried to go as fast as I could to see what would happen. Incoherently various inking techniques happened, and I almost ruined a shirt, but it was fun.
I dedicate this drawing to Andrew Sullivan. I will sell it to Andrew for $10 or record myself burning it for $100.
Clicking the picture will make it bigger, if you can handle it.
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