Imagine a Better World – Malcolm Gladwell – Zeitgeist Americas 2013 zeitgeistminds

Game of Tribes “The game is indefensible. Every year during August two-a-days, some poor kid dies of heat stroke. …And yet there is such joy in seeing your tribe, your people, your team win. You are validated. You are part of the family, the clan. You have a home.”

Learning Sympathy “Before roughly the 1800s, sympathy was less common and more restricted in scope, overwhelmed as people were by practical needs and circumstances.”

How To Learn Judaism as a Native Language “So, if Judaism is no longer a native language for many Jews, what is it? I believe that Judaism is best thought of now as an art, or maybe a sport. Put in even simpler terms, it’s like playing guitar, or playing tennis.”

It Captures Your Mind “scarcity captures the mind.”

What good is religion? “If religions stuck with helping people, non-coercively, in their attempts at self-transformation, they probably would not be ignored, hated or ridiculed as they are by growing numbers of the religiously disaffected.” Asking for what Rod Dreher calls Moral Therapeutic Deism.

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