Something which a little while ago got me thinking – to the extent that I felt that I needed to blog about it – was the decision to ban young people from social media following an example in Australia. Now, my thoughts were not strictly along the lines of is this a good idea or not – rather the announcement triggered a lot of related things.
Systems Thinking
A Thought Provoking Essay
One of the links in my Trough of useful sources is to what used to be called Brain Pickings but has now been retitled The Marginalian. I receive regular emails with short essays on a whole range of subjects which often contain things that are very insightful.
Does Truth Matter
Of course it does – I hear you all say. Of course, I agree. However there are some nuances to explore and – more specifically, some examples of where truth seems to have no place in the conversations. Strangely it is almost exactly a year (took so long to do this one that it is now 5 years!) since I wrote Face It – You Don’t Know which in some ways explored the same topic – but from a slightly different viewpoint.
Always Too Young To Know Everything
I’ve been prompted to write something on this subject by a couple of videos that popped up as recommended on my YouTube feed this week – although it is also in many ways following on from my previous post when it comes to being well informed and the Dunning-Kruger effect. The idea, of course, is fundamental to the purpose of this blog – i.e. to continue to learn and to constantly remind yourself that there is much yet to be known.
If Nothing Changes, Does Nothing Change
The quote (attributed to a few people) “if nothing changes, nothing changes” came into my knowledge bank today! As usual with this sort of thing it got me thinking – never a good sign…… and the result is that I want to put it into the context of my own worldview.
About The Train Of Life
Continuing along the same track as my previous post (see what I did there? 😃) there are many pieces of writing that use the metaphor of a train journey to depict our own life journey. Like all metaphors (just most metaphors?) it does break down eventually, but it does help illustrate what I was getting at with the idea of ephemeral friendships.
Wise Paraphrase
Perhaps an unsurprising source for something like this, but sometimes it is necessary to skip the political correctness and say exactly what you mean. I am sure that I have at least mentioned Dunning-Kruger before – the problem with something like that is that it seems like high falutin’ mumbo jumbo to the ears of many people – so perhaps it is better coming from the mouth of John Cleese.
Imaginary Worlds
Not sure where this will go, but I have been thinking about this for a few days and it would seem sensible to try and map out some preliminary ideas. Also it is rather a long time since I was active on this blog.
The Logical Endpoint of Usandthemism
As you will have noticed – assuming you have read any previous posts – the notion of us vs them has been a recurrent topic in recent posts – and actually it goes back a long way in the posts in terms of the way in which I see the world and how we each “belong” to different groupings – often arbitrarily and fleetingly – sometimes quite deliberately and long term – and occasionally permanently due to “force of circumstances.
Shining a Little Light (I Hope)
Over recent times I have become even more aware of how much I don’t know – there are lots of things that I have learned about. To quote just one – until this week I had no prior knowledge of “Black Wall Street” and what happened there 99 years ago.