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Shame is more effective than rules and regulations or censure and coercion, because people who feel shame regulate themselves.
Studies show that between 4 and 8 per cent of CEOs have a diagnosable sociopathy, compared to 1 per cent among the general population.
For most of our past, we inhabited an egalitarian world without kings or aristocrats, presidents or CEOs.
Meanwhile, this era also witnessed the birth of modern rule of law. Here was another antidote to our darker instincts, because Lady Justice is by definition blind. Unencumbered by empathy, love, or bias of any kind, justice is governed by reason alone.
Historians point out that if the Enlightenment gave us equality, it also invented racism.
intellectual integrity, his fidelity to truth.
The Pygmalion and Golem Effects are woven into the fabric of our world. Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower.
In one sweeping statement he dismissed the whole management profession: ‘Managing is bullshit. Just let people do their job.’
everybody reaffirming everybody else’s opinions.
‘overwhelming evidence’ that bonuses can blunt the intrinsic motivation and moral compass of employees.
How you get paid for what you do can turn you into an entirely different person.
skip teaching those skills that can’t be quantified.
major study among 230,000 people across 142 countries revealed that a mere 13 per cent actually feel ‘engaged’ at work.17 Thirteen per cent.
‘The gap between the people at the top and the folks doing the actual work–in healthcare, in education, you name it–is enormous,’ De Blok tells me when I visit his office in Almelo. ‘Managers tend to band together. They set up all kinds of courses and conferences where they tell each other they’re doing things right.’
managers tend to have very few ideas. They get their jobs because they fit into a system, because they follow orders. Not because they’re big visionaries.
‘It’s easy to make things hard, but hard to make them easy.’
bureaucracy keeps proliferating, because when you turn healthcare into a market, you end up with piles of paperwork.
A recent poll among twelve thousand parents in ten countries revealed that prison inmates spend more time outdoors than most kids.
Researchers at the University of Michigan found the time kids spent at school increased by 18 per cent from 1981 to 1997. Time spent on homework went up 145 per cent.3
the US, working mothers spend more time with their kids today than stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s.
With the emergence of the first cities and states came the first education systems. The Church needed pious followers, the army loyal soldiers and the government hard workers.
Sutton-Smith once said. ‘The opposite of play is depression.’41 These days, the way many of us work–with no freedom, no play, no intrinsic motivation–is fuelling an epidemic of depression.
The things we share are known as the commons.
For millennia, the commons constituted almost everything on earth. Our nomadic ancestors had scarcely any notion of private property and certainly not of states.
tell people, we’re releasing neighbours every year. Do you want to release them as ticking time bombs?’
In the US, 60 per cent of inmates are back in the slammer after two years, compared to 20 per cent in Norway.
the conditions in which they [inmates] live are the poorest possible preparation for their successful reentry into society, and often merely reinforce in them a pattern of manipulation or destructiveness.
structural causes of crime, such as poverty or discrimination.
scientists continue to consider US police statistics unreliable.36
In the US, the average police training programme lasts just nineteen weeks, which is unthinkable in most of Europe. In countries like Norway and Germany, law enforcement training takes more than two years.43
Among the most notable findings to come out of contact science is that prejudices can be eliminated only if we retain our own identity.
Instead of sharing in their distress, Ricard concentrated on calling up feelings of warmth, concern and care.
unlike empathy, compassion doesn’t sap our energy. In fact, afterwards Ricard felt much better.
