Rob > Recent Status Updates

Quoting Linda Hartling, “humiliation is not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability and violent conflict…perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age.” (149)

I'm finding useful frameworks with which to consider my own life through this book. That is, in spite of its limitations, one of which is the white American and middle class perspective (which McAdams acknowledges) and the other is the emphasis on faith and religion. Perhaps this is because the U.S. is such as religious country that the subject is bound to be a part of the discussion of identity.

Some brilliant ideas even in the short amount I've read, and while I don't love long books I wish Berardi had added a little more meat. He gives a single page to the history of free will from the Bible to the Industrial Revolution.
On the subject of freedom in ethics, he makes the point (perhaps obvious but not stated enough) that without the practical capacity to exercise one's will, ethics is meaningless.

"We are helplessly witnessing the private appropriation of public goods, the destruction of the social achievements of the past century, and the devastation of the environment. Now we should thoroughly accept impotence and turn it into an invincible weapon.
Desertion is an ethical choice, and a rational strategy too."
(from Introduction, page 7)