Cruelty, Nonsense, and Reality-Checks

Posted on Wednesday 12 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman says Trump knew full well how his Great Gatsby-themed party looked just as millions of Americans were about to lose federal food assistance — the cruelty is the point;
  • Short items about church/state separation; how “God’s authority” is not a legal defense; Mar-A-Lago Face requests; firing investigators targeting your friends; what “great red cities”?; Trump pranked; Obergefell; Trump doesn’t know what a magnet is; Trump thinks people quit their jobs to get SNAP; Trump thinks Mamdani is a communist, with a helpful chart to distinguish various “isms”; Tucker Carlson thinks chemtrails are real, with a helpful response detailing the logistics needed for that to be true; and how Trump thinks talent in the US is lacking.
– – –

Catching up on items in the news from the past week. This sets the tone.

Paul Krugman, 4 Nov 2025: The Big Smirk, subtitled “The cruelty is the point, party edition”
Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Psychology | Comments Off on Cruelty, Nonsense, and Reality-Checks

Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 5 (conclusion)

Posted on Tuesday 11 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”

(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)

(Post 1, Post 2, post 3, post 4)

\

Now, a final review and some thumbnail summaries. What was this book about again? Happiness? Ancient wisdom? The meaning of life? All of the above? The themes and structure of the book are not crisp enough for me to boil them down without reading through my notes one more time… That’s what I’m doing today, to distill the book down as much as I can.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Human Nature, Meaning, Morality, Philosophy, Psychology | Comments Off on Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 5 (conclusion)

Busy Weekend: Quick Summary

Posted on Monday 10 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Friday I had a PCP (primary healthcare physician) appointment; an annual checkup, though they don’t use that word anymore. Insurance difficulties. Just a 10-minute chat. D Frey had already seen all my blood work. No problems.

On Saturday we did a quick drive from Oakland down to LA, on the I5, to visit Y’s younger son Michael and his wife’s new daughter, Leila, for her 100-day party. A Chinese tradition.

And Sunday morning we drove home, up the I5.

Sunday afternoon we visited the Silverbergs, for a visit and take-out dinner. He had fallen and hurt his hip, and was house-bound. I had never been to their house before. This was a … thrill.

On Saturday, while we were in LA, my contributor copy of the Gary Westfahl anthology with an essay of mine arrived. I posted about this on Facebook, since my own essay is fully visible via Amazon’s “Read Sample” feature.

Posted in Personal history | Comments Off on Busy Weekend: Quick Summary

The Absence of Empathy

Posted on Friday 7 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m still working this past week on summarizing and assessing the 2006 Jonathan Haidt book THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS. I can’t quite wrap it up today, or soon, because we’re doing a quick trip down and back to LA tomorrow and Sunday, and probably won’t do any posts over the weekend. For now, I’ll note the usual political items.

The story all over the news yesterday and today:

The New Republic, 6 Nov 2025: Trump Just Stands There After Man Collapses During Press Conference, subtitled “One of the guests at Donald Trump’s press conference on weight loss drugs passed out during the event.”

A man appeared to collapse Thursday during a press conference to debut a deal to make those drugs more affordable, while President Donald Trump simply looked on.

As if annoyed that his press conference had been interrupted. Concern? Of course not; that would betray compassion. Trump (and MAGA) is not compassionate, or empathetic.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Morality | Comments Off on The Absence of Empathy

Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 4

Posted on Friday 7 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”

(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)

(Post 1, Post 2, post 3)

\

Ch10, Happiness Comes from Between
Quotes from the Upanishads and by Willa Cather

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Human Nature, Meaning, Morality, Psychology | Comments Off on Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 4

Cave Man Morality and the Normalizing of Racism

Posted on Thursday 6 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Right-wing panic and hypocrisy over the election of Zohran Mamdani;
  • While the right-wing increasingly embraces the racist views of Nick Fuentes;
  • How the election clapped back at Trump; Robert Reich on how Trump has put America into reverse;
  • Brief items about the actual Trump economy; Trump “news”; how Republicans are obsessed with issues that don’t matter to most Americans; and how the fossil fuel industry continues to spread climate change denial.
– – –

The right is hysterical about the newly elected mayor of New York City, because he’s not an old, white, Christian dude.

Slate, Molly Olmstead, 5 Nov 2025: Let’s Check In on How the Right Is Handling Mamdani’s Big Win

Tuesday night was, by any reasonable metric, a disastrous night for Republicans. Democrats were elected to the governors’ mansions of Virginia and New Jersey. Pennsylvania kept their liberal Supreme Court justices. Californians backed redistricting to counter Republican efforts. Even Georgia elected two Democrats to statewide offices.

But the greatest cultural shock to the class of Republican pundits and politicians who dominate social media conversations came from the night’s biggest news: A democratic socialist was elected mayor of the country’s largest city.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Cave Man Morality and the Normalizing of Racism

Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 3

Posted on Thursday 6 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”

(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)

(Post 1, Post 2)

\

Ch7, The Uses of Adversity

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Human Nature, Meaning, Morality | Comments Off on Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 3

Bill Gates and Climate Change

Posted on Wednesday 5 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

There has been much consternation over a piece published by Bill Gates last week, about climate change.

NY Times, David Gelles, 28 Oct 2025: Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise’, subtitled “In a memo, the Microsoft co-founder warned against climate alarmism and appears to have shifted some of his views about climate change.”

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has spent billions of his own money to raise the alarm about the dangers of climate change, is now pushing back against what he calls a “doomsday outlook” and appears to have shifted his stance on the risks posed by a warming planet.

In a lengthy memo released Tuesday, Mr. Gates sought to tamp down the alarmism he said many people use to describe the effects of rising temperatures. Instead, he called for redirecting efforts toward improving lives in the developing world.

Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Psychology, Science | Comments Off on Bill Gates and Climate Change

Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 2

Posted on Wednesday 5 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”

(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)

(Post 1)

Once again, there are lots of familiar ideas here, from books about psychology and human nature, from Stephen Pinker and Jonathan Haidt. That’s the point of the book: to assess modern understanding of topics about happiness and meaning, and contrast them with the ‘traditional wisdom’ about these matter. Three more chapters today. I’ll save my takes and summaries until the last post, but here I occasionally insert [[ personal comments ]].

\

Ch4, The Faults of Others
Quotes by Matthew, and Buddha.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Human Nature, Morality, Psychology | Comments Off on Jonathan Haidt, THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS, post 2

Survival, Revelations, Falling Standards

Posted on Tuesday 4 November 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Samuel McKee on how our brains are wired to survive, not to find truth;
  • Adam Gopnik from 2012 about an Elaine Pagels book on Revelations;
  • Jonathan Chait on how falling standards of behavior in Washington;
  • Brief items about tariffs on people moving to Texas, and a bailout to coal plants.
– – –

This piece isn’t news, but it is something core to my own understanding and themes, and something which I suspect is not widely understood.

IAI.tv (Institute of Art and Ideas), Samuel McKee, 4 Nov 2025: Our brains evolved to survive, not to find truth, subtitled “We are social animals, not truth-seeking ones”

Intro:

We like to believe that reason is our pathway to truth. Yet from Popper’s demand for falsifiability to Darwin’s doubt about the mind’s origins, a more unsettling picture is emerging. Our brains were shaped not to perceive reality, but to survive within it. Evolution has optimized us for social cohesion rather than accuracy, leaving false beliefs not as evolutionary errors but as features of our survival. In an age that prizes truth, philosopher of science Samuel McKee argues that our greatest obstacle may be the very mind that seeks it.

Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution, Human Nature, Politics | Comments Off on Survival, Revelations, Falling Standards