Stuff to think about

Are all those "psychological" studies biased because they rely on WEIRDO's?

WEIRDos. That is, they are people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures. In a provocative review paper published last week, a pair of researchers argues that WEIRDos aren’t representative of humans as a whole and that psychologists routinely use them to make broad, and quite likely false, claims about what drives human behavior...
(headsup FirstThings)



Individualism and egotism mar the studies: In most non western societies, the importance of the family and assisting those who have connections with you are more important than your own selfish desires...and life is not about happiness, but duty.
LINK
Similarly points out the problem in the discussion of caring for the elderly:


Economists configure caregiving as "burden." Psychologists talk about "coping," health-services researchers describe social resources and healthcare costs, and physicians conceive it as a clinical skill. Each of these perspectives represents part of the picture. For the medical humanities and interpretive social sciences, caregiving is a foundational component of moral experience. By this I mean that we envision caregiving as an existential quality of what it is to be a human being. We give care as part of the flow of everyday lived values and emotions that make up moral experience. Here collective values and social emotions are as influential as individual ones. Within these local moral worlds--family, network, institution, community--caregiving is one of those things that really matters...



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Lombardo reading from his Iliad translation:



the bad news is that I could never read it before listening to lectures (via ItunesU) that explained the nuances, which includes sympathy for those being killed in battle and the idea of honor that spurs on the fight.


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Similarly, hearing Anne Russell explain Wagner's Ring cycle will help you enjoy the "giant economy size" 4 part opera.