Freedom! And The Fear!

Lyrics for The Fear

When Francine said last week that she wanted to talk about free will, I asked her over Line to say more about the topic. She ended with a sentence:
“When we grow up, we get more physical freedom but less freedom of will. That's because of the fear.”
I understood immediately! But then when I sat down to pull information together for this article, I found that I didn’t understand at all. What is The Fear? Is it maybe different for every person?

Lily Allen made a song entitled The Fear, and it catapulted her to superstardom. It really resonated with people. But is her The Fear the same as what Francine mentioned, or is it different?

So let’s talk about this sentence! When you hear it, what do you think of?

“When we grow up, we get more physical freedom but less freedom of will. That's because of the fear.”

What is our Geist 討論逐字稿

—Let’s look at the first question: “Humans are just doomed to destroy each other?” Are humans basically just destructive assholes?
—Well, I don’t think humans are evil, but in a book, “The Third Chimpanzee”, the author analyses human behavior, like from the aspect of environment, he argues that humans always destroy their environments. Like the ancient people, we think they tend to live in harmony with nature, but the truth is not like this. For example, he uses a lot of proofs to demonstrate why the Aztecs and Maya, the reason they disappeared can be ascribed to their destruction of nature, because they used up their resources, no matter animals or plants,
—And the people around them too!
—And some creatures like animals, they went extinct, not just because of climate change, but they were overhunted.
—So you feel like, yeah, this isn’t something that can change
—I was quite persuaded by this author, because the population is more intensive than other creatures, so we can’t help but destroy what’s around us, because we need more resources than other creatures. So I think that’s possible
—Maybe it was true before, that people can destroy each other in the past, or use up a lot of resources in the past, because we have to live. But do you think the situation will change in the future? I think the situation will become better, because people are trying to find the balance between humans and environment. Like we’re trying to protect animals. Some people think we don’t use as much energy as possible, we have to save energy. So the situation has changed. Do you think people will kill each other in the future?
—Do you mean on an individual basis or a mass basis?
—Either one.
—I think individual murders will probably always be with us, but 20th century style mass mowing down of human beings will change.

What is our Geist? What do we want it to be?

Hi guys, this is a difficult article because it compresses a lot of references into a small space. Instead of trying to understand the article as a piece, I’d rather talk about some of the questions it brings up.

So each title is the question to discuss, and the text underneath is the part of the article that brings it up, just for reference. We can also talk about the meaning of each passage during the discussion.

What is Geist?
The concept of Geist is one of the most fundamental of the Enlightenment. It refers to how the human mind creates the world we live in. This mind is, by default, a collective mind, but it is one shaped by individuals’ experiences of the world. And zeitgeist is, as the word indicates, the spirit, or mind, of its time. When Goethe talks about ‘den Geist der Zeiten’ in Faust, he emphasises that it is always with ‘one’s own spirit’ that we look upon history.

Fair Compensation?

THE IDEA
Pay everyone in the company equally, at a livable wage (for the US)
Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. …The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.
Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.

THE BLOWBACK
1. Media Onslaught
What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.

2. Both Loss of Customers and Too Much New Business
More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase — despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.

Doing Favors + Creating Relationships, Who Counts?

Today we're looking at quotes from two related articles, one in The Guardian and one in The Wall Street Journal. The heading of each quote is a link to the article it came from.

Women's help doesn't count as something that should be repaid
Women were more likely than men to be asked for favors and were more likely to grant requests for help, Frank found. When the recipients of help were asked how “indebted” they felt, they appreciated the help of women less than the help of men——it turned out that people felt entitled to female help. Worse, the more “agreeable” the woman seemed, the more the value of her help was discounted by the person she assisted (as if they assumed “she just likes to help”).

How societies can grow old better

Today we'll talk about Jared Diamond's TED talk, How societies can grow old better.

As a supplement to this discussion, here's a video describing a group home for older people in Japan called Collective House Seiseki (in Chinese), and here is their website (in Japanese).

How to Spot a Liar

Let's talk about Pamela Meyer's TED talk: How to Spot a Liar

This talk has got a lot of information in it. As you listen, pick out the one or two things that really catch your attention, and we'll talk about those things. See you tonight!

Being Authentic

Tonight we're going to discuss Ash Beckham's talk, "When to take a stand and when to let it go."


The main theme of her talk is that human beings are more than one thing at a time, and acknowledging this is one way to be really human. I think this is one of the main cultural differences between the US and Taiwan. I feel that in Taiwan that it is culturally normal to be more than one thing at a time, and to have more than one idea about the world at a time. I think this is one of Taiwan's greatest strengths. So, let's talk about what is being an authentic human being, according to different cultures.

You Become What You Do

Let's talk about Barry Schwartz' TED talk: The way we think about work is broken.


"And that's how the industrial revolution created a factory system in which there was really nothing you could possibly get out of your day's work, except for the pay at the end of the day. Because the father -- one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith -- was convinced that human beings were by their very natures lazy, and wouldn't do anything unless you made it worth their while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving them rewards. That was the only reason anyone ever did anything. So we created a factory system consistent with that false view of human nature. But once that system of production was in place, there was really no other way for people to operate, except in a way that was consistent with Adam Smith's vision. So the work example is merely an example of how false ideas can create a circumstance that ends up making them true.

It is not true that you "just can't get good help anymore." It is true that you "can't get good help anymore" when you give people work to do that is demeaning and soulless. And interestingly enough, Adam Smith -- the same guy who gave us this incredible invention of mass production, and division of labor -- understood this. He said, of people who worked in assembly lines, of men who worked in assembly lines, he says: "He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become." Now, notice the word here is "become." "He generally becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human being to become." Whether he intended it or not, what Adam Smith was telling us there, is that the very shape of the institution within which people work creates people who are fitted to the demands of that institution and deprives people of the opportunity to derive the kinds of satisfactions from their work that we take for granted."

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong

What do people really need in their lives? Isn't it actually connection with others?

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.

Why it's time to rethink the pecking order at work

This talk is about why we might be better off rethinking how we organize ourselves at our workplaces.

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.

What Dame Ellen MacArthur learned sailing around the world

We're not the only ones talking about this! Another person's view on what's going on with our economy, surprisingly similar to our conclusions a couple weeks ago, when we were discussing the problem with Free Trade Agreements.

To see this talk on the TED site, click here.