longreads.com

Why Are Fish So Gay?

It was only when I juxtaposed our stories that I saw how harshly I had judged myself, when I was just another organism trying to survive. In this light, I found it helpful to write about myself the way I would a fish, such as thinking about times when I've had to adapt, evolve, or escape, and to write about a fish the way I would write about another person, which meant treating them as an individual whose life story matters, not just as a member of a school or a swarm.

themarginalian.org

The Bird That Is Your Life

We don't know what it is like to be any creature other than ourselves — the bird, the dog, the person we love. The great triumph is to let the fantasy of understanding go and love anyway.

longreads.com

What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat

When presented with the opportunity for empathy, even performative empathy, he chose escape.

longreads.com

The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt

I was trying to find the human side of history, and humans were often my best source. When I thought about Sacajawea in the Rockies, trying to keep her infant son alive, I thought about my own kids at that age—about my wife breastfeeding them, both parties always hungry, always thirsty.

themarginalian.org

How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other

It is, of course, impossible to ever fully know what it is like to be someone else — this is the cost of consciousness, singular and secretive as it is; impossible, too, to fully convey to another what it is like to be you. The dream of perfectly clear vision is indeed just a dream. But we can always see a little more clearly in order to love a little more purely.

themarginalian.org

Erich Fromm’s 6 Rules of Listening: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist on the Art of Unselfish Understanding

Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.

whyisthisinteresting

The Monday Media Diet with Hannah Park

Fiction to expand one's creativity and empathy. To experience emotions and other perspectives that would otherwise be unknown.

3quarksdaily.com

Against The Concept Of Telescopic Altruism

Okay, so the lib is angry about the Israeli military killing 50,000 people in Gaza. Do you think she would be angry if the Israeli military killed 50,000 of her neighbors? Probably yes? Then what's the problem?