Saturday Links of the Week — January 12, 2008 — The Human Nature Edition

A David Wong trilogy:

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable: Read the whole brilliant, hilarious article. Synopsis:

1. There are not enough strangers in our lives — as a result we fail to build up resilience to frustration, and are underexposed to diversity
2. There are not enough annoying friends either — and hence not enough friends, period
3. Text is bad communication — too easily misunderstood (as critical, or as supportive, or as consistent with your own view, when it is not)
4. Text is less communication — missing all the sensory clues of other forms of communication
5. We don’t get enough personal criticism — from which we learn and grow best: “Those horrible, awkward, wrenchingly uncomfortable sessions that you can only have with someone who sees right to the center of you”.
6. There’s far too much echo chamber outrage — the ability to get a steady stream of stuff that plays on what gets you worked up, and none of the stuff that puts all that in perspective
7. We don’t actually do enough for others — because it’s so easy to spend your life in thought and communication, away from the direct physical evidence of what is needed, and the demand that you actually act

10 Ways Online Role-Playing is Changing the Future: A must for Second Life and World of Warcraft addicts, and for anyone else who thinks alternative realities are better than the ‘real’ one, or vice versa.

12 Reasons We Can’t Care About More Than ~150 People, and Why That Makes the Modern World So Dangerous: More than a discussion of Dunbar’s number, this is an amazing analysis of human and animal social behaviour.

How Fear Grounds Us (keeps us focused) and Grounds Us (keeps us paralyzed): Patti Digh explains how our fears and insecurities inhibit us, drive us, and prevent us everywhere. I love the fact she has ‘intentions’ that stem from her insights, at the end of each article. Thought, then action. I challenge you to stop at one page when it comes to devouring Patti’s blog. Totally addictive.

Women Invest in Sex to Obtain Relationships, Men Invest in Relationships to Obtain Sex: TerraPraeta explains what drives men and women in relationships. What do you think? And if she’s wrong, why are we so suspicious of people who make such investments freely, without expectation of getting anything (obvious) out of it?

Why We Love Peace and Hate Strangers: Biologist Robert Sapolsky provides case histories that show that not only are we primates extremely culturally malleable, we are prone, in the absence of environmental stresses, to be both xenophobic and peace-loving.

EO Wilson & Richard Dawkins Square Off Over Selfish Genes: An interesting debate on the biological origins of altruism. I don’t really buy either argument, because I think the late Stephen J Gould had a much better explanation, which is often reflected on these pages, and is consistent with Sapolsky’s findings, above. Don’t miss the comments below the article, which are also fascinating.

Newsweek Weighs in on Marriage, And Broadsheet replies: “The vitriolic response to [the Newsweek essayist’s] decision to define her personal relationships on her own terms also suggests how threatening the idea of not embracing marriage continues to be.” And, Carol Lloyd adds, “For something so exclusionary and heavy with misogynist baggage, I reason, shouldn’t this legal/spiritual/love bond at least perform better as a bonding substance than our 50 percent divorce rates suggest?”

Thought for the Week: From VoxClamantis, a commenter on the Wilson/Dawkins debate: