I was suspended, didn't do homework, detention, etc. Never had to repeat a grade, but I probably should have given how little effort I put in nypost.com/2020/02/08/how…
"one might expect that adopted children would do well in school...adoptive families tend to be better off financially than other families with children. This is partly due to self-selection and partly to the screening that adoptive parents must go through" ifstudies.org/blog/the-adopt…
Education outcomes are merely a symptom of deeper problems no one wants to talk about. Childhood instability isn't bad because it might affect a kid's education. It's bad because of its effects on the subjective experience of a kid going through it. But we'd rather talk education
Frantic activity on distractions and rituals as a defense against impotence. There is a term for that
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“Beginning in the late sixties, Helmut Kentler, one of the most influential sexologists in Germany, placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the government.” newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…
“Kentler was inspired by the Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who had argued that the free flow of sexual energy was essential to building a new kind of society…Kentler came to believe that sexual repression was key to understanding the Fascist consciousness.”
“these foster homes were run by sometimes powerful men who lived alone and who were given this power by academia, research institutions and other pedagogical environments that accepted, supported or even lived out pedophile stances”
“the disintegration of the Soviet Union was one of the most astonishing events in modern history…The largest and most threatening empire in the world, with 5 million soldiers in Soviet garrisons from Budapest to Vladivostok, fell apart in just 6 years” nytimes.com/2002/01/20/boo…
Dark personality traits like manipulation, egocentricity, and callousness (for men) increase throughout adolescence, peak in young adulthood, and gradually decline with age
Young people's behavior is often attributed to moral idealism. Yet younger adults score higher on the Dark Triad than older adults, and appear to be more cynical. Perhaps the actions attributed to moral idealism are instead driven by less pleasant motives
"there is a hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only different but generally persist from birth to death...It is very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born" amzn.to/3qUTdKh
Gatsby: “The only respectable thing about you, old sport, is your money. Your money, that's it. Now I've just as much as you. That means we're equal.”
Tom Buchanan: “No. We were born different from you. It's in our blood. Nothing that you do or dream up will ever change that.”
Pierre Bourdieu posited the concept of “ease.” When you grow up in a social class and come to embody it, you represent its tastes and values so deeply that you exhibit "ease" within it. Impossible to learn as an adult. Bourdieu, like Fitzgerald, says you must be born into it.
"Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history. To interpret history from this viewpoint is historical materialism; standing in opposition to this viewpoint is historical idealism."
—Mao Tse-tung, Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle (1949)
Historical materialism is an idea from Karl Marx that the way societies are organized results from material conditions (e.g., economic forces) rather than ideals. Interesting considering the power of this very idea has had on the course of many societies marxists.org/reference/arch…
Mao's quote suggests that one has the ability to oppose his claim of historical materialism ("stand against"). Which means he believed ideals do in fact play some role in human affairs. Undermines his own ideology