Steven Pinker on the History of Violence: A Happy Tale

in History, Psychology | September 29th, 2011

In July, the Edge.org held its annu­al “Mas­ter Class” in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia and brought togeth­er some influ­en­tial thinkers to talk about “The Sci­ence of Human Nature.” The high­lights includ­ed:

Prince­ton psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Kah­ne­man on the mar­vels and the flaws of intu­itive think­ing; Har­vard math­e­mat­i­cal biol­o­gist Mar­tin Nowak on the evo­lu­tion of coop­er­a­tion; Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker on the his­to­ry of vio­lence; UC-San­ta Bar­bara evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Leda Cos­mides on the archi­tec­ture of moti­va­tion; UC-San­ta Bar­bara neu­ro­sci­en­tist Michael Gaz­zani­ga on neu­ro­science and the law; and Prince­ton reli­gious his­to­ri­an Elaine Pagels on The Book of Rev­e­la­tions.

The Edge.org has now start­ed mak­ing videos from the class avail­able online, includ­ing, this week, Steven Pinker’s talk on the his­to­ry of vio­lence. You can watch Pinker’s full 86 minute talk here (sor­ry, we could­n’t embed it on our site.) Or, if you want the quick gist of Pinker’s think­ing, then watch the short clip above. In five min­utes, Pinker tells you why vio­lence is steadi­ly trend­ing down, and why some things are actu­al­ly going right in our momentarily/monetarily trou­bled world.

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The Great Dr. Fox Lecture: A Vintage Academic Hoax (1970)

in Psychology | September 26th, 2011

Back in 1970, three psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sors pulled off a hoax that dou­bled as med­ical research. They brought Dr. Myron L. Fox, “an author­i­ty on the appli­ca­tion of math­e­mat­ics to human behav­ior,” to a con­fer­ence near Lake Tahoe and let him talk about “Math­e­mat­i­cal Game The­o­ry as Applied to Physi­cian Edu­ca­tion.” Lit­tle did the audi­ence know that Fox was­n’t actu­al­ly a researcher or schol­ar. He was actu­al­ly an actor who had played parts in Hogan’s Heroes and Bat­man. And he was giv­en a gib­ber­ish-filled script to learn only the day before. Nonethe­less, the edu­ca­tors in the crowd ate up his mean­ing­less talk, and it allowed the researchers to draw the con­clu­sion that “style was more influ­en­tial than con­tent in pro­vid­ing learn­er sat­is­fac­tion.” A nice way of say­ing that jar­gon and cant can some­times take you a long way in the acad­e­my — in the human­i­ties and sci­ences alike. More back­sto­ry here. H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment on YouTube

Carl Gus­tav Jung Talks About Death

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

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Movie Tearjerkers: What’s the Saddest Scene in Cinema?

in Film, Psychology | July 28th, 2011

Accord­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing piece in The Smith­son­ian, Fran­co Zef­firelli’s 1979 weep­fest The Champ is the most con­sis­tent­ly effec­tive tear­jerk­er in the his­to­ry of film. It’s also the tear­jerk­er most often used in sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of grief and sad­ness:

The Champ has been used in exper­i­ments to see if depressed peo­ple are more like­ly to cry than non-depressed peo­ple (they aren’t). It has helped deter­mine whether peo­ple are more like­ly to spend mon­ey when they are sad (they are) and whether old­er peo­ple are more sen­si­tive to grief than younger peo­ple (old­er peo­ple did report more sad­ness when they watched the scene). Dutch sci­en­tists used the scene when they stud­ied the effect of sad­ness on peo­ple with binge eat­ing dis­or­ders (sad­ness didn’t increase eat­ing).

We would have gone with either the last scene of West Side Sto­ry or that dev­as­tat­ing 1989 Negro Col­lege Fund com­mer­cial with the pen­nies. Feel free to post your own can­di­dates in the com­ments.

via Neatora­ma

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Renata Salecl: The Paradox of Choice

in Current Affairs, Psychology | June 22nd, 2011

With free­dom come choic­es. Every choice is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to select the best pos­si­ble out­come, the one that would make us hap­pi­est. More choic­es lead to more hap­pi­ness, right? Of course we find the oppo­site to be true. As choic­es increase, so does anx­i­ety. In the lat­est install­ment of the RSA ani­mat­ed lec­ture series, Sloven­ian social and legal the­o­rist Rena­ta Sale­cl argues that this anx­i­ety, cou­pled with the cap­i­tal­ist ide­al of the self-made per­son, leads to a kind of social paral­y­sis. “Today’s ide­ol­o­gy of choice,” says Sale­cl, “actu­al­ly paci­fies peo­ple and makes us con­stant­ly turn crit­i­cism to our­selves instead of orga­niz­ing our­selves and mak­ing a cri­tique of the soci­ety we live in.” The ani­mat­ed fea­ture was adapt­ed from a lec­ture Sale­cl gave last sum­mer in Lon­don. (You can watch the entire lec­ture here.) It draws on ideas pre­sent­ed in her book, Choice.

Oth­er RSA Videos:

Sir Ken Robin­son: A Cre­ative Edu­ca­tion

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Smile or Die: The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Steven Pinker: How Innu­en­do Makes Things Work

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230 Cultural Icons: A New Collection

in Film, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Psychology | June 13th, 2011


Time to roll out a new media col­lec­tion — a big col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons. Here you will find great writ­ers, daz­zling film­mak­ers and musi­cians, bril­liant philoso­phers and sci­en­tists — fig­ures who have changed our cul­tur­al land­scape through­out the years. You’ll see them in video, or hear their voic­es in audio.

The list cur­rent­ly fea­tures 230 icons, all speak­ing in their own words. The col­lec­tion will inevitably grow as we add more mate­r­i­al, or as you send sug­ges­tions our way. For now, how about we whet your appetite with 10 favorites? Then you can rum­mage through the full col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons here.

(Note: Down the road, you can access this col­lec­tion by click­ing “Cul­tur­al Icons” in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.)

Sal­vador Dali - Video – Sur­re­al­ist artist appears on “What’s My Line?” (1952)

John­ny Depp - Video – The ver­sa­tile actor reads a let­ter from Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son.

Anne Frank - Video – It is the only known footage of Anne Frank, author of the world’s most famous diary, and it’s now online.

Pat­ti Smith — Video — The “god­moth­er of punk” recalls her friend­ship with artist Robert Map­plethor­pe.

Quentin Taran­ti­no - Video – Pulp Fic­tion direc­tor lists his favorites films since 1992.

Leo Tol­stoy – Video – Great footage of the last days of the tow­er­ing Russ­ian nov­el­ist. 1910.

Mark Twain – Video – America’s fabled writer cap­tured on film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909.

Andy Warhol - Video – In 1979, Warhol cre­at­ed pub­lic access tele­vi­sion pro­grams. In this episode, he chats with Bian­ca Jag­ger & Steven Spiel­berg.

Tom Waits - Video – The raspy singer reads “The Laugh­ing Heart” by Charles Bukows­ki.

Vir­ginia Woolf — Audio — Record­ing comes from a 1937 BBC radio broad­cast. The talk, enti­tled “Crafts­man­ship,” was part of a series called “Words Fail Me.” The only known record­ing of her voice.

Get the rest here. Don’t miss us on Face­book and Twit­ter!

 

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Carl Gustav Jung Ponders the Meaning of Death (1959)

in Psychology | June 6th, 2011

On June 6, 1961, the great psy­chol­o­gist Carl Gus­tav Jung died at his vil­la at Küs­nacht, on the shore of Lake Zurich, Switzer­land. He was 86 years old.

Jung viewed death as a ful­fill­ment, rather than a nega­tion, of life. “As a doc­tor,” he wrote in his 1930 essay, The Stages of Life, “I am con­vinced that it is hygienic–if I may use the word–to dis­cov­er in death a goal toward which one can strive, and that shrink­ing away from it is some­thing unhealthy and abnor­mal which robs the sec­ond half of life of its pur­pose.”

To this end, wrote Jung many years lat­er in Mem­o­ries, Dreams, Reflec­tions, a per­son should fol­low his instinct and embrace myth: “for rea­son shows him noth­ing but the dark pit into which he is descend­ing. Myth, how­ev­er, can con­jure up oth­er images for him, help­ful and enrich­ing pic­tures of life in the land of the dead.”

Jung cer­tain­ly embraced the myth of an after­life, as evi­denced in this excerpt from an Octo­ber, 1959 inter­view with John Free­man for the BBC pro­gram Face to Face. The 40-minute interview–in which Jung talks about for­ma­tive events of his child­hood, his friend­ship and falling-out with Sig­mund Freud, and his views on reli­gion and death–can be viewed in its entire­ty here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Explains What Made Carl Jung Such an Influ­en­tial Thinker

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

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Charismatic Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan Gives Public Lecture (1972)

in Philosophy, Psychology | March 21st, 2011

The footage above is from an extreme­ly rare – and unex­pect­ed­ly enter­tain­ing – video of the philoso­pher and psy­cho­an­a­lyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), giv­ing a lec­ture at The Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain in 1972. The film is notable for a cou­ple of rea­sons:

1. In France, Lacan’s rock star sta­tus owed much to his pop­u­lar pub­lic sem­i­nars. The charis­mat­ic icon­o­clast had been giv­ing free pub­lic lec­tures for decades, and those lec­tures were usu­al­ly packed with stu­dents, col­leagues, skep­tics, young rad­i­cals … and fans. The video gives you an idea of what the fuss was all about. Even at 70, Lacan still owns the room, and he has the pres­ence of a stage actor, com­plete with dra­mat­ic paus­es, iron­ic self-reflec­tion, and pitch-per­fect storms of emo­tion (see minute 15:07).

2. At minute 21:37, a polit­i­cal­ly inspired heck­ler tries to ambush him. It’s a moment right out of a com­e­dy show, if the com­e­dy show were chic and grainy and edit­ed by Jean-Luc God­dard. Note the grace with which Lacan neu­tral­izes the poor guy, lights his cig­ar and then con­cludes the lec­ture, even though the fall­out from their encounter is still stuck in his hair.

Lacan’s ideas have fall­en a bit out of fash­ion in the past two decades, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the U.S., where psy­cho­analy­sis has been nudged out of the spot­light by neu­ro­science and post-struc­tural­ism has lost ground to post-colo­nial stud­ies. But Lacan still has his fans, notably the “Elvis of Phi­los­o­phy,” Slavoj Zizek, who dom­i­nates YouTube the way his pre­de­ces­sor once did salons.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Steven Pinker: How Innuendo Makes Things Work

in Life, Psychology | February 15th, 2011

RSA has rolled out its lat­est ani­mat­ed video, and it’s a good one. This time we have Steven Pinker, the famed Har­vard lin­guist and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist, try­ing to make sense of innu­en­do. Why do we often say things in veiled terms, espe­cial­ly when every­one knows what’s real­ly being said? Pinker breaks it all down, and explains how lan­guage pro­vides the grease that lubri­cates every­day social rela­tion­ships.

This clip is an excerpt from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed at the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts in Lon­don. Watch the full talk here, and scroll through pre­vi­ous RSA Ani­mat­ed videos right here.

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