Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb File Type: epub From the New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold new work that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept ones own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life. As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights *For social justice,focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations. Ethical rules arent universal*. Youre part of a group larger than you, but its still smaller than humanity in general. *Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others. You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot*. Educated philistines have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets. Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines. True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what youre willing to risk for it. The phrase skin in the game is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but its also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule thats necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster, and Never trust anyone who doesnt have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them. **
Author: Sigmund Freud
File Type: pdf
This remarkable book takes as its subject one of the most outstanding men that ever lived. The ultimate prodigy, Leonardo da Vinci was an artist of great originality and power, a scientist, and a powerful thinker. According to Sigmund Freud, he was also a flawed, repressed homosexual. The first psychosexual history to be published, Leonardo da Vinci was the only biography the great psychoanalyst wrote. When Jung first saw it, he told Freud it was wonderful, and it remained Freuds favourite composition. The text includes the first full emergence of the concept of narcissism and develops Freuds theories of homosexuality. While based upon controversial research, the book offers a fascinating insight into two men - the subject and the author. If youve ever wondered just what lies behind the Mona Lisas enigmatic smile, read Freud on Leonardo. Its genius on genius.
Author: Eric Voegelin
File Type: pdf
Published Essays, 1940-1952, includes some of Eric Voegelins most provocative and interesting essays. Containing his first publications after he fled Vienna and settled in the United States following Hitlers annexation of Austria, this volume provides eyewitness commentary on the rise of National Socialism from the first days of World War II onward. A major study entitled Growth of the Race Idea presents a masterful summary of the two volumes on that subject Voegelin first published in 1933. A related essay of wide interest is entitled Nietzsche, the Crisis, and the War.Another facet of Voegelins thought incorporated within this volume of the Essays is his extraordinary analysis of the diplomatic correspondence conducted between the Western powers, the papacy, and the Great Khans, whose breathtaking expansion of the Mongol Empire for a time threatened to extinguish Western civilization itself and resulted in a two-century domination of Russia. Another major study is The Origins of Scientism, an illuminating analysis of the grounds of much of modern philosophy and of all modern political ideologies.There are also surveys of the state of political theory in the late forties, penetrating studies of utopian thought with essays on Thomas More and Goethe, and a concluding essay that explores the intricacies of Gnostic Politicsa familiar theme from Voegelins contemporaneous New Science of Politics. This volume of published essays shows Eric Voegelin at his most accessible best.About the AuthorAbout the Author Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, immigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelins major writings.About the Editor Ellis Sandoz, Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science, is Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the general editor of Voegelins History of Political Ideas and author or editor of numerous books, including The Politics of Truth and Other Untimely Essays The Crisis of Civic Consciousness, available from the University of Missouri Press.
Author: C. G. Jung
File Type: epub
This volume has become known as perhaps the best introduction to Jungs work. In these famous essays. The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious and On the Psychology of the Unconscious, he presented the essential core of his system. Historically, they mark the end of Jungs intimate association with Freud and sum up his attempt to integrate the psychological schools of Freud and Adler into a comprehensive framework.This is the first paperback publication of this key work in its revised and augmented second edition of 1966. The earliest versions of the Two Essays, New Paths in Psychology (1912) and The Structure of the Unconscious (1916), discovered among Jungs posthumous papers, are published in an appendix, to show the development of Jungs thought in later versions. As an aid to study, the index has been comprehensively expanded.**
Author: Allan G. Grapard
File Type: pdf
In Mountain Mandalas Allan G. Grapard provides a thought-provoking history of one aspect of the Japanese Shugendo tradition in Kyushu, by focusing on three cultic systems Mount Hiko, Usa-Hachiman, and the Kunisaki Peninsula. Grapard draws from a rich range of theorists from the disciplines of geography, history, anthropology, sociology, and humanistic geography and situates the historical terrain of his research within a much larger context. This book includes detailed analyses of the geography of sacred sites, translations from many original texts, and discussions on rituals and social practices. Grapard studies Mount Hiko and the Kunisaki Peninsula, which was very influential in Japanese cultural and religious history throughout the ages. We are introduced to important information on archaic social structures and their religious traditions the development of the cult to the deity Hachiman a history of the interactions between Buddhism and local cults in Japan a history of the Shugendo tradition of mountain religious ascetics, and much more. Mountain Mandalas sheds light on important aspects of Japans religion and culture, and will be of interest to all scholars of Shinto and Japanese religion. Extensive translations of source material can be found on the books webpage. **Review Mountain Mandalas is thought provoking and Grapards prose, ever inventive and sometimes even amazing, makes it a fun read It is a rich and rewarding book for specialists in Japanese religious history and should provoke a range of discussions and further research for years to come. Journal of Japanese Studies About the Author Allan G. Grapard is Professor Emeritus in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
Author: Peter James Hudson
File Type: pdf
From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. The precursors to institutions like Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, as well as a host of long-gone and lesser-known financial entities, sought to push out their European rivals so that they could control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialismbut they also set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the behavior of the banks was deeply conditioned by bankers racial views and prejudices. Drawing deeply on a broad range of sources, Hudson reveals that the banks experimental practices and projects in the Caribbean often led to embarrassing failure, and, eventually, literal erasure from the archives. Bankers and Empire is a groundbreaking book, one which will force readers to think anew about the relationship between capitalism and race. **
Author: Donald Altschiller
File Type: pdf
With the first two editions widely praised by reviewers, Hate Crimes A Reference Handbook, Third Edition remains the most comprehensive reference source on bias-motivated violence committed in the United States. The book contains vital history on hate crime legislation, provides a detailed chronology of recent events, and offers the most up-to-date information on its prevalence and the affected religious, racial, and other targeted communities, such as Jewish Americans and Sikh Americans. Dozens of expert contributorssuch as Kenneth L. Marcus, president and general counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Lawpresent a balanced range of perspectives on the growing phenomenon, enabling readers to fully comprehend the widespread problem and develop their own informed opinion. Written in an accessible style suited to high school and undergraduate-level students as well as general readers, this book provides an essential, current, and easy-to-read ready reference on the timely and evolving issue of hate crime in the United States. The material provides an introductory overview of the topic of hate crime as well as insightful discussion of specific subjects, such as U.S. Supreme Court decisions and federal and state legislation regarding hate crimes, the incidence of hate crimes committed on Americas college campuses, and governmental and citizen efforts to combat this disturbing phenomenon.(Contemporary World Issues - Criminal Justice Series)
Author: William Henry Atherton
File Type: pdf
This is a comprehensive history of Montreal from its time as a French settlement to the end of the Seven Years War, when the defeated France gave up almost all North American possessions to the British. From the foreword Montreal being a unique city, with a personality of its own, its history, beyond that of any city of the new world, is particularly interesting and fruitful for such a retrospect. Dealing with the fortunes of several peoples, the original inhabitants of Hochelaga visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, the French colonists from 1642 and the Anglo-Saxons and Gaels from their influx in 1760, together with the steady addition of those of other national origins of later years, the story of Montreal, passing over the greater part of four centuries, is full of romance and colour and quickly moving incidents of compelling interest to the ordinary student, but how much more so to those who have any way leagued their fortunes with it, and assisted in its progress and in its making! Such cannot dip into the pages of the history of this ancient and modern city without finding fresh motives for renewed enthusiasm and for deeper pride. For Montreal is still in the making, with its future before it. The present work is especially dedicated to those who would realize the duties of good citizenship and it is the hope of the writer that it may serve to deepen the sense of civic pride now happily being cultivated here. To foster this civic pride is the justifying reason why he has been induced by his friends to launch on a long and laborious task, sweetened though it may be by the pleasure anticipated of communion with the scenes and thoughts and deeds of a romantic past and a wonderfully progressive present. **