Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.

Understanding patrimonialism is the key to defeating it.

·     When my clients try to negotiate their own deals, and I know they don’t know what they are doing, making the likelihood of reaching an agreement slim and none, I say, “This is like watching children playing with explosives.”

·     Sadly, in this case, that is not just a metaphor. It is literally true.

“This aggression will not stand, man!”

Scott Peck, a Harvard psychiatrist of some renown in the 70s, built his edifice of good mental health on truth - no avoidance, confrontation with reality, no matter how distasteful.

Instead of staring at your iPhone and photographing your physical image (without AI filtering), let’s do more of an MRI, designed to give us an image of how you are living your life.

Cognitive impotence is the reverse of social proof.

Social proof means we tend to do something because everyone else is doing it; cognitive impotence describes the tendency to not do something because everyone else is not doing it.

Wise decisions result in a wise life, and a wise life is as good as it gets.

Making wise decisions does not come naturally.

In recent years, we have learned that to make wise decisions, we must understand two concepts: heuristics and cognitive biases.

I often opine and whine, but empirical studies support my arguments in this article.

When

passions bore us

people understand Elizabethan

Warren Buffet files for bankruptcy

What are the benefits of having a self-transcendent purpose in life?

In 64 AD, a conflagration began devouring Rome. Emperor Nero bothered not, some say, with buckets, hoses, or help. Isn’t our version of Rome now burning in so many ways? And aren’t we fiddling?

Anyone who does not understand the importance of “undivided attention” has never had a small child or a hungry cat.

I admit to being a tad ambivalent about the prospect of the solar eclipse of 4/8/24.

Like an incurable cancer, rage rages on generation after generation.

We need to stop raging before we all kill each other!

Almost one in nine Americans—including one in eight children—live in poverty. More than 38 million people living in the United States cannot afford basic necessities. More than a million of our public schoolchildren are homeless, living in motels, cars, shelters, and abandoned buildings.

The Greeks may have been the earliest culture to discover that wisdom came clothed in stories, not lists and rules.

Hello, and thank you for calling Kvetchers International. We are here 24/7 to listen to your kvetching, or, for those of you who prefer to play the passive recipient, we offer various services at negotiated rates (based on your level of weirdness).

• Festivus is December 23rd.

• What is “Festivus”?

• For the unfamiliar, search YouTube (Seinfeld, Season 9, Episode 10, “The Strike”).

This article is primarily for those who have not completely delegated the art of writing clearly to ChatGPT or some other form of AI (NI = natural intelligence).

Most of us are familiar with the end of the story of Daedalus and Icarus.

For those of you who may not appreciate the nuances of Greek mythology, I am dropping you near the end of this story.