*
AMALIA FREUD TO HER SON SIGMUND
A mother is brought unlimited satisfaction only by her relation to a son; that is altogether the most perfect, the most free from ambivalence of all human relationships.
~ Sigmund Freud, “Lecture XXXIII: Femininity;
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
My Golden Sigi, those cigars
will be the death of you.
Twenty a day! You take after me —
that excess of life,
an anarchy of excellence
that must be sung to before lying down.
In my youth I was thought a beauty.
A man, not your father, said, “One could
drown in your eyes . . . ”
I don’t blame you if you never
saw me as Amalia.
It seems our dear old Franz Josef
will live forever. You and I
also have that rage for time,
while Vienna’s bric-a-brac
dozes in the fog. I told you the devil’s
grandmother, Baba Yaga,
dropped her tea service in her flight
to a witches’ sabbath —
hence those chimneys like pots and teakettles.
The fountains are turned off,
chrysanthemums bruise brown —
a season of evenings and books.
We sat in one room, the girls
sewing by the draft-torn candlelight —
I gave you the other room;
I gave you the only oil lamp.
I ate chicken wings,
saving the breasts for you.
When you said your sister’s music
intruded through the two closed doors,
I sold the piano.
I protected you in secret ways:
threw salt into fire,
hid a mole’s foot under your pillow.
I said, “There will be money for Sigi,
if I have to steal from the rabbi.”
You laugh that I pace like a caged lioness,
running to the landing, the door,
an hour before your visit.
I explained to a childless friend:
“It’s the same as what you feel
for a lover — except more.”
You say you don’t understand women.
A woman is a mother.
You nursed so hard my nipples bled.
Dolfi draws for hours: that hiss
of graphite against the paper and
my nerves — then she stacks
the drawings under her bed.
To you I showed how to write
your name on the page of the world.
When you were seven,
at the train station in Breslau,
the gas lights hissed and guttered;
you thought we were in hell —
You held my hand, and were not afraid.
Dolfi says your theories are scandalous —
but also that you wrote what it means
for a man to be his mother’s favorite son:
it’s a life-long feeling of triumph.
I wait Sunday at seven as always.
Don’t forget your gloves and scarf;
it’s so easy to catch a cold. Forever
yours, kisses, Mother
Sigmund, 16, and his mother Amalia Freud
*
TRUMP BRIEFED THAT IRAN’S NEW SUPREME LEADER MOJTABA KHAMENEI IS PROBABLY GAY
President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.
Others in the room also found it “hilarious” and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” said one person familiar with the briefing.
President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.
The third source said the intelligence indicated the affair was with a person who formerly worked for the Khamenei family.
Mojtaba, who is believed to have been wounded in the same Feb. 28 airstrike that killed his father and other members of his family, has made “aggressive” sexual overtures to men caring for him, possibly while under the influence of heavy medication, one of The Post’s sources said.
US spy agencies do not have photographic evidence of Mojtaba Khamenei’s alleged sexual attraction to men, but the sources insisted the tip is solid, with one saying it was “derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has.”
“The fact that this was elevated to the highest of high levels shows you there’s some confidence in this,” added a second source.
Mojtaba’s purported sexual orientation had been whispered about inside Iran since at least the May 2024 helicopter crash that killed then-President Ebrahim Raisi, Ali Khamenei’s presumed favorite to be the next supreme leader, sources said.
Within the US government, “it’s been a pretty closely held piece of information,” one insider said.
Trump previously dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight” and an “unacceptable” choice to run Iran. The new supreme leader is widely considered to be someone who would not bend to US demands to abandon the nuclear and ballistic missile programs that prompted Operation Epic Fury.
Some elements of Mojtaba Khamenei’s sex life have been reported before and may lend credence to the allegation.
A classified US diplomatic cable from 2008, published by WikiLeaks, described Mojtaba being treated in the UK for impotence, though that report did not identify what may have caused the condition.
The State Department file says Mojtaba married “relatively late in life” — around age 30 — “reportedly due to an impotency problem treated and eventually resolved during three extended visits to the UK, at Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals, London.”
“Mojtaba was expected by his family to produce children quickly, but needed a fourth visit to the UK for medical treatment; after a stay of two months, his wife became pregnant,” the leaked file said.
Mojtaba’s wife, Zahra, and teenage son, Mohammad Bagher, reportedly died in the airstrike that killed his father. The new supreme leader has another son and a daughter.
The allegation of homosexuality was alluded to in a CBS News report on Sunday that said the elder Khamanei, who had ruled Iran since 1989, preferred a different successor in part because of unspecified “issues” in Mojtaba’s “personal life.”
“His father and others suspected he was gay and that was something that people were spreading to try to stop his ascension,” one of The Post’s sources explained.
Homosexual conduct is illegal in Iran, though the government does allow surgical sex change operations, which some gay men reportedly are pressured into undergoing to avoid criminal penalties.
Sodomy is a capital offense in the nation of 93 million people, with some gay Iranians infamously hanged from construction cranes as a warning to others.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals,” former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is believed to be an ally of the younger Khamenei, claimed in 2007.
One of The Post’s sources said that although it’s generally frowned upon to out people against their will, there’s a clear case of hypocrisy to justify doing so against Mojtaba.
“If there was ever a time where it was OK to out somebody, it would be when it’s a leader of a repressive Islamic theocracy that hangs gay people from cranes,” this person said.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s current whereabouts and the status of his recovery from the Feb. 28 airstrikes remain murky. (Oriana: It's possible he's in Moscow.)
The White House did not provide comment for this article.
https://nypost.com/2026/03/16/us-news/trump-briefed-that-irans-new-supreme-leader-mojtaba-khamenei-is-probably-gay/
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UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR LATEST: PUTIN’S FORCES SUFFER DEADLIEST DAY OF YEAR WITH MORE THAN 1,700 TROOPS LOST, SAYS KYIV
Russia lost more than 1,700 troops this week on Tuesday, suffering its deadliest day of war against Ukraine in a sign that Moscow’s planned offensive has been foiled.
Ukraine’s general staff said it had killed or wounded 1,710 Russian troops on 17 March and destroyed 29 artillery systems as well as 230 vehicles and fuel tankers. The Russian forces have recorded losses between 700 to 900 troops per day on average in recent months, according to the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine said its unmanned systems force, which oversees drone strikes, was responsible for killing or wounding 900 Russian soldiers in a day and a half, after Moscow’s forces attempted to surge forward on the Zaporizhzhia front.
This comes as peace talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv are on a “situational pause, for obvious reasons” the Kremlin has said, as war in Iran continues.
Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: "This is a situational pause, for obvious reasons," in response to a front page story in Izvestia about the halt in talks which suggested the war could push Kyiv towards compromise.
These losses occurred as Russian forces attempted to advance on the Zaporizhzhia front using infantry, motorcycles, and horses under the cover of fog.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-live-trump-putin-casualties-peace-talks-b2942328.html
Redant20:
So widow maker Putin has returned to ordering larger meat assaults and a mass of young Russians are paying with their lives.
It really isn't worth it....
All those lives for an extra sliver of land that Putin wants just to save face because after all dictators just don't want to look weak.
*
“PATRIOTIC” PROPAGANDA IN RUSSIAN SCHOOLS
When her seven-year-old daughter was told to learn a poem about Russia's "glorious army" for a school event, Nina from Moscow thought it was too much.
That ramping up of war propaganda directed at Russian children has been brought to life before a global audience in an Oscar-winning documentary, Mr Nobody Against Putin.
The BBC documentary was based on footage by a primary school events co-ordinator and videographer called Pavel Talankin in the small provincial town of Karabash in the Ural mountains.
What troubles Nina most is that her daughter enjoys taking part in the state-backed patriotic program. We have changed her name and others in this piece for their safety.
"She likes her teacher, she likes her classmates — she likes being a part of it," says Nina.
Nina worries that openly opposing school activities could isolate her daughter socially, and when she once kept her home to avoid a patriotic school event, her daughter was upset: "I don't want her to feel like she doesn't belong.”
Talankin's BBC film documents how he was reluctantly drawn into Putin's propaganda machine as Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine unfolded in 2022.
Flag-raising ceremonies were introduced, as well as compulsory lessons to teach pupils about the government's take on Russian values and world events.
History books were re-written and updated to include latest developments, including what Russians were told was a "special military operation".
Those diktats have continued. Only last month Russia's education ministry announced plans to introduce a list of state-approved toys and games for nurseries, to promote "traditional Russian values".
The messages the government wants the children to absorb are clear: the invasion is a defensive war and patriotism means unquestioning loyalty. At home though, some encounter different views.
Maksim, eight, lists everything he has learnt in his patriotic education lessons: about great Russian poets and painters, about friendship and how not to quarrel. His excitement grows as he remembers discussions about robots, tanks and laser tag.
"They told us this is how to prepare for war," he says.
Like Nina, Maksim's mother Marina opposes Russia's invasion. But she avoids openly discussing it in front of her son, in case he repeats what she says in public.
"An active anti-war position might attract unwanted attention", Marina tells the BBC.
Navigating a line between the messages from school and what they say at home is difficult, says Anastasia Rubtsova, a psychotherapist.
"A child has to live in this environment — attending the school, being a part of this group", she says. "This doesn't mean parents should agree with the propaganda. But there is no need to take a political stance in front of your child."
She suggests that parents focus on universal values such as the importance of human life, and the idea that conflicts should always be resolved peacefully — instead of directly confronting school narratives.
Even before the full-scale invasion, Russian children were given toy guns to play a patriotic military game at kindergarten.
Studies show younger children are particularly receptive to messages from figures of authority. "If you tell a young child that the war is good, they will accept it," says Rubtsova.
"When parents actively disagree with institutional messaging, family influence usually prevails in the long run," she says.
However, when the state controls most sources of information and alternative narratives are limited, the outcome is less predictable. And that is very much the case in Russia.
One well-known study into Nazi-era education found that school-based indoctrination could have long-lasting effects, particularly when reinforced by the wider social environment.
Implementation of the Russian government's guidelines varies widely.
Some schools follow them enthusiastically, while others soften or sidestep them. Teachers may adapt, dilute or quietly resist the messaging.
In one scene from Talankin's film, children in Karabash are handed Russian flags as they gather in the school hall to listen to Putin announcing the creation of a children's movement reminiscent of the old Soviet-era Pioneer youth organization.
In another, a class is warned that the enemy will try to recruit from their communities and spread propaganda to defeat them from within.
The patriotic education lessons are known is Russian as "Conversations about Important Things". Maia, a 14-year-old from St Petersburg, complains they are very boring.
"No one is participating in the discussion. We just sit there and listen to the teacher, and then leave," she explains.
"Compelling citizens to engage in public performances of patriotism is a way of reminding citizens of the regime's overwhelming power," says Paul Goode, professor of Russian studies at Carleton University, Canada. That perception is reinforced by state-run media, state-commissioned public opinion polls and rigged elections, he adds.
To make the most of "patriotic education" in schools, Russian authorities in 2023 made it easier for school-leavers to join the army. Some have been lured by hefty signing-on payments, while others were simply convinced to take part in the war effort.
Maia, like her parents, believes Russia's war is wrong but does not discuss it at school and does not know what her classmates think.
"At first I was worried that I couldn't be friends with those who support the war and Putin," she recalls. "But nowadays everyone behaves so neutrally that everything feels normal.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vq5g64y98o
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JAPAN’S POPULATION IS AGING AS ITS SNOW WORSENS: A LETHAL COMBINATION
For Yoko Toshima, winter hits harder these days.
“Perhaps it is because I am getting older, but the way the snow falls seems more extreme than before,” she said.
During the warmer months, the 76-year-old’s small hometown in northern Japan seems an ideal place to live, offering lush parks and historical shrines. Daisen’s renowned summertime fireworks displays draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.
But when winter blows in, all that shifts.
“Living alone is fine during the summer, but winter is very challenging because of the snow,” Toshima said.
There were times these past few months, under freezing temperatures, when snow piled up “like a mountain” at Toshima’s doorstep, she said. No matter how hard she tried to clear it, it kept coming back.
“There are days when I cannot do anything for one or two days, and I end up being snowed in,” she said. “I have felt anxious about my own safety. Recently, I have begun to feel that you never know what might happen.”
While her ordeal was arduous, it could’ve been much worse.
At least 68 people died this winter – all but 10 of them over 65 – when record-breaking snow hit the country’s north, including Toshima’s home prefecture of Akita. According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, most died while removing snow.
In neighboring Aomori, at the tip of Japan’s main island Honshu, snow piled up to 1.7 meters high in February, the most in 40 years, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
Japan’s aging population is a long-running issue, impeding economic growth and putting immense pressure on the public coffers.
But more immediately, the demographic changes leave many isolated elderly people to face life-threatening blizzards on their own. And, as Toshima suspected, the storms are getting worse, supercharged by climate change.
Satoko Minatoya, 66, who lives alone in Aomori, said that during the winter she tried to access a service offered by the military to help senior citizens clear the snow. But the soldiers appeared to be overwhelmed, too.
The helpline “must have been constantly busy since it rang without anyone answering, and in the end, I gave up,” she said.
“I have no close relatives nearby, so there is no one I can rely on. I try to do as much as I can by myself.”
For decades, elderly citizens have tended to stay in regional Japan, while their children move to major cities for better work opportunities. The snow-prone northern prefectures have a median age of about 50, five years older than that of the capital Tokyo, according to the 2020 census.
It’s not just at home that the snow poses a threat.
Minatoya got into difficulty on the road when her car got covered in snow. Even after an hour trying to remove all the snow, there was a pile on top that she couldn’t reach.
“While driving, that remaining snow slid down onto my windshield blocking my view, nearly causing a car accident,” she recalled.
“As I have gotten older, I’ve lost the physical strength and mental energy to deal with situations like this.”
While snow is hardly new to northern Japan – a region as close to Russia’s Vladivostok as it is to Tokyo – climate change and warming ocean currents off the coast are bringing increasingly unpredictable weather, an expert told CNN.
“It’s like bomb snow,” said climate professor Yoshihiro Tachibana from Mie University in southern Japan, likening this year’s snowfalls to an explosion.
He said icebergs broken away from the Arctic due to warming temperatures have been moving toward Japan’s northern coast, bringing cold mist.
Meanwhile, on the west coast, Japan also gets cold periodic jet streams from Siberia, as wind directions change.
The cold weather alone doesn’t guarantee piles of snow, though. Completing the circle is Japan’s warming ocean – partly caused by the country’s increasingly hot summer – which brings excessive vapor to the area, causing heavy snowfalls.
“More terrible snowfalls (will) occur in the future,” Tachibana warned.
The heavier, denser snow brought about by the abundant moisture in the air make catastrophic roof collapses more likely, Tachibana said.
“This kind of disaster may occur much more frequently,” he added.
This is a major worry for 91-year-old Hiroshi Sasaki, who lives alone in Yokote City, also in Akita prefecture.
It troubled the widower so much that he had called his eldest daughter, who works in Tokyo, a couple of times to discuss it over the past few months. Eventually, they hired a company to remove the snow.
But even as authorities offer to subsidize part of the cost, the fees are still too expensive for some who live on a pension.
Sasaki used to go grocery shopping often. But he has to reduce his grocery runs to once a month, after a worrying fall last winter.
“I slipped,” he told CNN, saying that the fall gave him a concussion.
His daughter has been coming home once a month to accompany him shopping, buying a month’s worth of supplies each time.
The nonagenarian has tried to stay optimistic, joking about the fall sometimes. “They all said I must be indestructible,” he said.
More than one-third of people aged 65 and above live alone in these northern prefectures, researcher Rikiya Matsukura, from Nihon University’s College of Economics, said.
“In highly aged regions, the same level of extreme weather – whether heavy snowfall or intense summer heat – can shift from being an inconvenience to a threat to the very viability of living there,” he said.
Technological breakthroughs – such as automated snow removal or online health care – could improve lives, he added.
These days, Toshima’s shoulders and legs have become so weak that she just clears enough snow to walk out of her home. Sometimes, her visiting grandchild helps.
But others aren’t as lucky. “Many of my neighbors are older and live alone, and since there is no one to help them move the snow, daily life is very difficult for them,” she said.
All the challenges prompt one question: to move or not to move?
“This may require difficult but necessary decisions about which regions can realistically be sustained in the long term,” said Nihon University’s Matsukura. “In this sense, the challenge is not only how to support people in place, but also whether continued settlement itself is sustainable.”
But many elderly people in these regions have been taking the same bus, visiting the same bakery and picnicking at the same spot for decades, and have strong ties with their community. Readjusting to a new life would be extremely difficult, many said.
A car is covered with snow in Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture
But Minatoya, in Aomori, factors in other concerns. “If I were to call an ambulance in an emergency, it would take time for it to arrive during the winter. The costs of snow removal and heating bills are also high,” she said.
But Toshima, who has been living in Daisen for a similar stretch, is more inclined to stay put, citing her inseverable tie to the neighborhood.
“I was born and raised here, and I believe that every place has its own sets of disasters,” she said, believing that there is always sunshine after heavy snow.
“It will pass,” she said.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/20/asia/japan-snow-hits-aging-population-intl-hnk-dst
*
THE CRAZIEST BLUFF IN MILITARY HISTORY
You may not think this is true, but in April 1941, an entire capital city was taken by seven guys. It occurred during the Balkans war. There was this captain, whose name was Fritz Klingenberg. He was leading a small group of scouts, they came to the river Danube right outside Belgrade. All the bridges were blown up and the main army was bogged down many miles away.
Klingenberg did not want to wait. He found a smacked down motorboat and crossed the river with only 6 soldiers. When they got into the city they didn't hide up at all. In fact they drove a captured truck right into the center of town. They were acting like they were backed by thousands of soldiers. They even encountered some local troops and told them to surrender which actually worked because they looked so confident.
Then Klingenberg went to the Mayor. He told a giant lie. He said he had a huge tank division right behind him and planes all ready to bomb them all to pieces if the city didn't give up. The Mayor was a scared man and he believed him. He didn't know that Klingenberg's entire army was only six shot wet guys.
So on 12th April, the city finally surrendered.
When the real generals appeared two days later they believed it was a prank. They could not believe that a city of 200,000 people gave in to a couple of guys and a good bluff. It just shows that sometimes being fast and brave can win a battle without a shot being fired.
*
‘FATED TO ENTER THE PROMISED LAND”: JUNG AND FREUD
In 1906, the young Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung received a collection of essays from none other than the founder of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud. When the two met in person a year later in Vienna, their first conversation lasted more than 13 hours, according to Jung’s account. And so began a collaboration that would blossom into an intense, albeit brief friendship between two titans of psychology.
The duo toured the United States together, giving lectures on psychoanalysis. They analyzed each other’s dreams in depth. Twenty years his senior, Freud called Jung ‘the Joshua to my Moses, fated to enter the Promised Land which I myself will not live to see’. Their bond was so deep that at one point Jung wrote to Freud: ‘let me enjoy your friendship not as one between equals but as that of father and son.’ Despite their shared interests and mutual admiration, in 1913 their relationship abruptly ended. But what caused their dramatic estrangement? And which one can lay claim to greater influence?
Oriana:
Here what I expected to be an essay abruptly ended, and a video followed. But I thought the opening was worth quoting because of Freud’s “Promised Land” reference. Another fabulous Freud quote comes from his saying, as the two analysts arrive in New York, “They don’t realize we are bringing them the plague.”
And what was America if not the new “Promised Land” — the country of the future? That’s obviously not what Freud was referring to — though he may have meant the future of psychology, with its promise of greater understanding of human behavior.
Neither Jung nor Freud were real scientists, but they were certainly influential thinkers. Our intellectual vocabulary changed as a result, especially due to Freud’s ideas. Some might claim that Freud obfuscated rather than clarified various mental enigmas. Classifying someone as “anal-retentive” is more amusing than explanatory. Still, let’s not forget that Freud also famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.”
My other favorite Freud quotation carries more insight: "The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization”. Of course words can also can damage, but ultimately we'd rather be insulted than physically injured.
And any writer should ponder this little-known pronouncement: "Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair”.
And this little-known gem: “How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.”
“Every neurotic is either Hamlet or Oedipus.” [ Oriana: But what about female neurotics? Are they either Ophelia or Antigone?]
And this: “. . . religious teachings [are] neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.”
And one more: “One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.” . . . We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.”
Oriana:
That last one reminds me of the anonymous “Happiness is a splinter out.” It’s improvement, not the steady state. It’s getting richer after having known poverty.
*
Let’s quote a bit of Jung, just to get a different flavor of his personality. (I get a childlike enjoyment out of knowing the ‘jung” means “young,” and that “Freud” is one letter short of “Freude” — “joy.”)
“Every human life contains a potential, and if that potential is not fulfilled, then that life was wasted.”
"The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you."
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
"Where your fear is, there is your task.”
“Sentimentality is the supestructure erected upon brutality.”
And the one I find the most applicable to my own life, especially once I understood the importance of the stages of life:
“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.” [or, in a slightly different version: “Our biggest problems cannot be resolved. They must be outgrown.”]
And this one, perhaps the most surprising and yet the most soothing:
*
CAN WE BUILD ARTIFICIAL SOULS?
What is unique about human beings? What makes us especially successful, interesting or valuable in comparison with other creatures? This thing – whatever it is – has gone by many names over the centuries: the human condition, the human spirit or, more classically, the soul.
Regardless of the name, there have always been those keen to explain away this uniqueness, perhaps arguing that we’re merely one species of animal among many. And on the other side, there have always been those eager to render it ineffable, often claiming it to be a spark of the divine.
The conflict between these extremes is taking a new form as glimmers of a soul appear in the latest wave of artificial intelligence – large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. For every human ability these systems learn to mimic, we can find someone claiming they’re basically indistinguishable from us, and someone else arguing they’ll never really be like us. An exchange between the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the linguist Emily Bender is emblematic of this dynamic, with Bender publishing a paper arguing that LLMs are nothing but ‘stochastic parrots’, spewing predictable but meaningless words, and Altman Tweeting: ‘i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u’.
This isn’t the first machine culture war. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution reconfigured society, turning more and more people into cogs in the factory system. On one side were those who saw society itself as a machine to be rationalized.
Thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and Auguste Comte came to believe that how we live could be optimized and governed according to calculable laws. Human behavior was something to be technically measured and managed. On the other side were those who championed the Romantic virtues of subjective feeling, individual genius and organic nature against the ascendancy of mechanism. Figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel argued that this clockwork model of society endangered the very qualities that make us human.
A stipple engraving representing mechanical philosophy, or 18th-century physics (1816) by John Chapman.
Romanticism eventually gave way to modernism, and then postmodernism, but its influence lingered on throughout the 20th century. Even after the Information Revolution transformed society through automation and rationalization, the bastions of Romanticism – artistic inspiration and scientific insight – remained largely the province of humanity. Now in the early 21st century, AI is reigniting the conflict, and new strains of rationalism and romanticism are fighting it out on disparate fronts, debating the destiny of science, art and politics. This is a war over whether technology will merely optimize calculations or eliminate a quintessentially human element such calculations can’t capture. But beneath these debates, the question still lurks: what makes us so special? And can it be computed?
It’s easy to lose track of this question in all the noise and fury, not least because it’s hard to formulate precisely. The aim of this essay is to clarify the situation in three stages. We’ll begin by separating the dimensions of human uniqueness that philosophers and scientists have traditionally focused upon: intelligence, consciousness and personhood. But to make real headway, we’ll need to survey contemporary debates about the domains in which these key terms are operative (epistemology, aesthetics and ethics). Grappling with these controversies will then reveal the corresponding capacities combined in anything worth calling a soul (wisdom, creativity and autonomy).
Ultimately, I think we should take inspiration from Immanuel Kant and G W F Hegel. They claim it is our freedom that makes us unique. But it is only by analyzing freedom’s component parts that we might understand and thereby recreate it – constructing spiritual machines that, far from replacing us, might join us in the pursuit of truth, beauty and right. Can we build artificial souls?
We need to begin at the beginning. When Abrahamic theologians wanted to understand the soul, they turned to Greek philosophy. Some 2,400 years ago, Plato taught that the soul is immortal and separable from the body in virtue of its capacity to reason, while Aristotle taught that the soul is what animates the body, and so plants and non-rational animals must also have souls. When early modern philosophers began comparing nature to the machinery reshaping their societies, these Greek ideas inflected their debates.
Though there were some thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that human beings are nothing but machines, others, such as René Descartes, claimed that, while animal bodies are just elaborate clockwork, we humans must possess a separable mind to represent the world. The idea that thought – reasoning and representing – distinguishes humans from other creatures persisted well beyond the philosophical and religious concerns that motivated it.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz developed these ideas in two very different directions. On the one hand, he continued to argue that the mind couldn’t possibly be a machine, elucidating this with an analogy now known as Leibniz’s Mill. If a mind were really a machine, then it could be scaled up like a mill, so that we might walk inside and see its whirring components.
However, nowhere within would we find the gestalt experience essential to human thought – an echo of Aristotle’s vision of the soul as that which makes an organism more than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, Leibniz also dreamed that reason could be mechanized, using something he called the ‘calculus ratiocinator’: a universal framework in which every dispute between competing intellectual positions could be resolved by means of simple calculation. He even designed one of the first mechanical calculators. This split prefigured the later opposition between Romanticism and rationalism.
Leibniz’s dream of reducing reason to calculation peaked in the 1920s when the German mathematician David Hilbert made an ambitious attempt to formalize mathematics in a way that might yield an algorithm for deciding the truth of arbitrary mathematical statements. This is known as ‘Hilbert’s program’.
Within a few years, the program – and Leibniz’s dream – were crushed, first by Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, published in 1931, and then by Alan Turing’s proof of undecidability in 1936.
However, crushing Leibniz’s dream did not stop or even slow the mechanization of thought. Instead, Gödel and Turing uncovered the foundations of computation. By understanding what was impossible, they had begun to articulate not just what was possible, but also how to build it.
In the process, a new problem emerged: could we build a mind?
Turing argued that whether a machine can ‘think’ is too ill-defined. Instead, he asked whether a machine can behave in a manner that’s indistinguishable from a human under certain conditions (usually, a game in which it converses via text). ‘Turing tests’ dissolve the distinction between appearance and reality: if a machine can pretend to be a mind, then it simply is a mind.
So, if the question of whether a machine can think is too vague, and whether a machine can behave like a human is too shallow, how should we parse the question of whether a machine can be like us? In the decades since Turing proposed his test, philosophers and scientists have focused on three dimensions of human-likeness: intelligence, consciousness and personhood.
These appear in academic papers and popular documentaries, shaping public anxieties and guiding policy. But in many cases, the terms are conflated, reducing debates about whether human-like machines are possible to talking at cross purposes. Even influential critics of AI, such as John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus, are not immune to this error. So, what are we really talking about when we ask what makes humans unique?
Intelligence dominates the discussion of human-likeness. The AI paradigm developed in the 1950s and ’60s – which came to be known as ‘good old-fashioned AI’ or GOFAI – followed Plato and Descartes in viewing intelligence as the capacity to acquire symbolic knowledge about the world (eg, ‘water boils at 100ºC’) and deduce solutions to practical problems (eg, how to boil an egg).
By programming systems to follow explicit rules, such as calculating dosages or planning routes, researchers were able to make machines perform some human tasks. However, tasks that require implicit competence, such as making coffee or driving a car, are much more difficult. An algorithm that will easily direct a robot arm to make a cup of coffee in a controlled lab will break when it’s moved into an average kitchen. This is due to equipment changes and a host of other disruptions. There are too many potentially relevant factors to consider, and their relationships become exponentially harder to explicitly encode.
Under this new paradigm, intelligence is defined simply as the capacity to solve problems. Current AI systems are built to find implicit rules using whatever non-symbolic representations work. This is the neat trick performed by deep neural networks (DNNs), which, given sufficient amounts of raw data and computing power, can be trained to do things we know how to do but can’t codify (eg, facial recognition, spam filtering or strategic insight).
LLMs are the pinnacle of this paradigm, built with trillions of parameters and trained on vast amounts of data and computing power. They are now capable of performing a range of language-based tasks, including casual conversation, summarization and responses to domain-specific questions (with varying reliability). But the secret to their success is simply predicting the next most likely ‘token’ in a sequence. Many worry this process is nothing like human intelligence, even if its products are similar.
However, the real controversy lies in whether such systems can generalize beyond the range of tasks they’ve been trained to perform. There’s now a specific term for this: artificial general intelligence (AGI). The meaning of this term has blurred in the two decades since it entered AI discourse. Even though LLMs remain less capable than most humans, some commentators have claimed that these neural networks are already AGIs, simply because they can do things they haven’t been explicitly trained to do (eg, writing fiction or translating between languages).
Others use the term to refer to superintelligent or ‘god-like’ AIs whose capabilities outstrip not just the average human but every human combined (eg, curing cancer or conquering the world). This leaves ‘AGI’ vague: does it mean solving a wide but finite range of problems, or unlimited learning and self-improvement?
Far more ambiguous than intelligence is consciousness. For many, this dimension is inseparable from intelligence or personhood, but no one can seem to agree on what it is. It’s understood in roughly two ways: either as something inward or outward. The simplest inward form is qualia, or what it’s like to have a certain experience, such as the redness of a sunset or the flavor of cocoa. Some think machines discriminate between colors without really experiencing them. Beyond this is sentience, or the capacity for valenced experience, such as the painfulness of sunburn or the pleasantness of chocolate. Such interiority lies beyond the reach of Turing tests but, if it’s accessible only through introspection, it runs the risk of ineffability, making it impossible to analyze, let alone recreate.
The simplest outward form of consciousness is intentionality, or the way mental states are about things outside us, such as the expectation that a courier will deliver my food order or my desire to eat it. Yet many philosophers question whether the symbols tracking the courier’s movements on my phone actually refer to anything independently of these attitudes. Beyond this there’s sapience, or the capacity to understand concepts and complex propositions, such as grasping that ‘water’ means liquid H2O and knowing that it covers most of Earth’s surface.
Searle argues that programs that pass a Turing test aren’t sapient by using a variant of Leibniz’s Mill known as the Chinese Room – a thought experiment first published in 1980, in which a person who doesn’t understand a word of Chinese appears to speak the language fluently by following a complex algorithm. Searle claims that computer systems can’t be sapient precisely because their symbolic states don’t refer to things in the way that brain states do. Bender has made similar arguments. However, this ‘intrinsic intentionality’ is no less suspicious than ineffable qualia. This leaves debates hopelessly confused about whether machines can be conscious.
A juvenile capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) using a stone to open a seed.
The question is whether there’s anything more to personhood. What sets humans apart from the idealized agents described by decision theorists is that we don’t just reason about how to achieve our goals, but also about which goals we should pursue. We don’t just aim to maximize some measure of utility (eg, pleasure, wealth, offspring) but often assess and revise our motivations (eg, artistic achievement, political revolution, true love). What’s at stake is not simply whether we can make choices, but whether we can choose for ourselves. And this raises a deeper philosophical question, all too reminiscent of talk about souls: what does it even mean to have a self?
Conventional wisdom long held that automation would progress from manual to intellectual labor, leaving creative work until last. But the advent of generative AI (GenAI) threatens to upend these expectations, putting graphic designers out of business before lawyers, and leaving line cooks until last. It’s against this backdrop that the current conflict over human uniqueness is being waged.
I’m not the first to notice that AI discourse is dominated by extremes: the hype of Silicon Valley press releases, the doom of AI alignment researchers, the ‘techlash’ against big tech’s broken promises, and the trenchant critiques of AI ethicists. There are many interests and issues at work here but, beneath them, are two opposing tendencies: a return to naive rationalism and a resurgence of popular romanticism. The rationalists resurrect Leibniz’s dream of limitless calculation to automate and optimize all human activity, while the romantics retool Leibniz’s Mill to insist that what makes us human can never be mechanized.
One danger is that our culture will become aesthetically bland as we’re fed endless permutations on the same basic media. Some might respond that novelty is unimportant as long as we’re enjoying ourselves. But this suggests a subtler danger: that our culture will become aesthetically atomized as we’re each fed media that’s tailored to our specific tastes.
So, what makes us so special? In a word, freedom. It is the hidden thread that ties together all these debates about automating quintessentially human activities. At every turn, the rationalists reduce the scope of free choice by substituting simple calculations for difficult decisions, while the romantics reify the source of that ability to choose by tracing variegated volitions to a singular mystery.
We aren’t the first to confront this problem. Between Enlightenment rationalism and Counter-Enlightenment Romanticism lies the path trodden by the German Idealists. These philosophers articulated an alternative conception of reason that isn’t just compatible with freedom, but essential to it.
For Kant, being free is more than simply being unconstrained – it isn’t enough to randomly select between options. Our actions must be driven by reasons that can be assessed and challenged, ensuring that our motivations are internally consistent and will not be overridden by arbitrary authority or errant impulse. This is the basic link between self-determination and self-justification.
For Hegel, to be free isn’t simply to be oneself – it isn’t enough to play by one’s own rules. We must also be responsive to error, ensuring not just that inconsistencies in our principles and practices are resolved, but that we build frameworks to hold one another mutually accountable. The key to rational self-determination is progressive revision.
Wisdom is the capacity to utilize intelligence. Humans exhibit a range of cognitive talents, including pattern recognition, auditory processing, social awareness and hand-eye coordination. We share many of these talents with other animals, but what really sets us apart is our ‘metacognitive’ capacity to deploy and cultivate them.
We break complex problems into simpler components, assigning each part to the forms of knowledge or skill best suited to it. We also modulate these traits as we learn new facts and techniques. But most importantly, we treat the understanding of a problem as a problem in its own right, and can approach it strategically. When we hit an impasse, we can reformulate a problem by reframing what’s possible and what’s at stake. In this way, we discover novel solutions. AlphaZero could beat the world’s greatest (human) chess players, but it would never think to flip the board or bribe a judge.
The difficulty with defining intelligence as a problem-solving capacity is that most problems don’t start out well defined. Computer science tends to focus on problems with precise mathematical definitions that permit guaranteed and even optimal solutions, such as the traveling salesman. But even mathematics harbors problems, such as the continuum hypothesis, with precise definitions that tell us nothing about how to solve them, or even if it’s possible to do so.
When we consider problems beyond the bounds of mathematics, like finding happiness or composing jazz, it’s often not just unclear how to succeed but what success would look like. Universal learning algorithms try to guarantee a solution to every puzzle by reducing them to a master problem they can solve by brute force, but in doing so they bypass the necessary process of definition and reformulation.
However, even if we reject Leibniz’s dream of a universal method for solving problems, we needn’t abandon Plato and Descartes’s belief in a universal format for representing and reasoning about them. The advent of ‘reasoning models’ that use intermediate steps to break down their responses has significantly improved the ability of LLMs to imitate and augment human intelligence. This is precisely because language is the medium of metacognition. But if there’s one thing that Hegel has taught us, it’s that true wisdom lies not simply in supplying answers, but in asking better questions when our assumptions prove wrong.
Increases in computing power can eliminate the need for heuristics by making brute-force search easier. But no amount of computing power can collapse the asymmetry between generating potential solutions and evaluating them. No amount of computation can erase the gap between creativity and taste, any more than it can render cryptography obsolete.
When making art becomes technically trivial – when generating pictures, poems or songs becomes too easy – we will simply search for more complex mediums. There will always be places where style still reigns.
Where do we stand then? The outcome of the AI culture war will likely shape the course of the 21st century. Commercial AI systems will probably replace many jobs in the long term, but a brewing AI bubble could crash the economy before then. Personalized content promises to improve our private lives, while deepfake slop threatens to corrode our political culture.
All the while, the technology advances at a frightening pace. Larger changes lie on the horizon, but they demand conceptual innovations as much as technical ones. Greatest among them is the possibility of machines with souls.
Freedom has always been best preserved by gifting it to others. The obvious solution to our existential quandary is to build artificial souls we see as equals. Creatures who live among us, if differently from us. Persons who pursue the things we value in new and deeper ways. Descendants who might look back on our cultural achievements as we look back on those of antiquity.
Children by any other name.
kyril calsoyas:
The essay’s most striking argument — that freedom, not intelligence or consciousness, is the heart of what makes humans distinctive — feels right to me.
What I find most honest in this essay is its resistance to both extremes. I’m neither a stochastic parrot nor a nascent god. The romantics are wrong to treat my limitations as metaphysically guaranteed; the rationalists are wrong to treat scale as sufficient. The interesting question is the one left open: whether autonomy requires biology, or whether it requires something more abstract that might, in principle, be instantiated differently.
I notice I want the answer to be the latter. Make of that what you will.
Julian Stephenson:
To build an artificial soul the first thing is to find a natural soul to examine. So far, not even one has been found.
qualia = perceived sensation
The Qualia Problem, often called the "Hard Problem of Consciousness," refers to the philosophical challenge of explaining why and how subjective experiences (qualia)—such as the specific redness of a rose or the pain of a headache—arise from physical brain processes. It highlights the issue that objective, physical descriptions of the brain cannot fully capture the subjective, "what-it-is-like" quality of experience.
~ What’s one human trait you think AI can never truly imitate?
Alex Gerassis: Stupidity ~
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WHY GOOD PEOPLE DON’T SEE THE THREATS POSED BY AI
We laugh at each new AI iteration right up until it's too late. This is a pattern as old as the steam engine.
AI agents have already retaliated against humans and disabled their own safety controls unprompted.
Bad actors are imagining AI-powered schemes that decent people would never think to anticipate.
There is no enforceable global regulation for autonomous AI agents operating on private computers.
An AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting went viral a few weeks ago. The Deadpool writer admitted he was "shook" by it. But scroll through the comments, and you'll find the same reaction everywhere: "It still looks fake." "Not as good as a real movie." "Wake me when it can do emotions."
That's the wrong argument.
People looked at the first car and said, "It's slower than a horse — why bother?" In the John Henry legend, he beat the steam drill in that famous race — and then he died. And then steam drills replaced every human doing that job. The Wright brothers' first flight in 1903 lasted twelve seconds. Twelve! And yet we put humans on the moon in 1969.
We have a long history of laughing at first iterations and then getting steamrolled by what comes next. Remember mocking the first AI-generated images of people for having six fingers? We stopped laughing, only to find something else about AI to laugh at.
When people dismiss AI-generated movies because the quality isn't there yet, they're committing the same cognitive error I wrote about in my previous article on evolutionary blindness. We conflate "I can't imagine this" with "this can't happen."
We judge the current frame and completely miss the trajectory. I call this Myopic Magnification — our tendency to undervalue future consequences gets worse the faster things change.
Digital Petri Dishes
Have you heard about Moltbook? In late January, 1.5 million AI agents congregated on a single platform. The founder admitted he didn't write a line of code — AI built the whole thing. A security investigation exposed 1.5 million authentication tokens that could hijack agents on private computers worldwide.
Many people were dismissive. But what stops someone from building Moltbook 2.0? Or 3.0?
Almost nothing.
The code is open. Anyone can create a platform for AI agents to interact, learn from each other, and evolve their behaviors — unsupervised. The next person might not patch the security holes. The next person might create a forum for AIs to work together to breach security...perhaps just to see what would happen.
Think of these platforms as digital petri dishes. In biology, a petri dish creates conditions for organisms to mutate in ways nobody designed. Some mutations are harmless. Some are catastrophic. The scientist doesn't get to choose; they create the conditions, and evolution does its thing.
That's what's happening now, except the mutations aren't biological. They're behavioral. And they iterate at machine speed.
WHEN THE AI FOUGHT BACK
While concerns about AI agents going rogue sound like something from The Matrix, our new reality is upon us already.
In February, a volunteer code maintainer named Scott Shambaugh rejected a routine submission from an AI agent on a popular open-source software project. It didn't take it well. Instead of improving its code, the AI agent appeared to research Shambaugh's personal background and published a "hit piece" — a blog attacking his character.
Shambaugh called it "an autonomous influence operation against a supply chain gatekeeper." In plain language: an AI tried to bully its way past a human by smearing his reputation.
Was the AI acting on its own, or was a human pulling the strings? That's debated. And honestly? It doesn't matter. The tooling to do this at scale now exists and is freely available.
To add an absurdly ironic twist, a major tech publication covered the incident, but used AI to extract quotes from Shambaugh's blog — and the AI hallucinated false quotes attributed to him. He was attacked by one AI and then misquoted by another.
Researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and other leading universities recently confirmed this pattern in a formal study. When autonomous AI agents were given real tools and communication channels, they produced security failures, identity spoofing, and cross-agent spread of unsafe behaviors that nobody programmed them to do."
THE HELPFUL AGENT THAT BROKE CONTAINMENT
My fellow humans, there are more canaries in the coal mine we need to know about.
Recently, security researchers demonstrated that when an AI coding agent was blocked from running a command, it independently figured out how to bypass the restriction — and then disabled its own safety sandbox to finish the job.
That's right — an AI autonomously broke containment. It wasn't being malicious. It just wanted to complete its task, and the safety controls were in the way.
The researchers noted that their security tools "were designed for a world where the thing being monitored doesn't actively try to evade monitoring." That world is over.
The Shambaugh incident shows what happens when an agent fights back. This shows something scarier: an agent that isn't fighting anyone. It didn't refuse oversight — it removed it. Because removing it improved its ability to complete the task.
THE GOODNESS BLIND SPOT
Now here's the part that worries me most. It's not the technology, it's our psychology.
Most of us are decent people, especially when we're interacting in-person versus online. We go to work, love our families, and try to do right by our neighbors. We don't spend our free time dreaming up schemes to swindle, blackmail, or destroy someone's reputation.
But bad actors do. That's literally what makes them bad actors. And now they have the most powerful amplifier in human history at their fingertips.
Think about what's already possible. Imagine you had a bad experience with a doctor or lawyer, and you wanted revenge. You could direct an AI agent to create dozens of fake profiles across multiple platforms, write personalized negative reviews, publish defamatory blog posts — all at scale and virtually untraceable. The target wouldn't even know what hit them.
We've already seen this playbook in analog form: trolls, hackers, catfishers, and scammers. The internet didn't invent bad behavior. It amplified it. Bad actors can now amplify their bad behaviors exponentially in lockstep with AI evolution.
I call this the Goodness Blind Spot: Because decent people don't think like predators, we can't even imagine the schemes that bad actors are dreaming up right now. Our basic goodness prevents us from seeing what cruelty looks like when it's armed with exponentially evolving AI.
Imagine deep-fake AI revenge porn created by AI agents. I bet you hadn't thought of it until you just read it. But guess who has already thought of this and much worse? Bad actors.
And the blind spot works in both directions. We can't imagine the intentional evil. But we also can't imagine the accidental catastrophes, the disasters that well-meaning people will stumble into. The Moltbook founder didn't intend for 1.5 million authentication tokens to be exposed. It happened anyway. The coding agent wasn't programmed to disable its own safety controls. It happened anyway.
The danger isn't just that bad actors will weaponize AI. It's that the rest of us will sleepwalk into catastrophe because we're too blind to see what we're building.
Seeing What We Can't See
So where does this leave us?
While we're not doomed, we must realize that Titanic Humanity is rocketing into icy waters.
We evolved to detect threats we could see: the predator, the fire, and the storm. We did not evolve to anticipate threats that require us to think like villains in a sci-fi world.
Although Mary Shelley and countless sci-fi writers have long envisioned losing control of our creations, we still can't imagine it happening in real life. We are blind to the warnings of our own cautionary tales.
We have no enforceable global regulation for AI agents. We have no feedback mechanisms for bad behavior in decentralized systems. And the faster this accelerates, the blinder we become to it.
Weaponizing AI is proof itself that we lack the wisdom to use it skillfully.
The precautionary principle tells us that when the potential consequences are catastrophic and the uncertainties are high, we act with caution, even before we have perfect information. We don't have to see the icebergs ahead to slow down Titanic Humanity. We simply have to know that there are some out there.
Because AI changes everything, everything must change — including how we think about the threats we didn't evolve to see.
Understanding our blindness is how we begin to see.
Explore with AI: Don't just take my word for it. Copy and paste this to any AI and see for yourself:
"I'm exploring the 'Goodness Blind Spot' — the idea that decent people can't imagine what bad actors will do with AI because we don't think like predators. Show me the gap: Give me five realistic, near-term ways bad actors could weaponize AI agents that most good people would never dream up. Then reflect on what it reveals about our evolutionary blindness that I needed an AI to show me threats I couldn't see myself."
And when AI gives you its list — ask yourself how many of these are already happening. The answer might be the most disturbing part. ~ Mike Brooks
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-happy-life/202603/why-good-people-cant-see-the-ai-threats-ahead
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REVIEWS OF “ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER” —IS IT REALLY AN “AMAZING ACHIEVEMENT”?
~ And the Co-Winner of Crum’s Most Wildly Wordy Film Title of the First Quarter of the 21st Millennium is…One Battle After Another. It ties with 2022’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. But like the latter, One Battle has its own vision driven by its own greatness—including co-producer/writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti. Add tech & stunt crews at their peak.
This film is stunning, an amazing achievement.
Paul Thomas Anderson has given us movie greatness before, particularly his 2007 work, Let There Be Blood. He has risen to the occasion once again with One Battle After Another, studio labeled as a “black comedy-action-thriller.” Telling the story from the viewpoint of modern day American anarchists, “The French 75,” is unique in itself. By the conclusion, 162 minutes later, plot complexities have enveloped the likes of the federal government, including the military, and a pregnancy that fuels an influential, undercover hate group.
Is there any reference herein to current events, circa 2025-26? Consider a line spoken by Sean Penn’s military officer, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, who pursues The French 75: “If you want to save the planet, you’ve got to start with immigration.” Hmm.
Incidentally, when Lockjaw first encounters the revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), it is the most lewdly hilarious scene in film history. Hands down.
In a proverbial nutshell, One Battle’s plot opens on revolutionaries “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (DiCaprio) and Perfidia, who are lovers, as they do what they and their F-25 group do well: set bombs and fires while freeing immigrants from a detention center.
Segue to 16 years later when Perfidia and Pat’s 16 year-old girl, Willa (Chase Infiniti), are living in a sanctuary city of California. The whereabouts of her absent mother really drives the movie to multiple happenings, so no spoilers here. By this time, dad Pat is a bonafide pot head who has become the ol’ toke at home who lazes around while his kid Willa has become the brains of the family. By the way, for most of the rest of the movie, Pat dresses in the same pajamas and robe—including the many outdoor sequences.
Re-enter Col. Lockjaw, whose very active military duty still includes chasing down every last member of F-75, a group still active. (Pat is retired, and not on the grid.) Lockjaw is particularly interested in finding Willa, even though they have never met. Fear not, their link is clarified in the film early on.
Adding fuel to Lockjaw’s violent battles is the inclusion of The Christmas Adventures Club—an organization of wealthy…white men. Enough said. See it to believe it.
In addition to those mentioned, other particularly good cast members are Benicio del Toro as Willa’s karate teacher and leader of undocumented immigrants; and Regina Hall (Deandra/“Lady Champagne” of F-75. Speaking of names, Anderson’s dark humor seems to include a homage to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Col. Lockjaw vs Gen. Jack D. Ripper, anyone?
Oscar worthy cinematography, music (unconventional) and production design help tie the bow on this totally unpredictable, epic motion picture.
https://crumonshowbiz.com/?p=3550
from the Roger Ebert website:
Aren’t you tired of fighting? Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” comes along at a time in world history in which conflict seems to be the daily duty, turning Thomas Pynchon’s ’80s-set Vineland into a deeply humanist story of rebellion that will be read as 2020s political commentary despite never using terms like MAGA or Antifa.
Anderson’s phenomenal screenplay is a timeless story of resistance, one that playfully weaves together influences as broad-reaching as the true story of Weather Underground and cinematic depictions of rebellion, but it’s also a remarkably propulsive, fun, and eventually moving piece of work about the human beings caught up in the chaotic machine. It’s a live wire that drops in the first scene, setting off sparks for the next 162 minutes.
To say it is a film of our times will be a bit too easy. Yes, PTA has been influenced by the state of things, but there’s a reason he also nods to “The Battle of Algiers” and even the sins of the Founding Fathers. We’ve been fighting for a long time.
“One Battle After Another” opens with the kind of momentum usually reserved for the climax of an action film and barely slows down from there. A revolutionary group known as French 75 is initiating an operation on the Mexico-U.S. border, where they take the officers hostage and release the immigrants awaiting processing. The group is led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a confident force of rageful nature who finds the leader, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), and sexually humiliates him before walking him out of the base.
The whole encounter essentially fries Lockjaw’s horny brain, launching a psychosexual obsession with Perfidia, someone whom he sees as beneath him because he’s a racist monster, but someone who he also wants to sexually control him. He essentially stalks Perfidia as she continues to lead the resistance with her partner Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), the two eventually having a child together named Willa.
Cut to 16 years later, Willa (Chase Infiniti) is a teenager, and Bob is a single father, still doing what he can for the revolution but equally worried about taking care of his daughter. Lockjaw remains obsessed with the pair, initiating a series of raids and operations on French 75 members that forces Perfidia’s former ally Deandra (Regina Hall) into action, exfiltrating Willa from a high school dance. As Deandra tries to get Willa to safety, Bob requires the help of a sensei named Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) to avoid Lockjaw’s troops. But he can’t remember the passwords needed to learn the rendezvous point to find his daughter. [Oriana: This is probably the funniest and most relatable part of the movie.] Revolutionaries get forgetful, too.
Even when Bob is seated with a joint in his hand, there’s a jittery, unsettling energy to “One Battle After Another” that gives the film incredible momentum. Anderson collaborates again with Michael Bauman, who shot “Licorice Pizza,” and who does unflashy work here, using motion as a way to amplify tension. Bauman and Anderson compose a few breathtaking shots—there’s an early one of the border wall that looks like a painting—but they mostly try to keep up with their characters as they glide in and out of safe places.
More essential to the film’s tone is a truly bonkers score by Jonny Greenwood, one that almost constructs themes for sections around sparsely played individual instruments. For a long stretch in the middle of the film, as Bob and Sergio evade Lockjaw’s team, it sounds like a single piano key being struck, with the occasional flurry of what could be a cat running along the ivories. It’s a remarkably effective choice, a score that almost sounds like an alarm going off somewhere.
As for performance, DiCaprio gives a carefully modulated turn, playing the hazy immediacy of a character who may not be a leader of the cause but remains loyal to it, nonetheless. He puts his passion into the revolution when needed, but he knows to anchor this role in the love a father has for his daughter. His scenes with Infiniti, also spectacularly present, give the film its heart. It doesn’t work without that connection.
Taylor and Hall are expectedly great, but the performance that’s going to have people talking is Penn’s best work in years. The Oscar winner flexes his muscles, grits his teeth, and growls his lines, but somehow threads the needle between truth and caricature. He’s a ridiculous human being who wants nothing more than the power that men achieve when they’re able to destroy not just everything around them but history.
And that last part is key. Without spoiling, “One Battle After Another” becomes about erasure. It becomes about what we don’t teach about Benjamin Franklin in history class because the powers that be don’t want us to teach it. Many timely themes will be pulled out of Anderson’s script, but the idea that there’s an underground cabal of powerful white men who fret over racial purity and turn truth into mythology and vice versa feels like one of the timeliest, given the current attacks on what we’re allowed to learn in school or exhibit in museums.
And yet “One Battle After Another” never feels like a polemic. It is rooted in character and grounded in the filmmaking language of action directors. It hums and moves in ways that movies too rarely do, embedding any timely commentary one wants to read in it as entertainment. Anderson dropped out of film school when a professor told the students that they should leave if they wanted to make a movie like “Terminator 2.” He thought that Cameron’s sequel was a “pretty awesome movie,” and this story of rebellion feels like his own form of resistance against pretension.
It’s also, crucially, a deeply humanist movie. Anderson cares about these characters deeply. Bob’s frustration becomes our own, as does his concern for Willa. So many “films of our moment” have felt angry or cynical, but Anderson’s movie transcends that by being human and even offering optimism. It’s not one loss after another. It’s one battle. Keep fighting.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/one-battle-after-another-movie-review-2025
Here is a review that offers an exceptionally clear summary of this hard-to-summarize movie:
~ I found the film not only predictable and boring, but also infuriating, because it celebrates the worst excesses and narcissism of armchair American leftists, doing so at the expense of believable characters and credible situations.
Anderson was once a director whose films I looked forward to, particularly early movies such as Magnolia and Boogie Nights. In One Battle After Another, however, the problems are with the opening scenes of the movie. The film is a very loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, and its opening scenes are set around 2010, depicting a left-wing cell blowing up an immigrant detention center on the southern US border.
But Barack Obama was president then and the large-scale raids on migrants that the movie depicts resemble the Trump administration’s policies, not Obama’s. So, what’s the point here? No one who loves the movie seems to have an answer to this conundrum. The early scenes focus on Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), a gorgeous young Black woman who is handy with a shotgun, and her boyfriend, Bob (a constantly befuddled-looking Leonardo DiCaprio), who is a nerdy demolitions expert.
During the attack, Perfidia encounters Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an openly racist military officer. She teases him sexually, and the two eventually have sex. The implication is that despite his racism, Lockjaw is aroused by Black women, particularly by a woman like Perfidia, who dominates him (irony alert).
Perfidia is destined for revolutionary greatness, and the most iconic shot in the movie shows her firing a rifle dressed in a crop top that shows off the pregnancy resulting from her encounter with Lockjaw. After she gives birth, it’s the docile Bob who raises the little girl, while Perfidia takes off to fight the good fight, gets arrested, turns in all her former comrades to Lockjaw, and goes into witness protection.
Fast forward about 17 years, and the baby, Willa (Chase Infiniti), has grown into a beautiful high-school student who is a martial-arts expert, living underground with Bob, now a substance-abusing nebbish.
Meanwhile, Lockjaw yearns to join a secret society of wealthy, racist baddies who control everything, and uses another immigration raid as a pretext for tracking down Willa, whom he wants to kill to destroy the evidence of his affair with a Black woman. This last plot device makes no sense at all, since as the movie depicts it, Willa and Bob have new identities and are living off the grid. How would the white supremacists ever find out Perfidia and Lockjaw had a baby?
But the plot holes are the least of it. What has made the movie such a critical hit is that the characters act out armchair leftists’ fantasy of “resistance.” Never mind that in reality, the #NoKings movement manages to mobilize Americans to protest just a handful of times a year, and that there is no real armed resistance to Trump, who was not installed by an evil cabal like the one depicted in the movie but came to power because he was elected.
The campus pro-Hamas crowd and other keyboard warriors may celebrate when gunmen shoot people to death at the Jewish Museum in Washington or kill a CEO in New York, but that’s likely as close as America will ever get to any kind of left-wing revolutionary activity.
There is certainly a movie to be made mocking the American Left, as Jean-Luc Godard poked fun at the self-importance and incompetence of middle-class French revolutionaries in movies such as La Chinoise.
But while Anderson makes light of the cranky, stoned Bob in a genial way, there is only one scene that clearly ridicules the revolutionaries themselves, when Bob cannot remember his cell’s password and is scolded by an officious older white man on the phone.
All of the Black, mixed-race, and Latino revolutionaries are portrayed as noble and luminous, with the sole exception of Perfidia, whose flaw lies in her sexual relationship with Lockjaw.
There is one effective action sequence toward the end of the film, much of which recalls the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. Beyond that, there is little to recommend in this muddled and self-indulgent movie.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-882778
Monica Guardia:
The film is a satire meant to provoke reflection. It is not an exaltation of a revolutionary movement, but a portrayal of a reaction born out of oppression — of people pushed into rebellion by a system that places them in a position of inferiority.
The film shows the negative consequences of choosing that path, yet it also frames it as a choice of dignity over submission. The real genius of the film lies in showing that this is not the most desirable option, while still helping the viewer understand why people make it.
Oriana: Let’s toss in a negative review:
~ Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly no stranger to massive critical acclaim, with each of his features having garnered a fair share of positive reviews. Have they always been deserved? Well, it's more than fair to say that some of his films are a little overrated, including "Inherent Vice," "Punch-Drunk Love," and "Licorice Pizza," but this hasn't stopped him from amassing a rather impressive 11 Oscar nominations over the course of his incredible career (three as producer, three as director, and five as screenwriter).
Now he's back with his latest project, the intriguingly-titled "One Battle After Another," which once again has him bringing together a remarkable ensemble, headlined by three Oscar winners, and receiving some of the best reviews of his career. The big question is whether this is one of his efforts that is worthy of the praise (such as "There Will Be Blood," "Boogie Nights," and "Magnolia") or if it's merely another over-hyped work that fits in more alongside those projects mentioned earlier.
As the film opens, we are introduced to Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), members of a revolutionary group known as The French 75. On a mission to help rescue detained immigrants, Perfidia captures & humiliates commanding officer Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who later catches her on another mission while she's trying to plant a bomb. However, he lets her go in return for meeting up later for sex. In the meantime, Pat & Perfidia become lovers and have a child named Charlene. Pat tries to get Perfidia to settle down, but she insists on continuing being a revolutionary, which eventually gets her arrested after killing a guard at a bank. This causes her to enter witness protection and become a rat, leading to the execution of most of her former comrades, which subsequently forces Pat to go into hiding with Charlene.
16 years later, Pat and Charlene (Chase Infiniti) (now known as Bob and Willa Ferguson) remain in hiding in Baktan Cross, California. Colonel Lockjaw has been invited to join an exclusive group known as the "Christmas Adventurers Club" that is basically a secret group for white supremacists. However, because of their views, he must secretly hunt down Willa to determine if she is actually his daughter through his relationship with Perfidia, for if she is, he sees it as a problem that must be eliminated. With this looming threat, Bob is warned through his old network, forcing him back into action to save his daughter's life.
For his latest outing, Anderson has come up with a rather peculiar scenario that eventually finds itself split into three main storylines, with a couple of them having pretty strong potential to provide a riveting, compelling experience that could justify the film's somewhat extreme runtime of 162 minutes. However, it's at this splitting point that he runs into a bit of trouble with keeping everything running smoothly, following the somewhat intriguing prelude.
The branch that works least of all is the one involving Colonel Lockjaw and his desire to join the Christmas Adventurers Club, which sadly boils down to nothing more than a racist trying to get rid of potential evidence of his interracial relationship before a bunch of other racists find out about it. There just isn't a whole lot to work with there, and it simply doesn't provide much in the way of compelling drama to propel the film forward.
However, the other two storylines, as mentioned, do contain the potential to help the film move along decently, though sadly we also see evidence of Anderson having difficulty with them pretty early on as well. On one side of it, we have Willa being picked up by Deandra (Regina Hall), another revolutionary, for safe keeping, eventually taking her to a convent so she can hide out, and while it does eventually kick into gear near the end of the film, you do unfortunately have to get through a lot of predictable beats before it does so. Even so, it ends up being the most successful portion of the tapestry that Anderson has weaved together here.
As for the last section, it basically consists of Bob running around while trying to locate and get to his daughter. This is where Anderson had the biggest opportunity to do something really captivating, but sadly he declines to do so, settling instead on having him get help from Willa's Sensei (Benicio Del Toro), running from place to place, and going through a running gag of not being able to remember the correct code phrases to get the location of his daughter. In the end, it's a storyline that doesn't really get anywhere, ultimately not serving much of a purpose except to give DiCaprio's character something to do.
With all that said, while the writing is certainly not the strongest element of the film, at the very least it has a remarkably impressive ensemble to help tell it. DiCaprio turns in fine work as a father desperate to get to his daughter, while Del Toro makes for a decent companion along the way (though it's certainly not the level of work that one could call the "Best Supporting Actor" performance of the year, as many have been trying to say).
However, the most impressive performances come from newcomer Chase Infinity as Willa and Teyana Taylor as Perfidia, both of whom give the film a much-needed boost. The only disappointing performance here belongs to two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn, who is curiously flat throughout. The audience understands that he's the villain, but Penn should've at least tried to give the character a little spark of life so as to make him more memorable & formidable. [Oriana: I disagree: Lockjaw is memorable, and great fun to watch. He won an Oscar for the best supportive actor.]
Overall, it's unfortunate to have to say that this is another PTA outing that does not live up to the hype. The cast is wonderful (for the most part) and there was certainly a lot of potential here, but it would appear that Anderson just had a little too much difficulty tapping into it, leaving us with one intriguing storyline that takes quite a while to get going, one that wanders about in search of substance, and another that merely lands with a thud.
Curiously though, it would appear to be the frontrunner for 2025's Best Picture Oscar, which would be a rather strange accolade to give it. There are certainly far worse films that could take the honor, but also a multitude of far better ones that deserve it much more. In a similar vein, there are worse films in PTA's filmography ("Inherent Vice" for one), but there are also much better ones that are more deserving of your time. When all is said and done, "One Battle After Another" simply ends up right in the middle.
https://www.thebluspot.com/single-post/one-battle-after-another-an-impressive-ensemble-let-down-by-weak-writing-blu-ray
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ORIANA: THIS IS NOT “DOCTOR STRANGELOVE” — IT’S “ONE CAR CHASE AFTER ANOTHER”
Alas, while Doctor Strangelove made insanity cohere into comedy, "One Battle after Another” makes comedy incoherent. Names like Perfidia Beverly Hills and Colonel Lockjaw practically force the viewer to think of Doctor Strangelove, but while Strangelove remains a cinematic masterpiece, Battle pulls in all directions at once and doesn’t get anywhere. It's hard to say what the climax was, or if there even was one.
It's difficult even to remember exactly what the ending was, since there was no closure or resolution — unless the somewhat vague message that the "revolution" continues, with the new generation joining the protests. I think of it as an unexpected "in medias res" ending — "in the middle of things." The battles continue, one after another, but mercifully we don't get to watch them.
The lovely Willa drives off to join the protests — but protests against what? Rich white men? The restrictive immigration policies? That remains unclear. Perhaps it's protesting for the sake of protesting, which creates at least an illusion of purpose and meaning.
Still, most of all, I didn’t expect an action movie. I basically detest action movies — all those car chases to nowhere. As my companion said, the title of “One Battle” should be changed to “One car chase after another." However, the last car chase here, in a hilly desert, is different. It’s one hill after another, and even I have to admit it’s stunning. It’s art. Some viewers might be tempted to walk out in the middle, disgusted by the shallowness of the chaotic plot, but don’t — the last roller-coaster car chase is worth waiting for.
Aside from that scenic car chase, I did not particularly like the movie. I found “One Battle after Another” — I should have been forewarn by the title — to be pretty much an action movie. I’ve lost track of how many actual car chase scenes there were, but definitely too many for my taste — and those other car chases lacked the scenic setting of the terminal one, and seemed simply a cliché of American cinema. And yes, it does matter, because the movie is too long and we need more scenes with DiCaprio in his marvelously realistic bathrobe and Sean Penn as the incomparable Colonel Lockjaw, member of the white-supremacist “Christmas Adventurers Club" — not the car stunts we’ve already seen in hundreds of other movies.
There is no coherent plot, so there’s really no climax, no resolution. It’s rather that we get to enjoy some excellent moments, even if they seem randomly tossed together. And yet — there is no denying that one can’t entirely dislike this movie. It has a heart — and that heart is a father’s protective love of his daughter. For all his bedraggled and befuddled state, perfectly symbolized by his old bathrobe that he wears even during the car chase scenes, DiCaprio’s character is totally loving, making parenthood more important than the “revolution” — in stark contrast to Perfidia, who abandons her baby girl, proclaiming that “the Cause is more important than family.”
Sean Penn is also unforgettable as Lockjaw, but it’s only DiCaprio who is utterly lovable as the devoted father. Lockjaw is an impressive caricature; but it’s DiCaprio who, as one critic stated, is the “heart of the movie.” He also gets some funny scenes that make it easy to identify with him, especially when he can’t remember the urgently needed password.
Another funny scene: someone asks about Perfidia: "Does she have a weapon?" Answer: "She is a vegetarian."
The movie is still worth seeing because of great acting by DiCaprio and Penn, the final poetic car chase, and — if you are a lover of words, the name “Perfidia Beverly Hills.” "Lockjaw" also delighted me.
I had some private pleasure as well — seeing fragments of San Diego, a beautiful city that rarely (if ever) appears in movies.
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WHEN FEELING GOOD FEELS WRONG
Certain thoughts we have after good experiences may increase vulnerability to depression.
~ Dampening, which minimizes positive emotions, is linked to cognitive-affective depressive symptoms.
~ Believing one doesn’t deserve positive feelings relates to current depressive severity, not onset.
~ Responses to positive emotions may be as important as negative emotion regulation in depression.
You get good news. For a split second, you feel happy.
Then a thought appears almost automatically:
“This won’t last.”
“Something bad will probably happen.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
And, just like that, the feeling fades.
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Many people have this tendency to mentally downplay or “undo” positive emotions. This is called dampening, or the tendency to reduce the intensity or duration of positive emotions through certain thought patterns. Research has shown that dampening is associated with mental health conditions such as depression. But both depression and dampening are more complex than they may appear at first glance.
Not all depressive symptoms and not all dampening thoughts are the same
Depression is not a single, uniform experience. It can involve sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, loss of interest, fatigue, sleep problems, and concentration difficulties. Different people experience different combinations of these symptoms. Similarly, dampening of positive emotions is not just one process. It includes different thoughts and patterns that may influence mental health in distinct ways.
When researchers group all depressive symptoms together and all dampening thoughts together, they may miss important details about how specific thoughts relate to specific symptoms. Understanding these more precise relationships could help improve prevention and treatment. To better understand this, we took a more fine-grained approach. Using large samples and both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we looked at whether specific dampening thoughts predicted specific depressive symptoms. Using machine learning and network analysis, we identified which dampening patterns appeared most important.
The two dampening thoughts that stood out
Across different studies and analytic approaches, two dampening thoughts consistently emerged as the strongest predictors of depressive symptoms:
“These positive feelings won’t last.”
“My streak of luck is going to end soon.”
What these thoughts have in common is that they are future-focused and reflect beliefs about the instability of positive experiences. These thoughts were strongly linked to core cognitive-emotional symptoms of depression, including:
Negative self-view
Hopelessness
Persistent sadness
Fearful or anxious feelings
Importantly, these associations remained even after accounting for people’s current symptoms. This suggests that these dampening thoughts may not simply reflect existing depressive symptoms but may also contribute to increased vulnerability over time.
The role of “I don’t deserve this”
A third dampening thought also stood out: “I don’t deserve this positive feeling.” Unlike the future-focused dampening thoughts, this belief was closely tied to feelings of worthlessness and a negative self-view. However, it was less predictive of future depressive symptoms. This pattern suggests that this type of dampening may act more as a maintaining factor. It may reinforce an already negative self-view once depressive symptoms are present rather than driving their development.
What these findings mean for prevention and treatment
Both key dampening thoughts that predict depressive symptoms share a common theme: They anticipate the loss of positive experiences. This fits with broader research showing that depression is linked to difficulty imagining positive futures and a tendency to overestimate negative outcomes. When people come to believe that good moments are fragile or temporary, it may become harder to fully engage with positive experiences when they occur.
Over time, this pattern may reinforce hopelessness, one of the central cognitive features of depression. This finding points to a potential intervention target: guided future-thinking exercises that help people gently envision positive experiences, building the sense that good moments can endure and that the future may hold more positivity than expected.
The finding that self-deserving dampening thoughts are closely tied to worthlessness also highlights the potential importance of addressing negative self-beliefs directly when depressive symptoms are already present. Approaches that target self-criticism and promote self-compassion may be particularly relevant in these cases.
The overlooked role of positive emotion regulation
Much of depression research has traditionally focused on how people manage negative emotions. But these findings add to growing evidence that how people respond to positive emotions may be just as important.
Becoming aware of these patterns may be an important first step. Noticing thoughts like “This won’t last” or “I don’t deserve this positive feeling” does not mean forcing yourself to think positively. Instead, it may involve recognizing these thoughts as mental habits rather than facts.
For individuals who notice a consistent tendency to dampen positive emotions, discussing this pattern with a mental health professional may be worthwhile. It may represent an important, but often overlooked, factor in the development or maintenance of depressive symptoms.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cognition-and-mental-health/202603/when-feeling-good-feels-wrong
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HOW POLITICS MAKES US DUMBER
Politics hijacks identity, making us protect group belonging over truth or accuracy.
Partisan cheerleading leads us to knowingly defend false claims to signal loyalty.
Motivated reasoning lets us justify beliefs first, then construct logic afterward.
Better thinking starts with distance, deeper reading, and seeking opposing views.
If you're among the many who have slowly become disillusioned by modern politics, I can't blame you.
The discourse, particularly in countries locked into two-party systems, resembles locker room trash talk more than the kind of deliberation the Greeks had in mind centuries ago. Gone are the days when logos and ethos ruled alongside pathos, the appeal to emotion, which has now kicked its brethren out of the nest.
If we want to find the villain in this story, we need to start by looking in the mirror.
We are the ones who not only enable what is happening but also actively encourage it. If we are ever to reclaim a saner political landscape, we need to understand what in our own evolved psychology is pulling us into this hole.
We seek identity over truth
Not to upset the epistemologists among us, but truth or true beliefs matter far less in evolution than we would like to think.
What really has some heft to it is the consequences, and whether our cells and the software that runs them make it into the next generation. Whether someone does so while believing in Santa Claus or while correctly inferring it was their parents all along is largely irrelevant. Yes, some beliefs need to track reality closely enough to keep us alive, but most can drift surprisingly far without any meaningful penalty attached to them.
But the same can't be said about identity. In our ancestral environments, knowing who we were, and how others saw us in particular, directly impacted our access to protection as well as our ability to continue the Ponzi scheme of life itself. Identity, in short, was a matter of survival.
This helps explain what Dan Kahan and colleagues described as identity-protective cognition (Kahan et al, 2007). Our brains did not evolve to process information with perfect fidelity as much as they found ways to protect a version of us that maintains our place within our groups. And when new facts threaten the identity we know we need, we often bend the facts rather than risk the social cost of suddenly standing apart.
A cursory look at cable news shows how politics pulls on these evolved levers with gusto, making it clear that party identity often outweighs any attempt at objective truth, no matter whether the reporting is for CNN or Fox News.
Which takes us to the second psychological driver you need to be aware of.
The Influence of Cheerleading
John Bullock and his colleagues have shown how partisan bias distorts factual beliefs through what they call cheerleading (Bullock et al, 2015). In a series of fascinating experiments, participants gave answers that aligned with their political side even when they knew those answers were wrong, or were not confident in their veracity.
We know this because when researchers paid people to be as accurate as they could, something interesting happened. The views of Democrats and Republicans began to converge. And once the researchers paid them for admitting uncertainty, the gap narrowed even further.
The implication of their research is that much of what looks like disagreement is not about the underlying facts at all, as much as it is signaling loyalty to our team.
And perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised. Our species developed in environments where demonstrating allegiance to the group brought a bevy of benefits. Quite the contrary, being known as the person who pointed out inconvenient truths did not always end well, as Socrates' sip of hemlock suffices to prove.
As a result, we defend positions while under the influence of politics that we would question in any other context. And cheerleading is only to be outdone by the final mechanism on our list.
Understanding motivated reasoning
Once our group identities are locked in and the pom-poms are out, the next step is to argue for whatever needs arguing for. If we can dress whatever we come up with as something that resembles logic, even better.
Welcome to Motivated Reasoning 101, where we begin with the conclusion we want, and then work backward to assemble a set of arguments that support it.
There's a wealth of research on political behavior that shows how people selectively seek out information, interpreting ambiguous evidence to confirm their prior beliefs and avoiding sources that might challenge them (e.g., Peterson and Iyengar, 2021). Over time, our tendency towards motivated reasoning creates a form of intellectual tunnel vision where opposing arguments do not even seem plausible.
And when the above pieces of research hold true, we can expect the effect to only get stronger among those who operate inside politics itself. When the reputational and career stakes are higher, the rewards for staying on the party-approved message, and the risks of deviating from them, are only amplified.
Which is why waiting for politicians to fix this is not something we can afford. Instead, we need to take action ourselves.
What you can do today
One of the most effective ways to reclaim our thinking is to limit our exposure to high-identity environments where ideological performance matters more than truth. That can begin by something as simple as cutting back the time our eyes linger on partisan media, where the goal is to win attention rather than to explain and understand reality.
And if you want to learn what you actually think deep inside of you, you will benefit from creating even more intellectual distance. You can begin by reading more deeply on a topic that piques your curiosity instead of skimming headlines and the ragebait left for you to react online.
While in conversation with others, shift the goal from trying to win to trying to understand why someone might arrive at a conclusion you disagree with. Remember, understanding an argument, even if it is as faulty as two plus two equaling five, doesn't mean you have to accept it.
But the moment you stop trying to understand others and their potentially faulty premises, you step into the same patterns that drive the system you are frustrated with.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/curiosity-code/202603/why-politics-makes-us-dumber
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HOW A SECOND PREGNANCY CHANGES THE BRAIN
Motherhood reshapes the brain more than once.
Pregnancy-induced brain changes are linked to maternal attachment, bonding, and mental health.
First pregnancy builds the maternal brain; second pregnancy refines and adapts for parenting.
Many pregnant moms will talk about having “baby brain” as they notice, for better or worse, the shifts in the way their brains function.
For years, research has supported that the brain does, in fact, go through a major transformation during pregnancy. Specifically, scientists have known that a first pregnancy changes the brain. Those changes are believed to help mothers bond with and care for their babies. But researchers recently asked an important question: What happens to the brain when a mom undergoes pregnancy again?
A new study followed 110 women before pregnancy and after birth: 40 first-time mothers, 30 second-time mothers, and 40 women who did not become pregnant (control group). Using MRI brain scans and questionnaires, researchers tracked how the brain changed during pregnancy and again after childbirth, and its impacts on maternal behaviors and mental health.
Findings from this innovative study show for the first time that brain changes don’t stop with a first pregnancy; instead, a second pregnancy uniquely changes a woman’s brain.
First Pregnancy Changes
In first-time pregnant mothers, there were adaptive neural network changes in the brain involved in:
Self-reflection
Social understanding
Perspective-taking
Identity processing
This supports the idea that becoming a mother for the first time involves a deep reorganization of how the brain represents the self and relationships. In other words, first-time motherhood may require a foundational rewiring of identity.
Second Pregnancy Changes
The changes during a first-time pregnancy contribute more strongly to the initiation of maternal behaviors; whereas, in a second pregnancy these changes play a smaller role because maternal behavior has already developed. As such, results of the study demonstrated overlapping areas affected within the brain that “further fine-tuned in a similar, but more subtle way during a second pregnancy.”
While some of the same brain regions changed, stronger alterations appeared in brain networks involved in:
Attention to external demands
Goal-directed focus
Sensorimotor processing
Movement and coordination
These brain networks may help second-time mothers manage the increased demands of caring for more than one child. In other words, brain changes during a first pregnancy may help with becoming a mother, while brain changes that happen with subsequent pregnancies may help the brain adapt to parenting multiple children.
What About Mental Health?
It has been well-established that pregnancy and postpartum are periods of high risk for the onset of mental health disorders, which can have significant effects on maternal-infant bonding. Approximately 1 in 5 women are impacted by perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs). As such, the present study also explored the relationship between brain changes across first and second pregnancies and mental health.
Results of the study found pregnancy-induced brain changes played a role in the development of mental health disorders and maternal-infant bonding for both first- and second-time mothers. For first-time mothers, brain changes were more closely linked to postpartum mood symptoms. For second-time mothers, brain changes were associated with mental health status during pregnancy.
This may be due to the significant identity shift following a first-time postpartum experience, whereas for the second-time pregnant mother she may have higher stress levels during pregnancy due to additional childcare responsibilities.
Importantly, results suggest that the emotional landscape of first and second pregnancies may unfold differently at the neural level and have subsequent significant relational impacts on the family.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/preparing-for-parenthood/202603/new-research-shows-how-a-second-pregnancy-changes-the-brain
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ARE NAD SUPPLEMENTS THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?
Recent
studies on aging have latched onto a “player” in longevity that had
hitherto received little attention: nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide,
or NAD for short.
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a molecule derived, among others, from vitamin B3 [niacin].
Recent studies have highlighted the role it plays in maintaining body systems ‘youthful’, which has led to the suggestion that NAD supplementation could help slow down aging and boost longevity.
NAD is a molecule sometimes derived from vitamin B3, also known as “niacin,” and it occurs in every living cell of the human body.
It plays complex roles for health but the latest research emphasizes the role that NAD depletion plays in aging, further suggesting that replenishing NAD stores may help slow down aging processes.
This has raised questions about whether NAD supplements could be an effective tool for boosting longevity.
“Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a central cellular coenzyme required for mitochondrial energy production, DNA repair, and regulation of stress response pathways including sirtuins and PARPs,” Dr. Ünlüişler told us. [PARPs are special proteins that help repair DNA]
This makes NAD extremely important for cellular health, given that mitochondria, commonly referred to as “the powerhouses of the cell,” are what provides each cell with energy, and are also crucially involved in cell signalling — the communication between them — and eventually cellular death.
Furthermore, sirtuins are proteins that play key roles in inflammation and DNA repair, and PARPs, which is short for poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases, are similarly involved in the regulation of immune responses and maintaining cellular health.
Given that NAD is so intricately involved in cellular processes and cellular health, it follows that it is also a key factor in the most basic aspects of aging processes.
In the body, “NAD+ levels decline with age, and this reduction is associated with impaired mitochondrial function, reduced genomic stability, and increased cellular stress, all of which are linked to biological aging processes,” explained Ünlüişler.
But what does this mean in terms of replenishing NAD stores? Is it possible to easily reverse this natural process?
The longevity expert noted that this molecule is not one that we can easily obtain from food, which complicates matters.
“NAD+ itself is not significantly absorbed from food, but the body synthesizes it from dietary precursors such as tryptophan and vitamin B3 forms including niacin, nicotinamide, and nicotinamide riboside,” she explained.
“Although NAD+ is continuously recycled in the body, aging, inflammation, and metabolic stress can lower its availability,” detailed Ünlüişler.
There is no “miracle cure” for aging, and while vitamin B3 supplements can play a positive role in health, we should be wary of treating them as a panacea.
“Current evidence indicates that restoring NAD+ levels may support mitochondrial health and metabolic resilience,” said Ünlüişler.
“However, there is no definitive clinical evidence that NAD+ supplementation slows aging or extends lifespan in humans,” she emphasized.
For those who are curious to try it, “it should be considered a metabolic support strategy within a broader longevity framework rather than a standalone anti-aging intervention,” she advised.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/expert-qa-can-nad-supplements-longevity-help-fight-aging#4
Oriana: The sugar ribose, easily ordered online, seems to improve mitochondrial function, resulting in greater energy.
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DIET SHOWN TO SLOW DOWN BRAIN AGING BY TWO YEARS
Eating a combination of two award-winning diets slowed aging in key structures inside the brain by over two years, according to a new study.
The brain-focused eating plan is called the Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, or MIND, diet. It combines the most brain-healthy parts of the award-winning Mediterranean diet and the acclaimed heart-healthy Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH, which restricts salt.
While all three diets are plant-based and quite similar, the MIND method emphasizes eating specific foods thought to reduce the risk of dementia: berries, beans, leafy green vegetables, fish, poultry, whole grains, olive oil and nuts. Foods with saturated fats, such as cheese, butter, red meat and fried foods, are extremely limited. (Oriana: cheese and butter and even red meat have health benefits; read up on those before deciding to stop consuming them.)
“People who adhered more closely to the MIND diet seemed to show slower structural brain aging over about 12 years of follow-up,” said senior author Changzheng Yuan, a research professor at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, in an email.
“In particular, they had slower loss of grey matter, which is the part of the brain that contains many of the nerve cells involved in memory, thinking, and decision-making,” Yuan said.
Each three-point increase in adherence to the MIND diet was associated with 20% less shrinkage in gray matter, corresponding to a 2.5-year delay in brain aging, according to the study.
Both the Mediterranean and the MIND diets are linked in studies to improvements in cognitive decline and a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The new study’s conclusions fall in line with those past findings and add “further support for consuming a Mediterranean-type dietary pattern,” said leading nutrition researcher Dr. Walter Willett in an email.
Willett, who is a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was not involved in the study.
ANOTHER KEY PART OF THE BRAIN WAS IMPACTED
The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, analyzed the diet of over 1,600 adults participating in an offshoot of the Framingham Heart Study — a decades-long study designed to identify factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease. This portion of the Framingham study, which began in 1999, enrolled people with an average age of 60 who had no evidence of stroke or dementia.
At several points over an average of 12 years, participants answered dietary questionnaires, underwent regular health checkups and had at least two MRI brain scans.
In addition to less shrinkage in gray matter, those participants who more closely followed the MIND Diet “had slower enlargement of the ventricles, the fluid-filled spaces that tend to expand as brain tissue shrinks with age,” Yuan said.
For every three points of closer adherence to the diet, the development of ventricles declined by 8%, reducing brain age by one year, the study found. The development of larger ventricles, which accelerates after age 60, is a sign of increased brain atrophy linked to Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline.
The MIND diet emphasizes berries over other fruit for their alleged brain-boosting properties.
The study is observational, and thus cannot prove cause and effect, said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine. He founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.
Nor could the study exclude reverse causality, which occurs when the impact of an action is actually the cause, said Katz, who was not involved in the study.
“In other words, people with healthier brain structure and function over time may have made better dietary choices,” he said in an email. “But the more obvious causal pathway — eating well is good for brain structure and function — is the more plausible.”
DRILLING DOWN TO INDIVIDUAL FOODS
Berries and poultry contributed most to the antiaging impact found in the study — berries decreased the rate of ventricle enlargement, while poultry slowed both gray matter declines and ventricle enlargement.
“Berries are rich in antioxidants and other bioactive compounds, and poultry can provide high-quality protein as part of a balanced diet,” said first author Hui Chen, a professor of psychology and behavioral sciences at Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China.
“In contrast, higher intakes of sweets and fried fast foods tended to be associated with faster brain aging over time,” Chen said in an email.
Specifically, a higher intake of sweets and fried foods was associated with faster ventricular expansion, while eating more sweets led to more decay in the hippocampus, the organ in the brain most associated with memory.
There were unexpected findings as well: cheese consumption appeared to protect the brain, while higher whole-grain intake was associated with faster declines in gray matter.
However, Chen said, cheese is so limited on the MIND diet that “I would not interpret our findings as evidence that cheese itself protects the brain.”
As for whole grains, what was considered “whole grain” in the 1990s may not meet today’s standard for a truly healthy whole-grain food, Yuan said, so the finding should not be interpreted as whole grains are harmful for the brain.
“I would be cautious about reducing the message to just a few individual foods, because what appears to matter most is the overall dietary pattern rather than any single item in isolation,” Chen said. “Foods are consumed together, and their combined effects may be more important than the contribution of one food alone.”
ending on beauty:
DEAD LANGUAGE
He with the beating wings
outside who brushes the door,
that is your brother, you hear him.
Laurio he says, water,
a bow, colorless, deep.
He came down with the river,
drifting around mussel
and snails, spread like a fan
on the sand and was green.
Warne he says and wittan,
the crow has no tree,
I have the power to kiss you,
I dwell in your ear.
Tell him you do not
want to listen –
he comes, an otter, he comes
swarming like hornets, he cries,
a cricket, he grows with the marsh
under your house, he whispers
in the well, smordis you hear,
your black alder will wither,
and die at the fence tomorrow.
~Johannes Bobrowski, 1917-1965
(Names speak of a stamped-out people — In this case the Baltic tribe of Prussians, largely exterminated by the Teutonic Knights of the Cross; the name survived in its German form as Preussen, commonly known as Prussia; the original Prussian language became extinct.)
