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Maine Voices: Rethinking advice about being our best selves and being true to our selves Rep. Liz Cheney is an example of someone who’d rather risk disapproval with a candid ‘true self’ than put forward a more palatable ‘best self.’ By Barbara S. HeldSpecial to the Press Herald Share A professor at our small Maine college made some people a bit nervous. Jon Goldstein was then a big burly guy who rode a heavy motorcycle and spoke my native-Bronx “tell-it-like-it-is” language. We became fast friends. Beneath his gruff exterior, Jon is a kind-hearted person. When his truth-tellin...

Figure 1: Hubert, the author’s cheerful plush ladybug flatmate. Meet Hubert. For going on ten years now, Hubert has shared a living space with my wife and me. He’s a generally cheerful fellow, optimistic to a fault, occasionally prone to a little mischief; in fact, my wife, upon seeing the picture, remarked that he looked inordinately well-behaved. He’s fond of chocolate and watching TV, which may be the reason why his chief dwelling place is our couch, where most of the TV-watching and chocolate-eating transpires. He also likes to dance, is curious, but sometimes gets overwhelmed by hi...

Readers reflect on the role of chance, randomness and responsibility in their own lives Is our life’s course predetermined or could we change it on the flip of a coin or throw of a dice? Photograph: Brian Jackson/Alamy Is our life’s course predetermined or could we change it on the flip of a coin or throw of a dice? Photograph: Brian Jackson/Alamy Letters Sun 2 May 2021 11.29 EDT Last modified on Sun 2 May 2021 12.01 EDT What high-quality letters (29 April) on free will. My A-level psychology students always found this fascinating and usually thought that free will was obvious until they ...

1 He has focused on narratives. Energy narratives Before discussing King's narrative framework, it's worth pausing for some reflection. Scientists who study the biophysical limits of the human economy run head-on into a cultural divide between the natural and social sciences. These 'two cultures' (as C.P. Snow called them) do not speak the same language. I can testify to this divide. I have had many frustrating conversations with social scientists who are incredulous that the laws of thermodynamics apply to human societies. (They do.) And I have had equally frustrating conversations with na...

change people’s beliefs, it seems to make no moral difference anyway.Illustration by Triff / Shutterstock Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, eloquently claims as much in his recent book Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. It’s the “most prominent, promising, and dangerous capacity humanity has evolved,” he writes, the power to “see and feel and know something—an idea, a vision, a necessity, a possibility, a truth—that is not immediately present to the senses, and then to invest, wholly a...