Another Blog Year

September 19, 2020
Posted by Jay Livingston

A new year begins. L' shana tovah. A blog year ends. The first post in this blog was 14 years ago today. I have been blogging less and less often, and that trend will probably continue. Meanwhile, as for tooting my own shofar, here are a few posts from this past year. that I’ve liked.

Proclaiming an Idealized History
The preference for an idealized history has great appeal to the authoritarian mind. I posted this a year ago, but just this week Trump called for a “patriotic history.”

Raise Your Dog to Be an American
Sometimes it takes an extreme version, one that seems like a parody, to get us to realize that our cultural ideas are particular and even peculiar. Most of the time, we assume that they are “natural” and universal.

Acting and Reacting as an Agent of Culture
 A sequel to the previous post. Even social scientists, me for example, can fail to see how their own reactions in everyday life are constrained by their culture.

Impostor Syndrome and Cultural Rules
and
Impostor Syndrome, an Idea Whose Time Has Come . . . Again
I take my hat off to no one when it comes to feeling like an impostor. But maybe these private feelings are a product of the society. Maybe  impostor syndrome is less prevalent in cultures less success-obsessed than the US – for example, Great Britain.

Abortion Rights and Motherhood — That Was Then, It’s Also Now
Abortion will once again become a newsworthy topic. The arguments will be about rights – rights of the unborn, rights of women. But underlying these arguments are more profound differences about the proper role of women in society.