Sadly, there are psychopaths among us, and sadly they are often the most successful among us. Ignoring the welfare of others, and putting one’s own above all others happens to be a path to dominance. We are in some ways crippled by our conscience as it attenuates our desires for self gratification when they run … More Compassion

Each year since the election, this first principal has gotten harder and harder to imagine. In fact, my lifelong faith in the power of truth and love and their power to tear down barriers between us has been deeply shaken by what I see and hear among my peers. Of course what I see and … More Unity

My Holly Days agenda has always been both secular and spiritual. I believe that the key challenge of the modern age is fundamentally spiritual. Evidence of an innate cognitive bias for religiosity is now ubiquitous, as laid out in Shermer’s Believing Brain, and seems clearly an important factor in the doctrinaire zeal among the tribes … More Truth, Love, and Courage

Being grateful has become a vogue mental health meme. This is because a number of methodologically sound studies have demonstrated the psychological benefit of actively expressing and focusing on being grateful. The blessing of counting your blessings is as old as that axiom, and of course, common sense tells us it should be. The science … More Gratitude

Probably everyone who reads this will already know the story, if not, you can read a recounting of my recollections of my Dad as Santa Claus hyperlinked here. Sadly, this is one of the few images I have of him as Santa, even though those memories are among my most powerful of him. But one … More Generosity

I wrote an answer to a question on Quora: “What age should you stop spanking your kid?” My answer, which got over 700 upvotes, began: “Never start.” When I used to battle with various spoil-the-rod co-op moms over the issue, the argument that I think worked best was to point out the power of hope. … More Hope

Today is Kindness. One of the great joys of Poppa life for me has been the survey of children’s literature Rey and I have embarked on via our amazing Pearl River Public Library. One of the books she particularly enjoyed this past week was Be Kind.The great thing about it is that it actually questions … More Kindness

I went out shopping for trinkets for the Hollydays’ “advent calendar I made for Rey, and stumbled into a deep dive into a Hasidic tribe. It has been novel for me to interact with them here in Rockland County, where they have made a firm stronghold, much to the horror of many of my neighbors … More Compassion

Unity feels a bit like some idealist fever dream these days; a pollyanna’s foolish wish for some other prettier universe. Not only do we see this abyss between these red and blue political tribes, dug ever deeper by the echoing and largely non-overlapping media bubbles they inhabit, but profound schisms between subtribes within these: the … More Unity

Today is the last Holly Day and the beginning of a new year: Redemption. We can be redeemed by good deeds, apologies, and other demonstrations of our virtue. It’s pretty easy in this digital age to have some lapse in our personal lives attract an out-of-proportion scorn that can make us doubt our own virtuousness … More Redemption