By: Travis Biglow on January 21, 2015
Nationalism by Vernacularization After finding that this book was a little hard to read at times it had some important concepts to think about. I realized that nationalism is connected to languages that are more popular than others. And this is really something to think about in more areas of life than one. Unity…
By: Richard Volzke on January 18, 2015
David Brooks, in his book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, states, “We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.”[1] Who we are comes from our subconscious rather than the conscious part of our minds. According to Brooks, the subconscious mind is where we make most of…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on January 17, 2015
“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo I am a romantic. I love love stories. I love movies that are based on true stories. Historical epics, life documentaries, tear…
By: Carol McLaughlin on January 17, 2015
Julia and Rob, Harold and Erica, Harrison, Raymond and Richard Grace, cultures and ambition, generations and maturing, descriptions of the flow and ebb of life are integrated within the pages of The Social Animal by David Brooks. I am thankful that Brooks has taken the time to interweave the nuts and bolts of information and…
By: Bill Dobrenen on January 16, 2015
In his well-written book, The Social Animal[1], David Brooks does a terrific job of explaining the human condition as it really is in all its humanity and bases his input on lots of rich research. I enjoyed the book and Brook’s style. I especially enjoyed his characters and how he develops their lives. So does…
By: Stefania Tarasut on January 16, 2015
Community: the thing that shapes us into the people we are and become. Community: the one thing that most of us want, but aren’t willing to fight for. Community: a romantic notion of doing life with people, but in reality it’s hard, messy and often difficult to attain. We like the idea of community, but…
By: John Woodward on January 16, 2015
A few years ago, I sat in my campus ministry office talking with a young man who was having relationship problems. Over the next couple hours he poured out his heart, confessing to many sordid activities that he had been involved in. Now, I didn’t grow up in a protected environment, but what I was…
By: Miriam Mendez on January 16, 2015
I must confess that when the first sentence in the introduction of a book begins with “this is the happiest story you’ve ever read,”[1] I can’t help but be a bit skeptical. David Brooks, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Source of Love, Character and Achievement begins his book with such a sentence. Now,…
By: Julie Dodge on January 16, 2015
Last night while I was speaking in front of my class, one of my students did something that caught my eye. Tonight I can’t tell you what it was that my student did. It wasn’t anything significant or distracting. I just noticed it. It’s what followed that stuck with me. Without even directly looking at…
By: Jon Spellman on January 16, 2015
Blame the Capitalists! There’s only so much room on this planet. If a nation is to expand, or a new one emerge, some existing borders have to be shifted around a bit. It’s just the nature of things. It’s interesting to me to watch as (even as we speak) a new nation (Islamic State) is…
By: Dawnel Volzke on January 16, 2015
Nationalism is a sentiment upon which common cultural characteristics bind a population and produces a national independence. It is also used to describe loyalty or devotion to one’s country.[1] Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism[2] by Benedict Anderson asserts that modern nations are the creation of communication networks and people’s imagination. The underlying…
By: Michael Badriaki on January 16, 2015
I was born in a culture where thinking about your neighbor, sharing one’s life and possessions with others was part and parcel of the air we breathed in the village. I am using the term village to mean my family, relative and friends who helped raise, nurture and prepare me for life, thus the proverbial…
By: Brian Yost on January 16, 2015
Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism investigates a concept of nationalism that most people, while living out the reality, rarely consciously think about. I have traveled to many different countries and have found that there is an almost universal pride in one’s nationality. Even people who disagree with their government’s…
By: Ashley Goad on January 16, 2015
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement is about the modern life of humans. It explores attachment, parenting, education, love, family, culture, achievement, marriage, politics, morality, aging, and death by exploring a wide range of disciplines, including evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, and education theory. Given the table of contents,…
By: Liz Linssen on January 15, 2015
“Modern society has created a giant apparatus for the cultivation of hard skills, while failing to develop the moral and emotional faculties down below. Children are coached on how to jump through a thousand hoops. Yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and whom to befriend, what…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on January 15, 2015
Ka-Pow … that was the sound of my brain as I read “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism” by Benedict Anderson. Each time I caught myself in the reading zone, biting off another chunk of Anderson’s thinking to try to digest, I felt as if I had to leave the current…
By: Deve Persad on January 15, 2015
Spending a great deal of time each week listening to people: their fears, hopes, failures and aspirations, is a continual education. It teaches me much about the importance of genuine relationships and the meaning derived from those relationships. For some, just having someone to actively listen can provide an assurance about the strength of their…
By: Clint Baldwin on January 15, 2015
“Minds are intensely permeable…Invisible Networks Filling the Space Between Them”[1] David Brooks writes a book titled The Social Animal. In the United States, the book has also been subtitled in different editions, The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement and A Story of How Success Happens. Personally, I like the first title better for…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on January 15, 2015
In his book, The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens, David Brooks, explores the unconscious mind. Brooks relates his theory in a more accessible way using the fictional characters of two people who led wonderfully fulfilling lives (p.5). The reason for their success is, Brook explains, “They possessed what economists call noncognitive skills,…
By: Mary Pandiani on January 15, 2015
First written in 1983, Imagined Communities illustrates the trajectory of the world’s understanding of how it functions politically as the author, Benedict Anderson, reasserts his premise in the revision of 2006, and with even more relevance today in 2015. Acknowledging that many of his comrades with a Marxist bent predicted an end to nationalism, Anderson…
