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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

August 2021

Human Societies and Cultural Change (1 of 2)


Human societies are not governed by immutable instinct, as are most species below us. Because of our ability to think, Nature tells us little about how to treat each other. For example, we are not programmed to beat women, to murder neighbors, or to organize for war. We are not like ants, who are so programmed.

We are subject to many laws of nature, but less than our ancestors assumed. Experiments conducted on the behavior of babies have shown that even before they can s more...

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Afghanistan and Nation Building

As we watch the failure of one of our most sustained efforts at nation building, it is time to revisit when this policy can work and when it cannot. If we do not learn this, we will continue to blunder into hopeless situations.

President Woodrow Wilson established this national aspiration when, at the conclusion of World War I, he was hopeful that our entry could help "make the world safe for democracy." In the wake of that war, three empires did collapse, and a number of aspiring more...

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Intelligence Divide


A number of times during my many years of writing columns, I have noticed the great gulf in human intelligence. It does not seem genetic, but it does seem cultural. Culture is formed by conscious decisions among groups of people and is subject to change as people have new experiences.

Watching Richard Branson last month, floating in the weightlessness of space on his own spacecraft reminded me of all the intelligence required to perform such a feat. This 70-year-old billi more...

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Threats to Democracy

Historians of democracy are becoming alarmed at the possibility of the United States, the oldest continuous participatory government in the world, may be on the verge of losing this system.

We have had close calls in the past. The Civil War threatened to cut this nation in two, but the election of Abraham Lincoln saved us. Even during that dreadful conflict, we held an election in the Union north and Lincoln was reelected to his second term.

The slave-owning Southe more...

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