Best Of

I can't seem to re-find a good source, and am too lazy to dedicate more time to it... From what I've read about the NASA budget cuts, they are more drastic in the realm of non-manned programs than manned missions. Regarding actual science, probes and telescopes are the main thing, while manned spaceflight is more of a vanity project.

I guess that if you're serious about cutting state spending, the NASA budget is on the table, fine. However, personally, I would cut it the other way around, slash the manned spaceflight program, keep the probes and telescopes that do most of the actual science.

Just my view.

I thought the first review on Goodreads was interesting ( here ) in that it pointed to a kind of right wing narrative in the book, in that all the examples Kaufman uses of the victim mindset are of left wing liberal “snowflakes”. While in effect the right wing has its own victim mindset, looking at for example the idea that if it wasn’t for all the immigrants deserving Americans would be able to succeed better, but Kaufman doesn’t cite those cases.

Of course it is an idea popular with the right wing, that one shouldn’t focus on one’s traumas but should instead be ‘tough and rugged’ and this ties in with the trend towards citing Stoic philosophers, who are often thought to have a similar mindset. I see it as kind of a spectrum, in recovery from a traumatic event there comes a certain point where one has to let go of the trauma, otherwise you start identifying with it and perpetuating the idea of it, and that isn’t healthy.

In short I’m a fan of a certain amount of Stoicism. There should be a healthy balance between the extremes of ignoring one’s emotions, and being so caught up in them that any small disturbance is labelled a ‘trauma’. It is good to be in touch with emotion, to be aware and emotionally intelligent, but it can be taken too far, and it is important to be resilient to stress and life events.

There were some other comments that Kaufman had some more extreme right wing thinkers like Charles Murray on his podcast. It’s interesting, recent discussions here between you @person and @shoshin1 have made me more aware of political bias in the discourse of American influencers and on social media.