A few picked-up pieces from a book tour for The Social Animal (paraphrase alert):
Every politician he's ever met has incredible social talents. But their emotional intelligence stops when it comes to making policy.
People see "reason" and "emotion" as two ends of a see-saw. They're mistaking emotion for "arousal"--Emily Dickinson was emotional, but she wasn't screaming all the time. Emotion is the basis for rational decision-making.
Economics has become the gateway between different disciplines because it offers the currency we can understand to communicate--quantifiable, hard stuff. But it's the soft stuff that determines so much more.
The ed sector is way ahead in acknowledging emotional components.
When I go to Senators' office to talk about the thing I care about most--early childhood education--they pat me on the head patronizingly and say, Let's talk about the defense budget. There's a status hierarchy of policy topics. If it's perceived as being "soft" stuff, they don't want to deal with it.
Great schools like KIPP do both hard stuff (data-gathering) and squishy stuff (relationship-building) more than most.
Colleges should offer marriage courses (featuring Anna Karenina, among other texts): if you have a great job and a crappy marriage, you'll be unhappy. If you have a great marriage and a crappy job, you'll be happy.
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