If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Rutger BregmanRead
It's important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It's mostly about exceptions.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the difference between surface-level news and deeper journalism.
Rutger Bregman highlights that news often focuses on sensational and exceptional events, while journalism should dig deeper and explore underlying truths. This distinction is vital for understanding the complexities of events rather than just accepting them at face value.
In practice
In a public speech about media literacy, one might quote Bregman to stress the importance of distinguishing between news and journalism.
If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.
My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.
This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.
While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.
Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.
What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days.
Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?
I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.
Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.
Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.
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