At a personal level, peaceful behaviors are kind, considerate, respectful, just, and tolerant of others’ beliefs and behaviors — tending to manifest goodwill. The term “peace” originates most from the Old French pais, meaning, “peace, reconciliation, silence, agreement.”


A peace must be seen at least in two forms:

  • A simple silence of arms, absence of war.
  • Absence of war accompanied by particular requirements for the mutual settlement of relations, which are characterized by terms such as justice, mutual respect, respect for law and good will.

Buddhists believe that peace can be attained once all suffering ends. They regard all suffering as stemming from cravings (in the extreme, greed), aversions (fears), or delusions.


The classical “realist” position is that the key to promoting order between states, and so of increasing the chances of peace, is the maintenance of a balance of power between states — a situation where no state is so dominant that it can “lay down the law to the rest.”

As the maintenance of power could in some circumstances require a willingness to go to war, some critics saw the idea of a balance of power as promoting war rather than promoting peace.


It was a central tenet of classical liberalism, for example among English liberal thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century, that free trade promoted trade. Keynes said that he was “brought up” on this idea and held up unquestioned until at least the 1920s.

These ideas have again come to prominence among liberal internationalists during the globalization of the late 20th and early 21st century. These ideas have seen capitalism as consistent with, even conductive to, peace.


Socialist, communist, and left-wing liberal writers of the 19th and 20th centuries argued that capitalism caused war (e.g. through promoting imperial or other economic rivalries that lead to international conflict). This led some to argue that international socialism was the key to peace.


Fornari thought war and violence develop out of our “love need”: our wish to preserve and defend the sacred object to which we are attached, namely our early mother and our fusion with her. For the adult, nations are the sacred objects that generate warfare. Fornari focused upon sacrifice as the essence of war: the astonishing willingness of human beings to die for their country, to give over their bodies to their nation.


Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia or in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leader of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship… the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.


Malthusian theories see expanding population and scarce resources as a source of violent conflict.

Thomas Malthus wrote that population always increase until they are limited by war, disease, or famine.


Within the realist school as represented by scholars such as Kissinger and Hans Morgenthau, and the neorealist school, two main sub-theories are:

  1. Balance of power theory: States have the goal of preventing a single state from becoming a hegemon, and war is the result of the would-be hegemon’s persistent attempts at power acquisition. In this view, an international system with more equal distribution of power is more stable, and “movements toward unipolarity are destabilizing.” However, evidence has shown power polarity is not actually a major factor in the occurrence of wars.
  2. Power transition theory: Hegemons impose stabilizing conditions on the world order, but they eventually decline, and war occurs when a declining hegemon is challenged by another rising power or aims to preemptively suppress them. On this view, unlike for balance-of-power theory, wars become more probable when power is more equally distributed. This “power preponderance” hypothesis has empirical support.

The two theories are not mutually exclusive and may be used to explain disparate events according to the circumstance.


Conflict theory emphasizes interests, rather than norms and values, in conflict. The pursuit of interests generate various types of conflict. Thus conflict is seen as a normal aspect of social life rather than an abnormal occurrence. Competition over resources is often the cause of conflict.

The three tenets of this theory are:

  1. Society is composed of different groups that compete for resources.
  2. While societies may portray a sense of cooperation, a continual power struggle exists between social groups as they pursue their own interests. Within societies, certain groups control specific resources and means of production.
  3. Social groups will use resources to their own advantage in the pursuit of their goals. This often means that those who lack control over resources will be taken advantage of. As a result, many dominated groups will struggle with other groups in an attempt to gain control.

Fear is an emotion induced by perceived danger or threat, which causes physiological changes and ultimately behavioral changes, such as fleeing, hiding, or freezing from perceived traumatic events. Fear in human being may occur in response to a certain stimulus occurring in the present, or in anticipation or expectation of a future threat perceived as a risk to oneself.


Fear is closely related to the emotion anxiety, which occurs as the result of threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable.


This phenomenon is known as preparedness. Because early humans that were quick to fear dangerous situations were more likely to survive and reproduce, preparedness is theorized to be a generic effect that is the result of natural selection.


For fear in general to make sense, three conditions should be met:

  1. the object of fear needs to be “something bad”
  2. there needs to be a non-negligible chance that the bad state of affairs will happen
  3. there needs to be some uncertainty about the bad state of affairs

Politicians are notorious for using fear to manipulate the people into supporting their will through keywords and key phrases such as “it is for your safety,” or “it is for the safety of this country.”


Anxiety is an emotion characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination. It includes subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over anticipated events.

Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration. Anxiety is closely related to fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat; anxiety involves the expectation of future threat. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past.


David Barlow defines anxiety as “a future-oriented mood state in which one is not ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events,” and that it is a distinction between future and present dangers which divides anxiety and fear. Another description of anxiety is agony, dread, terror, or even apprehension. In positive psychology, anxiety is described as the mental state that results from a difficult challenge for which the subject has insufficient coping skills.


According to Viktor Frankl, when a person is facing with extreme mortal dangers, the most basic of all human wishes is to find a meaning of life to combat the “trauma of nonbeing” as death is near.


An optimal level of arousal is necessary to best complete a task such as an exam, performance, or competitive event. However, when the anxiety or level of arousal exceeds that optimum, the result is a decline in performance.


Social phobics do not fear the crowd but the fact that they may be judged negatively.


Lust is a psychological force producing intense desire for an object, or circumstance fulfilling the emotion while already having a significant other or amount of the desired object. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality, love, money, or power.


Annoyance is an unpleasant mental state that is characterized by irritation, and distraction from one’s conscious thinking. It can lead to emotions such as frustration and anger.


He proposed that actions are motivated by “fears, desires, and passions.” As he wrote in his book Treatise of Human Nature (1773): “Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will… it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will… Reason is, and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”


In Buddhism, emotions occur when an object is considered as attractive or repulsive. There is a felt tendency impelling people towards attractive objects and impelling them to move away from repulsive or harmful objects; a disposition to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed or worried over it (anxiety), and so on.


In stoic theories it was seen as a hindrance to reason and therefore a hindrance to virtue. Aristotle believed that emotions were an essential component of virtue.


Not only is the envious person rendered unhappy by their envy, but that person may also wish to inflict misfortune on others to reduce their status.


Children show evidence of envy at an early age. Adults can be just as envious; however, they tend to be better at concealing the emotion. Envy plays a significant role in the development of adolescents. Comparing oneself is a universal aspect of human nature. No matter the age or culture, social comparison happens all over the globe. Comparison can range from physical attributes, material possessions, and intelligence. However, children are more likely to envy over material objects such as shoes, video games, iPhones, etc. Kids believe these material objects are correlated to their status.

Social status has been found to have a strong connection with self-esteem. An adolescent’s self-esteem is very fragile during early years and is heavily impacted by peer opinion.


Younger adults, under the age of 30, have been found to envy others social status, relationships, and attractiveness. This starts to fade when a person hits their 30s. Typically, at this point in life, the person begins to accept who they are as an individual and compare themselves to others less often. However, they still envy others, just over different aspects in life, such as career or salary. Studies have shown a decrease in envy as a person ages; however, envious feelings over money was the only thing that consistently increased as a person got older. As a person ages, they begin to accept their social status. Nonetheless, envious feelings will be present throughout a person’s life. It is up to the individual whether they will let these envious feelings motivate or destroy them.


The common experience of jealousy for many people may involve:

  • Fear of loss
  • Suspicion of or anger about a perceived betrayal
  • Low self-esteem and sadness over perceived loss
  • Uncertainty and loneliness
  • Fear of losing an important person to another
  • Distrust

The experience of envy involves:

  • Feelings of inferiority
  • Longing
  • Resentment of circumstances
  • Ill will towards the envied person often accompanied by guilt about these feelings
  • Motivation to improve
  • Desire to possess the attractive rival’s qualities
  • Disapproval of feelings
  • Sadness towards other’s accomplishments

One possible explanation of the origin of jealousy in evolutionary psychology is that the emotion evolved in order to maximize the success of our genes: it is a biologically based emotion selected to foster the certainty about the paternity of one’s own offspring. A jealous behavior, in man, is directed into avoiding sexual betrayal and a consequent waste of resources and effort in taking care of someone else’s offspring.


Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual’s will or goal and is likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked.


There are multiple ways individuals cope with frustration such as passive-aggressive behavior, anger, or violence, although frustration may also propel positive processes via enhanced effort and strive.


Three main elements in hatred:

  1. a negation of intimacy, by creating distance when closeness had become had become threatening
  2. an infusion of passion, such as fear or anger
  3. a decision to devalue a previously valued object

Self-harm is a condition where subjects may feel compelled to physically injured themselves as an outlet for depression, anxiety, or anger, and is related with numerous psychological disorders.


Resentment can result from a variety of situations involving a perceived wrongdoing from an individual, which are often sparked by expressions of injustice or humiliation.


What we resent reveals what it is we value, and what we have come to expect (or hope) from others; it may also reveal to what we see ourselves as entitled to: that is, how our expectations or our surroundings are organized or measured. Only an amoral person (a person who didn’t have values or concern for the well-being of self or others) could not experience resentment.

Resentment can also function to warn against further, future, harmful and unfair situations from occurring again.


Resentment is most powerful when it is felt toward someone whom the individual is close to or intimate with. To have an injury resulting in resentful feelings inflicted by a friend or loved one leaves the individual feeling betrayed as well as resentful, and these feelings can have deep effects.

Resentment can have a variety of negative results on the person experiencing it, including touchiness or edginess when thinking of the person resented, denial of anger or hatred against this person, and provocation or anger arousal when this person is recognized positively. It can also have more long-term effects, such as the development of a hostile, cynical, sarcastic attitude that may become a barrier against other healthy relationships; lack of personal and emotional growth; difficulty in self-disclosure; trouble trusting others; loss of self-confidence; and overcompensation.


Confidence is a state of clear-headed either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes a latin word fidere which means “to trust”; therefore, having self-confidence is having trust in one’s self. Arrogance or hubris, in comparison, is the state of having unmerited confidence — believing something or someone is capable or correct when they are not. Overconfidence or presumptuousness is excessive belief in someone (or something) succeeding, without any regard for failure. Confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as those without it may fail or not try because they lack it and those with it may succeed because they have it rather than because of an innate ability.

The concept of self-confidence is commonly used as self-assurance in one’s personal judgment, ability, power, etc. One’s self confidence increases from experiences of having satisfactorily completed particular activities.


Self-confidence is not the same as self-esteem, which is an evaluation of one’s own worth, whereas self-confidence is more specifically trust in one’s ability to achieve some goal.


Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy. An international order accepted by all of the major powers is “legitimate” whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is “revolutionary” and hence dangerous.


Politics is the art of the possible.


In an article in the NYT that everyone wanted to break it down into contrasts of idealist and realist, but “if you had to put him in a category, he’s probably more realpolitik, like Bush 41… You’ve got to be cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation.”

Realpolitik distinct from ideological politics in that it is not dictated by a fixed set of rules but instead tends to be goal-oriented, limited only by practical exigencies.


Hard power refers to coercive tactics: the threat or use of armed forces, economic pressure or sanctions, assassination and subterfuge, or other forms of intimidation. Hard power is generally associated to the stronger of nations, as the ability to change the domestic affairs of other nations through military threats.

Instruments of soft power include debates on cultural values, dialogues on ideology, the attempt to influence through good example, and the appeal to commonly accepted human values. Means of exercising soft power include diplomacy, dissemination of information, analysis, propaganda, and cultural programming to achieve political ends.


Within states, a monopoly on violence is the norm; the police may carry weapons, but few others do so. Internationally, a “global policeman” is but one heavily armed state among 200 others.


The Westphalian System of state sovereignty is made a more or less clear separation between religion and state, and recognized the right of princes “to confessionalize” the state, that is, to determine the religious affiliation of their kingdoms on the pragmatic principle of “whose realm, his religion.”


A policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent, and is implemented as a procedure or protocol.


Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy. Policy differs from rules or law. While law can compel or prohibit behaviors, policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome.


Policies frequently have side effects or unintended consequences. Because the environments that policies seek to influence or manipulate are typically complex adaptive systems (e.g. governments, societies, large companies), making a policy change can have counterintuitive results.


Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It is an emotion felt by a person whose social status, either by force or willingly, has just decreased.


Whereas humility can be sought alone as a means of de-emphasize the ego, humiliation must involve other person(s), though not necessarily directly or willingly.


Shrodinger’s douchebag: someone who says offensive things and decides whether he was joking based on the reaction of people around him.


For instance — an author just starting out? The catchy title of the book is going to be the biggest text on the book. The author has brought out 3-4 books that are proving successful? The text size of their name is going to be equal to the title. Ian Rankin or Kate Atkinson? Their name is going to be the biggest text on that cover because that’s what draws customers in. I remember chatting to James Oswald who said “I knew I had made it when my name got bigger.”


The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him.


A big part of being social is having the ability to read someone’s interest and how engaged they are in the conversation topic.


Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.


Scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific methods:

  1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers
  2. that this objective reality is governed by natural laws
  3. that these laws can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.

The belief that scientific theories should and do present metaphysical reality is known as realism. It can be contrasted with anti-realism, the view that the success of science does not depend on it being accurate about unobservable entities such as electrons. One form of anti-realism is idealism, the belief that the mind or consciousness is the most basic essence, and that each mind generates its own reality. In an idealistic world view, what is true for one mind need not be true for other minds.


Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.


Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.


Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.


The modern Republic of Egypt was founded in 1953, it marked the first time in 2500 years that Egypt was both fully independent and ruled by native Egyptians.


One of the core concepts in epistemology is belief. A belief is an attitude that a person holds regarding anything that they take to be true. For instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition “snow is white.” Beliefs can be occurent (e.g. a person actively thinking “snow is white”), or they can be dispositional (e.g. a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert “snow is white”).


Does Cheney say angry things? Of course. But he never sounds angry when he’s saying them! “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my faults,” he says with a smile. “If you want to be loved, then go and be a movie star.”


From these thinkers, Kissinger cobbled together his own view of how history operated. It was not a story of liberal progress, or of class consciousness, or of cycles of birth, maturity, and decline; rather, it was “a series of meaningless incidents,” fleetingly given shape by the application of human will. As a young infantryman, Kissinger had learned that victors ransacked history for analogies to gild their triumphs, while the vanquished sought out the historical causes of their misfortune.


Lacking in Metternich is the attribute which has enabled the spirit to transcend an impasse at so many crises of history: the ability to contemplate an abyss, not with the detachment of a scientist, but as a challenge to overcome — or perish in the process… For men become myth, not by what they know, nor even by what they achieve, but by the tasks they set themselves.


Kissinger was taking a swipe at the bright-eyed social scientists around him, who thought that the deadly confrontation of the Cold War could be solved with empirical and behavioral models, rather than with existential swagger.


He and Nixon assumed, correctly, that they could back a coup against Allende with minimal fuss, just as Eisenhower, two decades before, had rid Guatemala of its democratically elected President.


If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.


Many presidential contenders view their potential VP largely through an Electoral College prism: Who can deliver a vital state? This was JFK’s approach in 1960. He had little love for LBJ but felt creating a Boston-Austin ticket could bring Texas into the Democratic fold.


It’s a metaphor for how unimportant everyday folks, especially those who are downtrodden, are to the machines of power.

He can scream, cry, shit himself all he want; nobody cares about him. He’s nothing but a loser put out by a mixture of society and personal choice. Frank will go home, sip some liquor with a cigarette on hand, and continue on.

It jives well with the broader anti-protest theme throughout the show. Whenever folks try using honest, democratic means to oppose Frank and Washington politics, the show demonstrates how folly those efforts always are.


Công dân có nghĩa vụ trung thành với Tổ quốc. Phản bội Tổ quốc là tội nặng nhất.


He may not possess or display power; force or the threat of harm may never enter into his dealings. He may not be popular; his followers may never do what he wishes out of love or admiration for him. He may not ever be a colorful person; he may never use memorable devices to dramatize the purposes of his group or to focus attention on his leadership. As for the important matter of setting goals, he may actually be a man of little influence, or even of little skill; as a leader he may merely carry out the plans of others.

His unique achievement is a human and social one which stems from his understanding of his fellow workers and the relationship of their individual goals to the group goal that he must carry out.


Human beings are not machines with a single set of push buttons. When their complex responses to love, prestige, independence, achievement, and group membership are unrecognized on the job, they perform at best as automata who bring far less than their maximum efficiency to the task, and at worst as rebellious slaves who consciously or unconsciously sabotage the activities they are supposed to be furthering.


When the leader succeeds, it will be because he has learned two basic lessons: Men are complex, and men are different. Human beings respond not only to the traditional carrot and stick used by the driver of a donkey but also to ambition, patriotism, love of the good and the beautiful, boredom, self-doubt, and many more dimensions and patterns of thought and feeling that make them men. But the strength and importance of these interests are not the same for every worker, nor is the degree to which they can be satisfied in his job.


In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilization from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes.


The very word culture meant “place tilled” in Middle English, “to inhabit, care fore, till, worship.” To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it — to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly.


“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: “Dare to be wise!”


If they make you feel bad more often than they make you feel good, they aren’t your friend.