Psychologyspeaking topic
“Love for the helpless one, love for the poor and the stranger, are the beginning of brotherly love.”
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- People fluent in a foreign language say that swearing, or saying 'I love you', comes easier in it; the words don't carry the emotional charge of the mother tongue. A learned language becomes a kind of emotional armor. Why are we braver and more cool-headed in a foreign language?
- The mind reading distortion: assuming the person across from you is judging you. With no evidence at all, why are we so sure we know what others are thinking?
- If the use it or lose it theory of the brain is right, what will outsourcing our thinking to AI do to our minds over a lifetime?
- A crowd watches someone collapse and nobody steps in; everyone assumes somebody else will. Why does a crowd reduce helping instead of multiplying it? When 'someone' is around, why does 'I' disappear?
- The framing effect: 'ninety percent survive' and 'ten percent die' describe the same fact, so why do they lead to different decisions? Is how information is presented as important as the information itself?