OK, I really dislike this style of writing, but it is obviously appealing to a very large audience (this item from a couple days ago has 1277 comments as of this writing). And it contains some really good stuff in between the fluff and hyperbole. "Every Friday afternoon Chase's teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they'd like to sit the following week... Chase's teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or 'exceptional citizens.' Chase's teacher is looking for lonely children." This is network analysis, created with slips of paper. "Everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection."
P.S. here's another one from the same author that's quite good. "I don't mean that there is no right or wrong in the world. I just wonder if maybe as far as I'M concerned – deciding whether Sherman is right or wrong is not my business. But maybe deciding whether my reaction to him and my thinking about him and my words about him are right or wrong is my business." Well said, and exactly right (at least, as a statement of how I feel I ought to conduct my own life). Also: the idea that there should be an Interdependence Day. On picking up onions.
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