Who Was Jackie Robinson?
Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) was an American baseball player who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. His courage in the face of inte...
Read article →HoloDream Blog
Virtual Worlds · Digital Culture · AI Literati
Latest Articles
Who Was Auguste Escoffier?
Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who modernized and codified French cuisine. Known as the King of Chefs and Chef of Kings, he organized professional k...
Read article →Who Was Ban Zhao?
Ban Zhao (45-116 CE) was China's first known female historian, completing the monumental Book of Han after her brother Ban Gu's death. She served as an advisor to Empress Deng Sui and wrote Lessons fo...
Read article →Who Was Lola Montez?
Lola Montez was the stage name of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert (1821-1861), an Irish-born dancer, actress, and courtesan who became one of the most famous women in 19th-century Europe. She infl...
Read article →Kintsugi — The Japanese Art of Repairing With Gold Isn't Just a Metaphor
Kintsugi — The Japanese Art of Repairing With Gold Isn't Just a Metaphor Kintsugi is frequently invoked as a metaphor. The broken bowl repaired with gold, its cracks made visible and beautiful rather...
Read article →What Samurai Philosophy Says About Fear — And Why It's Not What You Think
What Samurai Philosophy Says About Fear — And Why It's Not What You Think The popular image of the samurai and fear is simple: the samurai does not feel fear. The warrior tradition is often presented...
Read article →The Persian Concept of Tarof — The Art of Ritual Politeness as Meaning-Making
The Persian Concept of Tarof — The Art of Ritual Politeness as Meaning-Making The first time most non-Iranian people encounter tarof, they interpret it as a social complication — an elaborate performa...
Read article →Sophrosyne — The Ancient Greek Virtue That Has No Modern Equivalent
Sophrosyne — The Ancient Greek Virtue That Has No Modern Equivalent There is a word in ancient Greek that appears throughout Plato, in Aristotle, in the tragedians, in Xenophon, in sources across the...
Read article →The Hindu Concept of Maya — Why Your Problems May Not Be What You Think
The Hindu Concept of Maya — Why Your Problems May Not Be What You Think The Sanskrit word maya is usually translated as illusion, which is technically accurate and almost always misleading. When Weste...
Read article →The Indigenous Concept of the Seventh Generation — Thinking Beyond Your Lifetime
The Indigenous Concept of the Seventh Generation — Thinking Beyond Your Lifetime There is a principle, attributed to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), that decisions affecting the community sh...
Read article →Plato's Allegory of the Cave Is About Your Information Diet
Plato's Allegory of the Cave Is About Your Information Diet The allegory of the cave is one of the most taught philosophical passages in Western education and one of the least applied. Students learn...
Read article →The Buddhist Concept of Beginner's Mind and Why Experts Lose It
The Buddhist Concept of Beginner's Mind and Why Experts Lose It Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher who helped establish Zen Buddhism in the United States, is responsible for one of the most quoted observ...
Read article →What the Aztec Concept of Nepantla Teaches Us About Living Between Worlds
What the Aztec Concept of Nepantla Teaches Us About Living Between Worlds Gloria Anzaldúa did not invent nepantla. She recovered it. The Nahuatl word — used in pre-Columbian Aztec thought to describe...
Read article →Memento Mori — Why Roman Generals Had Someone Whisper That They Would Die
Memento Mori — Why Roman Generals Had Someone Whisper That They Would Die When a Roman general returned from military victory in a triumph — one of the most elaborate spectacles Roman culture produced...
Read article →Taoism and the Art of Not Forcing Things — Wu Wei Explained
Taoism and the Art of Not Forcing Things — Wu Wei Explained Wu wei is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Chinese philosophy, which is saying something given that Chinese philosophy contains a c...
Read article →Confucian Filial Piety — The Ancient Concept Behind East Asian Family Dynamics
Confucian Filial Piety — The Ancient Concept Behind East Asian Family Dynamics Spend enough time in conversation with people from East Asian backgrounds and a certain tension surfaces that is hard to...
Read article →The Stoic Practice of Negative Visualization and Why It Makes You Happier
The Stoic Practice of Negative Visualization and Why It Makes You Happier There is a counterintuitive practice at the center of Stoic philosophy that modern psychology has spent considerable energy va...
Read article →Norse Mythology Was Always About Resilience in the Face of Guaranteed Destruction
Norse Mythology Was Always About Resilience in the Face of Guaranteed Destruction Most mythological traditions offer their followers some version of hope. The gods win. The righteous are rewarded. The...
Read article →The Sufi Poets Were Writing About Attachment Theory 800 Years Early
The Sufi Poets Were Writing About Attachment Theory 800 Years Early Rumi died in 1273. John Bowlby published his first paper on attachment theory in 1958. The gap is 685 years. And yet reading Rumi —...
Read article →The Ancient Greek Concept of Eudaimonia Is Not Happiness — It's Something Better
The Ancient Greek Concept of Eudaimonia Is Not Happiness — It's Something Better When Aristotle wrote about the good life, he did not write about feeling good. He wrote about eudaimonia — a word that...
Read article →What the Bhagavad Gita Says About Decision Paralysis
What the Bhagavad Gita Says About Decision Paralysis The Bhagavad Gita opens with a man who cannot move. Arjuna, one of the greatest warriors of his age, stands between two armies on a battlefield and...
Read article →Mono No Aware — The Japanese Emotion English Has No Word For
Mono No Aware — The Japanese Emotion English Has No Word For There are things you can feel in any language. There are things you can only fully articulate in some. The Japanese phrase mono no aware de...
Read article →Ubuntu Philosophy — The African Concept the West Desperately Needs
Ubuntu Philosophy — The African Concept the West Desperately Needs "I am because we are." The phrase is a translation of the Nguni Bantu concept ubuntu, and it captures something that sounds, to Weste...
Read article →The Japanese Concept of Ikigai Isn't What Instagram Thinks It Is
The Japanese Concept of Ikigai Isn't What Instagram Thinks It Is If you have encountered ikigai in the past several years, you have probably encountered the Venn diagram. It shows four overlapping cir...
Read article →