As we face times of national and global, may we heed the timeless wisdom of James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1970 conversation about race and unity.
Margaret Mead
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As we face times of national and global, may we heed the timeless wisdom of James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1970 conversation about race and unity.
If we make one criterion for defining the artist… the impulse to make something new… — a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good — then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity.
Legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead on work, leisure, and creativity.
In the summer of 1970, James Baldwin and Margaret Mead had an extraordinary conversation about race of devastating relevance today.
An Interview with Santa Claus – Margaret Mead’s delightful cultural history of Santa and the spirit of generosity, in the clever format of a fictional interview with the jolly giver.
Margaret Mead on embracing life in an uncertain and violence-torn world – a beautiful letter of advice to her younger sister.
When I do good work it is always always for you … and the thought of you now makes me a little unbearably happy.
Happy Pride! Celebrate with the greatest LGBT love letters of all time – including Margaret Mead (above), Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Allen Ginsberg, Eleanor Roosevelt, and more.
James Baldwin and Margaret Mead in conversation about how to stop prioritizing possessions over freedoms and reimagine democracy for a post-consumerist culture – enormously timely wisdom from 1970.
In the wake of the Baltimore tragedy, James Baldwin and Margaret Mead in conversation about race – extraordinarily prescient insight from nearly half a century ago.
James Baldwin and Margaret Mead in conversation about identity, race, and the immigrant experience – so much timeless wisdom that applies to nearly every aspect of our lives today.
One weekend in August of 1971, Margaret Mead and James Baldwin sat down for an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation spanning identity, power and privilege, race and gender, human rights, beauty, religion, social justice, and the relationship between the intellect and the imagination. I came upon it in the aftermath of Ferguson and Eric Gardner, and it instantly stopped my breath with its remarkable prescience.
I’m resurrecting this forgotten cultural treasure in a multi-part series – here is the first installment, focusing on the two intellectual titans’ views on forgiveness and the crucial difference between guilt and responsibility.
Disillusionment about the existence of a mythical and wholly implausible Santa Claus has come to be a synonym for many kinds of disillusionment with what parents have told children about birth and death and sex and the glory of their ancestors. Instead, learning about Santa Claus can help give children a sense of the difference between a “fact” — something you can take a picture of or make a tape recording of, something all those present can agree exists — and poetic truth, in which man’s feelings about the universe or his fellow men is expressed in a symbol.
The thought of you now makes me a little unbearably happy.
For Margaret Mead’s birthday, her gorgeous love letters to her soul mate.
Legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead, born on this day in 1901, on myth vs. deception and what to tell kids about Santa.
To help kids learn about birth, see this; about death, see this.
Half a century ago, Margaret Mead on the root of racism and our shared responsibility in eradicating it, with a prescient note on law enforcement and race.
Half a century before Ferguson and Eric Garner, Margaret Mead on the roots of racism and the liability of law enforcement – remarkably prescient wisdom from humanity’s most influential anthropologist.