The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Changes the Way We Think, Live and Die

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People are programmed to focus their attention and resources on the present moment in situations of danger and deprivation, which makes it harder for poor people to make and execute long-term plans. Even in the limited context of laboratory studies, making people feel deprived causes them to engage in more risk-taking. Fascinating and eye-opening look at stress. “Stress does not create new energy; it only redirects it: When the stress response gives a boost in one area, it has to take something away somewhere else. In the face of the potential emergency stirring in the grass, your body shuts down all unnecessary functions. The glucose and proteins that flood your bloodstream are now being taken away from long-term projects like cell division, maintenance, and repair and redirected to the muscles.” “Indeed, studies have shown that people with lower incomes tend to have higher levels of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, in their bloodstreams.” To dream that you enter a house through a window by climbing a ladder, or if you dream that a long ladder falls on you, this means you will be concerned about false friends ahead.

He offers solutions to the issues he identifies that are not entirely unrealistic (unrealistic assumptions are those that fall along the lines of “rich people are bad and we need to take their money and give it to the poor people, who are good, and everyone will be happy”). We, like so many, are disturbed by the findings of Baroness Casey's year-long review of the Metropolitan Police.Makes great use of multiple disciplines like psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral sciences to illustrate key points. Here he makes use of evolution, “The discovery that capuchin monkeys are averse to receiving unequal outcomes, much like humans, suggests that these tendencies are evolved rather than learned.”

There were even some fascinating studies that show that liberals and conservatives may have more in common than it's easy to think. As one example, in Chapter 9, I learned that when surveyed, people thought CEOs should ideally only be paid between 4-5 times the average worker; liberals leaned closer to 4 times, conservatives closer to 5 times. Participants estimated that in fact CEOs are paid around 30 times more, revealing gross ignorance of the much larger actual ratio of CEO to worker pay of 350:1.Finally, he advises not comparing yourself with your neighbors or with those whom you perceive as better off. Rather, think of things that really matter to you and of your blessings. Old-fashioned advice, after all. You should always hold the ladder with a vise while working on it. This way, you will have the most comfortable surface to work on. For fixing small bents, you can strike the area gently with a hammer. But make sure you don’t strike too hard; otherwise, the ladder will catch a dent. I have already touched on the fact that Sigmund Freud believed that this dream was connected to sex. However, Carl Jung (another dream psychologist from the 1930s) believed that the dream symbol of the ladder is connected to our psychic development and internal consciousness. Dreaming of rudges in the ladder is also associated with one’s spiritual insight. As I have said before psychic terms, the symbolism of the ladder is seen through many religions as a direct connection of our higher self, our own experiences, boundaries and also limitations. Detailed dream interpretation from 1930s dream dictionaries