(New York Times) – Draw boundaries. Protect your peace. Worry less about pleasing others. The prevailing (and best-selling) wisdom of the day encourages an inward turn.

Every era molds a different version of self-realization. With each chapter in American history, people find a self-help guru who answers some spiritually unsettling questions of the moment.

Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that in a time of hyper-visible conflict — social media filled with memes of crying migrants shared by the official White House account, insults hurled in public between the country’s highest leaders — the self-help message of the day tells its readers that it’s perfectly OK to turn inward, even if that means ignoring the apparent travails of others. It’s a message retrofitted for appeal in a moment when every glance at a phone screen surfaces wrenching images of catastrophe.

Really, the prevailing advice of 2025 seems to be this: It’s OK to be a little bit of a jerk. (Read More)