Word: inertia
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...real” progress? Big institutions can often be agents for social change, but many times the young people that go work for them are too narrowly concerned with their own personal goals. A so-called reasoned impulse, it seems, leads only to an apathy and inertia that stands in the way of human progress; it is an unwillingness to deviate from a clearly charted course...
...cusp of the next decade, however, inertia began...
...progress begets paradox: we've gotten so good at the last goal, it swallowed the others, so we live longer but die slower. Two out of three people die in hospitals or nursing homes, often alone, the process prolonged by a conspiracy of hope, fear, bureaucracy, inertia. When researchers not long ago interviewed family members of the recently deceased, half of them said their loved one did not get the support he or she needed at the end. There's a specter to haunt us, a death worth fearing, altogether different from the death we can embrace...
...plans fail to sign up, even though companies often match contributions--free money, as it were. As a result of Thaler's work, many firms have switched to automatic enrollment. In the language of Nudge, the plans have moved from "opt in" to "opt out." That turns people's inertia-like tendency to stick with the default option--whether or not it's a good one--into an advantage...
...glistening strands of gold, green, and purple beads still dangled from trees and telephone wires, and lay broken in the streets. Middle-aged men nursed their drinks in quiet bars, and shop owners idled in empty gallerias waiting for customers. Somebody may have been sitting in City Hall, but inertia governed. In this atmosphere, action was—and continues to be—slow in coming. Jessica A. Sequeira ’11, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Canaday Hall...