Word: selfishness
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Remarkably, Appelfeld has succeeded in creating a novel without a single like-able character. Karl's selfishness, his sexual attraction to his former nanny, his willingness to do anything for his promotion; all of these characteristics repel us from him, but Appelfeld never tells us any redeeming qualities Karl might have had. We cannot even sympathize with Gloria as a possible victim of Karl's desires. Appelfeld never tells us if Gloria returns Karl's love, and in the end she comes off as being simply weak. Strangely, Gloria possesses an almost robotic tendency to observe the Jewish traditions...
...amuse themselves at the expense of people who are here to [learn] strikes me as stupid or selfish or arrogant," Kelly said...
...money for a bus ticket, Jake has to rely on his smooth-talking savvy to mooch enough rides to get him across the country in two days. In the meantime, he must cook up a way to win back his disgruntled girlfriend who gives up on Jake's selfish ways and takes off with Eddie (Adam LaVorgna), class smoothie (grease and all) and Jake's nemesis...
Richard Dawkins is not usually an author you read when you want to feel good about humanity. The Oxford professor is best known for writing The Selfish Gene, a book that theorizes that people are genetically predisposed to self-serving, exploitative behavior. People, according to Dawkins, never act in terms of what is good for the group, but only in terms of what is good for themselves. In the process of natural selection, altruists are gradually selected out, while cheaters and exploiters are left to propagate the earth and pass their genes onto more cheaters and exploiters...
...extend beyond a high school lab, has been programmed to set up a dichotomy of two domains for knowledge. Literature and the humanities are viewed as infusing wonder into the natural world, science as sucking it out. And so, people might feel "depressed" when they read something like The Selfish Gene, not because the book is innately pessimistic, but because of their innate misconceptions that every scientific theory debunks another one of life's mysteries. Of course, these misconceptions do not apply universally. Students who have chosen to study science need no persuasion from Dawkins to see the wonders...