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The Resource Curse: Oil and Authoritarianism

The Resource Curse: Oil and Authoritarianism

In 1959, the Netherlands discovered one of the world's largest natural gas fields. Within a decade, Dutch manufacturing was collapsing. The gas exports had pushed up the currency, making Dutch manufactured goods uncompetitive abroad. Factories closed. Workers were laid off. A country had been made poorer by becoming

Hydraulic Civilizations: Water and Despotism

Hydraulic Civilizations: Water and Despotism

In 1957, Karl Wittfogel published Oriental Despotism, arguing that the great tyrannies of history—ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China—arose from a common geographic condition: the need to manage large-scale irrigation. His thesis: Water infrastructure requires centralized coordination. Building and maintaining irrigation systems across vast territories demands bureaucracy, labor mobilization, and

Anxious Attachment Style: The Nervous System That Can't Stop Scanning

Anxious Attachment Style: The Nervous System That Can't Stop Scanning

Your partner texts "we need to talk" and your stomach drops. They're fifteen minutes late and you're already drafting breakup speeches in your head. They seem distant at dinner and you spend the next three hours replaying every interaction from the past week, searching

What Is Attachment Theory? Bowlby, Ainsworth, and the Science of Connection

What Is Attachment Theory? Bowlby, Ainsworth, and the Science of Connection

Attachment theory is a psychological framework developed by John Bowlby that explains how early bonds between infants and caregivers shape emotional development and relationship patterns across the lifespan. Bowlby's attachment theory proposes that human infants are biologically programmed to form attachments with caregivers as a survival mechanism—connection

The Neuroscience of Attachment

The Neuroscience of Attachment

Why Your Nervous System Needs Other People There's a reason "just calm down" never works. When you're dysregulated—anxious, triggered, overwhelmed—your nervous system isn't waiting for rational instructions from your prefrontal cortex. It's running a survival program that'

Disorganized Attachment: When Safety and Threat Wear the Same Face

Disorganized Attachment: When Safety and Threat Wear the Same Face

In the late 1980s, developmental psychologist Mary Main discovered something that shouldn't exist according to attachment theory. She found infants who, when reunited with their caregiver after a brief separation, would approach and then freeze mid-step. Or run toward their mother and then veer away. Or collapse to

Dismissive Avoidant vs Fearful Avoidant: Two Routes to Withdrawal

Dismissive Avoidant vs Fearful Avoidant: Two Routes to Withdrawal

Avoidant attachment is not one pattern but two. Both withdraw from intimacy. Both prioritize independence. Both look like emotional unavailability from the outside. But under the surface—at the level of the autonomic nervous system—they're running fundamentally different programs. Dismissive avoidant attachment is organized, stable, and consistent.