Mic Check – Boko Haram Strikes Again, a Unified Theory of Jerks, and Peter Dinklage

Impact

You're reading the new edition of Mic Check, PolicyMic's daily guide to the most important news and ideas right now.

THE AGENDA 

Boko Haram militants slaughter hundreds in Nigeria: "Boko Haram militants dressed as soldiers slaughtered at least 200 civilians in three communities in northeastern Nigeria," per the Associated Press. Witnesses told the AP that the Nigerian military failed to intervene even though it was warned that an attack was imminent.

MATTERS OF DEBATE

So you’re surrounded by idiots. Guess who the real jerk is: Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel works toward a unified theory of jerks in Aeon: “The jerk culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers. This failure has both an intellectual dimension and an emotional dimension, and it has these two dimensions on both sides of the relationship. The jerk himself is both intellectually and emotionally defective, and what he defectively fails to appreciate is both the intellectual and emotional perspectives of the people around him. He can’t appreciate how he might be wrong and others right about some matter of fact; and what other people want or value doesn’t register as of interest to him, except derivatively upon his own interests. The bumpkin ignorance captured in the earlier use of ‘jerk’ has changed into a type of moral ignorance.”

MARVELS

Stop with the lunchtime Facebooking: Here are 14 brilliant piece of literature you can read in the time it takes to eat lunch. [PolicyMic]

Editor's Note: Feb. 24, 2015

An earlier version of this article failed to cite passages from Fox News, the New York Times and ESPN in accordance with Mic editorial standards. The article has been updated to properly attribute the language to those sources.