Of One or Two Mindsets?
March 8, 2026 Leave a comment
A 7th century BCE proverb, attributed to Greek poet Archilochus, speaks of two ways of perceiving the world:
“The fox knows many truths, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
The fragment on which this metaphor was found doesn’t include what the poet meant or to whom he was referring to. But amplified versions of the two contrasting ways of thinking have come along.
Basically, hedgehog types, it is said, ignore many things available to them and relate everything to a single organizing idea – one big thing – that guides how they understand, think and feel.
Fox types, on the other hand, take in the big picture. They pursue many ends and draw upon many experiences and perspectives, some of which may be self-contradictory. They are pluralistic and know many things and approach issues from diverse perspectives.
In his 1953 essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas explored these two different approaches to perceiving reality – diversity or unity in thought; breadth or depth in intellectual pursuit.
Berlin saw hedgehog types as possessing a singular, unifying vision that guides their understanding of the world. To get to an essential monistic worldview, hedgehog thinkers simplify the complex and may even accept easy explanations. They hold strict beliefs and are not likely to consider alternatives. As such, they are idealists who are not likely to waver from their purpose. They have a singular focus.
Berlin saw Fox types as being curious and wanting to explore, as knowing many things. They draw upon diversity and complexity. With new perspectives, they adapt. They are practical and not ideological. Foxes see the world in all its intricacy and interconnectedness.
Robert McCrum, writing in The Guardian about Berlin’s essay: “the division of humanity into hedgehogs and foxes had become not only a witty means of classification, but also an existential way of confronting reality. Foxes, for instance, will come to understand that they know many things, that a coherent worldview is probably beyond them and that they must be reconciled to the limits of what they know . . .
“Berlin’s hedgehog, by contrast, never makes peace with the world and remains unreconciled. His or her purpose is to know one thing and” quoting Isaiah Berlin’s biographer’s words, “strive without ceasing to give reality a unifying shape. Foxes settle for what they know and may live happy lives. Hedgehogs will not settle and their lives may not be happy.”
The subtitle of Berlin’s essay: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. The Greek poet’s saying had Berlin seeking to classify Lev Tolstoy as a either a fox or a hedgehog based on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history as expressed in his novel War and Peace. Both War and Peace and Anna Karenina are written with an overarching moral order and with life’s intimate details. And, there are characters in each novel that exhibit the two different mindsets.
Asking whether Tolstoy’s “vision is of one or of many, whether he is of single substance or compounded of heterogenous elements,” Berlin decided, “there is no clear or immediate answer.” Berlin thought that Tolstoy embodied both the fox and the hedgehog types of thinking.
Berlin did categorize well-known thinkers and artists.
Those with profound central visions, were systematic and held rigid ideas about life he considered hedgehogs. He included Plato, Dante, Pascal, and Dostoevsky in this category.
Those who took in and thrived on a wide range of multi-layered experiences were the foxlike. He included pluralist thinkers Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Joyce in that category.
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The above is a brief summary of a school of thought that summarizes mindsets into two groups. You can read more about the Fox and Hedgehog Theory and how the two ways of thinking have been compared and how each mode is thought to apply at What is the fox and the hedgehog theory? where this table is found:
Using the supposed traits of each mindset, some have extrapolated how each mindset operates in terms of business and politics and in problem-solving and leadership skills.
Some may compare the two ways of thinking as a Fixed or Growth mindset.
Of course, Berlin’s interpretation is not supported by the Archilochus fragment. And there are those like myself who see the project as oversimplifying the multifaceted way we think and do so in diverse contexts.
Consider, for one example, the single-minded focus of a violinist who, in private, rehearses Paganini Caprice no. 5 and then at the time of performance, tunes her instrument to A440 and then plays focusing on the bowing and her performance.
Think of an orchestra conductor who sees the scoring of all the instruments and hears the sound of the whole ensemble. He directs the musician’s phrasing, tempo and sound according to his interpretation of what the composer had in mind.
Both solo violinist and conductor are focused on their “one big thing” and both are aware of the setting and the acoustics. They each listen to what comes forth and adapt as needed to enrich the performance for the listener.
Introduction to Berlin’s Division – Hedgehogs and Foxes
https://www.bookey.app/audiobook/hedgehog-%26-the-fox
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Northwestern professor Gary Saul Morson refers to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay in the conclusion of his magnum opus on classic Russian literature: Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter.
Throughout the book, Morson provides examples of how certainty and wonder played against each other in the writings during the Soviet era.
The nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia and its Bolshevik successors embodied Certainty. The intelligentsia or “party-minded” related everything to a single central vision – a scientific-materialist-atheistic worldview – and did so with dogmatic certainty. Everything, everyone, and reality itself had to conform to the iron-grip of ideology. Violence made sure.
Russian realist prose, with questions posed, evoked Wonder. Realist authors drew upon the complexity in the world, its many human experiences and perspectives. They wrote about the world and the human condition in realist terms – as it was and not as it was end-of-history supposed. They knew life had contingencies and that there was no one single way to go about things
You can read more about this in my previous posts A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over and Reentry.
Implicit throughout Wonder Confronts Certainty is the contrast of the fox and hedgehog mindsets in Russian writers. Only in Conclusion: Into the World Symposium does professor Morson refer to the fox and hedgehog saying and to Berlin’s essay. He does so to make the point about “true dialog.” He writes:
Life is eternal dialogue, a world symposium that never ends. In Bakhtin’s notebooks we discover his core belief:
The dialogic nature of human consciousness. The dialogic nature of human life itself. The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is the open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, and his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire life in discourse, and his discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium.[i]
Further on, under the subheading The Fox Knows Many Things, Morson writes:
Given human difference and the plurality of viewpoints, wisdom consists in learning to see the world from the perspectives of others. By intellectual as well as emotional empathy, we can bring discrete positions into open ended-dialog. When we do, we enrich both ourselves and the world.[ii]
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I don’t see a need to classify myself as a fox or hedgehog. There are benefits of both mindsets. I can hold two different things in my mind at the same time, and I am able to adapt to new situations.
I don’t have a degree in any area. As an autodidact, I have an open-ended humanities attitude toward life.
I am by nature a fox that takes in the big picture and I am also a hedgehog that focuses. I see the whole and wonder. I then drill down to explore my wonder. The game is afoot. A reader of my blog over time will notice this. I touch on various topics and often drill down to explore meaning. I do this so that I may understand what I think and to send it out in a post and have it come back to me as wisdom I can use.
I avoid binary, black or white, either/or, left-brain oriented thinking. The “dialogic nature of human life,” if invested in, can make a person knowledgeable and wise. And so can Michael Polanyi’s concept of knowing: ‘from-to’ subsidiary-focal-integration. See the video below.
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How Can We Know Anything? Artful Knowing with Esther Meek
Philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek to explore how our understanding of knowledge shapes everything, from faith to creativity to everyday life. Esther challenges the modernist assumption that knowledge is merely information gathering, arguing instead for a view of knowing that is personal, participatory, and artful.
“Polanyi will argue that apart from personal epistemology as he describes it, not even knowledge is possible, let alone realism. Positively, he will view realism as integral to personal knowledge and vice versa” Esther Lightcap Meek
Discussed:
How the “knowledge as information” paradigm cuts us off from reality
Michael Polanyi’s concept of subsidiary-focal integration
Why imagination is essential to all knowing (including science!)
The relationship between attention, love, and knowledge
How artful knowing can help us navigate crises of faith
The doctrine of creation and wonder in the ordinary
Re-enchantment vs. the “lively real”
Comparing Esther’s work with Iain McGilchrist’s brain hemisphere research
https://www.estherlightcapmeek.com/
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Hedgehog Mindset?
Monologue – Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes
We are clerks, medieval clerks leading this mental life that is natural and healthy only to men serving a transcendental idea. But have we that now? And what then does all this thinking, poring, analyzing, arguing become – what but so much agony of pent-up and thwarted action? The ceaseless driving of natural physiological energy into narrow channels of mentation and intellection… (p. 80)
Hedgehog TDS:
In a January 2026 media article in The New Criterion – A range of derangement: On the persistence of Trump hatred – James Bowman notes a Wall Street Journal article Is Trump Derangement Syndrome Real?
We now have it on the authority of a licensed psychotherapist that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (tds) is clinically real—though it’s probably not destined to have its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association any time soon. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Alpert claims that he finds a mental illness worthy of the name in his Manhattan-based practice,
where the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try. They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control. Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring. (Emphasis mine.)
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Speaking of hedgehog TDS:
Responses to a squishy feminized elite:
Late Friday, New York Times columnist David French snarkily referred to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a “walking MAGA caricature” on X.
Four hours later, Hegseth’s troops were pounding Iran in an intricate series of strikes that left its evil regime reeling.
The response to French — who has not withdrawn his sneer — was unsympathetic.
My favorite: “Let’s have a contest . . . you and Pete show up at Fort Bragg, see who the troops respect more.”
Is Hegseth a caricature?
To French and his ilk, maybe; but to many others, he’s a guy who gets results.
Presumably a 1945 David French would have considered Gen. George S. Patton a caricature, too . . .
As commentator William Wolf observed on X, “The fact that a billionaire real estate playboy who liked to slap his name on steaks and wine has proven to be a better diplomat and military strategist than every other politician and foreign policy expert over the last 30 years is such a damning indictment of the DC establishment I honestly don’t know how they recover.” Emphasis mine.)
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
Why Trump and Hegseth’s swagger leaves the ‘elite’ seething
Fox Mindset?
Time for climate education:
Dr. Willie Soon Reveals the Real Driver of Climate Change in New Video – PJ Media
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[i] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 384. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.
[ii] Morson, Gary Saul. “Conclusion: Into the World Symposium.” In Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, 388. Harvard University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.1791936.16.
Cindy Wity 
Who is Laying Hands on Our Children?
February 8, 2026 Leave a comment
Anyone even remotely familiar with Jesus will remember the following interaction recorded in three gospels, Mark’s gospel account (10:13–16) being the earliest:
Aware of this, the Evil One, just as he did with two innocent beings in the Garden, works to have us lay hands on children to pervert the innocence, teachability, and trust in a loving Creator that children embody. Both a murderer and a liar, the Evil One works to have children disembodied in the womb. Out of the womb, he wants children to be physically, mentally, and emotionally abused out of any notion of a loving Creator. For his own rule and dominion on earth, the Evil One wants to stop children from ever coming to Jesus.
Anyone even remotely familiar with Jesus, including Progressive Jesuits, will have heard this warning, recorded in Matt. 18: 6:
The obvious ones deserving a millstone necklace include financier pedophiles, elite pedophiles, Hollywood pedophiles, illegal immigrant pedophiles, human traffickers, those who Queer children, and the cabal of “gender affirming” lawmakers, doctors, and therapists who provide youth gender “medicine.” Darkness doesn’t come any darker than what comes out of these (Matt. 6:23).
But then again, what about certain school teachers who turn their classrooms into a type of jihadi Madrasa, a religious school for the incubation of destructive mindsets? What about teachers who turn their students into America-hating, white-hating, body-hating, Queer-loving, Marxist anarchists, climate activists, and anti-ICE protestors?
These teachers, Democrats and members of the NEA, a teacher’s union, want to lay hands on our children for indoctrination purposes. They have already submitted to Marxist education in the university and to on-the-job critical race theory and queer theory training. Their moral basis has been formed by Marxism, deconstructionism, gender identity politics, DEI – basically relativism which over time turns into nihilism.
What comes out of the content of their character are ways, including using Rules for Radicals, to leverage power for themselves. They teach and act in terms of the ends justifying the means and the use of any means necessary to obtain political power. Their behavior, like the millstone-deserving above, includes exploiting children to advocate for the “oppressed” against the “oppressor,” a narrative of power relationships that they’ve been taught to believe explains everything.
And so, we find teachers Indoctrinating babies for political trafficking purposes, without concern for what happens to the child:
(Note: There are more of the same videos at the link above. You can read the full article here.)
Are these teachers creating the future mayors of Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and New York? Are they spawning future deep state bureaucrats?
The Pro-Palestinian protests that occurred on university campuses during April of 2024 are the product of a Leftist jihadi education system. What we are currently seeing on the streets of Minneapolis and LA is the product of radicalized Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in the classroom. What happens in these classrooms is no different than what takes place in Islamic Jahidi Madrassas and in Soviet classrooms under Lenin and Stalin.
Jason Littlefield, in We Need to Give Children True Social and Emotional Skills, Not Marxism, writes
“Some regard Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as an educational necessity; others as a Trojan Horse for neoMarxism indoctrination. Based on my experience as an SEL Specialist in Austin Independent School District from 2014 to 2021, I know that true SEL is important to learning and that the SEL in schools is a Trojan Horse for neoMarxism indoctrination. . .
As Jason explains, SEL started out as a good thing. In 1994, an organization was formed to advance advancing SEL research, practices, and resources in schools: CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning). CASEL at one time stated
“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions.”
Then, as Jason writes, “In 2018 CASEL shifted SEL from the above focus on individual life skills and turned to collectivism. For example, in Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence, the authors focus not on children’s well-being in a liberal democracy but, instead, criticize the cultural, political, and economic traditions of these same democracies. It blames health problems, unethical behavior, and climate change on American society while complaining that schools promote America’s unhealthy acquisitive individualism.”
Then, another perversion of SEL: “At the end of 2020, CASEL officially rebranded SEL as “Transformative SEL” (TSEL), which it defined as,
“a process whereby young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting relationships that facilitate co-learning to critically examine root causes of inequity, and to develop collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being.”
I encourage every parent to read Jason’s complete article at the link above or download the article below. He talks about SEL changes and about aspects that are essential to good SEL. He also mentions the mental health issues affecting our youth, citing alarming statistics and the need for “actively promoting positive social-emotional outcomes.”
The CDC reports Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health
“Mental health conditions can begin in early childhood and the prevalence changes with age. Although there are some exceptions, most mental health conditions are more common with increased age (see 2022-2023 data below. See article for statistics.)
“It’s important to remember that diagnosed conditions do not tell the whole story about mental distress in children. This is because children can also experience some symptoms without meeting criteria for a condition, or they can meet criteria for diagnosis but remain undiagnosed.
“Among adolescents, mental health, substance use, and suicide are concerns. Data obtained directly from youth can tell us more about the scope of these problems.” See article for statistics.
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The young are especially open to formation through the experiences adults provide. See the example of Jesus above. He calls them to himself to lay his hands on them, affirming them as the “very good” of his Gensis creation, as fulfilling his desire for his creation – goodness.
But what will be the social skills, character education, emotional intelligence of children laid hands on by Leftist teachers? Aren’t we seeing the deleterious effects on our Democratic Republic as it is being torn apart by stupid willful people?
What will become of the moral imagination of children laid hands on by Leftist teachers? Will they accept lying because they learn that the ends justify the means? Will they use any means necessary to get their way? Will they act like Caligula “little boot” types wanting to be recognized as a god?
The American political system is infested with grown children who were taught that they are a moral law unto themselves by an American education system infested with Marxists, elitists, globalists, queers – with utter darkness.
School choice and homeschooling are vitally important to parents who see what is going on in the classroom. And, of course, the Left doesn’t want school choice and homeschooling. The Left wants your children (and your money) under their control. The Left wants your children in public schools, universities and even divinity schools where Progressives can lay their hands on them and send them on their way as activist fellow travelers.
Two sites to help parents:
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Sound of Freedom Quotes
“You can sell a bag of cocaine one time. But a child, the most precious child, you can sell a five-year-old kid five to ten times a day for ten years straight.”
God’s children are not for sale.
“Over two million children a year are being sucked into the deepest recesses of hell. Trust me, man, if we do nothing, their pain is going to spread and spread until someday it’s going to reach the likes of you. And that will be a nightmare that you’re never going to wake up from.”
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Derek Hunter asks How Did Democrats Get So Stupid?
“That there are so many people in this country who are so wildly ignorant enough to follow the political left over the cliff is not a shock; the public schools in Democrat-controlled cities have essentially been “ignorant factories” for decades. Manufacturing a mis-educated voting base is the surest way to ensure uninterrupted power, and it sure beats the hell out of having to try to argue in favor of the garbage Democrats advocate for.”
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Larry Snd writes in The National Miseducation Association: In addition to being consumed with left-wing politicking, the teachers’ unions inflict significant harm on the nation’s children noting that
“ . . . the National Education Association, the largest union in the country, is an organization whose primary concern is its radical political and social agenda. But do they benefit education in any way?
Hardly. . .
The NEA has long been a leading proponent of “restorative justice.” This touchy-feely, new-age canard, which took hold in the 1990s, has taken root throughout much of the country. It emphasizes “making the victim and offender whole” and involves “an open discussion of feelings.” Restorative justice emerged because black students are far more likely to be suspended than other ethnic groups. The suggestion here, of course, is that white teachers and administrators tend to be racist. But the racial bean counters never explain why the racial disparity exists even in schools where black principals and staff predominate.
Colorado Public School Gives Class to Children on How to Follow and Doxx ICE Agents
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What are the protesting school children learning to protect?
As reported at https://www.chattanoogan.com/: (Emphasis mine.)
Rep. Dan Howell said the Tennessee District Attorney General Conference report on crimes committed by illegal immigrants in Tennessee is “bad, really bad.”
The report was released on Saturday.
Rep. Howell said, “These are the criminals liberals want to defend while trying to defund ICE.
“Forty-one Tennesseeans are dead at the hands of illegal immigrants and hundreds raped. This will not be tolerated in this great state and we will do more to keep you safe.
“Every single one of these crimes could have been prevented.”
He listed:
21,648 total criminal charges in 2025
•2,183 violent offenses
•41 homicides
•1,592 assaults
•145 sexual offenses
•11 child rapes
•40 aggravated kidnappings
•2,920 DUIs
•5,318 cases of driving without a license or on suspended/or revoked
The report is at
https://www.tndagc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025-PC998-Immigration-Report-Final-2.pdf?st-lid=18642696
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Right before I posted my article, Sam Faddis, retired CIA Operations Director, posted his:
Many Pied Pipers Now – What the NEA And the Sunrise Movement Are Doing To Your Children
Sam writes “In folklore, the Pied Piper was a character who played a flute and led the children of Hamelin, Germany, away – never to return. Whether he was real or simply a fictional character remains unclear. What is clear is that the National Education Association, the Sunrise Movement, and their allies are leading your children away from you at this very moment. They, too, may never return.”
You will want to read the complete article to get a sense of the revolution at hand.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali: CAMBRIDGE Q&A ON CONVERSION, CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS
Former ‘new atheist’ Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali shocked the world when she announced her conversion to Christianity in 2023.
Hirsi Ali recently spoke with Dr James Orr for a Trinity Forum Cambridge event about her new faith, her concerns about radicalization at top Universities, and the need to educate young people about Christianity. She also talks about the difference between Islam and Christianity.
At the end of the podcast there are excellent conversations w/students who became Christians (not shown on the video). Download podcast here:
Season 2, Episode 3 – Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Cambridge Q&A on conversion, Christianity and politics – Justin Brierley | Think Faith
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“Advocating Genocide”: Musk Slams Far-Left Spanish MP’s Demand 500,000 Illegals Be Made Citizens For ‘Population Replacement’ | ZeroHedge
You do understand that when an illegal votes, your vote for all that concerns you – your people, your place, your past, and your prayers, everything that has been given to you down the years and you want to pass on to your children – is negated.
And make no mistake. The deep state loves the activists – the children both young and old parading around protesting about ICE, climate change, race and gender identity politics -anyone who is focused on issues that keep them from focusing on what is really going on behind the scenes.
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https://twitter.com/ShadowofEzra/status/2021068314819141820?s=20
If the wolf hadn’t been caught, what then?
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Filed under 2026 Current Events, children, cultural Marxism, Culture, Education, mental health, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with Anti-ICE, child abuse, children, education, Jesus, mental health, NEA, parenting, politics, SEL, teachers, teaching