Reflecting and Expecting

On 2011 and of 2012, respectively.

2011 was an eventful year for me, to say the least, although in some ways it's been a lead-in to a potentially even more eventful 2012. My blogging has decreased accordingly, as I even addressed in a September post titled Still Hanging Around: . . . it seems for a few months now I've been bouncing back and forth between really busy and tired to rather mellow, tranquil, and content. Neither state leads to very good rants or musings.

I won't go into all of it here because much of it I consider too private for this forum, but the past year has included many trips to hospitals with loved ones, moving, dealing with tight economic times at work, stresses with exes, chronic exercise injury, travel, excellent times with friends and family, new love, my 40th birthday, and an engagement announcement.

To touch on that last one a bit, a year ago I wrote a rambling, roundabout meditation on my dislike for New Year's resolutions even though I eventually arrived at a vague intent for 2011. I rather like the post: Dawn of a Brand New . . . ish . . . well . . . just another day, really. (And I'm quite fond of the two posts linked within it, although I do understand you don't have eternity to spend reading through the history of this blog.) I more implied my intent than stated it explicitly, but I indicated I wanted to create more opportunities for romance. Soon after writing the post, I created profiles for myself on two dating sites and pursued that for a good part of the year.

But a funny thing happened along the way. In the post, I wrote: Meeting someone for a date seems like such a constructed, performance-based event. Each person is on his or her best behavior, presenting a persona to make an impression. Or even when they're not, there's doubt about it since that's the expectation. I'd much rather see someone in her natural habitat being her everyday self and have her get to know me in the same way, and if a relationship organically develops then it does. But only so many people just organically enter our lives in an everyday way, and waiting can be an exercise in futility. Once I decided to stop waiting around and pursue something more intentional, an organic situation emerged. It was surprising and unexpected, has been much more of a rapidly evolving whirlwind than might seem prudent, and has been more wondrous and precious and happy than I ever thought possible.

So 2011 started with a more formal, radical resolution than is my habit. Though nothing came directly from the actions I took in pursuing what I resolved, something came about in that same realm that delightfully overshot the mark, and now 2012 looks to include a wedding, a honeymoon, a new house, and more.

I don't think any of that particularly relates to resolutions for the new year, though (although we are a week into our "wedding dress" workout regimen). No, I think 2012 looks to be eventful enough without adding the pressure of a "to do" list of things to add to my routine or feel I need to accomplish. Nevertheless, it's my nature to seek life-long learning and constant self-improvement. In keeping with that, I want to share another vague intent, this time one with much more continuity with my general operating procedure. (And for those of you who do have eternity to spend reading through the history of this blog, prepare for more links to past posts demonstrating the continuity and elaborating on my foundation for pursuing this intent.)

I don't generally use the term "Renaissance person" because I'm not sure what associations and connotations others might have for it, but I've always been drawn to the idea since it seems to fit me instinctively. In I Want to Be a Generalist (and in the intro here) I wrote about my predisposition for variety and being well-rounded, how I am interested in many different things and don't want to specialize in any. Despite the expert advice I've seen many times, I refuse to focus this blog because I want it to reflect my many, random interests, from the Tour de France to politics, religion, and social justice to nature walks and photography to children's literature to books I read to Dungeons & Dragons and much more. This blog is about me and any topic that catches my eye, which means it will be far-ranging and diverse.

We were Christmas shopping at Half-price Books and I came across one that intrigued me. It wasn't a category I normally go for and I was blindly hoping I'd run into something that would work for the person I had in mind, and I did. I not only bought him a copy of the book as a gift, I bought the second copy they had for myself. I don't have any great expectations that it will be particularly deep or well-written or will provide that perfect formula to a magically happy life that it offers, but I hope to get some good things out of it and apply them to my life. Add to my wisdom, if you will.

So that's my resolution for the New Year: read How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and see if I can put its "Seven Da Vincian Principles" into practice in new and deeper ways. Because it was reading the descriptions of those seven principles that won me over to the book. I'm sure I'll be blogging more about them as I get to the book, but here they are, in brief:

Curiosita - An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning.

Which I've already made some reference to above and hope this blog (and my daily life, for those of you who know me) already demonstrates regularly.

Dimostrazione - A commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.

I've always called myself a trial-and-error learner (including here).

Sensazione - The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience.

This brings to mind my recent post Keep Your Head Up, among other thoughts.

Sfumato (literally "Going up in Smoke") - A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.

I've said many times to many people, including in this blog post, we need to Embrace Contradiction and Paradox.

Arte/Scienza - The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination. "Whole-brain" thinking.

I remember in high school saying that my favorite subject was science, math, art, and music, and most recently blogged along these lines in: Are Knowledge and Imagination Dichotomous?

Corporalita - The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.

I would guess I tend to be a bit brutish for this particular definition, but I can't live happily without exercise and physical activity (see, for instance: Finally Indexing All My Born to Run Posts).

Connessione - A recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.

I'm not remembering at the moment if I've specifically delved into this idea in a post, but I think it's an underlying assumption to the basic philosophy that informs much of what I say.

So maybe reading this book won't be much of a revelatory or transformative experience for me, but I'm hoping it will help me continue to grow during a year that looks to have more than its fair share of eventfulness and challenge already. Who knows, maybe I'll even like it so much I get the workbook.

Embrace Contradiction and Paradox

Life doesn't make sense. Human consciousness and the human condition don't allow for us to grasp perfect logic and order. More than any of the particular statements that follow--although there are some that speak to me--this quote is important for its basic stance. And I believe that if more people could adopt this kind of attitude--instead of seeking religions and belief systems that provide "the answer"--the world would be a happier, healthier place. From American Gods:

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Longing and Tranquility

I was reading through the new picture books last week as I always do, looking for new storytime material and staying familiar with the collection, when one really stood out to me. The "dog" could be a metaphor for so many things in so many different contexts, and I really like the way it captures that sense of longing and yearning. I know the feeling the book describes in some way almost every day.

But I can't present the book in isolation, because it's only half the story. I've posted before it's more important to embrace contradiction and paradox than to try to make logical sense of everything, and longing will drive you crazy without an ability to tune it out and be in the moment. So I value both. I enjoy the drive and energy I get from longing but I also enjoy the contradictory ability to find joy and tranquility in fully experiencing the everyday mundane.

And I think it's important to have both. Often when I'm unhappy it's because those two competing veins are out of balance. With too small a dose of constant drive to seek something more I feel stagnant and life loses its zest, with no purpose or goal or reason to exist. With too much obsession about what I don't have, I can't focus on savoring what I do have and giving myself to who and what is right in front of me. You might think you can't pursue the ideas in both of the books that follow at the same time, but that's what works for me.

Nothing But a Dog
by Bobbi Katz
illustrated by Jane Manning

Once it starts
--the longing for a dog--
there is no cure for it.

Not an impy squirrel,
Or a parakeet that sings,
Not a fat bunny called Floyd,
Or a kitten that cuddles close and purrs.
Nothing really stops it for very long.

When you are playing checkers and
clump, clump, clump,
You jump doubles!
When you are skating and making a perfect figure eight
with no wobbles!
When the wind catches your kite just right
and you feel the wind in your hand--
it starts up--
that kind of sad, achy feeling of if you only had a dog.

There is no thing that stops the longing for a dog.
Not satellite shoes that you can wear to
jump, jump, jump
to the ceiling!
Or boots with zippers and all soft fur inside.
Or your very own workbench with real tools,
Not even a grown-up bike
that you can ride everywhere!
No thing can stop the longing for a dog because . . .
A thing, no matter how special, is still a thing.
A dog is something else.

Once it starts--the longing for a dog--there is no real cure for it.
Not learning to play the trumpet.
Or being vice president of the Tree Climbers Club.
Not going to a monster movie with your best friend
and sharing popcorn, the butter kind,
Not even a whole day at Howe's pond
can stop the longing for a dog.

You know, for absolutely sure,
exactly how it would be--
if only you had a dog.
Waking up with a cold, wet nose,
pressing against your face,
Coming home from school to your dog
wagging his tail, kissing your nose, and saying
"I LOVE YOU!" in dog language,
Going out in piles of deep snow, white snow
with your dog leaping and bounding
and celebrating all that whiteness!
Going to sleep with your dog tucked
right in your bed and dreaming
happy things every night.

But all that knowing is not having,
and nothing can stop
the longing for a dog--
but a DOG!

The Three Questions
by Jon Muth
based on a story by Leo Tolstoy

There once was a boy named Nikolai who sometimes felt uncertain about the right way to act. “I want to be a good person,” he told his friends. “But I don’t always know the best way to do that.”

Nikolai’s friends understood and they wanted to help him.

“If only I could find the answers to my three questions,” Nikolai continued, “then I would always know what to do.”

When is the best time to do things?

Who is the most important one?

What is the right thing to do?

[Too much story to transcribe, but it concludes as follows]

Nikolai felt great peace within himself. He had wonderful friends. And he had saved the panda and her child. But he also felt disappointed. He still had not found the answers to his three questions. So he asked Leo one more time.

The old turtle looked at the boy.

“But your questions have been answered!” he said.

“They have?” asked the boy.

“Yesterday, if you had not stayed to help me dig my garden, you wouldn’t have heard the panda’s cries for help in the storm. Therefore, the most important time was the time you spent digging the garden. The most important one at that moment was me, and the most important thing to do was to help me with my garden.

“Later, when you found the injured panda, the most important time was the time you spent mending her leg and saving her child. The most important ones were the panda and her baby. And the most important thing to do was to take care of them and make them safe.

“Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in the world.

“This is why we are here.”

From the "That Makes So Much Sense" Files

Using two groups of twins, from the United States and Australia, the investigators concluded that about half the difference between any two humans' ideologies results from genes. Family influence and the social environment account for the other half. This is big news to a species that considers itself autonomous and intellectual. And just as gob smacking as the numbers was the authors' analysis: Humans don't divide neatly into liberals and conservatives, they concluded. Rather, some of us are "contextualists," who tend to be empathetic and tolerant of others, who consider the context before punishing those selfish wolverines, who are suspicious of certainty when they encounter it in others, and who question authority and inequality. Others of us are "absolutists," who prefer a strong group unity with clear leaders, appreciate strict and forceful punishment systems, distrust human nature and outsiders, and are not distressed by inequality. Each of us leans one way or the other, regardless of reason, and these leanings color our behavior.

If you want to know which way I lean, all you have to do is read the header at the top of this blog. Things need context and are almost never absolute. I've preached often we should embrace contradiction and paradox, that my favorite punctuation mark is the semicolon because it allows for nuance and complicated connections, and so much more. When I rant about those I disagree with, it's often to complain that they need things unrealistically simple and black-and-white, that they can't deal with ambiguity but would rather have someone spell it all out for them so they don't have to think for themselves.

It's less overtly political, but an earlier section of the chapter had me thinking politics as well. If I'm not ranting about simplistic thinking, then I'm most likely worked up about either short-term, reactionary thinking or selfish thinking. I believe most of the bad political decisions I see are the result of at least one of those three things. I think we should always try to orient ourselves to bigger thinking, to the long-term common good, not the small, immediate, individual good. So I found all of this quite intriguing:

The behavior of sharing is so fundamental to human interaction that we do it from dawn till dusk without noticing. Every group of humans that forms a culture forges rules of conduct, then conforms to them, more or less. (More when someone's watching, less when unobserved.) . . .

Humans are particular about their partners in these efforts. I won't trade twice with someone who takes advantage of me . . .

Altruistic behavior is that which costs me effort, risk, or resources, but which doesn't benefit me. The problem is, it's hard to find an altruistic act that doesn't ultimately strengthen my hand. . . .

What if altruism isn't selfless at all, but rather a sly, long-term investment strategy? . . .

For one thing, it appears that we are hardwired to behave benevolently when we're being watched. . . .

Reputation is now strongly suspected as the engine that drives altruism: Because I am such a social animal, it's important to me that other humans trust and respect me. . . . What goes around comes around, in human groups. . . .

First of all, let's dispense with the girl-down-the-well syndrome. This is the phenomenon in which humans will donate one thousand dollars to aid one human infant, but won't donate one thousand dollars to save one hundred infants in Bangladesh. The difference is that the girl down the well has a reputation. Alas for those one hundred Bangladeshis, their faces and reputations are unknown. . . .

What exactly happens to my brain when I hand a PowerBar to a homeless human? For one thing, based on MRI experiments, my trusty dopamine receptors rev up, just as they do for great food, sex, and other life-prolonging goodies. Apparently kindness is addicting. A separate brain region simultaneously dampens my urge for instant gratification, so that I can act in favor of the long-term result. . . .

I join my dog and find that my pulse is racing. I have taken a huge social risk. I've punished a noncooperator. Theorists have argued since Darwin over why human niceness persists in spite of cheaters. . . .

Punishing is crucial to the survival of cooperation, because punishment erodes the cheater's precious social support. However, punishing also looks like a purely altruistic act: I confront the cheater, and all I get out of it is a racing heart and a peeved wolverine. No dopamine rush, even. Why, then, should I make such a sacrifice for the common good? Once again, the behavior looks biologically bankrupt at first glance. And once again on closer inspection, it appears punishing the cheaters is part of a long-term strategy wherein I trade today's stress for tomorrow's social support. When I volunteer to punish a cheater, I advertise my own high standards for trustworthiness and decency. I attract a better class of allies. My stock rises. . . .

Anyway, the sad truth about cooperative behavior seems to be that we're all wolverines inside, wolverines in bonobo clothing. If we consider only the short term, it undeniably serves me best to blow through stop signs, lie to the IRS, and ignore the little girl in the well. But in the long term, I rely on my fellow humans in so many ways that such cheating (in front of them, at least) just doesn't pay.

The Well Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself by Hannah Holmes

Update: More thoughts about these quotes here.

Doesn't Look Like Anything to Me

Or, It Is Enough to Know That Not to Know Is Enough

Or, And That's Why I Have to Go and Investigate Reality

Or, Owning Our Uncertainty Makes us Kinder, More Creative, and More Alive

Seems much of my consumption lately has shared a recurring theme of: Not Knowing.

This post's title is a reference to the TV show Westworld. We just finished watching the first season. In it, the park's "hosts"--the artificial intelligence "robots"--are programmed to say that about anything that is a reference to beyond their artificial world. Generally, the outside, "real" world. The whole season was characterized by a "suspense of disorientation," of not knowing who is "real" and who is not, what is "real" and what is not, and when different scenes were taking place in relation to each other. The very essence of its appeal lay in not knowing. (There will be a separate yet related look at the season at the very end of this post.)

The other references above are to books I've just finished. One, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, is an entire meditation on the topic. I briefly referenced it a couple of posts ago, Metaphorical Coherence, for my delight in the phrase, "The subtle power of incoherence." The other two, The Ghosts of Heaven and Down the Rabbit Hole, are fiction and touch on the topic less explicitly, yet it is there. Relevant excerpts will follow this brief interlude from Cyanide & Happiness.

explosm.net/comics/4154

A few selections from The Ghosts of Heaven, which consists of four stories from four different eras. Each is a compelling, haunting meditation on human nature. Each has horror undertones, confronts suffering and misery. Each is distinct in style, tone, setting, and action. Each involves philosophical musings about the meaning of spirals in the way of Jungian archetypes:

You want to go back to the start. You want to go back to where you began. You want to find the happiness you once had. But you can never get there, because even if you somehow found it, you yourself would be different. You would have changed, from your journey alone, from the passing of time, if nothing else. You can never make it back to where you began, you can only ever climb another turn of the spiral stair. Forever.

---

It was, many people felt, in man's nature to explore, to expand, in short: to live. The desire to survive and prosper, it was argued, is the very meaning of life itself. It must go on, forever, without limit, and to deny that would be to deny life.

---

I have spent my life trying to fill my mind. I have spent it trying to fill the thing, and yet the more I learn, the more I realize still remains to be understood. . . . So I have tried to open my mind further, and to fill it further, and yet the process appears to be an infinite one, on and on, forever.

---

It is enough to know that not to know is enough.
It is enough not to know.

Not knowing is not as much a theme of Down the Rabbit Hole, yet it is there in two ways: there is much the narrator does not know, which means there is much the reader must figure out by adding their own knowledge to what he shares. Tochtli has spent his entire, spoiled life in relative isolation (I know maybe thirteen or fourteen people) in the remote mansion of his father, who is a very rich and powerful international drug lord. It's apparent his father has taught him to always be macho--never be a "faggot"--and all about the business of making corpses. It seems he's largely had to figure out everything else on his own. His musings include conclusions such as: Hair is like a corpse you wear on your head while you're alive. And the one that follows:

Books don't have anything in them about the present, only the past and the future. This is one of the biggest defects of books. Someone should invent a book that tells you what's happening at this moment, as you read. It must be harder to write that sort of book than the futuristic ones that predict the future. That's why they don't exist. And that's why I have to go and investigate reality.

Because it is the book's topic, I want to include my full review of Nonsense, including a pretty extensive list of quotes that I quite like. Here it is.

---

A fascinating book. One, I think, worth going back and studying, now that I’ve finished an initial read, to consolidate my understanding of key takeaways and contemplate best practices for applying them.

The book’s contents, in brief, as pulled from the prologue:

“This book argues that we manage ambiguity poorly and that we can do better.”

Part 1 “lay[s] the groundwork.”

Part 2 “focuses on the hazards of denying ambiguity” in personal, professional, business, and organizational situations, among others.

Part 3 “highlights the benefits of ambiguity in settings where we’re more challenged than threatened: innovation, learning, and art.”

“In an increasingly complex, unpredictable world, what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.”

Holmes provides an abundance of real life examples, research and studies, and synthesizing commentary to make a strong case. For my tastes he was a bit heavy on illustrative anecdotes and a bit light on analysis, but both were there.

I’m of a mind to let the book speak for itself, both because I think the insights are worth sharing in a short form for those who might not read the book and to help me start that closer study mentioned above. The first three, longer quotes do a good job summarizing the first two parts of the book. The rest come from the last part, focused on positively applying the earlier ideas. Unlike many books of this type, I found that last part the most exciting and compelling, especially the bits I’ve pulled out here.

The urge to resolve ambiguity is deeply rooted, multifaceted, and often dangerous. In times of stress, psychological pressures compel us to deny or dismiss inconsistent evidence, pushing us to perceive certainty and clarity where there is neither. Unpleasant anxiety can compel us to seize and freeze on ideas and beliefs in areas of life completely unrelated to the source of that anxiety.

---

We’ve seen how easily we can misinterpret genuine ambivalence as calculating duplicity. When we’re trying to pin down someone’s intentions—whether the person is an employee, a boss, a customer, or a friend—we need to realize that ambivalence is a more natural state of mind than we ordinarily assume. Wanting and not wanting the same thing at the same time is so common that we might even consider it a baseline condition of human consciousness. When interpreting someone’s intentions, we should take into account that stressful circumstances make us more likely to ignore our natural human ambivalence.

---

Our need for closure is a powerful force. It’s so deeply ingrained in everyday living that cultivating an awareness of how it works isn’t enough. Combating its dangers means designing institutions and processes that make us less likely to succumb to our natural tendencies toward resolution when it matters most.

---

Another approach to helping students prepare for ambiguous challenges is to focus more directly on the emotions involved. A person’s comfort with confusion, the ability to admit that he or she is wrong, resilience, and the willingness to take risks are primarily emotional skills. Students have to grow comfortable not just with the idea that failure is a part of innovation but with the idea that confusion is, too.

---

Lasting knowledge earns its keep by allowing itself to be persistently questioned. In any field, we gain true confidence when we allow our ideas and successes to be continuously challenged.

---

The roots of prejudice can be traced to a general cognitive outlook characterized by the hunger for certainty.

---

Having an open mind doesn’t imply having no opinion. It often implies having both opinions. It means not denying the supposed contradiction that victims can be victimizers and vice versa, a simple truth that dogmatists refuse to accept. Such contradictions fuel . . . art. The open-minded person, likewise, cultivates those tensions.

---

Both empathy and creativity spring from the same source: diversity. Empathy, after all, is a fundamentally creative act by which we connect previously unimagined lives to our own. The path to embracing other cultures has to traverse the imagination. That’s why studies have shown that a high need for closure hurts creativity. And it’s why reading fiction—which puts us in other people’s shoes—can both lower our need for closure and make us more empathetic. Spending time among diverse social groups has the same effect.

---

Cultivating ambiguity helps us keep an open mind and empathize with different viewpoints and . . . contradictions are a kind of fuel for human imagination.

---

Take a guess as to how much you’ve changed over the last ten years on a scale from 1 to 10. Now, on the same scale, estimate how much you will change over the next decade. . . .

Most people, the psychologists wrote, “expect to change little in the future, despite knowing that they have changed a lot in the past.” We create a sharp division between our present, fixed self, and our past, evolving selves. We always think we’ve settled into ourselves, and we’re always wrong.

“The most interesting finding is that at every age, we feel like we’re done with our own evolution,” Quoidbach told me. “It’s like the present is what you’ve achieved after all those long years of changing. And now you’re done.”

---

For Chekhov, morality lay not in our relationships with what we know, but in how admirably we deal with what we don’t. . . . Chekhov showed that not knowing doesn’t leave us without a compass, in some relativist nether land. Owning our uncertainty makes us kinder, more creative, and more alive.

---

Perhaps most key in all of that, along with the ability to accept not knowing, is the ability to believe both opinions, even as they are seemingly contradictory. The ability to embrace contradiction and paradox. To accept that even as you understand things and know them to be true from your perspective and experience, that is only part of the story and there are other things that are true as well.

Finally, that different yet related thought about Westworld. I'm still digesting an article about the season finale from The Atlantic: Westworld and the False Promise of Storytelling. I have to admit I felt a little let down by the finale. Many of the key storylines were brought to what should have been satisfying conclusions, yet doing so meant resolving the "suspense of disorientation" that had been so enjoyably appealing. The conclusions made sense for the sake of the larger story being developed for future seasons, they just lacked that emotional oomph they should have had. The potential is very much there to build to something greater in the seasons that follow, but it does raise the question that had the story been told in a more traditional manner would it have had the same power and appeal. Is the core story any good or simply the manner of its telling? (Or is that an artificial distinction that can't really be made?)

Of course, the article's larger focus is on the final speech given by the mastermind behind it all. In it, he shares his dream of the park's participatory storytelling experience, where guests become immersed in the stories, being one that "ennobled" people. Instead, though, his experience had taught him that people's awareness of the artificiality of their surroundings caused them to give in to their baser natures. So he is starting the park down a new path, where the artificiality is gone. The artificial intelligences have become fully sentient and free, and the danger is now fully real and unpredictable. The article delves into the idea of determinism vs. free will, but I see that moment as setting up a future that will be entirely based on not knowing. The guests no longer have the assurance of safety and superiority, and no one--including they themselves--knows just what the hosts will become or be capable of. Instead of a storytelling structure that is disorienting, I hope it will develop into content that is so. And that in becoming a story about uncertainty it will achieve that ennobling end so desired.

The Purpose of Learning Is to Evolve Our Beliefs

A bit of comic relief to start things off.

"Dad, come here. I want to whisper something in your ear."

I lean down. He whispers.

"You're a dead man."

That  was our younger son, who just turned six, out of the blue the other night. No idea where he got the idea. My spouse wrote this on Facebook for his birthday:

Six years ago, [Younger] the Ebullient, came to complete our family.  His natural joy in making others happy is contagious. It is almost impossible to get him to make a choice that only considers himself.  A born leader, he loves "checking on everyone's progress", cares about everyone and everything (especially kitties!) and prefers to be with people and on the go! Pictured here at one year of age....  He told me he wants to grow up to take care of ALL the kitties in the world!  Now (so we all know my child isn't FB perfect), we just need to work on not kicking people or smashing things when we're mad, tired, or hungry!

Another moment from him; I'm not sure if this counts as comedy, wisdom, or both.

[Younger], at bedtime: "I'm hungry."

[Spouse]: "How about a glass of milk?"

"Okay!"

Waits . . . 

"Mom, are you going to get it?"

From the couch, as [Older]'s pillow: "Sorry. It's just [Older]'s so comfy."

Me: "Shall I get it?"

[Spouse]: "You look awfully comfy, too . . . "

"It's okay, I'll get it."

[Younger]: "Sorry, Dad. That's just the life of a parent."

That's just the life of a parent, being a dead man.

And one from his older brother, though this popped up on my Facebook memories from three years ago, when he would have been four.

"Are you sure I have eyes? I can't see my eyes."

A bedtime thought he was having.

I suppose you could say he was being scientific, doubting the reality until he could find some way to verify it with evidence.

Thinking like a scientist would align him with the advice of Adam Grant in his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. In my review, I wrote:

This excellent book does a wonderful job of teaching readers how to learn by evolving their beliefs. Grant starts by explaining why we default to getting stuck constantly trying to affirm our beliefs instead of challenging them, and then shows how to get beyond it. After a section for the reader as an individual, he goes into dealing with others and how to successfully stretch each other. His writing is accessible and entertaining and ever so helpful. I recommend it to everyone.

A bit more about it from Goodreads:

Think Again is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams.

New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. Section 1 explores why we struggle to think again and how we can learn to do it as individuals, arguing that 'grit' alone can actually be counterproductive. Section 2 discusses how we can help others think again through learning about 'argument literacy'. And the final section 3 looks at how schools, businesses and governments fall short in building cultures that encourage rethinking.

In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever.

I pulled a lot of quotes from it. First, a few simple soundbytes:

The purpose of learning isn't to affirm our beliefs; it's to evolve our beliefs.

-----

A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.

-----

It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.

Next, a chunk that lays out his main idea:

As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people's reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we're seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we're right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don't bother to rethink our own views. . . . 

Being a scientist is not just a profession. It's a frame of mind--a mode of thinking that differs from preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. We move into scientist mode when we're searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge. Scientific tools aren't reserved for people with white coats and beakers, and using them doesn't require toiling away for years with a microscope and a petri dish. Hypotheses have as much of a place in our lives as they do in the lab. Experiments can inform our daily decisions. . . . 

Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong--not for reasons why we must be right--and revising our views based on what we learn.

That rarely happens in the other mental modes. In preacher mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness; in scientist mode, it's a sign of intellectual integrity. In prosecutor mode, allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in scientist mode, it's a step toward the truth. In politician mode, we flip-flop in response to carrots and sticks; in scientist mode, we shift in the face of sharper logic and stronger data. . . . 

Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over certainty, curiosity over closure. When we shift out of scientist mode, the rethinking cycle breaks down, giving way to an overconfidence cycle. If we're preaching, we can't see gaps in our knowledge: we believe we've already found the truth. Pride breeds conviction rather than doubt, which makes us prosecutors: we might be laser-focused on changing other people's minds, but ours is set in stone. That launches us into confirmation bias and desirability bias. We become politicians, ignoring or dismissing whatever doesn't win the favor of our constituents--our parents, our bosses, or the high school classmates we're still trying to impress. We become so busy putting on a show that the truth gets relegated to a backstage seat, and the resulting validation can make us arrogant. We fall victim to the fat-cat syndrome, resting on our laurels instead of pressure-testing our beliefs.

Be a scientist.

More on thinking scientifically and on embracing challenges, nuance, and complexity:

When we find out we might be wrong, a standard defense is "I'm entitled to my opinion." I'd like to modify that: yes, we're entitled to hold opinions inside our own heads. If we choose to express them out loud, though, I think it's our responsibility to ground them in logic and facts, share our reasoning with others, and change our minds when better evidence emerges.

-----

Charged conversations cry out for nuance. When we're preaching, prosecuting, or politicking, the complexity of reality can seem like an inconvenient truth. In scientist mode, it can be an invigorating truth--it means there are new opportunities for understanding and for progress.

-----

We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn't limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.

-----

I finally understood what had long felt like a contradiction in my own personality: how I could be highly agreeable and still cherish a good argument. Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. It's possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Although I'm terrified of hurting other people's feelings, when it comes to challenging their thoughts, I have no fear. In fact, when I argue with someone, it's not a display of disrespect it's a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them. If their opinions didn't matter to me, I wouldn't bother. I know I have chemistry with someone when we find it delightful to prove each other wrong.

-----

Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It's a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories. To paraphrase the humorist Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

An antidote to this proclivity is complexifying: showcasing the range of perspectives on a given topic. We might believe we're making progress by discussing hot-button issues as two sides of a coin, but people are actually more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism. To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, it takes a multitude of views to help people realize that they too contain multitudes.

A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions, and it can make us curious enough to discover information we were lacking.

I've been preaching the value of nuance and complexity on this blog its entire existence. In 2009 I even titled a post Embrace Contradiction and Paradox. Here's more from Grant, with almost the same wording (from a footnote):

Some experiments show that when people embrace paradoxes and contradictions--rather than avoid them--they generate more creative ideas and solutions. But other experiments show that when people embrace paradoxes and contradictions, they're more likely to persist with wrong beliefs and failing actions. Let that paradox marinate for a while.

This chart has great advice:

This is off of his main point, but it's good to know / remember:

When my students talk about the evolution of self-esteem in their careers, the progression often goes something like this:

Phase 1: I'm not important

Phase 2: I'm important

Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important

I've noticed that the sooner they get to phase 3, the more impact they have and the more happiness they experience. It's left me thinking about happiness less as a goal and more as a by-product of mastery and meaning. "Those only are happy," philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way."

Trying to be happy doesn't make you happy. Another thought that has appeared multiple times on this blog in various forms.

So I guess this whole book merely confirms my beliefs and doesn't challenge them, but I think this is an area where Grant would say hold firm to your values as you evolve your beliefs. These are values.

One more quote from Think Again, from a footnote in his section on the Dunning-Kruger effect:

In a recent study, English-speaking teenagers around the world were asked to rate their knowledge in sixteen different areas of math. Three of the subjects listed were entirely fake-declarative fractions, proper numbers, and subjunctive scaling which made it possible to track who would claim knowledge about fictional topics. On average, the worst offenders were North American, male, and wealthy.

I've written before about White Supremacy Culture. This is a good example. It's part of our culture to not admit ignorance.

Related:

The Number One Reason White Men Give for Not Getting Involved with Diversity and Inclusion

Far more white men thought that DEI was at least somewhat important (48%), and 42% thought it was very important. Yet even in the latter group, dubbed the “True Believers” by the researchers, only 56% said they were actively supporting DEI at their jobs. The most common reason both groups gave for not being involved? “I’m too busy.” . . . 

According to the researchers, the readiness with which white men cite their lack of time points to an underlying issue in how many companies treat diversity and inclusion.

It’s “still seen as kind of extracurricular,” says Julia Taylor Kennedy, the lead researcher on the project and executive vice president at the Center for Talent Innovation. “It hasn’t been positioned as a core competency to driving business or individual leaders’ careers forward.”

And when white men, who continue to hold a disproportionate amount of senior-level positions, believe that they’re too busy to help with something as important as equality in the workplace, it’s no wonder that little progress gets made. . . . 

In order to get white men truly on board with DEI, the report argues that companies need to show them that building diverse, inclusive teams isn’t something that takes time away from their “real” work, and is instead a fundamental part of their jobs, as essential as hitting sales targets or bringing on new clients. . . . 

Senior executives can serve as role models in changing the perception that supporting DEI has no personal benefit for white men. During town halls and other internal events, she says, they should “include what they learned from teams that were diverse, how it helped them to identify previously overlooked markets, or what they gained as leaders by sponsoring women or people of color.” They should take advantage of opportunities to boast about individual teams or leaders who are highly involved with DEI efforts, the better to signal to the organization as a whole that people who support DEI get noticed.

The goal is to create an environment where it’s clear that DEI is a core value—one that no one who cares about their professional success could claim to be too busy to support.

A good place to start understanding some of the benefits would be with Think Again. New perspectives that challenge and grow our thinking are more likely to come from diverse populations.

Watching the bunny channel

This isn't really related, but I find it interesting and useful. I know Facebook and the rest have issues, but I still find them worth using in my own ways with the thoughts that follow in mind.

Social Media Isn’t the Problem . . . We Are

The problem is the data. 

See, there’s been research on social media and its effects on people. Lots of it. They’ve studied how it affects adults, how it affects children, how it influences politics and mood and self-esteem and general happiness.

And the results will probably surprise you. Social media is not the problem.

We are. . . . 

The researchers are leaning towards the conclusion that it’s anxiety and depression that drives us to use social media in all the horrible ways we use it—not the other way around. . . . 

There are plenty of explanations for growing political polarization and populism that don’t involve social media. . . . 

But social media is not destroying society, and even if it was, Big Tech is not fanning the flames. They’re actually spending a lot of money trying to put it out.

These companies have spent billions in efforts to fight back against disinformation and conspiracy theories. . . . 

Back in the 90s, conspiracy theories like my cousin’s were just as common as they are now. The difference was that they were far less harmful because the social networks that existed at the time cut them off aggressively at the source. That night at Thanksgiving dinner, my family members cut my cousin off, ending his ability to spread his ideas.

But today, someone like my cousin goes online, finds a web forum, or a Facebook group or a Clubhouse room, and all the little Y2Kers get together and spend all of their time socializing and validating each other based on the shared assumption that the world is about to end.

Facebook didn’t create the crazy Y2Kers. It merely gives them an opportunity to find each other and connect—because, for better or worse, Facebook gives everybody the opportunity to find each other and connect.

Once these people have found each other and connected, because of their shared belief in the apocalypse or whatever, they become far more motivated to post and engage with others about their crazy ideas. Think about it, nobody who thought New Year’s Eve 1999 was going to be fine felt any reason to say anything that night. It was only my cousin who couldn’t shut up and dominated the conversation for the next hour.

This asymmetry in beliefs is important, as the more extreme and negative the belief, the more motivated the person is to share it with others. And when you build massive platforms based on sharing… well, things get ugly. . . . 

The 90/9/1 rule finds that in any social network or online community, 1% of the users generate 90% of the content, 9% of the users create 10% of the content, and the other 90% of people are mostly silent observers.

Let’s call the 1% who create 90% of the content creators. We’ll call the 9% the engagers—as most of their content is a reaction to what the 1% is creating—and the 90% who are merely observers, we’ll refer to as lurkers. . . . 

The creators are largely the fools and fanatics who are so certain of themselves. They are people like my cousin James posting about the end of the world. They are disproportionately the finger-waggers, moralizers, and doomsayers. It’s not necessarily the platform’s algorithms that favor these fanatics—it’s that human psychology favors these fools and fanatics and the algorithms simply reflect our psychology back to us.

Meanwhile, the lurkers—the 90%—are people who are more or less reasonable. And because they are more or less reasonable, they don’t see the point in spending their afternoon arguing on Facebook. They aren’t sure of their beliefs and remain open to alternatives. And because they are open to alternatives, they are hesitant to publicly post something they may not fully believe.

As a result, the majority of the population’s beliefs go unnoticed and have little influence on the overarching cultural narrative. 

This is why the internet turns into this bizarro world where reality gets distorted and flipped on its head. . . . 

Because radical and unconventional views exert a disproportionate influence online, they are mistakenly seen as common and conventional. . . . 

Much of this can be summed up in the simple phrase: social media does not accurately reflect the underlying society. . . . 

Social media reflects a fun-house mirror of society, one that elongates and exaggerates the crazy and extraordinary, while minimizing and compressing the sane and ordinary. . . . 

Social media has not changed our culture. It’s shifted our awareness of culture to the extremes of all spectrums. . . . 

Rather than owning up to the fact that these online movements are part of who we are—that these are the ugly underbellies of our society that have existed and persisted for generations—we instead blame the social media platforms for accurately reflecting ourselves back to us. . . . 

Social media has not corrupted us, it’s merely revealed who we always were.

Social media does not accurately reflect the underlying society.

And speaking of the extremes, this article speaks to our current political polarization. It's long and fascinating, and I'm presenting just a quick summary. In many ways it reminds me of the book American Nations, which I posted about extensively almost a decade ago. I'm not completely on board with all of the author's assertions or conclusions, but it's interesting food for thought. He takes a critical eye to each of the "four narratives," and it was good to see my preferences examined critically.

How America Fractured Into Four Parts

Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness. There is never just one—they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up best to fact-checking. They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires. Americans know by now that democracy depends on a baseline of shared reality—when facts become fungible, we’re lost. But just as no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop self-criticism, nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity. The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up. . . . 

The 1970s ended postwar, bipartisan, middle-class America, and with it the two relatively stable narratives of getting ahead and the fair shake. In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America’s moral identity. They have roots in history, but they are shaped by new ways of thinking and living. They reflect schisms on both sides of the divide that has made us two countries, extending and deepening the lines of fracture. Over the past four decades, the four narratives have taken turns exercising influence. They overlap, morph into one another, attract and repel one another. None can be understood apart from the others, because all four emerge from the same whole.

• "Free America" - angry, antigovernmental libertarianism 
• "Smart America" - educated meritocracy, elite upper-class
• "Real America" - white, fundamental Christian, populist nationalism
• "Just America" - antiracism, identity politics

As Real America breaks down the ossified libertarianism of Free America, Just America assails the complacent meritocracy of Smart America. . . . 

All four of the narratives I’ve described emerged from America’s failure to sustain and enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years. They all respond to real problems. Each offers a value that the others need and lacks ones that the others have. Free America celebrates the energy of the unencumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid. They rise from a single society, and even in one as polarized as ours they continually shape, absorb, and morph into one another. But their tendency is also to divide us, pitting tribe against tribe. These divisions impoverish each narrative into a cramped and ever more extreme version of itself.

All four narratives are also driven by a competition for status that generates fierce anxiety and resentment. They all anoint winners and losers. In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating.

Of course it's not the different perspectives that are the problem, but the extreme polarization and demonization, the unwillingness to listen to and learn from each other.

To tie back into Think Again, another book I gave five out of five stars; it's one I've quickly referenced before here, but not fully shared. Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart by Shane Snow

This is excellent. Highly engaging, entertaining, and readable, and full of well-explained big ideas.

The key to great teams, Snow shares, is cognitive diversity. The important ingredient, the thing that gets teams into The Zone, is not peace and harmony and sameness--it's engaging the tension between their perspectives, heuristics, ideas, and differences. He uses the analogy of a rubber band. Unstretched, it lacks potential energy. Stretched too far, it breaks. It has the most ability to achieve when stretched just the right amount for maximum sustainable tension.

Of course, that's a hard balance to achieve. It starts by forming teams of individuals who bring differences to the table. Homogeneity--even of values--won't produce enough tension. And there needs to be provocation and dissent. To keep things from breaking, there also needs to be openness and honesty, mutual respect and goals, intellectual humility and empathy. And play. Playing, it turns out, makes us less afraid of cognitive friction. The members of great teams push each other in just the right ways.

That all sounds well and good in a quick summary; it's much more convincing with Snow's examples and explanations. Each chapter weaves together multiple threads showing his insightful ideas in action. I highly recommend this for, well, everyone.

I nominated this for our leadership book club at work and it was selected. I might have to try the same with Think Again. They pair ever so nicely. One final quote from Dream Teams that echoes my opening quotes from that earlier book:

The key to intellectual humility is increasing the cognitive diversity inside our own heads.

And we increase our cognitive diversity by being challenged by others.

The Patron Saint of Mediocrities

The choice

is between believing that

the narrative of life

is a story of winners and losers

or that it is about the struggle

to ensure decency and sufficiency for all

That's from the book The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert. More on it soon.

I took the title of this post from the movie Amadeus. It made a big impression on me when I was young, and I've always remembered the last few lines Salieri says at the end. From a script I found online:

Goodbye, Father. I'll speak for you. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. On their behalf I deny Him, your God of no mercy. Your God who tortures men with longings they can never fulfill. He may forgive me: I shall never forgive Him.

Mediocrities everywhere, now and to come: I absolve you all! Amen! Amen! Amen!

It's a fairly tragic moment, the character pronouncing to all that he considers himself a failure, that his life's work--and his life--have amounted to nothing.

However.

Alpert, in his book, redefines "good-enough" from it's common usage as settling for something barely acceptable to an entirely different meaning when seen from a changed framework. In the same way, many would consider Salieri highly successful and only "mediocre" in comparison to the greatness of Mozart. But the problem is not determining whether Salieri is mediocre, good, or great, it's the worldview that compels him to compare himself to Mozart at all. The evil is that he can't stop himself from feeling they are in competition and must be ranked against each other instead of appreciating his "mediocrity" for what it is.

Last post, Just the Insects and Me, I wrote about how the apparent "plainness" of Kansas has taught me to see the beauty in the ordinary:

While I do love the sense of awe I get from both mountains and ocean, I also love the relative plainness of Kansas. I love that the beauty doesn't just smack you in the face, that the landscape trains you to find the beauty in apparent absence. You learn to appreciate the subtle, mundane beauty that is always there in everything, not just in the grand and eye-catching. You don't take it for granted or get desensitized to it. Beauty is everywhere if you know how to see it. Kansas teaches you to.

While I referenced mainly physical features, I meant to imply the principal across the board. To "ordinary" people, emotions, experiences, art, ideas; all of it. Everything has inherent beauty and value simply because it exists. Ordinary--mediocre--is wonderful. It's all there needs to be. Not sameness, just a refusal to judge and compare, to decide that some people and things are better or worse.

I've been a librarian for 25 years now. At one point I felt pressure to "climb the ladder," which in my world means becoming management. I hated it. After two months I asked for my old position back, and have never regretted it. The thing I hated most was having to formally "appraise" people--not just help them grow, but make a record of their strengths and flaws against an official scale, to rate and rank them. I prefer to look at people with an eye toward appreciation. I know everyone has flaws, but I focus on empathy and seeing their unique and individual value. I see everyone as good and try as much as I can to see their goodness.

I really appreciate this Facebook post from George Lakoff:

In the conservative mind, all policy decisions flow according to the following hierarchy. To understand Republican stances on abortion, racism, homophobia, worker rights, etc., just consult this chart.

It's all there.

Of course, I'm biased as a liberal--but we have our moral hierarchies as well, which are just as bad in their own ways. I disagree with the ordering of this hierarchy from Lakoff, but even more I disagree with the existence of any kind of hierarchy at all.

Which is all meant to be an introduction to The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert. Here's my review:

The choice is [between believing] that the narrative of life is a story of winners and losers, or that it is about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

Alpert argues in this book for a change in society's orientation from a "greatness" worldview to a "good-enough" perspective. Greatness is characterized by a constant striving for success, whether financial, social, artistic, athletic, relational, or any other realm, a desire to be at the top of a necessary hierarchy. It's about comparing, judging, rating, and ranking people. Some are always better than others. A good-enough orientation, on the other hand, sees us all as connected and interdependent and only successful together, not as individuals. It does not mean just barely sufficient; it means everyone gets at least a good life and all needs are met--decency and sufficiency; good plus enough.

Whatever combination of solutions we rely on, they should all be compatible with the idea that everyone deserves decency and sufficiency, and that no one merits more than others.

I love Alpert's ideas, some of the ways he articulates them, and how he applies the worldview across the board at the personal, communal, societal, and natural levels. I'm not convinced his names for the two orientations are effective and feel often he considers his ideas too vaguely and abstractly, having insular conversations with other philosophers and thinkers instead of with readers.

Overall, though, a really good--and important--book.

But of course I don't want to stop with just that. I have a plethora of quotes I picked out to share.

A bit more on what Alpert means by "good-enough."

Although good-enoughness begins by accepting that human beings cannot entirely avoid tragedy or difficulty, thinkers of the good-enough do not stop there. They follow James Baldwin in understanding that this is only one of two opposing needs: this need of "acceptance, totally without rancor, or life as it is," but also the demand of "equal power: that one must never . . . accept these injustices as commonplace." The good-enough life accepts human failings--it appreciates that we are only ever good enough--and, because of those failings, it demands both decency and sufficiency for everyone. Because the world is good enough, we should be good enough to each other. But this is not a capitulation. It is a call to reimagine the world as a place brimming with meaning, access, and creativity for all. It is a call to think of who we are as irrevocably bound up with the destinies of all our fellow humans on this elegant and delicate sphere. And it is a call to appreciate that much of what is valuable in our world is overlooked by the regime of greatness--from the ordinary acts of labor that sustain our lives, to the ordinary caressses of intimacy that bring us home to ourselves.

-----

This is not an argument that doing these things will result in a perfect equality or an edgeless, harmonious social world. It is a claim that we can better circulate and distribute the value and goodness and decency of humanity to buffer ourselves collectively from the treachery and errors that are also part of our condition.

None of this progress will be possible without a deeper understanding of our natural condition. We are not determined by evolution to seek a place on the top of the hierarchy. We are the inheritors of a cooperative history that we bequeath to future generations. To ensure decency in this futurity, we will need to understand culturally what science already knows: that no group of humans is greater than any other, and that humans as a whole are not greater than nature. Humans and nature are both good-enough systems working in symbiosis.

He only uses the word symbiosis one time that I noticed, but I think it's a really important one. We are all interdependent.

A brief interlude.

The Holiness in Reality

For some people, scientific ideas stir spiritual feelings of wonder and connection, which, they say, can offer psychological benefits similar to religious spirituality, like an increased sense of well-being and life satisfaction. And, on top of that, when scientific ideas inform people’s sense of spirituality, they come away with a better understanding of science. “Although science and religion differ in many ways,” the researchers write, their findings across three studies indicate that those human enterprises “share a capacity for spirituality through feelings of awe, coherence, and meaning in life.”

That article focuses on the comparison of religion to atheism, but I think it also speaks to finding the value in the ordinary and mediocre.

So does, I think, something I wrote a long time ago in Attempting to Gain Some Momentum:

So in Clerks II there is an ongoing argument between fans of the Star Wars trilogy and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy over which is supreme. Both Lucas's movies and Tolkien's books were formational experiences for me, so I don't feel any need to make an either-or comparison. If push really came to shove, though, I think I'd have to come down on the side of LOTR. I don't make this decision lightly, but based upon the controlling mythology of the stories. I know I'm not the first to describe them in these terms and much more has been written than this, but here's my take.

In Star Wars your hero just happens to be magically imbued with a powerful force. We eventually find out he is the son of one of the great powers in the universe. He is destined for greatness and he fights the great. The prequel trilogy only expands upon this theme. This is a battle of the high and mighty against others who were born to power. This is an incredibly powerful mythology for an adolescent male--How awesome would it be to discover you have this great power and can do incredible things? Everyone wants that in some form. But while I can fantasize about wanting to be a Luke Skywalker, I know there is no truth in it. Finally I must accept that I am just another ordinary person and that particular fantasy is just an escape.

While LOTR may have Gandalf and destined-to-be-king Aragorn, the true protagonists are the Hobbits. They are as down to earth and ordinary as they come. They don't succeed in their quest because they are inherently great, but because they are able to find extraordinary strength of character and courage within themselves. They are you and me succeeding in a crisis situation despite our mortality and weakness. This may be called a fantasy, but it is one that we can actually put ourselves into and identify with. Ideally, it is one that can inspire us to live our own lives like courageous Hobbits and discover our own versions of greatness. It is a story that might make us better people.

And that's what I'm really looking for in a good fantasy, not just escape, but something that will help me examine my own life and come out a better person because of it.

Even the most ordinary hobbit has great value.

Back to Alpert:

It is unfortunate to have to think of smiling back at a child as some kind of extraordinary achievement. But such small acts of interpersonal care become increasingly difficult in greatness-oriented culture. This has a powerful impact on our general sociability. If we are all striving to be great and ignoring the ordinary interactions that constitute the bulk of our lives, we are going to be less friendly to others--both to our most intimate acquaintances and to those we do not know but with whom we share the world.

And:

Let's say . . . you've decided to reorient your life around the idea of being good enough. . . . You've stopped aspiring to be the best, and beyond that, you've seen through the absurdity of even thinking there is such a thing as the best. You've come to appreciate the inevitable suffering and limitations of existence without always trying to turn them into positive lessons. You appreciate that you are part of an interdependent world where your own actions find their deepest resonance in how they complement the activities of others. And to that end, you're trying to focus on promoting and participating in a world that is decent and sufficient for everyone. You've learned to gain strength from the profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency. You've recalibrated your sense of the purpose of parenting, love, and friendship, moving away from a desire to be among the greats and toward an understanding of the values of dissonance as much as communion.

But not you encounter a problem. Everyone around you is still striving for greatness. . . . 

The profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency.

Another interlude.

Researchers Gave 200 People $10,000 Each to Study Generosity

Researchers gave 200 people from seven different countries $10,000 each, with instructions to spend it all within three months and to document how they spent it.

Participants spent 68% of their cash prosocially, benefiting others and sometimes simultaneously themselves.

With members of the wealthy Baby Boomer generation beginning to pass away, an unprecedented transfer of wealth is about to unfold. The study suggests a significant amount of that money could be spent on the public good.

People respond to expectations, both good and bad. If we expect them to treat the world as a hierarchy and only strive for greatness, they'll see everyone else as competition. If we expect them to see the world as a more cooperative, interdependent one, they will.

From You Can't Have Winners without Losers:

Many of the standardized tests used to create these rankings are norm-referenced ones, which means that the tests are graded on a curve and students' scores are determined in comparison to each other. Once all the tests are scored and average is determined, with half the students ranked as above that average and half below. Using this measure, half the students by definition will always score below average. There is guaranteed to be a bottom quarter of students who fail every time. Even if every single student shows marked improvement and gets more than 90% of the answers correct, there will be a bottom half and a bottom quarter, and those at the bottom will be considered failing in comparison to the rest. It is impossible for everyone to be considered a success, no matter how well they do, because the measures used are competitive. We have created a system that guarantees we will always have millions of failing students taught by thousands of failing teachers in thousands of failing schools.

Because our measures are based on competition.

And in a competition, there will always be losers.

I know some workplaces use a similar scenario for their appraisal processes. There is an average percentage of annual raise for the pool of workers, say 3% for this scenario. Each person earns a raise based on their annual appraisal score. Some will score more highly than others, so some will get higher raises than others, as long as it all averages out to 3% for everyone. So if someone earns a 5% raise based on excellent performance, then someone else must be scored low enough on their appraisal to only earn 1% so that the numbers balance out.

Reality says that things will likely work out, that there will be some under-performers in each organization. But philosophically the organization is saying there must be. It is not possible for the entire team to achieve together, for everyone to band together and pull each other up to an excellent level of performance as a group. No, some of the group will have to perform disappointingly. You can never have a work group composed entirely of achievers; your organization will always have losers on its team. In fact, you're not likely to have a cohesive team practicing excellent teamwork, since members are in competition with each other to be the achievers and avoid being the losers. If I help someone else do well in his or her job, then that's less raise available for me at the end of the year. Better to see everyone else fail in comparison to me, even if it hurts the organization's overall performance. . . . 

You can't have a competition winner without a loser.

So, if we ever hope to really have a "we" that succeeds together as a group--where we are all winners and don't have any losers on our team--there has to be more to our measures of success, to how we define ourselves, to the core of our philosophical models than pure competition. . . . 

As this excellent article, 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying, articulates so well, the purely competitive capitalism model ensures there will always be plenty of losers:

So "anyone can get rich" isn't just untrue, it's insultingly untrue. You can't have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can't have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?

You're intentionally conflating "anyone can have the moonshine" with "everyone can have it." And you are doing it because you're hoping that we will all be too busy fighting each other to ask why there was only one jar.

We are not a collection of individuals; we are a collective.

But we don't act like it.

The One Cause of Poverty That’s Never Considered

What if the persistence of poverty has less to do with the misfortunes of the needy than with the advantages the affluent presume they are entitled to? In Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton, argues that we need to examine the behavior and priorities not of the poor but of “those of us living lives of privilege and plenty.” . . . 

He is impatient with the implication that poverty arises passively, because of large forces beyond our control. To the contrary, poverty is a social reality that Americans create and sustain—and from which many of the nonpoor benefit materially in more direct ways than they care to acknowledge. Desmond’s mission is to disabuse the better-off among us of the illusion that they are mere bystanders with their hands tied. Many wealthy people assume that the built-in advantages that come with affluence are their due, and take for granted their freedom to choose among many life options. What they fail to recognize is that their choices contribute to foreclosing options for people of lesser means, whose lives are already far more constrained. . . . 

Desmond demonstrates how exploitation in various forms is the root of the problem. . . . 

In Desmond’s taxonomy of how the privileged “make the poor in America poor,” the strategy of living in walled-off communities—and more broadly, the proclivity to invest in private amenities at the expense of public housing, education, and transportation—has more than an economic impact. The physical separation also “poisons our minds and souls,” enabling affluent people to forget about the poor and obscuring two other tiers of economic exploitation that Desmond calls attention to.

Surveying a host of other perks and benefits to which the well-off consider themselves entitled, he emphasizes that such life amenities are available only because poor people suffer: When the wealthy patronize shops and restaurants that offer low prices and fast service, their satisfaction comes at the expense of cashiers and dishwashers paid poverty wages. When we open free checking accounts that require maintaining a minimum balance, we benefit from the fact that banks can collect billions of dollars in overdraft fees from poor customers who struggle to meet these requirements—and who often end up gouged by check-cashing outlets and payday lenders.

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor,” James Baldwin once observed, an irony that still prevails in America. . . . 

What is “maddening,” Desmond writes, is “how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes,” or by doing 20 or 30 smaller things to curtail just some of the subsidies of affluence. Yet his book makes it all too clear why the loopholes don’t get closed. The real reason the well-off sustain the status quo isn’t that they believe the poor are shiftless. It’s because meaningful change would require giving up their own advantages—or, to put it bluntly, because “we like it,” as Desmond writes. This is, he notes, the “rudest explanation” for our current state of affairs. Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder.

Things can be different if we want them to be.

Back to Alpert:

Good fences do not make good neighbors. Good neighbors are made by how they treat one another with respect and appreciate their fundamental dependence on each other. A good fence won't do you much good when your neighbor's house is on fire. It will just provide tinder for the flame.

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Whether our current economic system requires racial divisions or not is debatable. At the very least, it requires an underclass of menial laborers who are underpaid and undervalued, and who, in order to justify their position, are often racialized. And it is relatively clear that the modern capitalist system was forged through its racial divisions.

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Empirical and historical studies have consistently affirmed [the] finding that market-driven inequalities produce civilizational-level crises. The solution [is] equally known: in material and positional equality lies the salvation of democracy. People who have a say in their lives, who find that their efforts are meaningfully rewarded, that their failures are adequately understood, and that they can have basic trust in the decency of both neighbors and strangers--such people are not easily corrupted by demagogues. And since democracies thrive when they can work cooperatively with others and without fear of attack, that equality itself works best when it is shared across nations, not just within their borders. To embrace this basic truth is to abandon the pursuit of economic and national greatness and appreciate that nothing less than global solidarity based on decency and sufficiency for all is the best path for peace and security.

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Time and again it has been shown that workplaces that foster participation both positionally (less top-down and more equal power) and materially (shared rewards) increase productivity, happiness, and a sense of purpose.

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There is nothing about our world that benefits from some nations or cultures or races doing better than others. Such competitive desires create the poverty, wars, and failures to act effectively on global issue like climate change that we see today. If we manage to overcome these challenges, it will not be because the fittest survived, but because we managed to survive the very idea of there being some who are more fit to live than others.

We must manage to survive the very idea of there being some who are more fit to live than others.

Finding sufficiency, appreciating the ordinary, experiencing the profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency does not mean settling for "mediocrity" in the traditional, comparative, hierarchical sense. Salieri complains of "God who tortures men with longings they can never fulfill." These longings are part of our natural state and we'll always have them.

From Alpert:

If the aim of natural selection is to get us to propagate our genes, then it needs to do two things. First we should get pleasure from activities that keep us alive and help us procreate. Second, these activities should leave us feeling a bit dissatisfied after and wanting more so that we keep trying. Our very survival depends on our seeking satisfaction and then finding it unsatisfactory. The result is that we have become creatures who experience suffering that we foolishly try to cure with pleasures rather than acknowledging the impossibility of total satisfaction.

And from Longing and Tranquility:

 . . . it's more important to embrace contradiction and paradox than to try to make logical sense of everything, and longing will drive you crazy without an ability to tune it out and be in the moment. So I value both. I enjoy the drive and energy I get from longing but I also enjoy the contradictory ability to find joy and tranquility in fully experiencing the everyday mundane.

And I think it's important to have both. Often when I'm unhappy it's because those two competing veins are out of balance. With too small a dose of constant drive to seek something more I feel stagnant and life loses its zest, with no purpose or goal or reason to exist. With too much obsession about what I don't have, I can't focus on savoring what I do have and giving myself to who and what is right in front of me. You might think you can't pursue the ideas in both of the books that follow at the same time, but that's what works for me.

We're always going to want more, to need to strive. Being "ordinary" and "good-enough" doesn't mean we stop working to make our lives better. It means we stop trying to make our lives better at the expense of others and instead we look for ways to make existence better for everyone.

To quickly revisit the opening quote with proper context, this comes at the end of a long section about Amy Chua's parenting book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

The choice is not between being a Chinese parent or a Western parent. It's between teaching your children that the narrative of life is a story of winners and losers, or that it is about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

The narrative we tell--the expectation we communicate--should be one about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

A biblical interlude. 

I would argue that one of the major themes running through the Christian Bible is that God has a different perspective than humans do, that God's wisdom is not human wisdom, that God does not approve of human hierarchies, judgments, and power structures, and wants to reverse them.

I did some skimming and quickly gathered a few verses; others have spent more time and done a much better job of it. This is long, so feel free to skim it yourself if inclined:

1 Samuel 8:10-18

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

Zechariah 7:8-12

The word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They made their hearts adamant in order not to hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, 16-17

I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.

Matthew 5:1-11

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Matthew 7:1-5

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Matthew 18:1-5

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Matthew 19:23-26; 30

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’ But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Matthew 23:1-28

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 25:34-40

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Mark 9:33-37

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’

Luke 3:10-14

And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’

Luke 4:5-8

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,

“Worship the Lord your God,

   and serve only him.” ’

Luke 6:37-42

‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’

He also told them a parable: ‘Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Luke 16:19-25

‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

Luke 18:9-14

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Luke 18:18-27

A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He replied, ‘I have kept all these since my youth.’ When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

Those who heard it said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ He replied, ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.’

Luke 20:45-47

In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’

Luke 22:24-27

A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

John 13:34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

All passages copied from the Oremus Bible Browser.

The greatest is the one who humbly serves.

From Alpert:

Researchers working at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and ecology have found remarkable parallels between inaction on climate change and what is called "social dominance orientation," a metric of how much someone believes that there should be hierarchies and inequalities in society. The more someone believes in human hierarchy, the more likely they are to believe that humans do not need to worry about climate change.

One last interlude:

For the First Time, Research Reveals Crows Use Statistical Logic

“In our lab, it has been shown that crows have sophisticated numerical competence, demonstrate abstract thinking, and show careful consideration during decision-making,” she said. In her most recent experiment, Johnston and her team pushed these abilities to a new extreme, testing statistical reasoning. . . . 

Johnston and her team began by training two crows to peck at various images on touchscreens to earn food treats. From this simple routine of peck-then-treat, the researchers significantly raised the stakes. “We introduce the concept of probabilities, such as that not every peck to an image will result in a reward,” Johnston elaborated. “This is where the crows learn the unique pairings between the image on the screen and the likelihood of obtaining a reward.” The crows quickly learned to associate each of the images with a different reward probability.

In the experiment, the two crows had to choose between two of these images, each corresponding to a different reward probability. “Crows were tasked with learning rather abstract quantities (i.e., not whole numbers), associating them with abstract symbols, and then applying that combination of information in a reward maximizing way,” Johnston said. Over 10 days of training and 5,000 trials, the researchers found that the two crows continued to pick the higher probability of reward, showing their ability to use statistical inference.

Statistical inference involves using limited information about a situation to draw conclusions and make decisions. People use statistical inference daily without even realizing it, such as when deciding which café will have more seating available for a group of friends. “You only have time to visit one, so you might think back to your previous visits and conclude that there were tables available (relatively) more often at Café A compared to Café B and thus opt to visit Café A,” added Johnston. “You’re not guaranteed a table in either case, but one is judged as the better option.” Similarly, the crows remembered the connections between the images on the touchscreen and the reward probabilities and used that memory to ensure they would get the highest reward in most cases.

Pushing the crows even further, Johnston and her team waited a whole month before testing the crows again. Even after a month without training, the crows remembered the reward probabilities and could pick the highest number every time. Johnston and her team were excited that the crows could apply statistical reasoning in almost any setting to ensure their reward. "Working with the birds every day is very rewarding! They are very responsive animals, so I enjoy spending time with them,” added Johnston.

The social dominance hierarchy, as with the conservative moral hierarchy and many others, puts humans above nature.

Finally, from Alpert:

Whatever combination of solutions we rely on, they should all be compatible with the idea that everyone deserves decency and sufficiency, and that no one merits more than others.

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Greatness in any sphere of our lives is a problem in all spheres of our lives. So long as some have vastly more wealth and power than others, they will have too much control over the lives of others, and the perceived desirability of their lives will create the kinds of competitive contests that distort our appreciation of each other's plural values and abilities.

Mediocre is all we need to be.

Ordinary is all there is.

Strive to provide for everyone.

You are deserving of acceptance.

Complete, unconditional acceptance.

From yourself, from me, from everyone.

We all are.