The Wisdom of Patterns and Flow

We are fluid, cyclical, rhythmic. We flow.

Physiologically we do not need to breath in, we just need to breathe out fully and the in-breath follows as natural as the body's natural wish to go on living. We are tidal creatures; always giving and always waiting to receive; always arriving and always about to say goodbye: we begin in some form of silence, live through the breathing exchange of a given life and end again in another form of silence. We are here and we are somehow not quite, a coming and a going, and in every religious inheritance, breath is the essence of that understanding, of our passing through, of our poignant transience, the way we appear and disappear. Breath is the essence of prayer.

From the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

I am fond of saying "cooperation is self-interest." I have shared that statement often in many contexts on this blog, shared many books and articles that support its truth. I absolutely endorse this idea and believe it needs to be loudly proclaimed--particularly in our current context, where competition is held in especially high regard.

I have also shared here a number of books I've read that are based on or support the notion that competition and inequality are due to the change in human lifestyles brought on by the advent of agriculture. While I appreciate the logic, it's never sat quite right with me; it seems overly simplified and idealistic.

This article offers an insightful counterpoint.

We Cooperate to Survive, But if No One's Looking we Compete

An age-old debate about human nature is being energised with new findings on the tightrope of cooperation and competition

[Of "the modern dispute about whether humans are fundamentally cooperative or competitive"] . . . Our collective predilection for exploitation, deceit and competition is equally important to cooperation in the story of human evolution. We evolved not to cooperate or compete, but with the capacity for both – and with the intelligence to hide competition when it suits us, or to cheat when we’re likely to get away with it. Cooperation is consequently something we need to promote, not presume. . . . 

Put someone in a game where identities are hidden and consequences are explicitly ruled out, and you remove many of the ordinary pressures that govern cooperation – reputation, ongoing relationships, the possibility of retaliation, the cost of being seen to take too much. What you end up measuring, in other words, is not ‘how cooperative this person is’, but how they behave in a stripped-down context where cooperation and betrayal carry very different risks.

That basic insight runs through decades of work on the biology of cooperation. . . . Cooperation, from this perspective, isn’t something we can simply assume; it’s something social life must make possible – and worth sustaining. . . . 

Much as any person might cheat a partner when the likelihood of being discovered is low, so are we wrong to assume that anyone who cooperates in one game is likely to cooperate in every game. Cooperating is not the same thing as being a cooperator. . . . 

There are plenty of examples of people dodging moral responsibility through credentialing (touting past good deeds), rationalisation, and plain opportunism. In aggregate, the belief that you’re a moral person because of the principles you profess or the good things you’ve done before can make it easier to rationalise seizing the opportunity to act unfairly now. . . . 

The egalitarianism so often noted in small-scale societies . . . may then represent a lack of opportunity for free-riding, rather than an evolved propensity for fairness. Knowing everyone in your camp, choosing to live with relatives, and a collective expectation that people will follow local norms, maintains cooperation . . . 

The idea that we lived in a state of equality until the invention of agriculture is mostly a myth that I think helps us feel better about human nature. . . . 

Rather than attributing our problems today to competition between groups and the structure of our societies, the governing rule for any social system is to expect exploitation where it is possible. Every group, society and culture, no matter its size, has weaknesses that some people will try to exploit for personal benefit. The question is how those weaknesses affect culture more broadly, and whether we live in a society that rewards fairmindedness – or cleverness, subtlety and opportunism.

In the modern world, as with our evolutionary past, the answer is the latter. All that’s changed since the advent of agriculture is the number and varieties of opportunities for free-riding and exploitation. Consequently, as technology improves and groups increase in size, we should expect people to develop creative ways for defecting more effectively – with evolution favouring those who do it best. . . . 

This requires adopting a realistic perspective about the kind of animal that Homo sapiens is. First, we are not inherently cooperative but have the capacity for cooperation – just as we have the capacity for exploitation and selfishness. What matters at the individual level is the way we choose to behave towards others.

Second, just as there is no such thing as a cooperator, there is no such thing as a free-rider. These are behaviours that we apply in models and experiments for convenience. How people behave – and critically, how we describe social behaviours – is a matter of circumstance. The same person who behaves ethically in one circumstance may not do so in another, as research into moral credentialing shows. Our behavioural plasticity, or ability to adapt the way we act to context, is one of our defining features. The evolved psychological processes driving our decisions cannot be captured by simplistic models or games. Anyone can be an invisible rival.

That is precisely why local social norms matter so much. If cooperation isn’t a fixed trait but a fragile, context-dependent outcome, then the real question is what kinds of environments make it easier to do the right thing – and harder to get away with quiet defection. . . . Just as organisms evolve immune defences against selfish cells that quietly undermine the whole, societies need norms – and the institutions that uphold them – that can detect and restrain rivalries that flourish out of sight.

Fostering community-level interdependence – and the norms that evolved to help them function cooperatively – is therefore essential for combatting the exploitation that results from invisible rivalry. Never try to enforce cooperation from above. Instead, just as the economist Noreena Hertz argues we should replace ‘greed is good’ maxims in the capitalist framework with a community-oriented, cooperation-promoting mindset, appreciating that we are all better off when we work together is the critical insight needed for building a prosocial and equality-focused environment for the future.

Education is where this begins, not as moral uplift but as collective self-knowledge: it helps us see our own temptations clearly and translate that insight into practical scaffolding – laws, schools and civic rules that reward cooperation and raise the costs of exploitation. Cheating will never vanish, and some people will always look for an edge, but our distinctive intelligence lies as much in recognising exploitation and organising against it as in exploiting in the first place. Invest in that knowledge and in the local institutions that make fairness both appreciated and rewarded, and we will widen the space in which cooperation and equality can endure.

The bolding for emphasis is mine; those are the key ideas I want to highlight, and provide the rest for context so they make sense.

I've requested my library purchase the book this author wrote expanding on these themes, Invisible Rivals: How We Evolved to Compete in a Cooperative World by Jonathan R Goodman, and hope to read it soon.

I find this an extremely helpful framing. Often we debate whether humans are more fundamentally good or bad, cooperative or competitive. The answer, of course, is that we are both in equal measure and that we constantly alternate between them. It's always, in every moment, a choice which way we lean. We decide based on mood, needs, context, and other changing circumstances.

So if we want to see humans be more cooperative, make more benevolent choices, we need to create more circumstances and structures that encourage it.

I find this idea a freeing one--we don't need to focus on what is fundamental to human nature and thus out of our control and unchangeable, we need to focus on choices and contexts, moments and environments--all things that are more permeable and within our power. "Make good choices," not "be a good person." "Good person" isn't even a thing; only what you do moment to moment. Neither is "bad person" a thing, merely an accumulation of bad choices--but always still open to change and redemption.

It feels to me how I felt after learning about the theories of Ibram X. Kendi when I wrote Ideas Make Me Happy in 2019. A part of what I shared:

The Anti-Racist Revelations of Ibram X. Kendi

[Kendi] thinks “racist” should be treated as a plain, descriptive term for policies and ideas that create or justify racial inequities, not a personal attack. Someone is being racist when he or she endorses a racist idea or policy. . . . 

In Kendi’s analysis, everyone, every day, through action or inaction, speech or silence, is choosing in the moment to be racist or anti-racist. It follows, then, that those identities are fluid, and racism is not a fixed character flaw. “What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what — not who — we are,” he writes. In studying the history of racist ideas, Kendi has found the same person saying racist and anti-racist things in the same speech. “We change, and we’re deeply complex, and our definitions of ‘racist’ and ‘anti-racist’ must reflect that,” he told me. Those who aspire to anti-racism will, when accused of racism, seriously consider the charge and take corrective action. They will not claim to lack any racist bones.

We don't have to worry about whether a person "is" or "is not" a racist. That's not a thing. All we need to consider is whether each choice, idea, or action is racist or anti-racist. Everyone contains some of both and will implement some of both. The goal is to tip the balance in the right direction.

Don't worry about whether you are good or bad; focus on trying to choose more good than bad. What matters at the individual level is the way we choose to behave towards others. Try to make more prosocial and equality-based decisions, take more prosocial and equality-based actions. That's all that matters.

We are tidal creatures; always giving and always waiting to receive; always arriving and always about to say goodbye. We are here and we are somehow not quite, a coming and a going, and in every religious inheritance, breath is the essence of that understanding, of our passing through, of our poignant transience, the way we appear and disappear. Our behavioural plasticity, or ability to adapt the way we act to context, is one of our defining features. We are fluid, cyclical, rhythmic. We flow. Choose to flow benevolently.

I love this.

World Politics Is a Shared Myth, One We Can Change from the Bottom Up

Stories become myths not because they lack factual accuracy but because they convey significance. They meet a human need for order, transform chaos into cosmos, and offer coherence in moments of uncertainty. They are collective stories, told and retold across generations, subtly shifting over time and place. All narratives convey meaning, but only myths convey the significance that shapes our understanding of the world, explaining we live as we do and helping us make sense of the world around us. Political myths are powerful because people act as if they are true, whether or not they are.

Myths are not new. They have shaped human societies since the first civilisations and remain central to religion and politics. Consider ancient Greek myths, from the age of heroes to the Trojan War. These events did not unfold as recounted but this is not what matters. What matters is that the telling of those stories, those myths, shaped political imagination and action for contemporary audiences. They conferred legitimacy on some authorities, justified certain actions, and delegitimised others. Social, religious, and political life were ordered within a cosmos defined by myth. Crucially, myth is not a thing of the past. Human beings, as existentialist Hans Blumenberg argues, have never overcome the need for significance and are unlikely ever to do so. From the audiences of Ancient Greece to those of today’s overwhelming media landscape, people seek to understand their world through the stories they tell and retell. Myths persist, even as their form and content change.

At this interregnum, where we see many of our seemingly long-established global norms beginning to falter, our concern lies with political myths about the international realm . . . What is unusual today is that the formal institutions remain, yet the myths that gave them meaning have eroded, and new ones have yet to form. . . . 

A new age of myth is taking shape. The global order is being reinterpreted through a profound shift in its symbolic foundations. . . . 

From Donald Trump’s talk of territorial acquisition, whether Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, or Gaza, to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, imperial aspiration has returned to public discourse with force. These developments signal the erosion of long-standing commitments to equality, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, alongside the collapse of liberal myths that once shaped global politics. . . . 

These stories do more than describe the world; they shape it. . . . Contemporary narratives of imperial resurgence and liberal decline are not neutral observations. They participate in a wider process that gives collective meaning and direction. . . . 

Talk of a new age of empires does more than describe events. It reshapes global politics. It makes territorial expansion seem reasonable and revives older ways of imagining space and power, such as spheres of influence and buffer zones. These ideas belong to the vocabulary of nineteenth-century imperial politics, and their return signals a deeper shift in how power is conceived today. . . . The power of this story comes not from its truth but from its capacity to shape imagination and guide action, much as Cold War myths once did. . . . 

They are not simply top-down narratives; they are collective stories that confer meaning and shape the world we inhabit. . . . within this void lies the possibility of creation. We are called to decide, to assert new myths that give form to the chaos, to will new values into being, and to prevent the logic of great power politics and the age of empires from setting the horizon of what is possible.

If we want structures, environments, and contexts that support more beneficial cooperation and less destructive competition, we need myths that lead to them.

A glimpse into current events via Rebecca Solnit.

When Love Thy Neighbor Is a Cry of Resistance

At the very heart of almost all our crises is a conflict between two worldviews, the worldview in which everything is connected and the world of isolated individualism, of social darwinism and the war of each against each. . . . 

Really the contemporary right would like to divorce cause and effect from everything. Theirs is an anti-systemic worldview in which they deny that, for example, poverty and poor health are very often the result of how the system is organized rather than personal failure, so they preach personal responsibility while denying collective responsibility and their own responsibilities, deny the collective overall. Margaret Thatcher famously said "there is no such thing as society," but we now know that societies exist even in the absence of human beings as forest ecosystems, ocean ecosystems. . . . 

At the very heart of the conflict raging in the United States is a conflict about human nature, a deep moral and philosophical conflict. I believe the isolationists will lose in the long run because they are not only out of step with the majority but they are out of step with reality and because theirs is an impoverished version of who we can be, walking away from the possibilities of love and joy and the sense of abundance and connection from which generosity springs.

In the opposite of the ideology of isolation, we recognize that everything is connected. . . . this cosmology of interconnection has grown more powerful and influential over the past several decades, thanks to many forces seen as separate but that all move us in the same direction . . . 

Responsibility sounds dismally dutiful, but reciprocity begins by recognizing that nature has given so much and therefore responds with gratitude and love, which makes the work not just giving, but giving back, a beautiful and natural response to abundance. (You can contrast that with the sense of scarcity and the manufacture of scarcity that underwrites capitalism's logic.) . . . 

This cosmology of connection comes from many directions. . . . the resurgent power of indigenous worldviews . . . Buddhism has come to the West in a big way and brought us many visions of interconnection . . . 

Contemporary biological sciences, from planetary ecology to botany, zoology, and neuroscience, have documented that we are all in dependent co-arising, that we are all part of systems and relationships, that each of us is not so much an individual but a node on a network, a plural being whose body is made up of billions of microorganisms as well as what we call human. There's a wonderful new field of biology called processual biology that looks at the world as made up of processes rather than objects, as phenomena forever flowing and changing and thereby exchanging with each other and changing into each other. It proposes that it is more useful and accurate to think of ourselves and most of what we call things as events. . . . 

For the survival of our democracy and our planet, understanding that interconnectedness, that capacity to relate and the abundance, joy, love that spring from it, are no longer abstract topics but an urgent political matter.

Myths, worldviews that cultivate cooperation. Reciprocity.

Wonderful analogy and imagery for understanding a complex idea.

Can You Rewire Your Brain?

The metaphor of rewiring offers an ideal of engineered precision. But the brain is more like a forest than a circuit board.

‘Rewiring’ is a risky metaphor. It borrows its confidence from engineering, where a faulty system can be repaired by swapping out the right component; it also smuggles that confidence into biology, where change is slower, messier and often incomplete. The phrase has become a cultural mantra that is easier to comprehend than the scientific term, neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change and form new neural connections throughout life. . . . 

Unlike electrical wiring, which follows rigid, fixed paths, the brain’s connectivity is dynamic and constantly changing. Neurons form and prune synapses – the connections between them – in response to activity and environment, a process governed by complex biochemical signalling rather than simple rerouting. Even when we can map the parts, the picture doesn’t explain the self. . . . 

The logic of neuroplasticity isn’t the same as swapping one wire with another. It’s more like a living forest where paths are gradually worn or abandoned based on use. It involves changes at the cellular level and can occur in response to learning, memory, sensory input and trauma. Importantly, while neuroplasticity is a lifelong feature of the brain, it is more robust during youth and becomes more effort-dependent with age.

This capacity allows the brain to adapt to new experiences, recover from injuries, learn new information and compensate for lost functions. Neuroplasticity is real, but it’s not magic. It has limits. It requires effort. And it doesn’t always result in perfect recovery or transformation.

Unlike rewiring a machine, plasticity is not as simple as replacing parts. It’s a gradual process and is often inefficient. Synapses, which pass signals between neurons, strengthen or weaken. New dendritic branches – neurons’ treelike extensions – grow while others retract. Entire networks shift their activity over time, but only under the right conditions, and these changes accumulate to support new patterns of function while overall mechanisms become less efficient across the lifespan.

Plasticity happens throughout life, but it’s shaped by many factors: age, environment, repetition, rest, nutrition and emotional state. . . . 

The old pathways aren’t necessarily erased. They remain in the background, potentially reactivated under stress. The idea that the brain is ‘rewired’ to function in a healthier way may offer hope, but it oversimplifies the reality. We build new trails, but the old ones don’t necessarily disappear. . . . 

The fact that neurons can expand their reach means that, if some of them die, others may broaden their territory to make up for lost processing. In general, the more connections a neuron has, the more it can shape behaviour. . . . 

While neuroplasticity resists shortcuts, it does respond to sustained engagement. Across the lifespan, brains that are challenged – cognitively, socially, physically – tend to retain greater flexibility than those that are not. This is not because any single activity ‘rewires’ a specific circuit, but because varied, effortful experiences repeatedly recruit overlapping networks: attention, memory, movement, emotion. Learning a new language, for example, activates distributed regions across both hemispheres, linking auditory perception, working memory, and executive control. Playing a musical instrument does something similar, coupling fine motor coordination with timing, prediction, and emotional recall. Over time, these demands encourage structural and functional changes that support what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve: the brain’s ability to compensate when injury or degeneration occurs.

The same principle applies beyond formal learning. Singing engages breath, rhythm, language and affect in ways that ordinary speech does not, which is why it can support recovery in some stroke and Parkinson’s patients. Physical activity – especially aerobic exercise – improves cerebral blood flow and is associated with changes in the volume of the hippocampus, a region critical for turning short-term memory into long-term memory. It’s also one of the few brain regions where new neurons are generated in adulthood. Social interaction recruits emotional and linguistic circuits simultaneously, offering a kind of neural cross-training that solitary exercises cannot. Even seemingly modest skills, such as learning to juggle, have been shown to induce measurable changes in grey matter after weeks of practice. None of these activities function as targeted neural ‘fixes’. Their value lies instead in repetition, novelty and sustained effort – the slow conditions under which plasticity operates. They do not override biology but work with it, nudging the brain toward adaptation rather than transformation. . . . 

If not ‘rewiring’, then what? Perhaps the better metaphor is not a machine being repaired but a landscape being reshaped. Neuroplasticity resembles erosion and regrowth: some paths deepen, others fade, and change unfolds unevenly over time.

Neuroplasticity is a remarkable capacity. It offers real hope for recovery, adaptation and growth. But it requires patience, structure, repetition and support. It is not a quick fix. It is a lifelong process that demands sustained engagement.

I made reference to this article recently in a conversation about early childhood literacy and the development of young brains, that some activities and practices lay the foundations for the paths that ultimately become reading.

Your nature is not inherently competitive or cooperative, you are not fundamentally good or bad. You are constantly, in every situation, making choice after choice to be more one or the other. Those choices accumulate. They shape the neural landscape of your brain. The choices that occur most often, repeatedly, grow and strengthen certain mental pathways; the ones that occur less have pathways erode and fade. You are not all good or all bad, all cooperative or all competitive, but what you choose most often reshapes your brain in ways that make it more likely to happen again.

It is a lifelong process that demands sustained engagement.

When you realize you are never going to be your ideal self that you will always be a mix of good and bad choices, you are able to plan for it.

Want things to go well? Plan like a defensive pessimist

So often we underestimate the time and effort required to reach our goals. You can avoid that trap with realistic planning

So often, we plan as if every day will be our best day. We plan as if we’re the non-procrastinating, energy-filled, mind-like-a-steel-trap people we want to be, and when the time comes, it turns out that we’re just our normal, well-intentioned but fallible selves. . . . 

Even those of us who believe that planning is important could often use some help doing it more realistically and effectively. Fortunately, psychological research has identified some of the most common planning pitfalls, as well as effective strategies for overcoming them. . . . 

Defensive pessimism is a strategy that involves assuming that things will go wrong (that’s the pessimism part) and thinking through what might go wrong in concrete and specific detail (that’s the defensive part). . . . 

What defensive pessimists do for themselves fits with what other research has shown about goal-setting and planning processes. . . . 

Key points:

• Optimistic plans often go awry. There are many planning pitfalls, but you can avoid them by being more strategic and considering how things could go wrong.

• Start with setting clear goals. Break abstract or vague goals into smaller, more concrete pieces.

• Give yourself a chance to make easy progress. Often, getting started is the hard part, so make the first steps of your plan easy to take. Then you’ll have momentum on your side.

• Write down your plan, if you can. Describe the steps, on your phone or on paper, to offload cognitive effort and highlight your progress.

• Think about how long your plan will really take. Avoid the ‘planning fallacy’ by envisioning what each step will actually require.

• Get feedback on your plan. Ask someone who knows you – and understands what you’re trying to do – whether your plan seems realistic.

• Anticipate obstacles and make backup plans. Ask yourself what could get in your way and have alternative courses of action at the ready.

• Remember who you are. Make plans that account for your preferences and limitation, rather than pretending they don't exist.

When you make plans for your realistic self, you are creating situations that are more likely to produce the choices and results you want. You are shaping your environment in ways that help shape your neural landscape.

Of mental landscapes.

It Pays to Be a Space Case

Are our moments of distraction—the daydreams and memories, the anxieties and reflections—really such a bad thing?

I called up my old colleague, neuropsychologist and author Ylva Østby, to find out. “Mind wandering is the opposite of control: It’s free,” she explains from her home in Norway. “In some situations, it is important to be able to control your mind and to focus on the task at hand, but that does not mean that mind wandering is in itself a negative thing. We just don’t recognize the situations where mind wandering is useful.”  . . . 

Studies find that mind wandering can play an important role in planning for the future and solving challenging problems, for example. Some psychologists have even found that it can help solidify memories, much like sleep does.  . . . 

“[Mind wandering is a] fundamental aspect of how we think,” says Smallwood. “People do this all the time and are permanently using it to think about the future, or other people in their lives, or goals they haven’t completed.” . . . 

 . . . he’s fascinated by the relationship between mind wandering and creativity. Much of his work has centered on the idea that losing control of our thoughts is not only normal, but desirable. . . . 

When our minds wander, they generate thoughts that are relevant and useful—at least to ourselves. We reflect on our actions from the hours gone by and ask questions about the days ahead. We think about our families and loved ones, our goals and personal challenges. And sometimes—if we’re lucky—we come up with solutions that are truly original. “If you want to do anything different in your life,” says Fox, “you need to create space for ideas.”

Studies that connect mind wandering with creativity often center on the idea of the incubation period. The concept is simple: by taking a break from a difficult problem, we can give our minds time to work through our challenges unconsciously—to let our ideas “incubate”—while we focus on other things. When we finally return to the problem again, we often find that the solution has suddenly become obvious.

Importantly, though, these incubation periods seem to be most helpful when they allow our thoughts to drift. . . . 

Indeed, many of history’s most revered artists and inventors had daily routines that incorporated periods of mental rest.

It's not better to mentally focus or mentally drift; it depends on the context and circumstances. Sometimes one is right, sometimes the other.

Of cooperation and interconnectedness.

Spirituality Can’t Be Reduced to What’s Happening in the Brain

Spirituality wears many faces. It can emerge in the awe one feels during a walk in nature, in the stillness of a secular meditation, in prayer at a church or mosque, or even through intense and painful rituals like walking on fire. Each of these practices is, in its own way, an attempt to transcend the ordinary – whether the goal is closeness to God or simply a deeper calm and harmony with life.

Researchers increasingly recognise that spirituality is a vital part of human wellbeing, whether or not one identifies as religious. Understanding this dimension of life isn’t just an abstract pursuit; it could help people better harness the benefits of spirituality for their mental and physical health. . . . 

Neuroscience provides remarkable insights into spiritual experiences. It has revealed, for example, how meditation affects neural networks associated with attention and self-awareness, and how these experiences alter the activity of the brain’s default mode network (DMN). It has demonstrated that contemplative practices can literally reshape brain structure over time. . . . 

Brain-imaging studies, despite their contributions, often strip away the cultural and contextual richness that gives mental life its meaning. . . . Moreover, brain-centred approaches promote a narrow focus on what’s happening in an individual brain, apart from the body and world in which it is embedded. . . . 

Scientists and philosophers have developed alternative formulations of the mind that extend beyond the confines of the skull. For example, the 4E cognition framework proposes that the mind emerges through dynamic interactions between the body (embodiment, the first ‘E’), the environment (embeddedness), our actions (enactiveness), and even the tools we use (extended cognition). Each of these aspects is needed for experiences, including spiritual ones, to come alive. . . . 

The 4E cognition framework and similar perspectives, such as ecological psychology and enactivism, suggest that transcendent spiritual experiences are not simply a product of neural activity but are deeply intertwined with bodily sensations and the surrounding world. From the perspective of ecological psychology, humans experience the world like a radio tunes into signals. A radio works through alignment: it resonates with the electromagnetic patterns already present in its environment. In much the same way, perception and experience arise through a bodily attunement to the world – a dynamic resonance between our senses, our environment, and the people around us. . . . 

From an embodied, ecological standpoint, these experiences are not confined to the brain but extend into the lived reality that we share. Just as a trained musician can detect subtle harmonies that others miss, a spiritual practitioner may perceive traces of the divine or the sublime in situations where others might overlook them. . . . 

What we found is that this spiritual practice is inherently collective, with coordinated bodies playing a crucial role in accessing the spiritual state. During the ritual, participants are advised to lower their gaze toward the ground rather than look at others. Yet, the entire structure of the ritual – the rhythmic recitations, the sound of voices rising and falling together, the subtle feeling of movement in those nearby – draws them into a powerful synchrony. It’s not only that their bodies move in unison; even their heart rates begin to align with one another and with the imam who’s leading the prayer.

Like a group of radios all tuning into the same frequency, the individuals engaged in prayer aren’t simply generating private, internal experiences. Instead, they are resonating with a shared, embodied and communal rhythm. We can see this kind of resonance in other rituals where people move and feel together, and their rhythms and emotions become intertwined – rituals that appear across various religious and spiritual contexts. Brain scans alone cannot offer a complete picture of what’s happening here. To truly understand spiritual experiences requires looking at all dimensions of cognition: our actions, our bodies, our tools and objects, our relationships, and the environments we inhabit. . . . 

Part of the reason behind the contemporary emphasis on meditation is our overemphasis on the brain. Spirituality is often treated as a project of mental control – as if the goal were to calm, train or rewire the wandering brain on its own – which often downplays the roles of the body, the environment, and the people around us. This may actually make spirituality feel harder to access. . . . 

By widening the lens, we open the door to more creative, inclusive and meaningful ways of understanding spirituality and living spiritually. One can dance ecstatically like the whirling dervishes of Sufi tradition, or find release through crying in collective mourning rituals like in Shiism. These practices, rooted in different cultures, show that there are countless ways to have transcendent spiritual experiences, including ways that, for you, might feel more natural, more emotionally resonant, and more aligned with who you are.

To truly understand spiritual experiences requires looking at all dimensions of cognition: our actions, our bodies, our tools and objects, our relationships, and the environments we inhabit.

We can shape our choices by shaping our landscapes, both internal and external.

While the science behind the MBTI is perhaps questionable, I've always found the descriptions of my type, INTJ, elucidating and useful. This came across my feed in an INTJ context and it resonates.

What I bring to the table:

• Ungodly pattern recognition
• Aggressive active questioning
• Silent observation
• Real-time theory building
• Behavioral analysis
• Micro-expression decoding
• Post-conversation autopsy

I share it here particularly because it relates to the quote I want to share from a book I enjoyed recently.

My thoughts about Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi:

This book is patient. Patient, detailed, deep, immersive, and enthralling. It's a story of intrigue and manipulation set in a world of intrigue and manipulation. A world modeled after the banking families of Renaissance Italy, their extra-governmental influence and empires built on concealed, indirect power. It's the book, I imagine, Machiavelli would create were he given to storytelling. Nothing in this world is as it seems; all is lies, misdirection, deception, and subterfuge. Success--no, even survival--depends upon one's ability to never give a clue to one's true thoughts, feelings, and aims.

Davico's father is an undisputed master of this game, of faccioscuro (a loosely Italian word Bacigalupi coins to loosely mean "face-obscured"). Devonaci di Regulai heads the di Regulai family's international banking business and, through it, controls the city of Navola--though not with ease, as his enemies are many. This is the coming-of-age story of Davico's early years, growing up in his father's house as the sole heir, trained by the best minds and tutors to inherit the family empire. And of, despite that upbringing, Davico's inherent gentle nature and inability to master faccioscuro. Davico is at odds with this world he is meant to dominate and doesn't sit easily with the role that is pressed upon him by everyone, friend and foe alike.

The story itself is not a gentle one that would suit Davico; it is dark and twisted and deadly. There is much hardship and suffering. I don't think it's a spoiler to say, since he is the one narrating the tale from it's inception, that Davico manages to come out of it alive at the end. Much changed in ways that no one--not he, his father, or anyone else who tries to influence him--would have anticipated (this is, remember, not historical fiction but fantasy), but alive, so the story can carry on. For, regardless of the book's impressive length and depth, this feels like the foundation for a larger story that will follow. And I, for one, can't wait to experience the rest of Davico's story.

This is masterful storytelling.

This excerpt from the book doesn't particularly represent the book or give insight into its story and themes, but I appreciate it in isolation:

These were the patterns of men, I realized.

This was not something I knew, it was something the dragon knew. The dragon had watched empires rise and fall. It had listened to thousands of conversations of men as they made caravans and marches through its demesnes. It had seen a thousand betrayals and a thousand loyalties.

This was not the knowing of the mystical, it was the knowing of patterns. Simple humanitas, observed for millenati. Wisdom. This was wisdom. Wisdom such as the philosopher kings of ancient Ebezzu could never hope to achieve, for they lived a single short lifetime, where the dracchus had seen all of humanity, for all of time. It had seen our petty human dramas and comedies too many times for anything to surprise it. It knew the intentions of a man perhaps before the man himself knew them.

And now, while we were bonded, I knew these things, too.

The mystical wisdom of knowing patterns.

The patterns, cycles, rhythms, and flows.

Shape the patterns, cycles, and rhythms to help you flow into the choices you want to be.

With Intellectual Freedom Comes Intellectual Responsibility

The fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual will select the good and reject the bad.

In general, I'm not fond of standing in front of rooms of people and presenting to them. I prefer to share knowledge in more informal and interactive ways. I find discussions, dialogues, and conversations, with their free-flowing exchange of ideas and feelings, much more pleasant and productive. I'd rather be a guide who is travelling the learning path together with my audience than delivering the overall one-way communication that is the nature of presentations.

Still, sometimes I'm asked to give a presentation that I'm excited about. Recently a local organization devoted to civic education and civil discourse asked my library to host their student cohort for the school year. Roughly 90 high school juniors from 9 different schools around our metro area. They gather once a month for a day, and in the second semester, after foundational learning and experiences, work together to create a comprehensive fact sheet on the topic of their choice (Immigration and Border Control, this year; chosen in September) and organize a panel of experts for an exchange of ideas.

In addition to hosting, they asked us to provide presentations on two topics: research methods and resources available through our library system and "the role libraries play in civil society, the library as a democratic institution, and our civic responsibility to seek reliable information." I enthusiastically accepted the latter topic, had a very good time putting together the content, and enjoyed presenting. It was well received.

Immediately before my portion of the day, someone from their team gave a lesson on The Perception Gap.

More in Common’s research on the Perception Gap shows that there is a gap between Americans’ perceived beliefs of those on the opposite side of the political spectrum than them and those people’s actual beliefs. Each party tends to perceive their opposite to be more extreme than they are, obscuring the middle ground many of us actually have with each other on major political issues.

When I got to the front of the room, before jumping into my planned content, I improvised a short transition. It went roughly along the lines of the abridged recreation that follows.

"The Perception Gap makes me think of the cognitive bias known as 'the fundamental attribution error.' A 'cognitive bias' is an unfairness in our thinking. Everyone has many, as they represent how our brains instinctively function. The fundamental attribution error means our human tendency to attribute our own actions, behaviors, and choices to occurring under the influence of situational factors and context; they are the result of where we are as much as who we are. On the other hand, we attribute the actions, behaviors, and choices of others as only determined by--and representative of--their character without considering their circumstances. We see ourselves as complex and nuanced; we see others as simple and two-dimensional.

"That's simply a part of how our thoughts process. Being aware of your own biases and perception gaps helps you learn to be more fair and understanding with others. The last presentation was all about building greater awareness of how much common ground there really is between those who see themselves as opposed and excluded from each other. Finding and working with that common ground is important.

"It doesn't, though, mean we need to try to be the same. Our goal should not be to agree to think, feel, and behave the same. Because a democratic society is based on the idea that we are different, that we can accept and embrace those who are different as neighbors and community, and that we can learn to negotiate among those differences to find a common good. Much of what you talk about in this program focuses on listening, respecting, and understanding others. Giving them full appreciation in your thoughts to overcome that fundamental attribution error and similar biases, to believe others who are different are just as complex and nuanced as you are. That's how you make democracy work: you share stories with each other, listen, and respond.

"And that speaks to the core of my identity as a librarian. I believe I can help to make the world a better place--that we all can--by giving our attention to the stories of others. Both living ones and the ones in books and other library material. Research shows that reading--particularly complex stories about those who you find different--improves your natural empathy. It exercises the skill of imagination it takes to put yourself in the shoes of others and see things from their perspective. And that's why I'm a librarian."

Here are the slides from my presentation and their brief speaking notes for myself.

Libraries, Democracy, Relationships, and Responsibility - The role libraries play in civil society; the library as a democratic institution and our civic responsibility to seek reliable information.

Who gets to use the library?

• What was required for you to walk through the door today and start using our resources?
• If you have a library card, how much did it cost?
• Did you have to prove your citizenship status to get a library card?

Everyone is welcome at the library

It is free

A few things require you to be a resident (not citizen)

If you want to check out our things, we want to know who you are and how to contact you so we can do a good job keeping track of our things—but that is all we need to know about you

Who owns the library?

The library is owned by “the public.” The residents (of the county).

Paid for by property taxes

Shared ownership; shared use – be good at sharing

Late fees: “market obligation” vs. “moral obligation” to be a good citizen

I’m going to throw a lot of words at you, so be prepared.

Ask: What do you see?

The central idea at the heart of all my words today: Civic Discourse requires Intellectual Freedom

What do those words mean to you?

What does the word “democracy” mean to you?

I want to go through a few slides of quotations from famous figures without spending too much time on any of them, as a sort of collage of ideas to help us get some big ideas into focus

"I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them."

 ― Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. President, in a letter to publisher Herbert Putnam

What did he mean by “national intelligence?”

“Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy—where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk.”

 ― Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress 2016-2025

Qualifier: “where information is free and equally available to everyone”

“A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.”

 — Doris Lessing, Novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007

“[Librarians] are subversive. You think they’re just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They’re like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn’t mess with them.”

 ― Michael Moore, film director, producer, screenwriter, and author.

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”

 ― Jo Godwin, Librarian and library profession leader

What does that mean?

Go back to “who owns the library?” Everyone. So: one of the library’s goals is to have something for everyone. A broad array of interests and perspectives. In Johnson County, for example, that’s roughly 600,000 different people.

The metaphor of windows and mirrors; mirrors and windows. Every person should find at least a few mirrors in a library collection, something that reflects their identity, experiences, and values; and every person should find some windows, things that give a view of different identities, experiences, and values.

American Public Square + Public Libraries

Why do American Public Square and Public Libraries make sense as partners?

Civic Discourse requires Intellectual Freedom

First, let’s look at American Public Square for a moment . . . 

From americanpublicsquare.org – middle of the page 

A healthy civil society is defined by strong communities and networks that encourage active participation. Members of civil societies:

• Embrace their duty to participate in the social and political life of their community.
• Recognize and appreciate the differences among them and are willing to accept and respect those differences.
• Work toward common goals and encourage the discussions and activities that ensure everyone has a voice.
• Honor and protect fundamental rights and freedoms, ensuring dignity for all.
• Believe in the importance of education and its vital role in creating informed, thoughtful and responsible citizens who contribute to their communities

From www.ala.org/aboutala – American Library Association: About

The ALA Mission: Empowering and advocating for libraries and library workers to ensure equitable access to information for all.

Our Core Values

• Access
• Equity
• Intellectual Freedom and Privacy
• Public Good
• Sustainability

What is your reaction to one of all of those?

I want to especially focus in on Intellectual Freedom today.

Access, Equity, and Intellectual Freedom . . . 

"I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them."

 ― Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. President, in a letter to publisher Herbert Putnam

 

"Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of president Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

"The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves."

― Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner

www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill – Library Bill of Rights

A quick look for context; we’re not going to read all of that right now. 

I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.

II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

VII. All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.

 

Adopted June 19, 1939, by the ALA Council; amended October 14, 1944; June 18, 1948; February 2, 1961; June 27, 1967; January 23, 1980; January 29, 2019.

Library Bill of Rights

ALL PEOPLE

MATERIALS SHOULD NOT BE EXCLUDED

ALL POINTS OF VIEW

CHALLENGE CENSORSHIP

FREE EXPRESSION AND FREE ACCESS TO IDEAS

RIGHT TO USE A LIBRARY

NOT BE DENIED OR ABRIDGED

EQUITABLE

REGARDLESS OF BELIEFS OR AFFILIATIONS

ALL PEOPLE

PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY

Adopted June 19, 1939

Who gets to use the library?

What does the library contain?

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”

 ― Jo Godwin, Librarian and library profession leader

What was happening in the world in 1939?

“All People” and “All Points of View” mean everyone. Democrat and Republican; Antifa and MAGA; KKK and Black Panther

Designated Petitioning Zones at all buildings for protests and petitions

Bothers even Library Board Members at times

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book is not right for her child. There is a colossal problem with a parent deciding that, therefore, no child should be allowed to read that book.”

 ― Jodi Picoult, author

This also means we don’t police what children check out and use. Each family decides their own values and limits.

Lots of sensationalistic press about “exposing,” “corrupting,” “grooming,” and similar

Locally, I’ve seen: “Libraries are worse than pornography stores” because we don’t “label” our “porn”

www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/freedomreadstatement – The Freedom to Read Statement

A quick look for context; we’re not going to read all of that right now. Here are a few highlights to give you the flavor of the statement:

• The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack.
• Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy . . . 
• Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms.
• It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.
• There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others . . . 
• It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression.

The Freedom to Read Statement

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.

 

Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee; amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004.

The Freedom to Read Statement

Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

The fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual will select the good and reject the bad.

“The role libraries play in civil society; the library as a democratic institution and our civic responsibility to seek reliable information.”

How do you “select the good and reject the bad?” --> Discussion!

A portion of this recently came across my feed as a meme, and I liked it so much I found the source. Concluding with it here seems appropriate.

A Prayer for the Tired, Angry Ones

Laura Jean Truman

God,

We’re so tired.

We want to do justice, but the work feels endless, and the results look so small in our exhausted hands.

We want to love mercy, but our enemies are relentless, and it feels like foolishness to prioritize gentleness in this unbelievably cruel world.

We want to walk humbly, but self-promotion is seductive, and we are afraid that if we don’t look after ourselves, no one else will.

We want to be kind, but our anger feels insatiable. 

Jesus, in this never-ending wilderness, come to us and grant us grace.

Grant us the courage to keep showing up to impossible battles, trusting that it is our commitment to faithfulness, and not our obsession with results, that will bring in Your shalom.

Grant us the vulnerability to risk loving our difficult and complicated neighbor, rejecting the lie that some people are made more in the image of God than others.

Grant us the humility of a decentered but Beloved self. 

As we continue to take the single step that is in front of us, Jesus, keep us from becoming what we are called to transform. Protect us from using the empire’s violence--in our words, in our theology, in our activism, and in our politics--for Your kingdom of peace.

Keep our anger from becoming meanness.

Keep our sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. 

Keep our hearts soft enough to keep breaking.

Keep our outrage turned towards justice, not cruelty.

Remind us that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. 

Keep us fiercely kind.

Amen.

― from the book A Rhythm of Prayer

The vulnerability to risk loving our difficult and complicated neighbor, rejecting the lie that some people are more than others.

Be fiercely kind.

Try to Remain Permanently Confused

The older I get, the more I need to be oiled.

I am constantly focused on getting enough healthy fats and oils in my diet, the olive oils and nuts and avocadoes and similar. I have generally low cholesterol, and I struggle to keep my "good cholesterol" high enough. So I've learned to embrace the oils in my food.

For a few months now I've been keeping a short, groomed beard. Which has led to my learning that beard oil is a useful thing to keep the hairs conditioned and soft. I add a few drops most days, and my hands appreciate being part of the treatment.

I struggled with acne as a teen and my skin and hair have always tended toward greasiness. I was worried putting oil on my beard would mean an oily face, but it hasn't happened. I've finally aged enough that I'm starting to dry out, and I can finally appreciate being oiled.

Another isolated, random thought on aging without much context:

It has taken me a very long time to understand that hunger, acid (reflux), and anxiety all feel the same to me, and I still have trouble figuring out which one I'm experiencing so I can have the proper response.

I think one of the reasons I've struggled to control my weight most of my life is because I instinctively eat in response to all three.

That, unfortunately, is about the extent of my original content today. I've been keeping busy at work and with life, anxious about the state of the world, and going through a minor wintering phase, so the time and energy for creation has been limited. I have, however, done much reading and thinking. The things I've found especially resonant and important follow.

Of the children's book Bad Badger: A Love Story by Maryrose Wood:

Why did so much in life depend on who ate whom? It made the simplest things, like friendship, so tragically complicated.

This is a gentle, nuanced, compelling story about love: love of self, love of friends, love of difference. About identity, about the categories that do and don't define us, and about how to get along with yourself and others. It's both cozy and complex, as a very unusual badger who enjoys the quiet, comfortable, polite life he has made for himself finds himself challenged to expand his comfort zone--to explore, adventure, and try new things--in an attempt to answer his nagging questions and learn how to get along with others. The book is inviting, accessible, and just silly enough to be fun while remaining contemplative. It's lovely.

Perhaps friendship was like that. Perhaps a never-ending parade of misunderstandings was to be expected. Perhaps there was always a sense of mystery about the ones we care for, no matter how fond we are, or how well we imagine we know them.

I am in love with the meditation on the word "belief" in the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte. Here's an abridgment (emphasis mine):

Beliefs invite disbelief. Even people who generally agree with one another are almost always irritated by the minor differences of interpretation they unfailingly discover on further conversation. My belief is never exactly your belief, and from a practical point of view, my belief can never be exactly your belief: belief is about fixing the world in place; no human being ever fixes the world in place in exactly the way their neighbor does. Therefore, in a never ceasing, moveable world, fixed beliefs are the beginning of all unhappiness between human beings. . . . 

The naming mind thinks we are jeopardizing our sense of survival by not believing one thing over another or one thing or another--the naming mind is right: beliefs are about survival, and shared beliefs about communal survival, not about really understanding anything to the core or truth behind the belief itself. Shared beliefs are temporary truces between argumentative human beings. . . . 

Beliefs held publicly, held in place and defended, are always predictable in their ability to divide the believer from the non-believer. . . . 

Beliefs are magnificent stories immobilized to narrow interpretations and then harnessed for a whole spectrum of human needs, but always in the end, when taken literally, as a way to garner power over others. Beliefs taken on by groups or societies always complicate and cover over the original spirit that originated the belief in order to preserve the power of those who now reserve for themselves the sole right to interpret the belief itself. . . . 

There is nothing wrong with beliefs held privately, except our belief that it is necessary for other people to share the same beliefs with me. No matter what innate goodness was in my original belief it is always, when carried too far, superseded by my belief that others who do not agree with this goodness should come to a very bad end. . . . 

Belief is often my act of defence and preservation: belief keeps a part of me alive that I know will disappear if I have a real conversation with the unknown. Beliefs must be defended, beliefs are the foundation of all dead-end arguments. . . . 

It is possible to live and to live well without fixed beliefs: borne along by the great flow of human experience, stories and mythologies out of which every fixed belief was wrought. . . . 

What if I could love the world just as it is and what if I could love everyone and every last thing in it, just as they are: untouched, untrammeled and completely innocent of my own, strange, coercive inherited, or invented way of seeing the world? Perhaps the healthiest belief of all, is one that disarms all the rest: the belief that fixed beliefs are the enemy of all human peace, personal and public. Through that belief we allow every belief, most especially my own, to be more of a curious invitation, a way to come to an understanding, a beautiful question leading all of us together, to somewhere better, beyond belief.

Be curious, fluid, open, and adaptable. Flow.

I always love the thoughts and ideas of Maria Popova at The Marginalian, yet most of the time the way she chooses to present them in her posts doesn't land squarely enough with me for me to reference them here. This one does:

How to Be an Instrument of Kindness in a Harsh World: George Saunders on Unthinking the Mind, Unstorying the Self, and the 3 Antidotes to Your Suffering

Literature, Saunders insists, can quiet our habitual thoughts just enough to invite “a little more empathy, a little more engagement, a little more patience,” effecting “incremental changes of consciousness on the part of the writer and the reader” — changes that have to do with unclenching the fist of story and certainty that is the self and hold out to the world the open palm of curiosity. He identifies three awarenesses we must eventually attain in order to wake up from the core delusions that keep our lives clenched, that stand between us and kindness:

You’re not permanent.

You’re not the most important thing.

You’re not separate. . . . 

Saunders offers the simple, intensely difficult remedy:

Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die.

The great writer’s gift to the reader are not better answers but better questions, a greater tolerance for uncertainty, a mechanism of transmuting confusion into kindness, and at the same time a way of seeing the world more clearly in order to love it more deeply.

(Emphasis mine.)

I liked many things about the book Walking: One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge. To start, what I wrote for my review (with, again, bolding added for the purposes of this blog post):

This book offers a pleasant, meandering stroll through Kagge's thoughts, feelings, and meditations about the act of walking, a mixture of his extensive experiences with walking, observations from them, the myriad benefits of walking, and philosophical connections.

If a bird sings while hidden in a treetop, I am unable to differentiate the sound that I hear and the bird that I picture to myself from other experiences that have taken up residence in my body. The birdsong that you hear is therefore not the same as that which I am hearing, even if it's the same bird. Everyone has his or her own collection of experiences, and it may be that the information you have archived plays a larger role than the birdsong itself.

The journey can feel random and rambling at times, as Kagge circles his topic to consider it from many perspectives rather than taking a direct linear route through it. At the heart of those circles is his belief in walking as a type of embodied mindfulness. It is encouragement to both challenge oneself to regularly encounter a bit of strain and hardship in order to fully interact with the world and to do it slowly, at walking pace, in order to become fully absorbed in those interactions.

Life is prolonged when you walk. Walking expands time rather than collapses it. . . .

So much in our lives is fast-paced. Walking is a slow undertaking. It is among the most radical things you can do.

I found this brief, conversational book a refreshing, resonant, and thoughtful read that turns walking into meaningful movement.

I also noted many bits I wanted to revisit and excerpt.

Making things a little bit inconvenient gives my life an extra dimension. For as long as I can remember, there's been a little devil inside of me who constantly tells me to choose the path of least resistance: to take a shorter walk than planned, to skip out on visiting a sick friend and go to a cafe instead, to put off getting out of bed when I should. . . . 

If you always choose the path of least resistance, the alternative that offers the fewest challenges will always take priority. Your choices will be predetermined and you will not only live un-freely, but also lead a dull life.

So much in our lives is fast-paced. Walking is a slow undertaking. It is among the most radical things you can do.

-----

"There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting," writes Milan Kundera in the novel Slowness. . . . 

"The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."

Kundera is on the verge of something that goes beyond memory and forgetfulness. The pace we choose when we walk can be decisive for how we think. I have tried substituting "memory" with "intelligence" in Kundera's equation. Intelligence can be many things but if you see it as the ability to think abstractly, as well as being able to apply earlier experiences to new situations, I believe that Kundera's maths works out well.

Emotions seem even less understandable than intelligence but it has nonetheless been a meaningful exercise for me to plug them into Kundera's equation. When I walk with a fast pace it feels like many emotions are held at a distance and when I slow down they return.

-----

When the Greek philosopher Diogenes was confronted by the idea that movement does not exist, he replied Solvitur ambulando: "It is solved by walking." Socrates walked around Athens conversing with people.

Charles Darwin went for a stroll twice a day and had his own "thinking path." Soren Kierkegaard was, like Socrates, a street philosopher. He wandered around Copenhagen . . . 

Albert Einstein fled into the woods surrounding Princeton whenever he was frustrated with his work, and Steve Jobs went on walks with colleagues when he wanted to expand his ideas. . . . " . . . the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow," concluded Henry David Thoreau. . . . 

When I walk my thoughts are set free. My blood circulates and, if I choose a faster pace, my body takes in more oxygen. My head clears. If my phone rings while I am sitting down, I like to stand up and pace about as I speak. My memory, concentration and mood improve after only a  few steps. "If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk," was Hippocrates' advice.

-----

 . . . a valuable Inuit tradition. If you are so angry that you can hardly control your feelings, you are asked to leave your home and to talk in a straight line through the landscape outside until you anger has left you. You then mark the point at which your anger is released with a stick in the snow. In this way, the length, or the strength, of one's rage is measured. The most sensible thing that you can do if you are angry--a condition where our reptilian brain rules our decisions--is to walk for a while away from the object of your anger.

-----

Is this culturally determined? I believe much of it is. If I had been born on one of the islands of Hawaii, I might have preferred surfing away from my problems instead of walking. If I had grown up in a family that practiced Zen, I would have chosen zazen, sitting with crossed legs, quiet, deep in contemplation. In Buenos Aires, I may have danced the tango, another form of walking. I have surfed, danced and sat cross-legged at various times, but as I am Norwegian, walking is the most natural way. It helps too that this is one technique I don't have to learn. It's something I've always done.

-----

Paradise is where I am. This is the thought that arises when I sit at home in my living room with a good book, share a meal with people whose company I value, or go on a walk.

-----

Fernando has accompanied many different nomadic people on journeys throughout the world. . . . Fernando has posed the same question to everyone who crosses his path: "Imagine you close your eyes and open them again in twenty years. What would you be happy to see?"

The answers are similar, whether among the Samburu, or the Maasai from Tanzania and Kenya, or various tribes of Rajasthan. Everyone thinks that what would make them happiest is to see their flocks healthy and fat. They imagine families together, relaxing and enjoying nature, which would be rich and fertile. "That's the harmony," says Fernando, "for those who wish to live in balance with nature. Instead of focusing on their individual needs, they look after the common needs, those of the community, in its expanded sense. From a son to a tree to a sheep." The answers mirror a longing to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Not only society, which is important enough, but something more. Nature has its own intelligence. In school, I learned that the spiritual was the opposite of the material, but in the woods these two are not opposites--they are equals. To walk reflects this.

I want to try to remember to ask that of people to see how they answer: "Imagine you close your eyes and open them again in twenty years. What would you be happy to see?" It seems a good way to learn each other and bond.

I have shared--and written here--ideas similar to Kagge's many times. When I walk my thoughts are set free. Most of the things I'm excited to write, I first compose and revise in my head while walking. When I was younger and more fit, I was fond of saying Trail Running Is My Favorite Form of Meditation. Now I would say that it is "trail walking," or hiking. But, really, the trail only improves what is already the key component of the experience: moving my body. I think best when my body is moving.

(See also: No One Will Believe You if You Actually Get It Right.)

I don't actually love this essay, as it spends too much time dissecting the thoughts of historical philosophers, yet it has good ideas. Most of all, I love the foundational claim: gratitude is the antidote to pessimism.

Most of the time, we think the opposite of pessimism is optimism; the reverse of expecting the worst is expecting the best. Yet, at heart, pessimism is feeling already defeated by past circumstances, which is why the future seems bleak. Nothing good will come because nothing good has yet occurred. There's a backward-looking component to it.

And, where optimism is future-looking, gratitude is focused on the present and the past. Being able to appreciate where we are, who we are, and what we have--and how we have come to these current circumstances--keeps alive the idea that the future will offer things to be grateful about as well. It is gratitude about what is and what has been that allows us to look toward what will be with anticipation that can balance any anxiety.

To be able to see the potential good in the future, you must first be able to appreciate the good from the past.

Gratitude Is the Antidote to Pessimism

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and why existence is a gift

Gratitude expresses a profound relation not only with our fellow beings but also with being itself. The big, so-called metaphysical questions--what is the ground of being? Why is there anything at all? Which comes first, the gaping absence or the fullness of creation?--are also questions about how we are to feel existence itself. And perhaps more than anything, we long to know how to feel about our own being, here and now. . . . 

It is difficult to remain in this state of mind. For if we try too hard, the cultivation of gratitude may itself become another pleasure trap; the constant effort to feel grateful and to dwell almost incessantly on the good may even lead to dopamine burnout—especially today, when we are already bombarded with so many excitements.

Furthermore, we do not wish to be duped by a shallow “let’s see things in a positive light.” Existence shows itself in many colors, including dismal grays, and one must be realistic about that. Yet here is the point: we all sense clearly that it makes a great difference whether we are stagnating, regressing, or moving forward, growing. In other words, there is an immediate recognition of goodness. And with a little reflection, we can see that there are indeed things we recognize as good: personal achievements, common goals of humankind, or even existence itself (after all, it is up to us to choose). Such recognition gives us a grip on the situation; it provides coordinates in an otherwise blank space. . . . 

Despite this insistence on recognizing goodness, gratitude is not so much about believing in the good and renouncing the evil (although ethical choices do have to be made in life) as it is about acting from the goodness itself. . . . 

The cultivation of gratitude directs our attention more toward relations rather than objects, and more toward experiences rather than mere knowledge. Furthermore, and this is crucial, it gives us a ground to stand on in times of hardship; indeed, it even allows us to create our own ground, to cultivate our relationships with others and with ourselves. For let’s face it: human life cannot exist without change, voluntary or otherwise. Yet if we choose to adhere to certain practices and to recognize their goodness, we create paths for moving through life—paths for going and returning. Or for taking certain things with us when we decide to leave.

Human life cannot exist without change.

I like this thought.

Writing Isn’t Just the Expression of Thought — It’s the Creation of It

Reading supplies writers with the raw materials for thinking on the page. Together, reading and writing form a single cognitive loop, and it’s only by engaging with both that we can transform the vague notions bouncing around in our minds into original ideas on the page. . . . 

Reading and writing are often seen as two distinct activities — one passive, the other active. We view reading (or listening) as simply an act of receiving, while writing (or speaking) is the act of giving. The written word acts like a kind of mental modem, moving communications from one head to another. . . . 

Originality isn’t isolation; it’s the synthesis of different voices and ideas coming together to form something new. . . . 

These influences are obvious if you’ve read the stories, but in true orchestral fashion, it’s the bringing of these ideas and voices together that created something completely new. . . . 

Reading and writing weren’t separate activities for Darwin; together, they formed a type of extended cognition.

As William Zinsser points out in Writing to Learn (1988): “Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know — and what we don’t know — about whatever we’re trying to learn.”

In that book, Zinsser argues that writing isn’t simply the act of putting thoughts on a page; the very act of writing is an act of thinking. . . . 

Reading isn’t just a way to onboard new information, and writing isn’t just a way to tell the world what we know. They are a way to think and learn throughout our lives.

I relate to this thought.

My spouse sent me this screenshot of our twelve-year-old's homework, which almost reads like a poem.

Algebra is very complex.

My dad is very distinct.

This individual in particular is quite special.

This is quite a pressing issue.

People with ADHD perceive the world differently from others.

This sentence is not super relevant.

Everyone plays a vital role.

The speck of dust is small and not very significant.

[My younger brother] and I are very similar.

I've been informed it was a vocabulary assignment where he had to use each word from the list in its own sentence. So only one word in each sentence is not his; all of the other words, including usage context are original to him. Which makes the sentence about his dad even better: the very first thing he thought of when contemplating the word "distinct" was me (and he's not yet reached the stage where he's embarrassed of me).

And I now I can enjoy adding to my bio statements that those closest to me find me "very distinct," perhaps in the hope that people will read too quickly and think it says "distinguished," perhaps in the hope that people will assume my unique characteristics are more positively different from the norm than negatively.

I recently enjoyed a journey through The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon.

Marvelous!

There's humor, madcap adventure, danger, oddball and outcast characters, an evil society of mad scientists, giant worms, etiquette school (danger), useful hermit crabs, and absurdity galore. And it's all presented with a narrative voice that feels like a highly caffeinated, manic cousin to Lemony Snicket; equally sarcastic, with similar sensibilities, yet much more animated and outrageous, and maybe influenced by reading a good bit of Captain Underpants. This story, as with Snicket's, centers on three unfortunate sibling orphans, each with a distinct and oddball talent.

Eugenia liked explosions and searching for expensive rocks. Dee-Dee liked building machines. And Gertrude was interested in things like bugs and beetles and what makes the purple feathers on pigeons sparkle and what makes soap bubbles have rainbows in them and where does a newt lay eggs and do cat whiskers feel anything and are guinea pigs related to pigs and how is a chili pepper hot and things like that.

This, too, is peppered with frequent narrative asides, commentary, irrelevant anecdotes, footnotes, and similar; but where Snicket's are along the lines of . . .

. . . a room with a cozy alcove in it--the word "alcove" here means "a very, very small nook just perfect for sitting and reading." (The Reptile Room)

. . . insertions from this book's narrator, Dr. G. Edwina Candlestank, are more like . . .

Millicent had devised a plan of entry that was simple and implacable, whatever implacable means. I don't feel like looking it up right now.

As you might assume from the book's title and similar evidence, the three sisters learn to apply their particular abilities to the practice of mad science--which, in their town, is outlawed and thought mythical--to save the day. Somewhat. Kind of. With much misfortune thrown in. (More books are coming!)

Yet, similarities aside, this is no mere imitator or knock-off. As a librarian, I start every new celebrity book dubious and with reservations, wondering whether its publication is merely the result of status and connections or if the author truly is suited to the art. McKinnon quickly won me over and I can now firmly say that children's literature is enriched by her inclusion. This book is wonderfully clever, outrageous, enthralling, and entertaining. And let me throw in a pitch for her narration of the audiobook, which is as impressive as it is fantastic. She is marvel at performing this story.

It's hard to find books as fun as this one.

For a further taste, here are a couple of the book's footnotes that I particularly enjoyed:

The Stub-Rat was bred in 1522 for the purposes of terrorizing children in a Dutch village. The children liked to sneak out at night to steal doughnuts from the doughnut store, stubbing their toes on the jutting cobblestones of the sidewalks as they went--then they'd be too tired the following morning to work their mandatory fourteen-hour shifts of plugging up the dam with chewed bubble-gum. So the mayor hired a Virologist named Geerten Van Beerpgen to breed a rat with razor teeth that could hear the sound of a stubbed toe from five miles away. When the children stubbed their toes while sneaking out to the doughnut store, the rat would scurry over and chew off their feet. Well, the plan worked, perhaps a little too well: The Stub-Rat systematically chewed off all the children's feet, then the dam flooded and the village was wiped out. This is, of course, a cautionary tale against (1) child labor and hypocrisy, (2) breeding giant rats, and (3) placing civic trust in men named Geerten Van Beerpgen. But I digress.

And:

[main text] Anyway, there comes a time when the protagonist has lost it all. It's not fun to write, and it's certainly not fun to read. Someone you hopefully have come to care about or perhaps relate to in some way is in pain and probably alone and doesn't know what to do next. Maybe it reminds you of a time when you felt that way, too.*

*[footnote] I know it does for me: I am reminded of the time when I accidentally locked myself in the basement of my house and had to stay there for eight weeks and survived on the one things I buy in bulk and keep in the basement, which is string cheese. I had hypothermia and diarrhea. After eight weeks, I realized that the key to the basement door was stuck in my hair.

Highly recommended.

After getting into current events pretty heavily on this blog a few years ago, I've taken my thoughts other directions more recently. But, for a taste of the larger context that is always in one part of my mind these days, here are parts of a post from Rebecca Solnit's Meditations in an Emergency blog:

This Cold Winter, Love Is a Superpower

The powerful nationwide and beyond opposition to Trump and his authoritarian power grabs has come as a surprise to him and his gang. They believe devoutly in the power of violence and do not comprehend the power of nonviolence. They understand the power that the state has but do not understand the power that civil society has. They understand their own motives--greed, a lust for power, an intolerance of difference--and are baffled or uncomprehending about generosity, the desires for democracy and equality that are about wanting to share rather than hoard power, the tolerance and more than tolerance of difference. . . . Some of us take pride in the diversity of our cities and country; some of us care about people who are supposed to be divided from us by category but can be united with us by care.

For many in the Trump regime it seems incomprehensible or a scam of sorts that those not categorically under attack by ICE are so committed to solidarity with their neighbors who are, and thereby to universal human rights, to standing up on principle, and since ICE's murder of Renee Good, will risk their lives to do so. . . . 

Apparently can't imagine altruism, solidarity, idealism, care that crosses racial lines, interest that is not narrow self-interest, because that is what is behind the way people are showing up for each other in this crisis. . . . 

The poet W.H. Auden wrote in a review of the final book in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, "Evil, that is, has every advantage but one – it is inferior in imagination. Good can imagine the possibility of becoming evil – hence the refusal of Gandalf and Aragorn to use the Ring – but Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself. Sauron cannot imagine any motives except lust for domination and fear so that, when he has learned that his enemies have the Ring, the thought that they might try to destroy it never enters his head, and his eye is kept toward Gondor and away from Mordor and the Mount of Doom." . . . 

This is one of our strategic advantages: they routinely fail to comprehend motives that are not selfish, so the idealism, the altruism, the commitment to ideals and principles, that motivates the resistance is seen as a cover-up for the real motives, which helps them cast progressives as criminal or delusional. Empathy is itself an act of imagination, that begins with attention and care: what is it like to be this other being, what are they feeling, what do they need. It arises from and reinforces a sense of non-separation, a sense that we're all in this together, that everyone is your neighbor and no one is a stranger. . . . 

It seems more and more that Trumpists live in a bubble they've created among themselves and with the help of online influencers and social media. It's a bubble in which coexistence with difference is intolerable, cruelty is to be admired and snickered about, racism and misogyny likewise smiled upon, and lies the currency of people who scorn the obligation to others, institutions, justice, and the public record that underlies telling the truth. In which a minority matters infinitely and a majority not at all. Sometimes when they speak publicly, they seem clueless that the rest of us see things so differently, or think that it doesn't matter that we loathe them. . . . 

They do not understand the powers of civil society and the power of nonviolent resistance and noncooperation. Another part is about human nature; they seem to assume that most of us are selfish and timid and will not resist once we see their capacity to dominate and do violence, that we do not care about anything much beyond our individual selves, or that we will see them as winners and admire winning so much we'll come on over. Like Sauron they suffer from failure of imagination. The thing they cannot imagine is us.

It is a time of conflict and change.

Also:

Anatomy of Extremism: What ICE Is Revealing in Minnesota

In principle, extremists primarily seek to harm people who do not share their race, religion, or nationality. . . . 

Extremism is the belief that an in-group’s success or survival can never be separated from the need for hostile action against an out-group.

Enacting harm on out-groups is risky, difficult, and costly, so extremists almost always seek to make the task easier by enlisting the entire in-group. . . . 

The extremist in-group is a movement based on a demand to harm out-groups. . . . 

The eligible in-group is the category of people an extremist movement claims to represent and from which it seeks support. . . . 

If the extremist movement can’t persuade the eligible in-group to enact harm on out-groups, it may try to change the composition of the in-group by declaring that dissenters have forfeited the right to their in-group identity. . . . 

An extremist movement that hasn’t consolidated control of the in-group often declares war against “ineligible” dissenters. . . . 

We’re seeing the early stages of this dynamic right now in Minnesota . . . 

One of the most important ways extremists seek control of the eligible in-group is by exploiting the socially constructed nature of reality. The theory of social construction is popularly understood as “consensus reality,” and its premise is simple enough: The world is too big and complicated for people to experience in its entirety. We can only understand the world through consultation with trusted others, who tell us what happens out of our sight and help us determine right from wrong. Put simply, we can only understand the world in dialogue with others. . . . 

Almost everything done by authoritarians and fascists (for whom extremism is an essential tool) can be understood as an effort to control the social construction of reality by amplifying selected in-group views and entirely suppressing the views of out-groups through methods that range from discrimination to segregation to genocide. . . . 

Minnesotans . . . are communicating a strong in-group consensus to their persecutors by turning out in large numbers and loudly asserting their condemnation through shouting, blowing whistles, giving sermons, honking horns, posting signs, and painting graffiti. These expressions of in-group disapproval can help defuse the psychological drivers of violence and undermine competing narratives and political power structures that seek to validate an extremist orientation and the repressive tactics that it justifies. . . . 

People around the country can support Minnesotans using many of the same tactics . . . 

For in-groups larger than a neighborhood, the consensus is therefore described and defined by institutions and individuals in journalism, politics, and the arts. These portraits of the in-group consensus are distributed through traditional and new media platforms, and none of them are neutral. . . . 

The consensus is won through perception. And when an authority figure, an institution, or an algorithm creates the perception that extremists are winning, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. . . . 

If America is to climb out of this era of rage and hate, those who stand against the extremist wave cannot just show up and expect to be counted. They must loudly demand their voices be acknowledged in every setting and institution of civic life, from business to politics, from news to the creative arts. . . . 

The winner of this struggle will define what values the American in-group stands for, perhaps for generations to come.

Reality exists in the interactions between us.

Finally:

A Lesson in Coexistence

The 17th-century town Cacheu was a hub of West African and European cultures, languages and beliefs (and run by women)

In fact, before the rise of nationalism as a worldwide phenomenon in the 19th century, shared lives in multiethnic and religious empires were the norm – whether in Christian European empires of the Atlantic world and Russia, or the Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. Understanding how these societies worked and what helped people to get along is probably one of the most important things that a historian can do these days.

So, what lessons follow today from the kind of world that Peres lived in? We learn that coexistence is both precious and fragile – easily broken down by greed and overconsumption, and by inflexibility. It’s clear that co-sharing in the lives of people from different backgrounds is key for peaceful coexistence. This means speaking many languages, participating in one another’s celebrations, and living in a world of more gendered equity. . . . 

Historians cannot resolve this, of course. But by recognising the different ways past societies organised themselves, they can acknowledge that the world can be different. It is through looking at different times and places that we can begin to identify the steps that are needed to change course in times of crisis.

Let's make sure multiethnic and religious empires are the norm.

So . . . in a nutshell . . . 

A never-ending parade of misunderstandings is to be expected.

There is always a sense of mystery about the ones we care for.

Beliefs invite disbelief.

Fixed beliefs are the beginning of all unhappiness between human beings.

Shared beliefs are temporary truces between argumentative human beings.

Beliefs are always predictable in their ability to divide the believer from the non-believer.

Beliefs are a way to garner power over others.

Beliefs will disappear if I have a real conversation with the unknown.

What if I could love the world just as it is and what if I could love everyone and every last thing in it, just as they are: untouched, untrammeled and completely innocent of my own, strange, coercive inherited, or invented way of seeing the world?

You’re not permanent.

You’re not the most important thing.

You’re not separate.

Don’t be afraid to be confused.

The great writer’s gift to the reader are not better answers but better questions, a greater tolerance for uncertainty, a mechanism of transmuting confusion into kindness, and at the same time a way of seeing the world more clearly in order to love it more deeply.

The birdsong that you hear is therefore not the same as that which I am hearing, even if it's the same bird. Everyone has his or her own collection of experiences, and it may be that the information you have archived plays a larger role than the birdsong itself.

Walking is a type of embodied mindfulness.

Life is prolonged when you walk. Walking expands time rather than collapses it.

Making things a little bit inconvenient gives my life an extra dimension.

When I walk my thoughts are set free.

The most sensible thing that you can do if you are angry--a condition where our reptilian brain rules our decisions--is to walk for a while away from the object of your anger.

A longing to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

Gratitude is the antidote to pessimism.

It is gratitude about what is and what has been that allows us to look toward what will be with anticipation that can balance any anxiety.

The cultivation of gratitude directs our attention more toward relations rather than objects, and more toward experiences rather than mere knowledge.

Together, reading and writing form a single cognitive loop; they form a type of extended cognition.

Originality isn’t isolation; it’s the synthesis of different voices and ideas coming together to form something new.

Those closest to me find me "very distinct."

This is, of course, a cautionary tale.

They do not comprehend the power of nonviolence, the power that civil society has. They are baffled by generosity, the desires for democracy and equality that are about wanting to share rather than hoard power, the more-than-tolerance of difference.

Empathy is itself an act of imagination, that begins with attention and care.

A sense of non-separation, a sense that we're all in this together, that everyone is your neighbor and no one is a stranger.

We can only understand the world in dialogue with others.

The consensus is won through perception.

Coexistence is both precious and fragile.

Co-sharing in the lives of people from different backgrounds is key for peaceful coexistence.

Imagine you close your eyes and open them again in twenty years. What would you be happy to see?