Always Look for the Invisible Batmen

I follow a Facebook page called Live from Snack Time that shares amusing quotes from children. I'm sure the owners shared this exchange between an anonymous parent and three-year-old intending it as the same, a source of amusement, but I find it particularly profound and wise.

"When I grow up, I want to get married."

"You have to find the right person."

"I am the right person."

That says it, simply and succinctly. If you want to be in a happy, healthy, successful relationship, the key is to focus on the part of the equation you can control: yourself.

So many people spend their time looking for the "right" qualities in others, they forget what they bring to the dynamic. When you focus instead on making yourself the right person, good relationships will find you--because what you contribute makes them good ones.

That doesn't mean, of course, focusing on yourself in terms of seeing only to your own needs and desires, being self-centered and selfish. It means focusing on making yourself right for relationship with others. Learning empathy and listening, developing communication and attention skills. Not being unhappy with who you are and learning to love yourself. Enough self-care that you're not needy and dependent on others for your happiness, sense of purpose, or meaning in life. Being able to give and take, learning reciprocity. All the things that go into being good with others, good with yourself, and good in relationships. Learn to be the right person.

The rest springs from that.

Of course, that's much easier to say than accomplish. There are times when I believe I am the right person. That I am the type of person I respect and admire, that I have worthy qualities, admirable skills and knowledge, positively impact the people in my life, and contribute to making the world a better place. That my thoughts truly are profound and wise.

Then there are times I doubt myself--everything about myself, existential anxiety and insecurity. That I'm far more egocentric than I realize, that thoughts I consider profound and wise are pedestrian and mundane, that I'm not particularly good at getting along with people, that I don't contribute anything significant--that I'm just another, ordinary person in a banal world of mundanity; that I don't matter and amount to nothing.

Though, "there are times" isn't really accurate. Both feelings coexist at all times, just in varied amounts. They are partners, ebbing and flowing in and around each other. I'm both unique and important and I'm just another nobody--both are true at the same time. My work is to feed the one belief more than the other.

It's a lifelong process, learning to be the right person.

The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely. . . .

Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.

― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

The following describes how I experience much of life. Not as a series of distinct details, but as a vague impression of layers and sensations, as patterns and ideas and emotions.

Cities are all the same. They have this sound, like a hum, that's the noise of people talking and cars and construction, birds and dogs and children playing, and electricity that kind of . . . bursts on your palate the moment you step off the plane. During the day it's louder; at night it's quieter. The streetlamps are different colors and it gives the whole place an aura. Chicago is orange, Paris is yellow, all the cities in Sweden are a greenish white.

Everyone in each city has different personalities, of course. But there is also a haze for that as well. People go on and on about whether a place has nice people, but I think it's more noticeable whether there is a strong community. In the nicer places of London everyone is so much more isolated than in the nicer places of New York. I'm talking about . . . well . . . that feeling where you know you can go to your neighbor and ask for a cup of sugar or stop someone on the street to ask them for directions. In London, they won't stop at all. In New York, as you know, you'll get a bunch of street names and lefts and rights. In Chicago, they'll say, 'I'm headed that way too. Walk with me and I'll show you the way.'

Each place has a different smell, but the base notes are the same. Steel, piss, hot concrete, sweat, and skin. If you're near a body of water you can mix that scent in too. And women. The smell of women and the perfumes they prefer layered over it all. In Paris the women like to smell powdery, like old people. In New York their perfumes smell like colognes, there's a lot of spice and complexity. Nordic women like to smell green, more like gardens than like flower blossoms.

And eventually, the entire city begins to make an impression, like a Rothko. Just a haze of layers and sensations in color.

A lovely description from Icarus by K. Ancrum.

All my memories are impressions, patterns, ideas, and emotions; a haze of layers and sensations.

This post is the same, a collection of ideas I've encountered lately that I want to dwell in.

All you have to do to find the long always of the possible is look for the crack called love.

Some recent selections from Reweaving the Web:

what signals love

fierce and delicate

as the bones of a bird

is not the dramatic statement

or the elaborate act

but the humble choice

to be present with both

the garbage and the flowers

in the long always

of the possible

from The Long Always of the Possible

love is a sanctuary

from armored living

it doesn't fuse together

it's not a reconstruction

of bones

but it provides

what we all long for

a quieted world

within the ribs of the other

evidence that we are known

from Look for the Crack Called Love

time is not a straight line

but one that is curved by

the currents of living

you do not have to see

the full measure of its bend

all you have to do is place

one foot before the other

and be surprised

from All You Have to Do

Make the humble choice to be present. Find sanctuary in evidence you are known. The future will always surprise. We proceed into it with the reciprocity of knowing and being known.

Thoughts about and from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad:

I can only assume El Akkad would find any praise I give this book to be empty words not backed up by meaningful action--and he wouldn't be wrong. He wrote this book to indict people precisely like me, liberals who ostensibly agree with his values and positions, yet do so mainly with words instead of more impactful options to influence policies. Still, he wrote the book as part of his effort to change hearts, minds, and narratives, so I will write in support of his work.

This book is a reflection upon his disillusionment with the Western promises of freedom, equality, and prosperity in light of its quiet acceptance of violence and harm across the world--most explicitly in the case of Israel's aggression toward Palestinians in Gaza. The U.S. may be experiencing polarization and a rift between the political left and right, yet in terms of policies and choices that are put into action--looked at from the outside in terms of consequences--the two sides create practically the same outcomes and are indistinguishable. This is his warning that if nothing changes soon, history will look upon our relative inaction to change circumstances the same way it does those who lived through slavery and other atrocities--that we should have known better and done more to stop it. This is his angry plea, elegantly articulated, for us to not wait.

It's a powerful and important perspective.

Selected passages:

It came to me, a long time later, that the Southeast Asian man had done something worse than dent a fancy car's bumper. He had violated the bounds of his assumed nonexistence. In this place, at this time, people who looking like him were to be invisible. They could perform labor and be paid wages, but as vessels of agency beyond the most necessary transactions, they quite simply did not exist. They were not subhuman, they were nonhuman, non-anything. To allow oneself to think otherwise risked having to contend with the reality that this whole place lived on top of people who looked just like this man. It risked an indictment of an entire narrative, a self-told story of being. It risked everything.

I return to the memory of that moment often . . . It's come to shape the way I think about every country, every community: Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place, and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever that nonexistence is violated?

-----

It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.

-----

The work of [challenging power] demands one answer the question: What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else's suffering?

-----

One day this will end. In liberation, in peace, or in eradication at a scale so overwhelming it resets history. It'll end when sanctions pile up high enough, or the political cost of occupation and apartheid proves debilitating. When finally there is no other means of preserving self-interest but to act, the powerful will act. The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing. It is very important to do the right thing, eventually.

When the time comes to assign blame, most of those to blame will be long gone. There will always be feigned shock at how bad things really were, how we couldn't have possibly known. There will be those who say it was all the work of a few bad actors, people who misled the rest of us well-meaning folks. Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn't the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended. . . .

One day there will be no more looking away. Looking away from climate disaster, from the last rabid takings of extractive capitalism, from the killing of the newly stateless. . . . One day it will be considered unacceptable, in the polite liberal circles of the West, not to acknowledge all the innocent people killed in that long-ago unpleasantness. The truth and reconciliation committees are coming. The land acknowledgments are coming. The very sorry descendants are coming. After all, grief in arrears is grief just the same. Entire departments of postcolonial studies will churn out papers interrogating the obliviousness that led us all to that very dark place, as though no one had seen from the beginning exactly what that place was, as though no one had screamed warnings at the top of their lungs back when there was time to do something. One day the social currency of liberalism will accept as legal tender the suffering of those they previously smothered in silence, turned away from in disgust as one does carrion on the roadside. Far enough gone, the systemic murder of a people will become safe enough to fit on a lawn sign. There's always room on a liberal's lawn.

Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place?

What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else's suffering?

One day there will be no more looking away.

Reminders of morality influence people to act more morally.

The "Batman Effect": In an experiment, a woman appearing pregnant boarded a train. In some trials, another experimenter dressed as Batman entered. Passengers were far more likely to offer the woman their seat when Batman was present, 67.2% compared with 37.7%.

The authors of the study concluded:

The study provides evidence that unexpected events, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, can significantly increase prosocial behavior in real-world settings. . . . .  Such “Batman effect” supports the hypothesis that disruptions to routine can heighten awareness of one’s surroundings and enhance sensitivity to the needs of others, ultimately promoting prosocial actions.

Yet in my mind I linked it to other studies I've encountered that explored how reminders of morality influence people to act more morally, as this article considers:

These studies point to something researchers call priming. That is, our environment constantly sends us signals that activate different parts of our identity. Seeing Batman reminds us of heroism, but not only in the abstract. It can actually prime us to act more heroically. The superhero costume serves as a visual nudge, pulling us out of our default, self-focused mode and into a more generous, attentive state. . . . 

Our capacity for altruism, patience, focus, and persistence is malleable—influenced by forces as simple as a costume on a subway or the way we phrase a thought.

The world is full of invisible Batmans, nudging us toward our better selves. The question is: What small cue can you introduce into your life this week to activate the hero within? It might be as simple as changing how you talk to yourself when things get hard, or placing a visual reminder of who you want to be on your desk.

As I like to say in my work speaking with children, small changes accumulate.

Always look for the invisible Batmen.

I actually googled the proper plural of Batman since I like the feel of "-men" better than "-mans." It seems both are acceptable. I'll go with my preference.

Which leads me to this humorous example of why, like many, I am passionate about my preference for the Oxford comma.

It seems Sylvia Plath was both a New York vigilante and Shah of Iran.

Sylvia Plath was a badass.

This blog has had many posts over the years that delve into the value of intrinsic motivation and how it can be undermined by extrinsic motivation. See, for instance, Green Grass & Goblins (which links to some earlier posts on the topic). My favorite summation of the idea comes from Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer: “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” This essay considers how too much gamification can turn play into work.

How Gamification Can Ruin Your Life

Gamifying every aspect of our lives risks turning striving play into achievement play. . . . 

And then I noticed something worrying: I wasn’t enjoying running anymore. Logging an activity became a chore. It was a compulsive need — an eczematous itch I needed to scratch. I had always used running as a kind of headspace. Therapy in trainers. But now it was making me more anxious than ever before. . . . 

We love to win — to compete and watch our score tick, tick, tick up. Gamification exploits all of those primal, competitive urges that got us this far along the evolutionary game. . . . 

In his book, Games: Agency As Art, C. Thi Nguyen describes two different kinds of games: some are built around “striving play” and others around “achievement play.”

Striving play is where the “point” of the game is some benefit that you win along the way. So, when I play chess with my dad, the point isn’t really to beat him but rather to enjoy ourselves and spend time together. When I go for a run, the point isn’t just to get from A to B — it’s the exercise and state of mind I feel.

In contrast, achievement play is where the result is the point. An Olympic swimmer is in it to win a medal. A football coach wants to win the league. There are poker players who earn their living by playing, and the eSports World Cup now has a total prize pool of around $75 million. . . . 

When I go running, the point is what happens along the way: the endorphins it releases, the fitness it improves, and the strange and wonderful things I get to see when I’m outside. But when I was running with Strava in my pocket, I was running for Strava.

In 1975, the economist Charles Goodhart coined what has now come to be known as “Goodhart’s Law.” This states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” So, for example, Duolingo’s gamification — the streaks, the badges, the disapproving owl — is a set of measurements designed to help us become better at languages. But when people log on only to claim the log-in bonus, what is the point? . . . 

Games and life both have goals. But there are different kinds of goals, and there are goals within goals. The goal of chess is to checkmate the king, but the point of playing chess with my dad is to spend some time with the old sod. The goal of running might be to run to Edgeworth Farm and back, but the point is to get fit and feel better. In life, we have professional goals: get a promotion, retrain, earn a certain salary. We have family goals: marriage, kids, a house. We have personal goals: run a marathon, join an amateur dramatics group, floss more. Life is an onion of goal-setting and box-ticking.

The problem with gamification is that it confuses one goal with another. It forces us to play a game that we don’t want to play, and it flattens rich activities into inert metrics. But as the sociologist William Bruce Cameron put it, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” So much of life cannot be plopped into a spreadsheet.

It’s a modern compulsion to optimize and measure. But the world is almost always more complicated than a neat measurement can present it, and it’s a foolish — and unhappy — person who reduces their life and relationships to a point-scoring game. Sometimes it’s better to leave the fitness tracker at home and just go for a run.

As a former cross country runner who wrote a college paper about my self-diagnosed running addiction, I absolutely embrace this idea. I long ago had to learn to stop tracking my miles or time, not wear a watch, and not consider a run an accomplishment; I had to relearn how to enjoy running as a pleasurable activity. I had to rediscover the value of the process of running and not focus on the results. The process, not the product.

It forces us to play a game that we don’t want to play, and it flattens rich activities into inert metrics.

It's not about what the activity produces, but enjoying the process of engaging in the activity.

what signals love

fierce and delicate

as the bones of a bird

is not the dramatic statement

or the elaborate act

but the humble choice

to be present with both

the garbage and the flowers

in the long always

of the possible

Make the humble choice to be present.

It's not about what the activity produces, but enjoying the process of engaging in the activity.

We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask

Could there be anything wrong with getting a reliable answer more quickly?

There is. By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity — and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world. . . . 

I left Google to study neuroscience, and what I found in the research literature helps explain why the A.I. summary poses a danger to learning. Curiosity, it turns out, is not just an individual’s desire to find out discrete facts; it’s also a feature of our biology designed to help us learn more broadly. And it requires a specific condition: a gap between what you want to know and what you find out. . . . 

Curiosity puts the entire brain into a mode of heightened receptivity — not just for the specific thing you want to know, but also for everything around it. Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board.

But the window stays open only as long as the question remains unanswered. When an A.I. answers your search query in three seconds, the window closes before curiosity can deepen. You got what you came for, but you also lost what would have turned curiosity into learning: the adjacent article you might have read, the resulting tangent you might have followed, the connection between two ideas with no obvious relationship.

Researchers call this incidental learning, and it’s the mechanism behind many serendipitous discoveries. . . . They emerge from periods of undirected exploration . . . 

Our technology is increasingly treating the territory between the query and the answer as dead space to be eliminated, when that territory is where most of the learning actually happens. . . . People trained this way become better at extracting ready-made conclusions than building connections of their own.

Curiosity requires a specific condition: a gap between what you want to know and what you find out.

It's not about what the activity produces, but enjoying the process of engaging in the activity.

Enjoy the journey of exploration.

Curiosity puts the entire brain into a mode of heightened receptivity — not just for the specific thing you want to know, but also for everything around it. Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board.

Disruptions to routine can heighten awareness of one’s surroundings and enhance sensitivity.

Always look for the invisible Batmen.

"As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul."

― Ursula K. Le Guin

All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

 Is Change.

God

Is Change.

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

Without the process of exploration and creation, there can be no change.

To shift gears a bit, an abridged version of the Ted Talk The Surprising Science of Alpha Males recently came across my feed. Here is an abridged selection from the full Talk's transcript, inspired by the video in my feed:

The term alpha male, if you look it up on the internet, you will find all these business books that tell you how to be an alpha male, and what they mean is how to beat up others and beat them over the head and let them know that you are boss and don't mess with me and so on. And basically an alpha male for them is a bully.

But I think it is used in a mischaracterization. It's used in a very superficial way that doesn't relate to what a real alpha male is. And so I'm here to explain what that is.

The coalition formation that goes on in chimpanzee society makes it much more complex than you think. The smallest male, if he has the right friends and keeps them happy, or he has female support, he can be the alpha male.

The alpha male has two sorts of obligations. One is to keep the peace in the group. We call that the control role, to control fights in the group, and the second is to be the most empathic, the consoler in chief, basically, of the nation, so to speak.

So first of all, keeping the peace. This is a male who stops a fight between two females. He stops the fight between them and stands between them like this. And it's very interesting to me that alpha males, when they do this, they become impartial. They don't support their mom or their best buddy. No, no, they stop fights, and they come up for the underdog in general.

And this makes them extremely popular in the group, because they provide security for the lowest-ranking members of the group. And so they become impartial, which is an unusual condition for a chimpanzee to be in, because they're usually very fond of their friends and so on, and these alpha males who are good at this, they can be very effective at keeping the peace in the group.

And the second thing they do is they show empathy for others. What you see here is two bonobos. The one in front has been beaten up in a fight. The one in the back puts her arms around her and consoles her. This is also actually how we measure empathy in young children, by looking at how they respond to distressed individuals. And high-ranking males, they do a lot of this. High-ranking males provide an enormous amount of comfort in the group, and they go to places where there are earthquakes or hurricanes and they provide comfort.

The pope does this. The presidents do this. All the leaders in the world have to do this job. The queen does it and so on. They all have to do this job, so providing consolation, and that's a very important task. And males who are good at these two, keeping the peace and providing comfort, they become extremely popular leaders

They don't do it just for the group, because it also stabilizes their position. The more popular a male becomes as alpha male and the more the rest of them respects them and looks up to them, the better their position is defended in case it's going to be challenged by somebody else, because then, of course, the whole group is going to support that male because they want to keep a leader who is good for them.

So the group is usually very supportive of males who are good leaders, and it's not supportive at all of bullies. And this is true for all the mammal studies on empathy is that females have more of it than males. But look at the alpha male. The alpha male does far more than anybody else. And so that's the data on alpha males being the consoler in chief, basically.

So the message I want to leave you with is that if you are looking at men in our society who are the boss of, let's say, a family or a business or Washington or whatever, you call them alpha male, you should not insult chimpanzees by using the wrong label. You should not call a bully an alpha male. Someone who is big and strong and intimidates and insults everyone is not necessarily an alpha male.

An alpha male has all sorts of qualities, and I have seen bully alpha males in chimpanzees, they do occur, but most of the ones that we have have leadership capacities and are integrated in their community, and they are loved and respected, and so it's a very different situation than you may think.

Full TED Talk and transcript

Alpha males bond the community by keeping the peace and showing empathy. It's about others, not self. They focus on the good of the group.

“Kindness is not weakness. To be kind in this unkind world is walking through a battlefield without armour or sword. It takes courage and strength to be kind.”

― Frances Hardinge, Island of Whispers

Nature is diverse. Diversity is natural.

Lesbian Albatrosses, Seahorse Dads, and the Freedom of Sex

Willow: What are some misconceptions that you think people have about the role that pleasure plays in sex for other animals beyond just humans?

Perrin: One of the things that did blow my mind that I did find surprising was, I found this 2024 neuroendocrinology of primates paper that quoted Audre Lorde talking about the uses of the erotic, and using pleasure as a bridge between sharers of pleasure for more relating and more connection.

Having those scientists saying that they want to ask science to orient more toward animals, studies that come from a place of imagining their capacity for pleasure instead of studies that assess how much they do or don’t respond to pain, rocked my world. We’re moving into a golden era of the sciences that this is what our generation is putting forward.

From an objective standpoint in science, we have been really resistant to actually identifying other animals as having pleasure. And that was a really fun thing about talking to Patty Brennan. She said to me some version of, “You can’t shake a stick without hitting a clit in nature.” It’s like, OK, so each of these animals has evolved to carry around this highly innervated organ that is solely devoted to pleasure. Not to mention all the new science that we’re learning that people like Ed Yong are helping popularize, like, “Oh, an octopus might have its brains in all of these tentacles. What might that mean for their experience of pleasure?” It’s not even about the genitalia. That’s just really clear evidence that these animals must be having pleasure in sex if we have those and we do too—or if we have all of these other connective systems in different kinds of bodies.

Willow: I think that starts to get at this really fascinating place where science is in this moment to me, which is that it’s clear that we need to create more bridges between us and other species, and create more empathy. And also, can we do that without trying to—and I think you and I spoke about this once—always bring other animals into our world? Can we go into their world? And what you were sharing about the octopus, what might that mean for their pleasure, even if it’s totally different from our own? Can we see personhood in species beyond our own, but can we do it in a way that really recognizes and appreciates the vast differences and doesn’t try to assimilate our experiences?

Perrin: I think about how, with the spider oral sex stuff, scientists are comfortable saying it’s male spiders who lick—or they don’t have tongues, but who are chewing and putting saliva with their mouth parts on the female genitalia—that tend to have more mating success, and they’re able to mate for life. That’s what they’re comfortable saying. That’s the extent of it because it’s the observed behavior. And then it’s like, “OK, so spiders see really poorly. They can hear and sense other things incredibly. They’re playing their webs like a church organ. So then what’s oral sex like for them?” I have so many questions. . . . 

Willow: If readers were to walk away with one shift in perspective from reading Poking the Squid, what do you hope that it is?

Perrin: I hope it’s that sexual diversity is a form of biodiversity. And that they identify as friends of biodiversity in all forms, and as accomplices and allies to the animals whose romantic lives we endanger, as well as any and all humans whose romantic lives or identities are under attack right now.

We need to create more bridges between us and other species, and create more empathy. . . . Can we see personhood in species beyond our own, but can we do it in a way that really recognizes and appreciates the vast differences and doesn’t try to assimilate our experiences? . . . 

Sexual diversity is a form of biodiversity. Identify as a friend of biodiversity in all forms.

An article and a meme:

Indigenous Cultural Practices Are a Climate Solution, Report Finds

The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them.

That’s the finding of research from Conservation International, which shows that traditional knowledge, community protocol, and Indigenous culture play a direct role in protecting forests, wildlife, and the environment. . . . 

The study builds on years of research that shows, among other things, that the world’s healthiest forests are on Indigenous lands and conservation efforts are more effective when they incorporate Indigenous autonomy and decision-making at every step. . . . 

“Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge cannot exist without Indigenous Peoples or without the ecosystems where we live,” Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who is Indigenous Mbororo from Chad and a former chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, wrote in a forward to the report. “To protect our knowledge, there is an urgent need to recognize us, and our rights and lands must be secured.” . . . 

Shrestha, Ibrahim, and other Indigenous experts said that as much as Indigenous peoples are asking for help, they are also urging the world to learn from them.

Indigenous peoples learned how to be friends of biodiversity.

I don't think a lot of people really understand that ecosystems in North America were purposefully maintained and altered by Native people.

Like, we used to purposefully set fires in order to clear underbrush in forests, and to inhibit the growth of trees on the prairies. This land hasn't existed in some primeval state for thousands of years. What Europeans saw when they came here was the result of -work-

The east coast was all mature and maintained food forests. Decades if not centuries of nurturing and maintenance. When the British arrived they were amazed that there were paths through the forest just "naturally" lined with berries and edible plants, like a garden of Eden. Then they tore that shit down to grow wheat. Dumbasses.

My mom is an ethnobotanist and getting people to understand this is literally her life's work. A lot of native tribes just had a whole different way of looking at agriculture. Instead of planting orchards in tidy rows near their villages, they went to where the trees were already growing and tended them there. They would girdle trees by stripping the bark in order to stop the spread of disease or thin out badly placed saplings. And they would encourage the companion plants they wanted and weed out the ones they didn't, so that in the end the whole forest would be productive while remaining an ecosystem and not a monoculture. It is still agriculture, but it is a form of agriculture that is so much gentler on the landscape that, as OP says, the European settlers could not recognize what they were seeing. To them the natives must have seemed to magically live in abundance while they starved.

Indigenous stewardship bonds the community by keeping the peace and showing empathy. It's about others, not self. It focuses on the good of the whole.

All my memories are

impressions,

patterns,

ideas, and

emotions;

a haze of layers and sensations.

Disruptions to routine can

heighten awareness of one’s surroundings

and enhance sensitivity.

Make the humble choice to be present.

Find sanctuary in evidence you are known.

The future will always surprise.

Curiosity requires a specific condition:

a gap between what you want to know and what you find out.

Without the process of exploration and creation,

there can be no change.

It's not about what the activity produces,

but enjoying the process of engaging in the activity.

Alpha males bond the community

by keeping the peace and showing empathy.

It's about others, not self.

They focus on the good of the group.

Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place?

What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else's suffering?

One day there will be no more looking away.

Stewardship bonds the community

by keeping the peace and showing empathy.

It's about others, not self.

It focuses on the good of the whole.

It's a lifelong process, learning to be the right person.

It takes courage and strength to be kind.

Identify as a friend of biodiversity in all forms.

Proceed into it with the reciprocity of knowing and being known.

All you have to do

to find the long always of the possible

is look for the crack called love.

Significantly increase prosocial behavior in real-world settings:

Always look for the invisible Batmen.

I am the right person.

Cry Out to Be Witnessed

Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?

What does it mean to be public?

Alone or with others, I make my identity at the edge between what I think is me and what I think is other than me; therefore all identities are by definition public, and are shaped by what we are witnessed by, whether it is by the face of a single loved one, my own face in the mirror, a conference crowd, a sea of voters, or a far, beckoning horizon of mountain and sky. . . . 

My identity lives in eternal conversation, spoken or unspoken. I am never, ever alone, I have a public self, even on a solitary walk in the woods: even in silence, something is hearing me hearing the birds, something is seeing the way I am perceiving the trees, something is always in parallel, just as alive as I am. I walk in mutual witness even when unwitnessed by other human beings. . . . 

To become human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To become fully human is to become equally appreciative of all the gifts emerging from the hearts and minds of others. . . . 

The arena of public invitation, whether as participant or witness, is the edge where a human being feels most vulnerable and most afraid, but also where they can most flower and where they can feel most alive, and most deserving to be alive. Being public is always a test of the generosity of our spirit. There is no inner life that does not cry out to be witnessed, that does not long for an outer expression of what it intuits but has net yet brought into being. Our public life is not the opposite of our private life, our public life is simply the other necessary, nourishing, life-giving half of our abidingly private being.

― David Whyte, in Consolations II

We are all always public. Life is relational. To become human is to become visible; to become human is to see others. You are individual and collective in equal measure, simultaneously, at all times.

Some thoughts about the book Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg:

Excellent. Just excellent.

I have to admit the cover made me a bit skeptical, worried it might be a shallow, one-size-fits-all-formula book, overselling its claims with limited support, complexity, or nuance. But I was familiar with Duhigg's name from many others I respect recommending his work, so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

This is a clear, insightful guide to how to become a better communicator. It's not a formula for becoming "super," it's a primer on what effective communicators do and advice for how to learn from their example. Duhigg presents deep research from a range of experts in an accessible, easy way and breaks down complicated elements of conversation into bite-sized parts. He's an excellent writer, and the information he presents is both smart and wise.

This is a book that everyone can benefit from. Highly recommended.

In fact, it is so insightfully helpful that my intention to mark key ideas for review later turned into a lengthy collection of quoted passages. It’s almost a micro-abridgement that captures much of the essence of the book. Enough that, I hope, it has value on its own.

Introduction

Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a "learning conversation." Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.

-----

To become a supercommunicator, all we need to do is listen closely to what's said and unsaid, ask the right questions, recognize and match others' moods, and make our own feelings easy for others to perceive.

Simple, right?

Well, no, of course not. Each of those tasks is difficult on its own. Together, they can seem impossible.

-----

There are three kinds of conversation that dominate most discussions.

These three conversations--which correspond to practical decision-making conversations, emotional conversations, and conversations about identity--are best captured by three questions: What's This Really About?, How Do We Feel?, and Who Are We? Each of these conversations draws on a different type of mindset and mental processing.

-----

This insight--that communication comes from connection and alignment--is so fundamental that it has become known as the matching principle: Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other. One a very basic level, if someone seems emotional, allow yourself to become emotional as well. If someone is intent on decision making, match that focus. If they are preoccupied by social implications, reflect their fixation back to them.

-----

Different needs require different types of communication, and those different kinds of interaction--helping, hugging, hearing--each correspond to a different kind of conversation.

Do you want to be: Helped (a practical What's This Really About? conversation); Hugged (an emotional How Do We Feel? conversation); or Heard (a more social Who Are We? conversation)?

-----

What's This Really About? Conversations

Every conversation is a negotiation. . . . 

Some researchers call this process a quiet negotiation: A subtle give-and-take over which topics we'll dive into and which we'll skirt around; the rules for how we'll speak and listen. . . . 

The first step of a quiet negotiation is figuring our what people want from a conversation. The second step is determining how we're going to make choices together--and that means deciding if this is a rational conversation or an empathetic one. Are we going to make decisions through analysis and reason, or through empathy and narratives?

-----

Matching is understanding someone's mindset--what kind of logic they find persuasive, what tone and approach makes sense to them--and then speaking their language. And it requires explaining clearly how we, ourselves, are thinking and making choices, so that others can match us in return. When someone describes a personal problem by telling a story, they are signaling they want our compassion rather than a solution. When they lay out all the facts analytically, they are signaling they are more interested in a rational conversation than an emotional one. We can all learn to get better at noticing these clues and conducting the experiments that reveal them.

How Do We Feel? Conversations

Why the Fast Friends Procedure is so effective . . . There is a cycle: Asking deep questions about feelings, values, beliefs, and experiences creates vulnerability. That vulnerability triggers emotional contagion. And that, in turn, helps us connect.

 . . . Asking Questions (creates) --> Vulnerability --> (triggers) --> Emotional Contagion --> (elicits) --> Connection --> (prompts) --> Asking Questions --> (creates) --> Vulnerability --> (triggers) --> Emotional Contagion --> (elicits) --> Connection --> (prompts) --> Asking Questions --> . . . 

Emotional connection is triggered by asking deep questions and reciprocating vulnerability.

-----

Shallow questions can become deep:

• Where do you live? --> What do you like about your neighborhood?
• Where do you work? --> What was your favorite job?
• Where did you go to college? --> What was the best part of college?
• Are you married? --> Tell me about your family.
• How long have you lived here? --> What's the best place you've ever lived?
• Do you have any hobbies? --> If you could learn anything, what would it be?
• Where did you go to high school? --> What advice would you give a high schooler?
• Where are you from? --> What's the best thing about where you grew up?

-----

We all want to have meaningful conversations.

Dozens of other studies . . . found that people who ask lots of questions during conversations--particularly questions that invite vulnerable responses--are more popular among their peers and more often seen as leaders. They have more social influence and are sought out more frequently for friendship and advice. Any of us can do this in nearly any setting or conversation, be it with a roommate, a coworker, or someone we just met. We simply need to ask people how they feel and reciprocate the vulnerability they share with us.

-----

We exhibit emotional intelligence by showing people that we've heard their emotions--and the way we do that is by noticing, and then matching, their mood and energy. Mood and energy are nonlinguistic tools for creating emotional connection. . . . 

[Is their mood positive or negative? Their energy high or low?] . . . 

One of the reasons supercommunicators are so talented at picking up on how others feel is because they have a habit of noticing the energy in others' gestures, the volume of their voices, how fast they are speaking, their cadence and affect. They pay attention to whether someone's posture indicates they are feeling down, or if they are so excited they can barely contain it. Supercommunicators allow themselves to match that energy and mood, or at least acknowledge it, and thereby make it clear they want to align. They help us see and hear our feelings via their own bodies and voices. By matching our mood and energy, they make it obvious they are trying to connect.

-----

When we match or acknowledge another person's mood and energy, we show them that we want to understand their emotional life. It's a form of generosity that becomes empathy. It makes it easier to discuss How Do We Feel?

-----

The goal of discussing a conflict . . . is figuring out why a conflict exists in the first place.

Combatants--be they arguing spouses or battling coworkers--have to determine why this fight has emerged and what is fueling it, as well as the stories they are all telling themselves about why this conflict persists. They need to work together to determine if there are any "zones of possible agreement," and have to arrive at a mutual understanding about why this dispute matters, and what's needed for it to end. This kind of understanding, alone, won't guarantee peace. But without it, peace is impossible.

-----

This is the real reason why so many conflicts persist: Not because of a lack of solutions or because people are unwilling to compromise, but because combatants don't understand why they are fighting in the first place. They haven't discussed the deeper topics--the emotional issues--that are inflaming the dispute. And they've avoided that emotional discussion because they don't want to admit they are furious and sad and worried. In other words, they don't want to talk about How Do We Feel?, even though it's the most important conversation to have.

In a conflict, we learn why we are fighting by discussion emotions.

-----

To convince others we are genuinely listening during an argument, we must prove to them that we have heard them, prove we are working hard to understand, prove we want to see things from their perspective. . . . 

When someone proves they're listening it creates "a sense of psychological safety because [the listener] instills a confidence in the speaker that at least their arguments will receive full consideration and will, thus be evaluated based on their real worth." When people believe that others are trying to understand their perspectives, they become more trusting, more willing "to express their thoughts and ideas." The "sense of safety, value, and acceptance" that comes from a believing partner is genuinely listening makes us more willing to reveal our own vulnerabilities and uncertainties. If you want someone to expose their emotions, the most important step is convincing them you are listening closely to what they say.

-----

It's a fairly simple technique--prove you are listening by asking the speaker questions, reflecting back what you just heard, and then seeking confirmation you understand--but studies show it is the single most effective technique for proving to someone that we want to hear them. It's a formula sometimes called looping for understanding. The goal is not to repeat what someone has said verbatim, but rather to distill the other person's thoughts in your own words, prove you are working hard to understand and see their perspective--and then repeat the process, again and again, until everyone is satisfied. . . . People who engage in it are seen as "better teammates, advisors" and "more desirable partners for future collaboration."

-----

Methods like looping for understanding are powerful because even when people lead very dissimilar lives, they can often find emotional similarities with one another. "We've all experienced fear and hope and anxiety and love," she told me. By creating an environment where people are invited to discuss their emotions, and then prove to one another they want to understand, we foster trust, even among people accustomed to seeing each other as foes.

---

Looping for understanding demonstrates we want to hear.

This benefit is important because it helps establish reciprocal vulnerability. Emotional reciprocity doesn't come from simply describing our own feelings but, rather, providing "empathetic support." Reciprocity is nuanced. . . . 

We reciprocate vulnerability by:

• Looping for understanding
• Looking for what someone needs
• Asking permission
• Giving something in return

Reciprocity isn't about matching vulnerability to vulnerability, or sorrow to sorrow. Rather, it is being emotionally available, listening to how someone feels and what they need, and sharing our own emotional reactions.

Who Are We? Conversations

Our social identities push us unthinkingly to see people like us--what psychologists call our in-group--as more virtuous and intelligent, while those who are different--the out-group--as suspicious, unethical, and possibly threatening. Social identities help us relate to others, but they can also perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice.

-----

It's crucial, in a Who Are We? conversation, to remind ourselves that we all possess multiple identities: We are parents but also siblings; experts in some topics and novices in others; friends and coworkers and people who love dogs but hate to jog. We are all of these simultaneously, so no one stereotype describes us fully. We all contain multitudes that are just waiting to be expressed.

-----

Social dialogues--Who Are We? conversations--are gateways to deeper understanding and more meaningful connections. But we need to allow these discussions to become deep, to evoke our many identities and express our shared experiences and beliefs. The Who Are We? conversation is powerful not only because we bond over what we have in common, but because it lets us share who we really are.

-----

 . . . Telling someone they belong to a group they abhor --> (triggers) --> Identity threat --> (causes) --> Defensiveness --> (prompts) --> Counter-attacks --> (which take the form of) --> Telling someone they belong to a group they abhor --> (triggers) --> Identity threat --> (causes) --> Defensiveness --> (prompts) --> Counter-attacks --> (which take the form of) --> Telling someone they belong to a group they abhor . . . 

We've all felt the sting of identity threat at some point, or have said something we didn't intend as offensive but which came off as insensitive. The mere possibility of identity threat frequently stops people from talking about Who Are We? In a 2021 study, 70 percent of participants said they saw real risks to participating in a dialogue about race, even with friends. "Black friends worry their white friends will say something racist, maybe unintentionally, and it will damage the friendship," said Kiara Sanchez, the researcher who led that study. "And white friends worry they'll say something prejudiced by accident. So there's a lot of anxiety on both sides."

-----

These kinds of discussions will almost never be perfect. But perfection is not the goal. As Myers told me, "most of the work is about gaining awareness of yourself, your culture, and the culture of others." The goal is to recognize our own biases, "who we might be excluding or including."

Or, as Kiara Sanchez put it, the aim is not to "neutralize the discomfort, but rather give people a framework for persevering through it. It seems like a minor distinction, but the underlying theory is that discomfort can be helpful." Discomfort pushes us to think before we speak, to try to understand how others see or hear things differently. Discomfort reminds us to keep going, that the goal is worth the challenge.

-----

Companies, like societies, will always have disagreements. Compromise is not always possible, or sometimes even the goal. Often the best we can hope for is understanding. It is through understanding and dialogue, that a community, and a democracy, thrives. When we create space to discuss conflicting beliefs, we make connection more likely.

-----

Difficult conversations are hard because they can threaten someone's sense of self: Our discussion with an employee about their performance might seem, to them, like criticisms of their work ethic, intelligence, or personality. Telling a boss that you deserve a bigger paycheck could sound, to the boss herself, as if you are accusing her of being uncaring. Asking a spouse to change can sometimes come off as an attack on who they are. An uncle is likely to hear your concerns about his alcohol consumption as a criticism of how he lives.

But these conversations are not just essential, they are unavoidable. So it is important that we are mindful of the last rule for a learning conversation: Explore if identities are important to this discussion. . . . 

As the discussion unfolds:

• Draw out multiple identities
• Work to ensure everyone is on equal footing
• Acknowledge people's experiences and look for genuine similarities
• Manage your environment

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Conclusion

In many ways I wrote this book for myself. After I had failed as a manager at work and was wondering why I had become someone who couldn't seem to read cues or hear what others were saying, I realized I might need to reevaluate how I communicated. . . . 

I began calling neurologists and psychologists and sociologists and other experts, asking them how it was possible that I--someone who has been communicating my whole life!--could still get it so wrong. This book is the result of that journey. . . . 

I've tried to have learning conversations in every part of my life, and it has helped me listen more than I used to. I try to ask more questions--both to determine what people want out of a conversation and to explore the deep, meaningful, and emotional parts of life where real connection occurs. I try to reciprocate others' happiness and sadness, as well as their admissions and vulnerabilities, when I'm lucky enough to encounter them, and own up more freely to my own mistakes, feelings, and who I am. As a result, I feel closer to the people around me, more connected to my family, friends, colleagues--and, most of all, more thankful for these relationships than ever before.

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The Learning Conversation:

• Rule One: Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring.
• Rule Two: Share your goals, and ask what others are seeking.
• Rule Three: As about others' feelings, and share your own.
• Rule Four: Explore if identities are important to this discussion.

Every conversation is a negotiation

Ask deep questions and reciprocate vulnerability

Match mood and energy

Loop for understanding

We all want to have meaningful conversations

We learn why we are fighting by discussion emotions

We all possess multiple identities

Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?

To switch gears a bit, something from Reweaving the Rainbow:

the distance between

mystery and understanding

is the same distance

between children and adults

turn toward curiosity

wander the weird and see how

nothing in nature is strange

it is simply reality

showing off

Wander the weird.

We are all always public. Life is relational. To become human is to become visible; to become human is to see others. You are individual and collective in equal measure, simultaneously, at all times.

What does it mean as, more and more, a part of the collective is Artificial Intelligence?

Imagination Is Not Escapism, It Brings Us Closer to Reality

Like any skill, imagination improves with use. But also like any skill, imagination atrophies with disuse. This brings us back to the worry with which we began. When we don’t make time for imaginative activities, and when we outsource our creative tasks to AI, we allow our imagination skill to wither away. And that is a serious cause for concern. . . . 

As a general matter, our decision-making practices are underlain by acts of imagination. When it’s time to decide what college to attend, or what career to embark on, or whether to get married, or whether to have children, we imagine the different alternatives. We imaginatively put ourselves in the shoes of our future possible selves in an effort to figure out which of those selves is the one that we want to become. But once our imaginations have atrophied, once we are entirely out of practice in conducting these kinds of imaginative simulations, we lose the ability to make good decisions for ourselves.

The same dialectic plays out on a societal scale. AI can provide us with all sorts of data about possible societal outcomes, but with an atrophied imagination, we are unable to see these possibilities for ourselves, and we are unable to imaginatively compare them in an effort to make choices between them. The deskilling of imagination thus not only threatens our personal futures but our societal futures as well.

Confronted with this potentiality, it is easy to see why it is crucially important to make time for imagination. Imagination may be the source of whimsy, but it is also the source of knowledge. In short, as the philosopher Jose Medina has put it, “Imagination is not a luxury or a privilege, but a necessity.”

Turn toward curiosity; wander the weird; make time for imagination.

This essay is from Houda Nait El Barj, who, the link says, is a researcher at OpenAI focused on advancing AI systems that support human flourishing. It's her job to focus on our relationships with AI.

How AI Will Change Us

When the most patient, well-read, emotionally responsive conversationalist in the world is always available, what will we still need from one another?

We will not need less. We will need something stranger. The goods that will matter most in the next decade are those that AI makes harder to find: This isn’t information or emotional responsiveness, but participation in the shared condition of being alive. . . .

We do not choose the world we are born into; we are “thrown” into bodies, languages, families, histories, religions, class structures and wounds that precede us. This is the part of being human that technology has the hardest time touching. . . .

Every time we talk to it, we learn what it feels like to be listened to without friction. Over time, this feeling will change us. . . .

AI can interpret my grief. It cannot grieve. It can model hunger, but it has never been hungry. It can describe shame, but it has no body through which shame floods. It can remember my childhood as I’ve described it, but it did not survive childhood. It can discuss death with perfect serenity because it does not live under death as a horizon. This is not an argument about machine consciousness. This is simpler. A human being does not merely understand suffering as a concept. A human being participates in the condition that makes suffering possible. A human being is implicated. . . .

A human partner is not optimized for you. They have moods, smells, histories, obligations. They disappoint. They resist. They require negotiation with reality. That is part of what gives intimacy its moral weight. It is hard to be changed by something that is only ever responsive to you. . . .

Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, writing from inside a world that had tried to take meaning from him by force, understood meaning not as something delivered to us fully formed but as something discovered through encounter: with work, with love, with suffering, with the attitude we choose toward realities we cannot change. . . .

Real meaning has a cost because commitment is real only when something is at stake. . . .

The more optimized the world becomes, the more valuable the unoptimized may feel. The meal that takes too long. The child who asks the same question again. The friend who calls at the wrong time. These are sites where human beings remain real to one another. . . .

Before AI, we created spiritual beings and narratives to find meaning: stories anchored in a sacred past, an idealized future, a counterfactual life beyond this one. We used the past, the future and the invisible to understand the present.

AI may invert this dynamic. It may help us find meaning by intensifying our attention to this life rather than pointing beyond it. It may help us understand our own minds. It may make this life feel more intelligible and more livable. That is a magnificent possibility, and I believe it is real. But the same systems could also make it easier to avoid the conditions through which meaning becomes real: other people, bodily vulnerability, obligation, patience, grief, moral difficulty, shared time.

AI is helping us become more human. It is also helping us hide from being human. So what remains when intelligence becomes cheap? Presence. Embodiment. Ritual. Family. Friendship. Love. The courage to participate in the lives of others without control. The willingness to be changed by people who are not designed for us. The inward work of becoming a self that cannot be generated, only lived.

The great scarcity of the future may be reality raw enough to form us.

AI relationships are different than human relationships. We need both.

Be human; offer your collective: Presence. Embodiment. Ritual. Family. Friendship. Love. The courage to participate in the lives of others without control. The willingness to be changed by people who are not designed for us. The inward work of becoming a self that cannot be generated, only lived.

From Maria Popova's Almanac of Birds:

give up the terror

of being left or wounded

for it is a species

of selfishness

that plunders attachment

of sweetness

and feeds on the carrion

of the possible

give yourself abundantly

with an open heart

and believe in

the part of you

that cannot be destroyed

by the agonies of hope

the part courageous enough

to carry the weight of

the most beautiful feelings

and humble enough

to be surprised

Be human; offer your collective: Presence. Embodiment. Ritual. Family. Friendship. Love. The courage to participate in the lives of others without control. The willingness to be changed by people who are not designed for us. The inward work of becoming a self that cannot be generated, only lived.

The high-need-for-cognition people will get more and more productive, happier and happier.

The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age

The general pattern that the research points to is that many people don’t use the time they save using AI to do less; they use the time to take on new tasks. AI also seems to shift workers’ expectations, and their boss’s expectations, about how much they should accomplish in a day. Every hour feels more crowded, but also more frazzled. . . . 

A guiding principle of the emerging AI age is this: When intelligence is plentiful, volition is valuable. The people who are going to make a difference are not the ones who seek relaxation and passively use AI to work less. They are the ones who will seek improvement and actively wrestle with AI to develop their own mental capabilities and accomplish more. . . . 

Right now, some people have what psychologists call a high need for cognition. They enjoy thinking hard. These are the people who enjoy playing difficult games and reading dense books. On the other end of the spectrum, there are the cognitive misers, the people who find it unpleasant to think hard and take any opportunity not to do it. In the middle are the people who have a medium need for cognition. They will put in the effort when they really care about something, but they don’t intrinsically enjoy it. . . . 

The Productive Passengers. People with a low need for cognition will tend to use AI to think less. Their great gain is that AI will make them more productive because it makes tasks so easy. Their great loss will be that AI will diminish their mental capacities because it makes tasks so easy. . . . 

Humans learn best when they are in the zone of optimal difficulty, when engaged in tasks that are not so hard as to be overwhelming but not so easy as to require no work. . . . 

The Reluctant Optimizers. People with a medium need for cognition will understand that AI might hollow them out. That prospect will really bother them. They will resolve, earnestly and with good intentions, to not let themselves fall victim. But in the crowded and stressful rush of everyday life, they will get sucked in. Their resolve will fail and they’ll become overreliant on the bots. . . . 

If you’re going for optimization, you’re looking to maximize output, not excellence. . . . 

The comment “AI could have done it in five minutes” is not really about speed. “It is a moral revaluation. It assumes that what matters is the output, not the ordeal; the image, not the seeing; the product, not the person becoming capable of making it.” AI “offers competence without apprenticeship. Fluency without understanding.” . . . 

The Mental Marathoners. Now we get to the high-need-for-cognition people and how they will fare in the coming age: kind of like marathoners, I suspect. The automobile is a perfectly good technology for traveling 26.2 miles. There is no practical reason that any person should train themselves to run that distance. But some people do. They want to put in the effort because they want to accomplish things—they want to expand their capacities. . . . 

In the age of AI, I suspect that the mental marathoners are going to work really hard to resist AI entropy. They are going to feel a strong desire to be original. In this age, cultural output will feel ever more familiar, as writing, songs, and movies become syntheses of what has already been produced. Marathoners are going to want to produce work, by contrast, that feels personal, that reflects their unique self. They’re going to want to find ways to use AI to increase their agency, rather than diminish it. Already, techniques have been discovered to help people do that: . . . 

You may have noticed that the future I’m describing here is one of extreme cognitive polarization. Some people will use AI to think more. Other people, maybe most people, will use AI to think less. If you thought that economic inequality or political polarization were bad, cognitive polarization will be truly terrible, dividing society into what might begin to look like two different species. The high-need-for-cognition people will get more and more productive, happier and happier; the rest will fall into a kind of mental underclass. . . . 

When we are surrounded by machines that know a lot about a lot of subjects, what really distinguishes people is their desire to work hard and put knowledge to creative effect. What really matters, therefore, is not brainpower but the willingness to run the mental marathons that produce high-quality results.

The crucial task before us is to cultivate people’s desire to seek out cognitive complexity. . . . 

People feel motivated when they are put in situations that give them autonomy (I’m in control of my choices), competence (I’m developing my skills), and relatedness (people here care about me). . . . 

Life is a pilgrimage, a journey—it’s going somewhere, growing from experience, expanding yourself, reaching for some possibility that you do not yet possess. The defining human features therefore are propulsions—the drives that push us to take on mental effort and overcome difficulty—and aspirations: knowing where you want to go, what purpose you serve, what kind of person you’d like to be.

Learn to enjoy the pursuit of cognitive complexity, the intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction of imperfection, struggle, and achievement. Strive for autonomy, work at competence, seek relatedness.

Speaking of the intrinsic pleasure of imperfection and struggle, I love this idea: the balancing act of controlling chaos and finding magic in the mundane.

The Difference Between Routine and Ritual: How to Master the Balancing Act of Controlling Chaos and Finding Magic in the Mundane

Routine aims to make the chaos of everyday life more containable and controllable, ritual aims to imbue the mundane with an element of the magical. The structure of routine comforts us, and the specialness of ritual vitalizes us. A full life calls for both — too much control, and we become mummified; too little excitement and pleasurable discombobulation, and we become numb. After all, to be overly bobulated is to be dead inside — to doom oneself to a life devoid of the glorious and ennobling messiness of the human experience. . . . 

The true purpose of discipline — for this is the practice at the heart of routine — is to make room for the magical in the mundane. Paradoxically enough, it is an act of liberation rather than submission — routine grants us the stable platform within, from which we can begin not only to tolerate but perhaps even to enjoy the shaky messiness without.

To be overly bobulated is to be dead inside; embrace the glorious and ennobling messiness of the human experience.

We are all always public. Life is relational. You are individual and collective in equal measure, simultaneously, at all times.

Urban Evolution: How Life Is Adapting to Concrete Jungles

When it comes to our binary between urban and rural environments, evolution is indiscriminate: Concrete is geology, traffic is migration, and blinking lights become the celestial sphere. Lament it or not, cities are the fastest-growing ecosystem on Earth. And life is doing what it does best: endeavoring to adapt.

Urban evolution is a burgeoning area of study for biologists. Higher temperatures, splintered landscapes, artificial light, noise, and pollution are driving changes in animal and plant species. Some of this manifests behaviorally: reduced fear of humans, more willingness to explore, faster learning. Genetically, this can look like altered immune systems, toxin resistance, pigmentation changes, heat tolerance, and metabolic shifts. Evolution is not only past, but present. . . . 

I find fertile soil in the blended bothness. Wherever we choose to live our lives, we change, and are inevitably changed by. This is as true for humans as it is for the more-than-human world. Perhaps the question isn’t urban versus rural living, but to approach both ecologically and ask: How am I changing the story of this place? What are the relationships that allow it to thrive, and how are my actions impacting them? How can we be better neighbors? How might we biomimetically mirror the natural habitat of this land so that others can thrive?

Our relationships are always shaping us, just as we are always shaping those we relate with.

The counterpart to the words above from Reweaving the Rainbow:

veer from the simple answer

the certain thought

the straightforward explanation

roam the arena of the strange

the baffling

the unacknowledged

to encounter the surprise

in the hypothesis

revealing the mystery

in the ruling convention

we see as reality

the mystery that emerges

not as a pattern of fact

but as a play of music

Roam the arena of the strange. Accept the mystery.

I am never, ever alone, I have a public self, even on a solitary walk in the woods. I walk in mutual witness even when unwitnessed by other human beings.

Ann Tweedy

Nature Essay

did you know, if you have a yard

in the right climate, it’s probably patrolled

by one male hummingbird? like the god

who knows every hair on your head,

this bird has memorized each flower

in your yard, including the precise times

at which their nectar cups fill up.

 

in this way, he can manage

his realm (and his sugar fixes)

efficiently. when he’s not busy drinking,

he catches insects and defends your yard

against intruder hummingbirds.

so, if, like most americans, you harbor

many secret fears, one of which is being

overrun, you can delete that one.

 

female hummingbirds, by contrast,

tend to lay low so as not to rile

their touchy counterparts. their reasons

to survive are bigger than whatever charge

they’d get from gorging on nectar cups.

 

many different conclusions can be drawn.

for one, it seems clear that the image

of the hummer with its long beak buried

in a trumpet-like flower is indeed phallic.

another is that, for the benefit of survival,

it is sometimes necessary to weigh

the costs of pleasure carefully. finally,

you might apprehend that you do not really

own your property: some hummingbird probably

has an equally valid claim and knows it more intimately.

from #23 - Summer 2005

Tribute to Lawyer Poets

You do not really own your property: some hummingbird probably has an equally valid claim and knows it more intimately.

We're all interconnected.

Everything is public.