All Wars Are Civil Wars

A catalog of recent insights.

I love this comment someone left on one of my Facebook posts:

"Your superpower is the ability to see beauty all around you."

It's something I try to do, see some beauty in everything, and feel seen and hugely complimented.

I feel the ability to see beauty all around is vaguely related to this description.

His friends admired not only his critical and intellectual capacities but something rather different, a virtue that is usually lacking among giants: ethics, character, as well as a deep, some would say overwhelming, desire to understand, to grasp the core of things. He sought relentlessly what he called the leaping point, the heart of the matter, as for him deriving a result by logical means was never enough: "That is like dancing on one leg," he would say, "when the essence lies in recognizing connections, meanings and associations in every direction." For him, true understanding was a full-body experience, something that involved your entire being, not just your mind or reason.

That comes from the book The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut, which I read recently. Here's my review.

One of his professors from the University of Vienna, who met him when he was a very young man, said that he could not figure out if it was the nature of his work that made him unstable, or if you actually had to be unstable to think in the way that he did. I believe there is truth in both views.

A uniquely fascinating and stimulating book.

One that presupposes that great genius is inherently unstable, then creates fictionalized details of the lives of a few great thinkers to illustrate the point. Human genius, in this case, involved in the creation of machine genius. A short opening section focuses on Paul Ehrenfest in the early twentieth century; a long middle section on John von Neumann a handful of decades later; and a final section about the recent development of Artificial Intelligences capable of defeating the world's best players of the complex game of Go. Each of the early figures developed ideas that have helped lead to our current situation, and the story Labatut tells of each is compelling, thoughtful, and dramatic.

While not a reliable history lesson, it makes for excellent reading.          

[Younger] (age 9) seems to have been undermotivated for this--which appears to be nonjudged, since his handwriting and spelling (and content) are usually much better--journal free writing activity we found in his backpack after school today. This is what [Younger] did over the winter holiday break:

I Don't Know 

We shoveled snow out of our driveway. And I progressed my plan to destroy the world and then rule humanity. We watched some movies. We played video games. We played in the snow. We played some board games. And we did some stuff that I can't think of right now. And even more stuff I can't think of right now.

He is very serious about the plan by the way. It involves becoming president so he can drill to the center of the earth and ignite a fusion bomb. He will save a few other people along with himself, who will then select him leader in gratitude. He has everything worked out except for, well, how to implement some of the details.

(And I so want to have him watch or read Watchmen so he can see how much he thinks like Ozymandias, but, alas, he is far too young for that.)

Speaking of the development of Artificial Intelligence and ruling the world . . . 

Axios' Behind the Curtain: A Chilling, "Catastrophic" Warning

Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — called us to deliver a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration. . . . 

Underscoring the gravity of his message, Sullivan spoke with an urgency and directness that were rarely heard during his decade-plus in public life. . . . . 

Staying ahead in the AI arms race makes the Manhattan Project during World War II seem tiny, and conventional national security debates small. It's potentially existential with implications for every nation and company.

To distill Sullivan: America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China.

"There's going to have to be a new model of relationship because of just the sheer capability in the hands of a private actor," Sullivan says. . . . 

The big picture: There's no person we know in a position of power in AI or governance who doesn't share Sullivan's broad belief in the stakes ahead.

Regardless of what was said in public, every background conversation we had with President Biden's high command came back to China. Yes, they had concerns about the ethics, misinformation and job loss of AI. They talked about that. But they were unusually blunt in private: Every move, every risk was calculated to keep China from beating us to the AI punch. Nothing else matters, they basically said.

That's why they applied export controls on the top-of-the-line semiconductors needed to power AI development — including in Biden's final days in office — and cut off supply of the hyper-sophisticated tools Chinese firms need to make such chips themselves. . . . 

The bottom line: There's a reason our Behind the Curtain column writes obsessively about AI and its collision with government. We believe, based on conversations with AI's creators and experts, this dynamic will reshape politics, business and culture beyond most imaginations.

This is worrying. Not from a nationalistic perspective, but from a humanistic one.

I love this essay.

There Are No Pure Cultures

All of our religions, stories, languages and norms were muddled and mixed through mobility and exchange throughout history

The tale of globalisation is the most successful scare story of our times. And like all scare stories, it stimulates our fear of an overwhelming unknown.

But it’s all an illusion. There is no new global world.

Our present appears that way only because we have forgotten our common past. Globalisation didn’t begin in the 1990s, or even in the past millennia. Remembering this older shared history is a path to a different tale, which begins much, much earlier – long before the arrival of international supply chains, ocean-going sailing ships, and continent-spanning silk roads. The tale of globalisation is written across human history. . . . 

Collective human memory is a partial and imperfect repository of our encounters with one another through time. We are not good at remembering, let alone acknowledging, the ways that these encounters have shaped our present societies, cultures and economies. . . . 

Globalisation theorists following the sociologist Roland Robertson use the term ‘glocalisation’ to describe how local cultures digest the products of the global market and turn them into something seemingly new. Through this process, incoming goods – technologies, ideas, symbols, artistic styles, social practices or institutions – are assimilated, becoming hybrid recreations that take on new meanings. These recreations are then redeployed as new markers of cultural or class distinction, sedimenting borrowed cultural products in the collective consciousness to the point of misrecognition. And so the global becomes local, the foreign becomes familiar, and the other becomes us. Glocalisation is how and why we collectively forget. Such is the silent trick of every single globalisation in our history: our forgetfulness of it is the method and mark of its success.

Every generation appropriates the inheritances of global exchanges and refashions them as its own. Excavating the sediments our predecessors left in our collective consciousness is not a task that we are naturally disposed to perform. It is an act of remembrance and self-understanding that can destabilise our identities because it counters the processes that endow them with authenticity.

Excavating the sources of our identities is made more difficult by our tendency to focus on the uniqueness of the present. By limiting ourselves to the minutia of the current global moment, we overlook the most obvious manifestations of globalisation’s deeper past. . . . 

The cultural markers of identity we cherish most jealously – our cuisines, religions, languages and social mores – are products of past globalisations. When we celebrate such cultural markers as ‘authentic’ elements of our identities, we are effectively celebrating our shared human culture, born of a long chain of encounters and exchanges. . . . 

Globalisation is observable across all human history. It displays such a degree of constancy that it must be fundamental to the evolution of human society. Far from being a mere lifestyle or worldview – or an invention of the elite – globalisation can be understood as the mass process through which human culture evolves and perpetuates itself.

Culture is how we have adapted to our changing environment to sustain ourselves and flourish. Cultures, plural, are the specific manifestations of human culture in different times and places. These two categories – human culture and cultures – are roughly equivalent to the biological idea of the ‘genotype’ (our core code) and the ‘phenotype’ (its variable expressions). The history of our globalisations is the history of how phenotypical variations in human culture have circulated and cumulatively transformed our cultural genotype.

Exclusionist and anti-globalist sentiments come from a confusion of these categories. . . . 

The distinctiveness of local cultures is an illusion of scale. When viewed in the long term, their boundaries blur and melt into each other. But the consciousness of an individual or a generation is not capacious enough to span the deep temporality that human culture inhabits. And so, we forget.

The national histories we are taught also erase this long story of cultural movement. . . . 

Stories of circulation and adoption abound and offer a much more interesting and accurate account of our shared history. . . . 

Our culture is cosmopolitan because we are a cosmopolitan species. We are citizens of the world, not nations, to paraphrase both Socrates and Thomas Paine. What has allowed us to thrive, physically and culturally, is not our rootedness but our mobility. Without it, we would already be extinct. . . . 

Ultimately, in the fullness of deep time and human history, we are all migrants, and we have always been. For movement is an adaptive response to existential risks arising from our ecological and social environments. It is how we preserve our individual and collective dignity when our life conditions become unsustainable, unbearable and cruel. Coerced rootedness and coerced mobility are both aberrations that equally contradict the very process of home-making – of how we come to belong. . . . 

The wars we wage against one another are all civil wars. Until we recognise them as such, they will remain tragedies we accept as natural – or horrors we cheer on in the name of grand notions sold to us by loud voices who know our fears too well (and know too little of the richness of our world and our history). We have always been global, and this is our shared identity. It is our unique way of being and remaining in the world as one family. Whatever we cherish in our humanity and culture has been crafted by our global journeys and encounters. Through them, we will continue to write the story of how we become us.

I love it so, so much.

And am reminded by it of this quote I've previously shared:

National borders were nothing but graffiti.

From the book The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil.

Though I strongly believe we are innately social and connected creatures, I've always been less susceptible to social pressure and less likely to follow the herd if it feels false to my sense of self.

90 Percent Will Click This Post. Here's Why

Cognitive Bias: The persuasive power of 'social proof'

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people look to the actions of others to determine appropriate behavior, especially in uncertain situations. 

“It states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct,” social psychologist Robert Cialdini wrote in his best-selling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. “The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”

People tend to copy what other people do. If something is popular, we tend to trust it more. When many other people buy a product or follow a trend, we tend to assume it’s good. Our brains are wired to look for clues from other people’s choices. It’s a basic human instinct to follow the crowd. "Monkey see, monkey do."

Marketers, political consultants, and other professional persuaders know this. They cleverly use social proof to influence our behavior in myriad ways. In his book, Cialdini uses the example of laugh tracks in sitcoms. Why do so many TV shows insert canned, recorded laughter into their shows? It’s there to encourage you to laugh. Because when you hear others laughing, you’re more likely to laugh as well. . . . 

Here are some other ways social proof tends to show up in our daily lives:

• Ads tout the fact that a large percentage of consumers buy Product X instead of other products.
• Political campaigns release polls announcing that a majority of people will vote for their candidate or ballot measure.
• Social media platforms use “likes” and other visible metrics of popularity to encourage us to engage with content.
• User reviews on sites like Amazon, Tripadvisor, and Yelp feature customer reviews, ratings, and testimonials that point us to the most popular and well-liked items.
• Some businesses will rent crowds to attend their events and make them look more popular. There are even companies, like Rent-a-Crowd, that exist for this purpose!

The social proof effect is an example of how our brains are wired in specific ways that make us influenceable by people who know how brains work. The “wisdom of crowds” has a powerful subconscious influence. So, watch for this key persuasion tactic, lest you find yourself standing in a line without knowing why.

It is both a good and bad aspect of our wiring.

Social Proof can be especially important in moments of needed, positive defiance. It can be a source of inspiration, support, and validation in working to promote (or resist) change.

How the “Defiance Domino Effect” Can Improve Your Life and Transform Society

Societies tend to associate defiance with rudeness and disorder. But defiance isn’t about boldly challenging others; it’s about acting according to your values when faced with the pressure to do otherwise. Values-based defiance is a skill that can be developed through daily practice in small moments. . . . 

My definition of defiance is “to act according to your true values when there is pressure to do so otherwise.” . . . 

We want to consider: Does the situation go against our values? That’s the key question. If it does, if it’s something that you would not feel comfortable with, then that is the moment to defy.

There are times we decide to comply because it isn’t safe or effective to defy. I use the phrase “conscious compliance” to reflect those moments. You need the freedom to say no because if you don’t have it, you may comply, but you don’t consent. [In this view], compliance is going along with something that is externally imposed on you by another person or a system. It’s not coming from within. . . . 

Defiance is simply living by your values.

You don’t have to be a superhero or have a strong personality or be larger than life. You don’t even have to be brave. Sometimes you can be motivated by fear of what happens if you don’t defy. We can all defy in our unique way. . . . 

This element of defiance is a skill. It’s not a personality trait. We need to learn the skill and practice it every single day — even in those smaller moments of speaking up. . . . 

There are three main things. First, I’m focused on the individual decision to defy. When you defy, it transforms you because you can be more yourself. You’re more authentic. You have a more joyful, honest life. That fascinates me as a psychologist.

[The second thing] is what I call the “defiance domino effect.” This is how defiance transforms the people who observe it.

 . . . That moment affected me. It changed how I thought about defiance, and what I would like to see in the world on a larger scale. Society is built on all of these smaller moments, and I want to see a society where one of the teens would’ve spoken up against his peers so my immigrant mother wouldn’t have to. That’s the type of social change that I would like to see in the world — one where every individual makes a difference.

[The final thing] is setting up systems, workplaces, institutions, and organizations that give us the freedom to defy. Too often, many of our systems and workplaces want us to comply, to sign on the dotted line and not have a choice. America is supposed to be the land of the free, so give us the freedom and the right to say no and set up the systems that enable us to do that.

The freedom to defy.

This is related.

Don’t Waste Time Correcting Misinformation. Instead, Try the “Bypassing Technique”

The classic response to someone presenting misinformation is to present counterevidence. . . . 

But that likely won’t work. The APPC team conducted six experiments where they compared factually correcting someone with “bypassing” and found that using evidence and facts to disprove someone tends to be far less successful at changing attitudes.

So, what is bypassing and why is it seemingly more effective? Bypassing is where, instead of providing some negative rebuttal to a claim, you instead provide positive counterclaims about the topic. For example, if someone says aluminum causes bone problems, you should reply, “Aluminium is one of the key elements in boosting our immune system and making the vaccine effective.” Or, if someone tells you that 5G kills birds, tell them that 5G adds trillions to the world economy.

Make no mention of the false claim. Do not attack the misinformation but override it with positive, true information.

Don't comply to their definition of the perspective; defy it with your own.

An apparently random non sequitur.

Am I the only one whose brain automatically and constantly plays with every word it encounters, often landing on preferred alternate pronunciations? Like this, for instance, is a temple of the bread god Pane-Ra.

My brain likes to play with words and language.

Speaking of language and defining perspectives . . . 

George Lakoff on Facebook

Language gets its power because it is defined relative to frames, prototypes, metaphors, narratives, images, and emotions. Part of its power comes from its unconscious aspects: we are not consciously aware of all that it evokes in us, but it is there, hidden, always at work. 

If we hear the same language over and over, we will think more and more in terms of the frames and metaphors activated by that language. And it doesn’t matter if you are negating words or questioning them, the same frames and metaphors will be activated and hence strengthened. 

Language uses symbols. Language is a tool, an instrument— but it is the surface, not the soul, of the brain. I want us to look beneath language. New curtains won’t save your house if the foundation is cracking.

-- The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics

If you are defying their perspective, do it with your own language.

But not everyone's brain loves to play with words and language. I recently read this to help me remember that and better understand others.

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions by Temple Grandin

I remember an epiphany I had about my parents in, I think, my late teen years, when I was first in college. If I wanted my mom to understand something, she needed to read it; if I wanted my dad to understand something, he needed to hear it. The first example I stumbled upon was the cooking instructions on a packaged food box. I could read the instructions out loud to my mom and she just couldn't process them very well; she needed to take the box from me and read the steps for herself. On the other hand, if I gave my dad the same box and asked him to read the same instructions, he would get frustrated because they just didn't click; he needed me to take the box and read the steps out loud to him. They had different preferred ways of receiving and digesting information, of learning, of understanding the world. Mom did better reading, Dad did better hearing.

Once I'd had that epiphany, I could look back to see how those preferences had informed the ways they had taught me growing up and I used that information to make future interactions with them better. (I am just like my mom in this regard, that I learn best by reading; I would rather read the transcript or captions when I watch an instructional video than listen to it, for instance, and devour books.) I remembered that lesson as I began working on my teaching degree and feel lucky to have known since that people experience the world in different ways, that different people need to experience the same information differently before it becomes knowledge for them. Multiple intelligences, preferred modes of learning, and similar.

In this book, Temple Grandin makes a compelling case for acknowledging and nurturing visual thinkers. My parents may have had differences in how they wanted to receive language, but both still relied on words--they were both verbal thinkers. Their thoughts were given form by words, they understood instructions, themselves, and the world best through language. Visual thinkers' brains work differently; they think in pictures. Words and language are helpful tools, but not natural to how they process and understand. These are not exclusive, binary modes of thinking, of course; they exist on a continuum and everyone uses some measure of both verbal and visual thinking. Grandin, as someone with autism, is at the far end of the visual spectrum and thus understands it better than most.

She also differentiates between two types of visual thinking: object visualizers and spatial visualizers.

"Object visualizers" like me see the world in photorealistic images. We are graphic designers, artists, skilled tradespeople, architects, inventors, mechanical engineers, and designers. Many of us are terrible in areas such as algebra, which rely entirely on abstraction and provide nothing to visualize. "Spatial visualizers" see the world in patterns and abstractions. They are the music and math minds--the statisticians, scientists, electrical engineers, and physicists. You'll find a lot of these thinkers excel at computer programming because they can see patterns in the computer code. Here's a way to think of it: The object thinker builds the computer. The spatial thinker writes the code.

For someone who claims limited verbal ability, Grandin is skilled with language and writes an excellent book. Aside from establishing the fact of visual thinking, the main thrust of the book is advocating for wider acceptance of visual thinkers and more development of their natural skills. Our society, both in terms of the educational system and unofficial hierarchy of professions, elevates verbal thinking and relegates visual. We have moved far too drastically toward homogenization, to only recognizing and respecting the one and considering anyone who doesn't fit into the system a failure. Grandin sees this resulting in a lack of invention and innovation, a failing infrastructure, and many similar practical, real-world weaknesses; and advocates for changing our education system to better develop those most suited to making things better. A wealth of research exists making the case that diverse perspectives and talents make for stronger teams, groups, organizations, and societies. Grandin here adds to that wealth in considering the differences between verbal and visual thinking.

The final two paragraphs of her conclusion:

I've worked with industry innovators for my entire career, and I'm convinced that the people who are developing this kind of cutting-edge technology are like Edison, Turing, and Musk, visual thinkers whose paths began in a basement or garage where they were free to tinker and experiment. I'm also convinced that two key elements set the stage for success in fostering abilities: exposure and mentorship. The breakthrough technologies are not coming from kids shunted off to special ed or addicted to video games, even though they might have the right kinds of minds for it. How can we identify and encourage our future designers, engineers, and artists? First, we must see them, recognize their skills, support their different learning curves. Above all, my goal is to help those kids. If we start there, anything is possible.

Imagine if we catered to visual thinkers the way we cater to verbal thinkers. If we didn't assume that we all perceived and processed information the same way, primarily through language. We can look the other way each time a bridge buckles, an apartment building collapses, a plane crashes, or a reactor melts down. Or, if we want to make good on our promises of giving our kids a better life--if we want to engineer a safer, more inclusive, more advanced society that leads in manufacturing, technology, and finding solutions to the challenges of a rapidly changing and complex world--we need to make room for our visual thinkers and their remarkable gifts.

It is an engaging, accessible, and convincing book.          

I also like this quote from Grandin's book.

The greatest obstacle in understanding visual thinking is knowing it exists. Nowhere is that obstacle greater than in comprehending the inner lives of animals. Just as we've under-estimated and underutilized the talents and contributions of humans who are visual thinkers, we have similarly underestimated and misunderstood thought in animals. Animals live--and think--through their senses. Without verbal language, they store memories of previous experience as pictures, sounds, smells, tastes, or touch memories. Sensory-based thinking and memories are recollections of experiences without words.

And this one.

Attaching a stone blade to a stick to create a spear, one of the first complex tools, was invented long before language evolved. A recent study by Dana Cataldo and colleauges from University College London investigated how our ancestors might have created stone blades. Novices were divided into two groups. The first group had an expert flintknapper who both demonstrated how to make the tools and verbally explained the process. The second group had the same instructor, but there was no spoken instruction. The students had to observe the instructor, who used nonverbal cues such as pointing or showing how to hold the rock. The novices who were in the nonverbal group performed better at learning the task. Nonverbal, sensory-based learning may have played a significant role in early human achievement, an idea worth thinking about as it relates to the cognition and achievement of other animals.

Which makes me think about teaching and learning, how things go much better with demonstration than simple explanation.

And I was reminded of this section of the introduction to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which I first shared in The Solace of Words . . . 

It's a calming thing, to learn there's a word for something you've felt all your life but didn't know was shared by anyone else. It's even oddly empowering--to be reminded that you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're just an ordinary human being trying to make your way through a bizarre set of circumstances.

 . . . by this quote from Grandin.

Marilynne Robinson also described how lanuage resonates emotionally for verbal thinkers. "Literature says this is what sadness feels like and this is what holiness feels like, and people feel acknowledged in what they already feel," she writes. Her observations provided me with an insight into how the verbal mind processes emotion and how it differs from mine. Words provide information for me; there are few to no emotional associations. I need to see something or recall a visual image to feel emotion. A concept like holiness is too abstract for me. But I am not without emotion. When my mother read Black Beauty to me, I visualized a real horse from my database of horses, and then imagined it being harmed, and that made me feel terrible.

And Grandin's book provided me with insight into how the visual mind processes emotion and how it differs from mine.

On the topic of my mind and how I process, I recently took the Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) for something work-related. Here are parts of my results.

As a person with a Blue-Green MVS, you achieve feelings of self-worth by being genuinely helpful to others while developing self-sufficiency for yourself and others.

You assess other people's needs and contribute to their self-reliance. You assist people who are genuinely in need of help and are willing to use the help offered. You move quietly to the aid of others with an efficient plan. You believe in prudent helpfulness and set limits on the assistance you give to others. You value the power of building the capacity of self and others.

You create fair processes that help people become self-reliant. For you, the real measure of success is how helpful you can be without diminishing the independence of those you are helping. You balance principles and feelings, logic and emotion. You want to see your well-planned help bring out the best in others.

You use reason and systems to improve the welfare and independence of others. You alert others to risks they may not have considered. You prefer an open and tolerant environment that respects people's feelings and is based on fair principles.

Your top three strengths are an important part of the way others see you. These strengths are frequently evident when you work with others. You are probably very effective with these strengths and appreciate when you are recognized for using them well.

1. Modest - You play down what you are capable of doing.
2. Analytical - You dissect and digest whatever is going on.
3. Methodical - You are orderly in action, thought, and expression.
4. Tolerant - You respect differences, even when you don’t agree.
5. Fair - You act justly, equitably, and impartially.
6. Open-to-Change - You consider different perspectives, ideas, and opinions.
7. Cautious - You are careful to make sure of what is going on.
8. Inclusive - You bring people together in order to reach consensus.
9. Caring - You concern yourself with the well-being of others.
10. Self-Confident - You believe in your own powers and strengths.
11. Option-Oriented - You look for and suggest different ways of doing things.
12. Principled - You follow certain rules of right conduct.
13. Helpful - You give assistance to others who are in need.
14. Loyal - You remain faithful to the commitments you make to others.
15. Persuasive - You urge, influence, and convince others.
16. Supportive - You give encouragement and help to others.
17. Reserved - You practice self-restraint in expressing thoughts and feelings.
18. Persevering - You maintain the same course of action despite obstacles.
19. Devoted - You are dedicated to some people, activities, or purposes.
20. Trusting - You place your faith in others.
21. Forceful - You act with conviction, power, and drive.
22. Risk-Taking - You take chances on losses in pursuit of high gains.
23. Adaptable - You adjust readily to new or modified conditions.
24. Flexible - You act in whatever manner is appropriate at the moment.
25. Competitive - You strive to win against others.
26. Quick-to-Act - You get things started without delay.
27. Sociable - You engage easily in group conversations and activities.
28. Ambitious - You are determined to succeed and to get ahead.

MODEST

Camouflage. That’s a term that may come to mind when thinking about how people see you. In other words you don’t need to be in the spotlight or capture everyone’s attention. Your work is typically done behind the scenes. And that’s exactly what makes you a valuable asset to any workplace.

When your efforts and accomplishments are highlighted, you’re quick to give others credit for helping you get there. Because you tend to play down your capability and accomplishments, others may not always see you as competent or even consider you for a task. So your growing edge may be to wave your own flag just a bit when you know you’re a good fit for a task.

Bottom line for you is that your humble approach means you almost always under-promise and over-deliver. Everyone appreciates that.

ANALYTICAL

More than most, you have a capacity to make sense of information when others are still taking it in. You synthesize information in a rational way and make logical connections for others that create “aha moments.”

You want everything in your life to make logical sense. You discover patterns and underlying causes that others have not found. Of course, this means you also find flaws in other people’s logic, and when you do, you’ll need to take care to not embarrass them. You may also need to nurture your ability to keep the big picture in mind because you can get mired down in details that may not matter too much.

Solving life’s puzzles is a reward in itself. Your biggest reward is found when solving something that creates understandable and rational solutions for others.

METHODICAL

In your perfect world, everything would have a place and everything would be in its proper place. You’re most comfortable when things are in order. While others might think you work at this, it actually comes quite naturally. And while others are aspiring to be organized, you’re doing it.

You don’t dare shoot from the hip. You have systems. You make plans. You follow schedules. You have routines. And once it’s working for you, you stay with it. So much so that, on occasion, you might be seen as rigid or stuck in your ways.

You might be encouraged to “get out of a rut” to find a new groove. In spite of this caution, your strength is so desirable that others will seek you out, asking you to help them set up similar systems, procedures, and methods for them.

Your top three overdone strengths may contribute to some difficulty in your relationships. Even though they are well-intended, they can generate negative perceptions in others. You can turn perceived weakness into strengths by using them at the right time, or by scaling back their frequency, duration, or intensity.

MODEST (Self-Effacing)

In your effort to give other people credit, you can end up putting yourself down. Not only do you avoid undue attention, you tend to deflect compliments and diminish your own knowledge, skills, or contributions. You want to avoid being seen as arrogant or vain and do not want people to have unrealistic expectations of you.

When your modesty comes on too strong, you can appear uninformed, incapable, or even unwilling to get involved. This self-effacing tendency can limit you. It can take away the opportunity to do the things in life that you really want to do.

While you may be hesitant to promise success, you could confidently state your ability to contribute and give your best effort, without making guarantees about results. Then, you don’t have to fear that you will let others down.

ANALYTICAL (Obsessed)

You have an almost insatiable curiosity and need to understand how things work and why people do what they do. When things don’t make logical sense to you, it can freeze you in your tracks. You don’t want to take the next step until you understand exactly where you are and what’s going on.

Whether the current puzzle is a project or a person, you can get obsessed with finding a cause or an explanation. Once you’ve found it, you may replay or relive your discovery for the people who are involved, which they can find tedious.

Asking yourself some questions can help keep your analytical powers productive, and stop you from going down the proverbial rabbit hole. What if there is no answer? What is the simplest way to communicate my understanding to others? Is this worth my time?

SUPPORTIVE (Self-Sacrificing)

When you make a commitment to support someone you’ll be there for them – no matter what happens. You have a tendency to put other people’s interests and wishes ahead of yours, possibly to your own detriment.

In some cases, you give until it hurts. You keep track of how much you’ve done for others and see it as an investment in the relationship. But when others don’t appreciate how much you’ve invested, you can become resentful, thinking or saying: “After all I’ve done for you...”

Being too supportive can make you look self-sacrificing to others, but you can turn this perceived weakness back into a strength. Place reasonable limits on the support you provide to others. Don’t support someone so much today that it limits your ability to support them in the future.

HOW YOU EXPERIENCE CONFLICT

You first try to understand the issue and reduce your personal risk. You blend or alternate accommodating and analytical approaches to people and problems. You balance your needs, rights, and obligations with others. You want to establish a mutually respectful peace. You believe that the best way to show you care about the problem is to clarify the issues and people’s feelings through conversation.

You want people to get along and to treat each other fairly. You do not want other people to be aggressive, argumentative, or to push for immediate decisions or actions.

If conflict progresses to your Stage 2 blend of Blue and Green, you may accommodate with conditions or analyze the situation, depending on how important the results are to you. You feel that others don't share your priorities and that you need to decide what matters most to you.

If conflict progresses to your Stage 3 Red, you confront people, get angry, or fight, although you may wait a long time in Stage 2 to prevent this.

This all feels accurate and insightful to me.

To end, a poem I really enjoy.

Denise Duhamel

POEM IN WHICH I PRESS FAST FORWARD

my young mother becomes my dead mother

my new car becomes a clunker

 

my blond hair becomes gray,

my favorite sweater, a rag

 

my beloved becomes my enemy

my enemy, someone I can’t remember

 

my past becomes a murky place except for a few sharp excerpts

my memory, a torn plastic bag, groceries spilling onto the pavement

 

my love of apples becomes a metaphor

my love of apples becomes my love of applesauce

 

my flat chest becomes a set of breasts that later flop

my bright pink scar becomes a faded white line

 

my childhood friend becomes a stranger, then a corpse

my childhood home becomes someone else’s home

 

my baby fat becomes adult fat

my new sneakers, worn and ready for Goodwill

 

my obsessions become ash

my fire, a cold sandwich

 

my scribbles becomes more scribbles

my wedding dress, a punchline

 

my glass of wine becomes my rewind

my beer stein, a pencil cup

 

my garbage becomes landfill

your trees, my kitchen table

 

my biggest problems dissolve

then bubble up years later like Alka-Seltzer

 

my belly laugh becomes a bellyache

my aversion to conflict becomes a migraine

 

my frown becomes a ray of frown lines

my dance moves becomes a skeleton rolled into an anatomy classroom

 

my childhood love of the sea becomes my adult political quest

my pet peeves soften into petty concerns then become peace lilies

 

my fall from grace becomes my saving

my savings become my coffin’s down payment

 

—from In Which

2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

I hope to always have the ability to see beauty all around me.

Your superpower is the ability to see beauty all around you.

The essence lies in recognizing connections, meanings and associations in every direction.

True understanding is a full-body experience, something that involves your entire being, not just your mind or reason.

And so the global becomes local, the foreign becomes familiar, and the other becomes us.

Excavating the sources of our identities is made more difficult by our tendency to focus on the uniqueness of the present.

We have always been global, and this is our shared identity. It is our unique way of being and remaining in the world as one family. Whatever we cherish in our humanity and culture has been crafted by our global journeys and encounters. Through them, we will continue to write the story of how we become us.

Our brains are wired to look for clues from other people’s choices. Our brains are wired in specific ways that make us influenceable by people who know how brains work.

Defiance isn’t about boldly challenging others; it’s about acting according to your values when faced with the pressure to do otherwise.

Defiance is simply living by your values.

When you defy, it transforms you because you can be more yourself. You’re more authentic. You have a more joyful, honest life.

Defiance transforms the people who observe it.

Make no mention of the false claim. Do not attack the misinformation but override it with positive, true information.

We are not consciously aware of all that it evokes in us, but it is there, hidden, always at work.

If we hear the same language over and over, we will think more and more in terms of the frames and metaphors activated by that language.

Visual thinkers' brains work differently; they think in pictures. Words and language are helpful tools, but not natural to how they process and understand.

We have moved far too drastically toward homogenization, to only recognizing and respecting the one and considering anyone who doesn't fit into the system a failure.

Diverse perspectives and talents make for stronger teams, groups, organizations, and societies.

Sensory-based thinking and memories are recollections of experiences *without* words.

I am not without emotion.

Achieve feelings of self-worth by being genuinely helpful to others while developing self-sufficiency for yourself and others.

Value the power of building the capacity of self and others.

The real measure of success is how helpful you can be without diminishing the independence of those you are helping.