^zhurnaly

Howdy, pilgrim! You're in the ^zhurnal — since 1999, a journal of musings on mind, method, metaphor, and matters miscellaneous — previous volume = 0.9952.

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Fear versus Love

Lovingkind thoughts from New York Times columnist David French, in his essay "Were You Raised in a Church That Fears the World or Loves Its Neighbors?":

When I talk to Christians who are struggling with their faith, one of the first things I ask them is, “Were you raised in a fear-the-world church or a love-your-neighbor church?”

Most people instantly know what I’m talking about. The culture of the church of fear is unmistakable. You’re taught to view the secular world as fundamentally a threat. Secular friends are dangerous. Secular education is perilous. Secular ideas are bankrupt. And you’re always taught to prepare for the coming persecution, when “they” are going to try to destroy the church.

The love-your-neighbor church is fundamentally different. It’s so different that it can sometimes feel like a different faith entirely. The distinction begins with the initial posture toward the world — not as a threat to be engaged, but as a community that we should love and serve.

...

To be raised in a fear-the-world church is to experience a Christianity that declares with its words that the Resurrection is real, but seems incredulous about the possibility of a resurrection within its heart. If Christians truly can declare: “Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?” then why is there such pervasive fear?

Another way to describe a love-your-neighbor church is to say that it embraces a resurrection faith. Its aim is to follow Christ’s consistent pattern of moving to the suffering, the alienated and the sick, all to bring life from death.

We cannot, of course, exercise Christ’s literal power over death. We cannot declare, as Christ did to Lazarus, “Come forth,” and watch our loved ones walk out of the tomb. But we can try to heal, to care for the physical needs of suffering people, and we can be instruments of grace to those dying from different kinds of deaths — spiritual, emotional and social.

We live in a time of great anger. We live in a time of great pain. And everywhere we look we seem to see people of faith stoking anger and inflicting pain.

But a resurrection church that follows a resurrected savior should be a balm, not a blowtorch. It will never be perfect, of course, but its fundamental orientation isn’t toward protecting itself, but toward serving others. Its default posture toward difference isn’t suspicion, but affection.

_{(cf My Religion (2000-11-06), Religion and Reverence (2001-07-08), Life Is Hard, and It's OK (2022-03-04), Friendship (2023-09-28), Classical Virtues (2024-04-14), John Hussman on Our Common Humanity (2025-04-17), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-21}

- Monday, April 21, 2025 at 09:45:41 (EST)

John Hussman on Our Common Humanity

John P. Hussman, a financial advisor and philanthropist, writes thoughtfully and with lovingkindness. In "An Abrupt and Cascading Dislocation" (16 April 2025) his commentary on irrational exuberance in the stock market concludes with remarks about society:

Because silence can be equal to consent, I’ll add that these unfavorable market conditions are joined by other observable elements that are deeply troubling in my view: the rapid descent of the U.S. toward an autocracy that normalizes the unchecked abuse of power; dispenses with the rule of law, due process, and human rights; dismantles democratic institutions; replaces career civil servants with loyalists; systematically defunds public health research and disease surveillance; retaliates against critics; raises barriers to access of Social Security offices and earned benefits; pressures law firms not to represent clients; exploits every opportunity for self-dealing; defunds universities, purges libraries, and whitewashes museums of so-called “improper ideology”; maligns journalists and bars access to news organizations that resist absurd demands; abandons, betrays, and disparages allies; openly seeks to annex sovereign countries; floods public dialogue with disinformation, grievance, fear, division, and false narratives; expels independent Inspectors General along with the capacity of the public to demand accountability; and deliberately erodes constitutional constraints in favor of personal dictate.

Perhaps the escalating risk of a market crash and cascading economic dislocation isn’t surprising after all.

We’re more than this. More than our division. More than the blame we cast on the other “side.” All of us are made of this shared substance of common humanity. The tragedy is that in our anger, we can’t see it – only us versus them. As my beloved friend and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh often said, “Enlightenment is the moment a wave recognizes that it is the water.”

Our enemy isn’t each other – even the people we blame for all of our own suffering since the time we were 5 years old have suffered themselves since the time they were 5 years old. The blame falls to hatred, injustice, and ignorance themselves; the greed, violence, abuse, and lack of compassion that come from our illusion that “we” and “them” are separate; the failure to even consider how the other side has suffered – something both liberals and conservatives share; and worst, the destructive impulse to eliminate everything – even human beings – that we associate with the other “side.” All of us risk falling into that trap, and we can see our way out. If we have the insight to see that the other person also suffers, we know better what to do, and what not to do, to go forward.

Look, I’ll speak out and fight against hatred, division, avarice, corruption, and injustice all day long. But it’s those elements, not human beings, that are the enemy. I hope others do the same, but also always considering the suffering of the other “side.” Even those who fight for the dignity and equality of others – especially those who are different – have to be mindful enough to see the moment when others feel threatened that those differences will overwhelm their way of life. When any side goes unheard for too long, their response is often to destroy, even without considering the consequences. My concern is that it’s happening within our government and nation right now.

Despite our differences, and a thousand failures to become “a more perfect union,” we still have the capacity to listen to each other and work together to solve problems. We still have the chance to preserve a United States of America that dignifies the patriots who sacrificed their lives for this precious democracy – this Constitutionally based republic – without dispensing with “democracy,” or “Constitution”, or “United.” In our anger and division, we are further along the path of losing that precious inheritance than we may want to admit.

_{(cf Education, Culture, and Blame (2000-06-01), Aikido Spirit (2003-12-09), Ground of Being (2013-10-03), Gentleness, Sensitivity, Compassion (2014-03-09), Irrational Exuberance (2021-08-13), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-17}

- Friday, April 18, 2025 at 06:38:07 (EST)

Shema

The Shema — one of the oldest prayers in the world — begins:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד

Like Ho'oponopono, the Shema is mentioned in an episode of the multipart medical drama "The Pitt". In Toki Pona, perhaps it could be said:

o kute
sewi li ale
sewi li wan

_{(cf My Religion (2000-11-06), 2008-03-23 - Sunrise Service at Seneca Creek, Tikkun Olam (2019-12-11), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-16}

- Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 09:21:58 (EST)

Mantra - Ho'oponopono

• I Love You
• Thank You
• I Forgive You
• Please Forgive Me

... elements of Hoʻoponopono – "a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness". It was mentioned, in the presence of death, during an episode of the brilliant 2025 medical drama "The Pitt".

Something to think about and practice!

And in Toki Pona, perhaps:

• mi olin e sina
• pona tawa sina
• mi weka e pilin ike tawa sina
• o weka e pilin ike tawa mi

_{(cf the Highly Reasonable blog entry of 2025-03-14, This Is Water (2009-05-21), Core Buddhism (2011-10-17), Cup Full of Love (2021-08-02), Genuine, Gallant, Generous, Grateful, Good (2023-09-16), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-09}

- Wednesday, April 09, 2025 at 07:08:02 (EST)

FRED

“Do you even FRED, bro?” asked Paul Krugman in an NY Times column a few years ago. FRED is the nickname of the "Federal Reserve Economic Data" tool – a marvelous interactive system provided by the US Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. FRED lets you quickly display and analyze economic information, combine multiple time series, generate graphs, and actually understand large-scale trends worth celebrating (or worrying about). An awesome free service to help the world think better!

_{(cf ^z FRED graphs, the NY Times Jeanna Smialek's article "Everybody Loves FRED: How America Fell for a Data Tool", Basement Worries (2002-06-15), Supply and Demand (2005-09-13), Folk Economics (2022-02-22), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-08}

- Tuesday, April 08, 2025 at 08:41:55 (EST)

How NOT to Invest

A new (March 2025) book by Barry Ritholtz, How NOT to Invest, is summarized by the author in his blog post 10 Biggest Ideas in “How NOT to Invest”. Slightly abridged:

Bad Ideas:

1. Poor Advice: Why is there so much bad advice? The short answer is that we give too much credit to gurus who self-confidently predict the future despite overwhelming evidence that they can’t. We believe successful people in one sphere can easily transfer their skills to another – most of the time, they can’t. ...

2. Media Madness: Do we really need 24/7 financial advice for our investments we won’t draw on for decades? Why are we constantly prodded to take action now! when the best course for our long-term financial health is to do nothing? ...

3. Sophistry: The Study of Bad Ideas: Investing is really the study of human decision-making. It is about the art of using imperfect information to make probabilistic assessments about an inherently unknowable future. This practice requires humility and the admission of how little we know about today and essentially nothing about tomorrow. Investing is simple but hard, and therein lies our challenge.

Bad Numbers:

4. Economic Innumeracy: Some individuals experience math anxiety, but it only takes a bit of insight to navigate the many ways numbers can mislead us. It boils down to context. We are too often swayed by recent events. We overlook what is invisible yet significant. We struggle to grasp compounding – it’s not instinctive. We evolved in an arithmetic world, so we are unprepared for the exponential math of finance.

5. Market Mayhem: As investors, we often rely on rules of thumb that fail us. We don’t fully understand the importance of long-term societal trends. ...

6. Stock Shocks: Academic research and data overwhelmingly reveal that stock selection and market timing do not work. ...

Bad Behavior:

7. Avoidable Mistakes: Everyone makes investing mistakes, and the wealthy and ultra-wealthy make even bigger ones. We don’t understand the relationship between risk and reward; we fail to see the benefits of diversification. Our unforced errors haunt our returns.

8. Emotional Decision-Making: We make spontaneous decisions for reasons unrelated to our portfolios. We mix politics with investing. We behave emotionally. We focus on outliers while ignoring the mundane. We exist in a happy little bubble of self-delusion, which is only popped in times of panic.

9. Cognitive Deficits: You’re human – unfortunately, that hurts your portfolio. Our brains evolved to keep us alive on the savannah, not to make risk/reward decisions in the capital markets. We are not particularly good at metacognition—the self-evaluation of our own skills. We can be misled by individuals whose skills in one area do not transfer to another. We prefer narratives over data. When facts contradict our beliefs, we tend to ignore those facts and reinforce our ideology. Our brains simply weren’t designed for this.

Good Advice:

10. This is the best advice I can offer:

A. Avoid mistakes (fewer unforced errors, be less stupid).

B. Recognize your advantages (and take advantage of them).

C. Create a financial plan (then stick to it). If you need help, find someone who is a fiduciary to work with.

D. Index (mostly). Own a broad set of low-cost equity indices for the best long-term results.

E Own bonds for income and to offset stock volatility. Primarily Treasuries, investment-grade corporates, munis, and TIPs.

F. Be tax-aware. Consider direct indexing to reduce capital gains and reduce concentrated positions.

G. Use a regret minimization strategy when sitting on outsized single position gains.

H. Be skeptical of all but the best alts (VC/PE/HF/PC). If you have access to the top decile, take advantage of it. Otherwise, exercise caution.

I. Spend your money intelligently: Buy time, experiences, and joy. Ignore the scolds.

J. Fail better. Understand what is and is NOT in your control.

K. Get rich: Here are the classic strategies to get rich in the markets, including how difficult each is and their likelihood of success.

_{(cf Money Wisdom (2001-05-20), Bubble Busters (2002-02-06), Harry Browne Rules of Financial Safety (2019-12-24), Shiller Price Earnings Ratio (2021-03-29), Bogleheads (2024-01-28), Four Pillars of Investing (2024-04-19), ...) - ^z - 2025-04-03}

- Thursday, April 03, 2025 at 07:10:33 (EST)

sona wawa

Steelmanning, briefly, in Toki Pona:

o sona wawa
o pana e wawa tawa toki sona pi jan ante
o toki insa pona
o pilin-pona tawa jan ante

_{(cf Steelmanning (2025-03-25), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-27}

- Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 07:48:33 (EST)

Steelmanning

An important strategy for argumentation, as described in Wikipedia's article "Straw man":

A steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of a straw man argument. Steelmanning is the practice of applying the rhetorical principle of charity through addressing the strongest form of the other person's argument, even if it is not the one they explicitly presented. Creating the strongest form of the opponent's argument may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted or developing the strongest points which counter one's own position. Developing counters to steel man arguments may produce a stronger argument for one's own position.

... and that paragraph's reference, to Conor Friedersdorf's essay "The Highest Form of Disagreement" (in The Atlantic, 26 June 2017), leads to Chana Messinger's comment in "Knocking Down a Steel Man: How to Argue Better":

“... steelmanning makes you a better person. It makes you more charitable, forcing you to assume, at least for a moment, that the people you’re arguing with, much as you ferociously disagree with them or even dislike them, are people who might have something to teach you. It makes you more compassionate, learning to treat those you argue with as true opponents, not merely obstacles. It broadens your mind, preventing us from making easy dismissals or declaring preemptive victory, pushing us to imagine all the things that could and might be true in this beautiful, strange world of ours. And it keeps us rational, reminding us that we’re arguing against ideas, not people, and that our goal is to take down these bad ideas, not to revel in the defeat of incorrect people.”

Beautiful, wise, and powerful!

_{(cf Questions, Ideas, Arguments (2000-09-14), Discussion and Dialogue (2006-01-07), Steely Eyed Missile Man (2008-05-01), Productive Collaboration (2017-02-27), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-25}

- Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 09:45:51 (EST)

Three Things

What are the most enjoyable things in life? Maybe consider big categories:

• Knowing — learning new things, seeing beautiful patterns, discovering and treasuring knowledge, ...
• Sharing — helping others (and self, both future and present) become stronger, happier, kinder, wiser, ...
• Doing — acting in the physical world of animal bodies and inanimate objects — building, creating, loving, ...

Or in Toki Pona:

ijo musi tu wan

• sona en lukin
• kulupu en pana
• pali en olin

_{(cf My Religion (2000-11-06), Cardinal Newman (2001-10-04), Most Important (2002-05-16), Liberal Education (2005-11-02), Holy Day (2008-03-23), Mantra - Mindfulness, Nonattachment, Oneness (2017-01-25),"2, 3" (2020-01-04), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-22}

- Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 06:40:03 (EST)

Humility and Uncertainty

Theologian Adam Clark (1762-1832) writes, in an essay about the Biblical book of Revelations:

... My readers will naturally expect that I should either give a decided preference to some one of the opinions stated above, or produce one of my own; I can do neither, nor can I pretend to explain the book: I do not understand it; and in the things which concern so sublime and awful a subject, I dare not, as my predecessors, indulge in conjectures. I have read elaborate works on the subject, and each seemed right till another was examined. I am satisfied that no certain mode of interpreting the prophecies of this book has yet been found out, and I will not add another monument to the littleness or folly of the human mind by endeavoring to strike out a new course. I repeat it, I do not understand the book; and I am satisfied that not one who has written on the subject knows any thing more of it than myself. ...

... such a wise statement of uncertainty concerning a complex subject!

_{(many thanks to comrade Matthew Payne for sharing this quote — cf Your Own Bible (2007-02-13), Mantra - Uncertainty, Kindness, Peace, Hope (2017-06-29), Certain Uncertainty (2021-03-16), How to Embrace Uncertainty (2024-01-13), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-16}

- Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 07:22:14 (EST)

Atlas of Happiness

Helen Russell's 2018 book The Atlas of Happiness: The Global Secrets of How to Be Happy offers a world tour, in alphabetical order by country, of a few dozen words and phrases dealing with cheery-adjacent concepts:

• Australia — "Fair go" — justice (along with "No worries")
• Bhutan — "Gross National Happiness" — attending to societal well-being
• Brazil — "Saudade" — melancholy and sorrow (to be recognized and avoided)
• Canada — "Joie de vivre" — enjoyment of life
• China — "Xingfu" — life-happiness, well-being
• Costa Rica — "Pura vida" — optimism, happiness, "pure life"
• Denmark — "Arbejdsglæde" — contentment, job-life balance, "happiness at work"
• England — "Jolly" — general cheerfulness in the face of adversity
• Finland — "Kalsarikännit" — cozy at-home relaxation, literally "pants drunk"
• Germany — "Gemütlichkeit" — comfort-inducing pleasantness, in moderation
• Greece — "Meraki" — creative precision, devotion, undivided attention
• Hawaii — "Aloha" — love, kindness, compassion, respect
• Iceland — "Þetta reddast" — "it will all work out"
• India — "Jugaad" — frugal innovation
• Ireland — "Craic" — news and conversation
• Italy — "Dolce far niente" — "the sweetness of doing nothing"
• Japan — "Wabi-sabi" — beauty in simplicity and imperfection
• New Zealand — "Türangawaewae & Haka" — places of empowerment and connection, shared energy
• Norway — "Friluftsliv" — open-air living
• Russia — "Azart" — excitement, passion
• South Africa — "Ubuntu" — interconnection and sharing
• Spain — "Tapeo & Sobremesa" — meeting for food and conversation
• Sweden — "Smultronställe & Lagom" — a quiet place to relax & "just enough"
• Switzerland — "Federerism" — coined by the author, "control, precision, ... industriousness, order"
• Syria — "Tarab" — musically-triggered emotions
• Thailand — "Mi pen rai" — "don't worry"
• The Netherlands — "Gezellig" — cozy, quaint
• Turkey — "Keyif" — idle relaxation
• USA — "Homeyness" — comforting simplicity
• Wales — "Hwyl" — enthusiastic fervor

... rather a mixed bag, arguably redundant, tangential, arbitrary, and questionable — but overall positive sentiments!

_{(cf They Have a Word for It (2023-09-06), Island Wisdom (2025-03-11), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-13}

- Thursday, March 13, 2025 at 05:16:44 (EST)

Island Wisdom

Island Wisdom: Hawaiian Traditions and Practices for a Meaningful Life (2022), by Kainoa Daknes and Annie Daly, is a sweet (if a wee bit too first-person and mystical) book that riffs on four big themes:

• Aloha — love — olin
• 'Āina — land — ma
• Mo'olelo — stories — toki
• 'Ohana — family — kulupu

Great principles to cherish! – with loose translations into Toki Pona (toki-pona).

_{(cf Global Wisdom (1999-07-22), Scandinavian Health (2021-05-24), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-11}

- Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 11:22:22 (EST)

The Greatest Secret

BLUF: Take great thoughts, toss them into a vat, stir, and dip out a dozen buckets of awareness.

Rhonda Byrne's 2020 book The Greatest Secret offers "... a life of permanent happiness and bliss." It's a rather disorganized collection of quotations by spiritual writers and teachers, accompanied by enthusiastic exhortations within a bit of first-person framing. Thank goodness for the summary sections at the end of each chapter! In brief:

1. "Hidden in Plain Sight" — we're all looking for happiness and meaning
2. "The Greatest Secret: Revealed" — it's all about Awareness
3. "The Reveal Continued" — notice Awareness and stay with it
4. "You're Dreaming ... It's Time to Wake Up" — life is but a dream
5. "Freedom from the Mind" — don't believe your thoughts, observe them
6. "Understanding the Power of Feelings" — question negative feelings
7. "The End of Negative Feelings" — welcome your feelings and live in Awareness
8. "No More Suffering" — be Aware
9. "Dissolving Limiting Beliefs" — question everything
10. "Everlasting Happiness" — let go of your attachments and stay in Awareness
11. "The World: All is Well" — everything is an illusion; say "Yes" to it
12. "The End–There Is No End" — death is an illusion; Awareness is eternal

All well, all good – but so long and chaotic!

_{(cf Core Buddhism (2011-10-17), Mantra - Mindfulness, Nonattachment, Oneness (2017-01-25), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-11}

- Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 08:50:13 (EST)

Making Mathematics with Needlework

Making Mathematics with Needlework, edited by Sarah-Marie Belcastro and Carolyn Yackel, is a crazy-quilt of connections. The math is somewhat of a scrap-bag – inspirational suggestions, questions for student-teacher discussion, glimpses of deep theorems. From a fiber arts perspective, there's not a lot that's non-obvious yet relevant to practical crocheters, knitters, et al. Occasionally there's excessive jargon and irrelevant digressions. That's OK!

The main themes touched upon in this mathematical buffet are:

• topology — surfaces and shapes such as Möbius strips, Klein bottles, tori, knots, braids, ...
• number theory – integer ratios, fractional approximations, prime factors, ...
• geometric patterns – symmetries, scalings, fractal self-similar designs, ...

And at a deeper level, this 2008 book offers hints on how to "pop up a level" and think meta about a craft!

_{(cf Do Meta (1999-05-08), Crochety Crochet (2011-03-14), Symmetry in Physical Laws (2015-12-12), Visible Mending (2024-11-10), ...) - ^z - 2025-03-11}

- Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at 06:56:36 (EST)

Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World

Iddo Landau is a professional philosopher, so his 2017 book Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World is mainly full of questions. That's good! – especially when dealing with a big, important topic. Landau's BLUF:

Yes, the world is far from flawless; our lives are finite, as is our civilization, our planet, and the universe itself. Yes, a few lucky people do amazing things; most of us don't. Yes, maybe "free will" is an illusion. Yes, stuff happens, seemingly at random. Yes, people (and cultures) disagree about what's most valuable and which goals are most worth pursuing. Yes, suffering seems almost ubiquitous. Yes, great Evils exist. Yes, we often judge ourselves harshly and feel regret over our mistakes.

Nevertheless, there is so much good in the world – beauty, kindness, and love. Landau suggests that we tend to overlook that good.

At the end of Chapter 4, Landau summarizes his antiperfectionism thesis:

Thus, alongside the perfectionist streak in Western culture and philosophy, there is also a powerful and interesting nonperfectionist streak. This book follows the latter streak, which finds great value in ordinary things. As I see it, a person who is decent; who is a good family member, friend, or neighbor; who is curious; and who can enjoy the sight of the trees through the window of the bus on her way to work has already made it. She has a meaningful life. She has passed the threshold. Perhaps Mother Teresa or Bach had even more meaningful lives, but her life is already meaningful. Meaningfulness can be found in growing and enjoying geraniums on the balcony, not only orchids in the conservatory. ...

And at the very end of the book Landau offers some "practical guidelines":

• Avoid perfectionism
  • If it is impossible to achieve something, do not try to achieve it and do not blame yourself for not achieving it
  • Do not ignore the good just because not everything is good
• Do not discriminate against yourself — treat yourself as you treat others, and as you would want others to treat you
• This is not a dress rehearsal — we have one opportunity to live a meaningful life, and it is a great pity to waste it
• Do not be cruel to yourself
• Work — only a few people can have a meaningful life without working

Hmmm, sounds like Mindfulness!

_{(cf Optimist Creed (1999-04-16), No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed (2003-10-13), Ethical Fitness (2000-12-15), Fallibilism (2013-05-14), So I Will See (2016-03-27), Mantra - Beliefs Are Knobs, Not Switches (2017-07-03), ...) - ^z - 2025-02-20}

- Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 08:00:28 (EST)

Thomas Friedman's Laws

Thomas Friedman is a smart person. From his recent interview with Patrick Healy (produced by Jillian Weinberger), some wise bumper stickers — generally applicable to human events, far beyond the current geopolitical situation:

• change — "... the game board sometimes really does need to be shaken up ..."
• stupidity — "... the single most underestimated force in international relations is actually stupidity ..."
• feedback — "... In a low information system where no one wants to tell the top guy the truth [...] little bad news ever gets to the guy at the top. ... Low information systems are always dangerous. They’re particularly dangerous in a world where we have rapid change. ..."
• physics — "... I’ve kind of given up on politics ... I’m now entirely betting on physics, on the hard realities of things. ... When the politicians responsible for being buffers don’t do their jobs, all I’ve got left Newton and the third law of motion: For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. That’s all I’ve got left. ... I’ve pretty much given up on politics, but I do believe in the laws of gravity. The apple actually did fall from the tree. It didn’t jump from the ground into the tree. And eventually, the laws of gravity will make themselves felt. ..."

In a nutshell: excellent big-picture systems thinking and modeling!

_{(cf Tilt Theory of History (2004-06-01), Study Offsets (2007-07-08), In Favor of Both (2020-11-27), Upside Surprises (2021-02-22), ...) - ^z - 2025-02-20}

- Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 10:26:58 (EST)

Mantra - Forgive Yourself First

... when sad about the past, when worried about the future, when recovering from a mistake, when suffering from an attack ...

_{(many thanks to 🧫 for great wisdom! — and cf Aikido Spirit (2003-12-09), Forgiveness and Oneness (2013-10-08), Mantra - Be Your Own Best Friend (2016-02-16), Mantra - Worthy of Love (2016-07-24), Mantra - Forgiven (2016-08-02), Stay Right When Wronged (2016-10-05), Mantra - Love Your Self (2016-12-30), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-28}

- Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 09:47:03 (EST)

King of Infinite Space

H S M Coxeter (1907-2003), aka "Donald", was a geometer: a mathematician who explores space and shape, distance and direction. King of Infinite Space, Siobhan Roberts' biography (2006), is a delightful ramble through the space and shape of Coxeter's life. Rather like that life, Roberts' book is long, well-written, precise, diverse, and quite quirky at times. And like that life, Roberts' book defies encapsulation. Perhaps best would be just to show something that's not even in it: a picture of a pattern that Coxeter generalized, his "loxodromic sequence":

The circle marked "0" touches the three larger ones (numbers 1, 2, 3) and the three smaller ones (-1, -2, -3). And the sequence extends to infinity in both directions: ever-larger and ever-smaller circles, radii in a Golden Ratio. Each kisses the three before and the three after it, in a dizzying spiral. Wow!

_{(cf Hobbes and Geometry (2008-03-04), Genius at Play (2018-11-04), Certain Uncertainty (2021-03-16), Geometric Folding Algorithms (2024-05-18), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-24}

- Friday, January 24, 2025 at 08:18:24 (EST)

Four Thousand Weeks

Oliver Burkeman is a thoughtful person who writes well. His 2021 book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is a set of variations on themes he played in The Antidote (2012), and has many of the same problems. Aside from poetic quotes by classic thinkers, there are few glimmers amidst the prose. Zen-like twists are fun: embrace your insignificance, give up the illusion of control, be a better procrastinator, etc. Live mindfully within a human lifespan, the "Four Thousand Weeks" of the title.

Further details, alas, are sketchy. Best, perhaps, are hints in the summary sections near the end of the book. Burkeman's "Five Questions" in the final chapter, for instance:

1. Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what's called for is a little discomfort?
2. Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
3. In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?
4. In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you're doing?
5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn't care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?

_{(cf The Antidote (2013-06-28), Stand in the Shed (2055-01-04), Celebrate Healthy Habits (2025-01-07), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-23}

- Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 10:27:01 (EST)

What the Robin Knows

Jon Young's "What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World" is actually a book about awareness, via the metaphor of ornithology. Its final paragraph summarizes the mindfulness-mission:

When we train ourselves to listen to the birds with every synapse of our brains (or so it may seem), when we "lose our mind" and "come to our senses" in the fullest possible way, the chattering, texting, e-mailing, twittering mind will eventually quiet down and almost silence itself. This is a sacred and connected silence, and within this zone we can choose to turn on the conscious thoughts or leave them off. It's like a deep, still pond reflecting the stars of the night sky. I believe this is the baseline for human consciousness, and I'm convinced that the birds are the best mentors in the natural world for bringing us to it.

_{(cf Twitchers and Foamers (2013-12-15), Gentleness, Sensitivity, Compassion (2014-03-09), Taiji and Self Awareness (2014-04-15), Slow Birding (2022-12-22), Birding, Zen, and BirdCast (2023-04-19), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-20}

- Monday, January 20, 2025 at 08:18:48 (EST)

Suit the Tool to the Task

Great Life Wisdom in chapter 2 of the delightful 1970 computer science textbook Numerical Methods that Work by Forman S Acton:

The ideas of computational strategy

One of the more persistent messages of this book is an exhortation to suit the tool to the task. This exhortation, in turn, demands that both the tools and the task be understood. The essential shape of the problem to be solved must be discovered and then used as the driving force for the solution strategy. An elegant algorithm applied to the wrong problem is not apt to produce much enlightenment. Nor are large numbers of random trials to be justified simply because they are relatively easy. Seeking needles in haystacks, even with an electronic computer, is time consuming. It behooves the problem analyst to seek carefully for the important characteristics of his problem and then to pick a strategy that is appropriate. This art is difficult, for equations are often not what they at first appear nor are our numerical tools even close to universally applicable. A method that can find the isolated root of a cotangent-like curve may fail spectacularly when used on a polynomial with a triple root and a few bumps ...

- Sunday, January 19, 2025 at 08:06:26 (EST)

Reasons to Stay Alive

Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive is an intensely personal, immensely important little book. It's a view-from-inside description of his depression and how it came, went, and returned – repeatedly. Especially insightful are some of his lists, such as this one from the chapter "How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety":

1. Know that you are needed, and appreciated, even if it seems you are not.
2. Listen.
3. Never say "pull yourself together" or "cheer up" unless you're also going to provide detailed, foolproof instructions. (Tough love doesn't work. Turns out that just good old "love" is enough.)
4. Appreciate that it is an illness. Things will be said that aren't meant.
5. Educate yourself. Understand, above all, that what might seem easy to you—going to a shop, for instance—might be an impossible challenge for a depressive.
6. Don't take anything personally, any more than you would take someone suffering with the flu or chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis personally. None of this is your fault.
7. Be patient. Understand it isn't going to be easy. Depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. It doesn't stay still. Do not take one happy/bad moment as proof of recovery/relapse. Play the long game.
8. Meet them where they are. Ask what you can do. The main thing you can do is just be there.
9. Relieve any work/life pressure if that is doable.
10. Where possible, don't make the depressive feel weirder than they already feel. Three days on the sofa? Haven't opened the curtains? Crying over difficult decisions like which pair of socks to wear? So what. No biggie. There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

And it all boils down to love ...

_{(cf Therapies for Depression (2015-10-04), Another Look at Depression (2018-08-12), Michael Gerson sermon (2022-11-19) Midnight Library (2025-01-11), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-18}

- Saturday, January 18, 2025 at 07:33:36 (EST)

Walk in the Park

A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko (2024) is subtitled "The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon". It describes a hike of ~800 miles along the cliffs of the Grand Canyon National Park as performed by the author, his friend Pete McBride, and various helpful experts.

Fedarko's prose is generally good, though sometimes a bit turgid when describing the awesome scenery, sometimes excessively first-person, sometimes distractingly preachy, but overall fast-flowing and enjoyable. The real problems with the book are the unfortunate absence of decent maps keyed to the journey, the lack of an index, the failure to include a timeline, and the generally poor quality of the illustrations. Perhaps some future edition can remedy those issues!

_{(cf Eastern Yosemite Mountains (2006-06-02), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-13}

- Monday, January 13, 2025 at 17:26:39 (EST)

Midnight Library

Matt Haig's novel The Midnight Library is a sweet allegory about depression and suicide – or perhaps, about choosing to live and discovering happiness, meaning, and love. The protagonist tries to kill herself. She appears in a limbo/bardo place, represented by an infinite "library", full of many-world quantum-mechanical "books", each a biography of an alternate life. She samples several, and eventually discovers ... well, that's the plot!

Midnight Library isn't terribly deep conceptually, the prose isn't terribly poetic, the characters aren't terribly surprising — and that's OK. The thoughts it offers are wise and kind. Good enough!

_{(cf Many Worlds Demystified (1999-10-24), Worst Zen Student That Ever Was (2012-03-10), Oblique Life (2013-08-14), Therapies for Depression (2015-10-04), Another Look at Depression (2018-08-12), Depression as a Gift (2023-01-16), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-11}

- Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 08:29:18 (EST)

Character-Building Tools

David Brooks in "The Character-Building Tool Kit" summarizes University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth's list of key strengths:

• ... of the heart — being kind, considerate, generous
• ... of the mind — being curious, open-minded, having good judgment
• ... of the will — self-control, determination, courage

Brooks talks about inspirational teachers, such as "... a physics professor who doesn’t teach only physics but also the scientific way of life — how to lead a life devoted to wonder, curiosity, intellectual rigor and exploration." He describes facets of character-building at some special schools:

... They have a sense of moral mission, that who you become is more important than what career track you pursue. ... They have a clear goal and everybody knows their role in achieving it. They have rituals to mark transitions. They have retreats and group travel so that people can see one another before the makeup goes on. They provide opportunities for struggle and growth. They often have sacred symbols and initiation rituals so that everybody knows they belong. ...

... and key skills:

• understanding — "... being good at listening and conversation, and eliciting life stories so that you can accurately see the people around you and make them feel seen" ...
• attention — "... How you see people determines how you show up in the world. If you see with eyes of judgment, you’ll find flaws, but if you see with generous eyes, you’ll see people doing the best they can. ..."
• consideration — "... how to treat people well in the complex circumstances of life: how to offer criticism with care; how to break up with someone without crushing the person’s heart; how to ask for and offer forgiveness; how to end a conversation or a dinner party gracefully. ..."

Brooks finishes with discussion of rôle models, moral traditions, great books, self-confrontation, and community service. Good thoughts on being good!

_{(cf What Moderates Believe (2017-08-26), Disagreement under Disagreement (2020-12-02), Most People Seek to Be Good (2023-06-19), David Brooks on Being Human (2023-10-21), How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times (2023-11-05), Middle Manager Magic (2024-04-12), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-10}

- Friday, January 10, 2025 at 10:57:41 (EST)

Hofstadter Hopes for 2025

Douglas Hofstadter's responded to Peter Coy's question in the NYT column "What 15 Very Different People Hope to See in 2025":

I hope somehow to regain some measure of hope in this, the most ominous-seeming year that I have yet faced. Over this past year, and especially these last few months, I have lost much of my once-strong faith in humanity, but I hope, somehow, to regain at least a little bit of it in 2025. How, I certainly don’t know, but hope springs eternal.

_{(cf Indra's Net (2009-06-21), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-10}

- Friday, January 10, 2025 at 08:56:18 (EST)

How Meditation Deconstructs Your Mind

"How meditation deconstructs your mind" by Oshan Jarow in Vox is a fascinating overview of modern neuroscience and psychology research as applied to mindfulness practice. Key points:

• Four states of meditation, increasingly deep, are:
  • Focused attention — "... practices [that] help settle the mind ..."
  • Open-monitoring — "... practices [that] help us get untangled from focusing on any particular thing happening in the mind ..."
  • Non-dual — "... practices [that] help you shift your mental center of gravity so that you identify with that expansive field of awareness itself, rather than everything that arises within it ..."
  • Cessation — "... one step deeper, where even the field of non-dual awareness disappears ..."
• Predictive processing is a cognitive science theory that explains mind as a set of mental models of reality, updated based on sensory data:
  • "... we don’t experience the world as it is, but as we predict it to be. Our conscious experience is a construction of layered mental habits acquired through past experiences. [The senses] feed information into our brains, which conjure our experience of the world ... to match ... what might actually be going on ..."
  • Consciousness begins with priors — "... beliefs or expectations based on the past ..."
  • Meditation "deconstructs the predictive mind" — it "... progressively turn[s] down the volume on each layer of stacked priors, releasing the grip they ordinarily hold on awareness ..."
• Thus, the four states of meditation successively act as follows:
  • Focused attention "turn[s] down the volume" in the mind on everything except the object of attention
  • Open-monitoring "drop[s] into a more settled mind across the board"
  • Non-dual meditation "... aims at turning down even those deep priors that construct distinctions between subject and object altogether. ... no self/other, good/bad, here/there, now/later. All these dualities that underlie ordinary cognition basically melt into a big soup of the Now [and] universal oneness ..."
  • Cessation "... deconstructs the predictive mind ..." and temporarily turns off consciousness "from the inside"

Jarow describes these neuroscientific theories as "stories" — good stories, that suggest new testable hypotheses. He concludes by quoting Shamil Chandaria of Oxford University's Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing:

“Ultimately…all these stories are pointing to the moon. But [contemplative traditions] were pointing with their fingers. Now, we have laser pointers.” And as science progresses, “we’ll be able to work with what we’re finding out about the brain,” he added. “It’s actually about making progress, and by progress, I mean more useful stories.”

And maybe it's just bayesian knobs, all the way down?!

_{(cf Finding the Quiet (2009-12-05), Mantra - Beliefs Are Knobs, Not Switches (2017-07-03), Being You (2023-11-01), Little Book of Being (2024-12-03), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-09}

- Thursday, January 09, 2025 at 16:44:36 (EST)

Celebrate Healthy Habits

Turn the "New Year's Resolutions" gambit on its head! Lori Leibovich's NYT essay "How to Future-Proof Your Happiness in the New Year" suggests several approaches, including thoughts from Oliver Burkeman:

... resolutions can sometimes make people feel worse, not better. We often expect massive changes done perfectly from the outset, he explained. So whatever you hope to do in the new year, let yourself start off poorly. “Ten minutes spent very badly jogging,” he said, is “just infinitely more valuable than all the most amazing plans to do it perfectly.”

... and from Chris Bennett, who recommends re Resolutions:

... Don’t do them. Instead, double down on the healthy habits you already have “and then celebrate them,” he said.

Maybe you read before bed each night or avoid grabbing your phone first thing in the morning. Try not to take these habits for granted, he said: “We do really great, awesome things that we would make a resolution to do if we weren’t already doing them.”

Excellent inversion of the obvious!

_{(cf The Antidote (2013-06-28), Stand in the Shed (2025-01-04), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-07}

- Tuesday, January 07, 2025 at 18:56:47 (EST)

Stop Taking It So Seriously

... life-wisdom from retired Aussie Rules Football star Tony Armstrong in The Guardian interview "Feral cat tasted like the most delicious rotisserie chicken I’ve ever had" by Sian Cain.

_{(cf Sparky and Sandy (2002-07-24), Light Mind (2002-08-22), Unselfing (2009-01-14), Unselfing Again (2009-11-01), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-06}

- Monday, January 06, 2025 at 09:44:45 (EST)

Stand in the Shed

In The Guardian, helpful advice from Oliver Burkeman via the podcast "How to have a perfectly imperfect 2025" by interviewer Helen Pidd. From the summary:

... when you have a huge task you are putting off – such as clearing out your shed [– the] most important thing to do is take a tiny first step. Even imagining yourself doing it, or just going to stand in the messy shed is enough.

It’s a simple idea with many applications. For instance, if you have a generous impulse, act on it immediately, rather than throwing yourself into a grand gesture which you may never finish. And above all, remember that if you stop trying to be perfect and control every aspect of your life you might find more things to delight in.

... and there's a chance that the "tiny first step" might be far more important than anything else you do later!

_{(cf One Small Step (2010-06-23), Dan Ariely Lecture (2011-02-10), Shikake (2012-12-18), Thousand-Year View (2014-06-10), toki sona - pona lili li pona sewi (2024-08-30), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-04}

- Saturday, January 04, 2025 at 06:53:23 (EST)

Be a Better Bayesian

"Beliefs are knobs, not switches!"

Just remember:

• Estimate prior odds for each outcome
• Adjust the odds as new evidence comes in

Bayes in a Nutshell

How likely is it that the enemy will attack at dawn, that the next card is an ace, that you will catch the flu, or that you will get married next year? To answer any probabilistic question, "Bayes Rule" says to start with your best guess of the chance for each possible result, then adjust those guesses based on information as it arrives. If a new observation is surprising, make a big adjustment; if it's ho-hum just-as-expected, make little or no adjustment.

Note the two key components:

• Baseline: prior chances of events
• Adjustment: updates based on evidence

For simple well-defined cases, like rolling dice or winning a lottery, precise baseline odds and the size of updates can be computed with a little math. Complex real-world situations, in contrast, demand relevant experience and good judgment — but the same principles apply. For example, to estimate your chance of being in a traffic accident tomorrow:

• Baseline: What's the average accident rate for people like you? (e.g., maybe one crash every few years = roughly ~0.1% daily?)
• Adjustment: Are you at more, or less, risk tomorrow than the average in that pool of similar people? (Do you rarely drive? Live in a dense urban area with bad traffic? Plan to take a long trip tomorrow? Tend to get a lot of tickets? Anticipate that tonight will be a night of partying and little sleep? And is the weather forecast bad? Will tomorrow be a holiday? ...)

And most important: continue to adjust as new evidence arrives. If your team is evenly-matched with their opponent before the big game, the odds of winning are about 50%. If your team falls behind in the final minutes, the odds become worse. If a nice slice of cake awaits you in the refrigerator at home, the likelihood of an enjoyable dessert is high. But when you arrive if you find unexpected visitors and a party underway, chances fall for finding that food uneaten.

And finally: don't be too sure! Common cognitive fallacies involve anchoring on old beliefs, under-adjusting for new evidence, overlooking alternative outcomes, and seeking evidence to confirm rather than refute judgments.

_{(cf Statistics - A Bayesian Perspective (2010-08-13), Introduction to Bayesian Statistics (2010-11-20), Mantra - Beliefs Are Knobs, Not Switches (2017-07-03), Think Better - Three Keys (2019-06-05), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-01}

- Wednesday, January 01, 2025 at 07:03:04 (EST)

Just What We Are

Just a bag of bones
And blood and filth

Just an animal
Cowering in fear

Just a speck of cosmic dust
Orbiting an average star

Just a matrix of biochemical pathways
Feedback loops and coupled equations

Just a giant robot clumsily following instructions
From tiny genes demanding it build copies of itself

Just a whirl of thoughts and hopes and dreams
Clashing against the constraints of reality

Just a long list of laws with penalties for
Disobedience and rewards for submission

Just symbol-manipulators running
On unreliable hardware

Just a soul trapped inside
A cracked shell

Just all of these
And much more

Just love

_{(cf Light of Evolution (2006-04-24), What We Know (2006-08-15), Present in Every Moment (2019-11-15), You Are a Poem (2020-02-10), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-31}

- Tuesday, December 31, 2024 at 08:01:55 (EST)

Anti-Lexicalization

Could there be a language
In which poetry is the only way
To speak?

Is there a tongue where metaphor
Drives a cart which a "literal" equine
Can never get ahead of?

Where similies, like water,
Wear away the weary stones
Of words?

What airy thoughts might such a speech support,
Without a foundation of reference to referents?
Could it lift itself by bootstraps, self-sufficient?

Or would it slump into a
Quasi-structureless
Stack of questions?

_{(see "Lexicalization" in the Toki Pona wiki, and here cf Mines of Metaphor (1999-09-28), Writing vs Good Writing (2018-01-21), Speak, Poetry (2018-03-23), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-29}

- Sunday, December 29, 2024 at 08:00:46 (EST)

A World of Endless Second Chances

Rebecca Barry's heartfelt NYT essay "Alzheimer’s Can Be a World of Endless Second Chances" celebrates her Father's mind just-as-it-is — descending into dementia, and yet full of love and surprises. Ms Barry's gratitude-list includes:

• "He’s forgotten that he was mad at me before and now he likes me a lot because I can find things ..."
• "While he remembers that I wrote books, he doesn’t remember that he didn’t much care for them. ..."
• "He repeats stories, but on the flip side, I get to tell stories over and over, and he appreciates them each time as if they’re brand-new. ..."
• "He says funny things. ..."

... and even more magical:

Because he lives in a world that isn’t governed by time, entering the house is like moving into a sacred realm where anything can happen and all that matters is the person in front of you. I love this place. Nothing has to be factually true. The past can be erased or reinvented at any time. There is a beautiful flow when you let go of caring about what he remembers or arguing about what’s real. When someone is traveling to a different land, why not join him?

I also love the freedom in talking to someone knowing he’ll forget most of what you say. There are endless second chances.

... and there's Ms Barry's beautiful set of questions she asks herself:

... And sometimes I wonder, what is my memory keeping from me? If I didn’t remember past hurts and grudges, how much lighter and more forgiving would I be? Would we all be nicer to one another if we remembered less? Love people we otherwise don’t? Love people we do even better?

... and her description of a key facet of her father's mind:

... so wonderful an aspiration, for all minds, at all times of life!

_{(cf Nonattachment to I (2012-01-15), Heartfulness and Mindfulness (2014-12-15), Fear of Failing (2015-07-08), Fraying at the Edges (2016-05-04), Mantra - Mind Your Heart (2024-08-22), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-26}

- Thursday, December 26, 2024 at 08:09:13 (EST)

The Color of Water

James McBride's autobiography The Color of Water is subtitled "A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother". It gets its name from his mother's answer when, as a young child, McBride asked her what color God was. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color." was her reply. McBride alternates chapters based on interviews with his mother — Ruth Shilsky McBride Jordan (1921-2010), who grew up Jewish, married Black men, became a devout Christian, and raised a dozen children — with chapters focusing on his own challenges while growing up. A sample from Chapter 22 ("A Jew Discovered"):

That night I slept in a motel just down the road from the McDonald's, and at about four in the morning I sat straight up. Something just drew me awake. I tossed and turned for an hour, then got dressed and went outside, walking down the road toward the nearby wharf. As I walked along the wharf and looked over the Nansemond River, which was colored an odd purple by the light of the moon, I said to myself, "What am I doing here? This place is so lonely. I gotta get out of here." It suddenly occurred to me that my grandmother had walked around here and gazed upon this water many times, and the loneliness and agony that Hudis Shilsky felt as a Jew in this lonely southern town—far from her mother and sisters in New York, unable to speak English, a disabled Polish immigrant whose husband had no love for her and whose dreams of seeing her children grow up in America vanished as her life drained out of her at the age of forty-six—suddenly rose up in my blood and washed over me in waves. A penetrating loneliness covered me, lay on me so heavily I had to sit down and cover my face. I had no tears to shed. They were done long ago, but a new pain and a new awareness were born inside me. The uncertainty that lived inside me began to dissipate; the ache that the little boy who stared in the mirror felt was gone. My own humanity was awakened, rising up to greet me with a handshake as I watched the first glimmers of sunlight peck over the horizon. There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, and the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rules and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. My life won't be lived that way, and neither, I hope, will my children's. I left for New York happy in the knowledge that my grandmother had not suffered and died for nothing.

_{(cf Interracial Intimacies (2003-02-24), Racial Relationships (2004-01-10), An Hour before Daylight (2004-05-25), Interracial Checkmate (2004-07-20), Race and Love (2004-08-06), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-25}

- Wednesday, December 25, 2024 at 20:33:50 (EST)

Why 'A Christmas Carol' Endures

Sweet thoughts in "Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures", a New York Times essay by Roger Rosenblatt – concluding:

We are all capable of narrow-mindedness, of selfishness and greed. We are all concerned for our own material enrichment. But so too are we capable of fantastic generosity and selflessness. Dickens understood this, and it was in demonstrating the benefits of raising our moral consciousness that the quiet genius of “A Christmas Carol” most shines through.

...

Nothing satisfies a sinful reader (that is, everyone) as much as a tale in which we are given a chance to vicariously work off our sins — particularly when redemption comes fairly easily, after the scare of a single night and three brief sermons. We look at the repentant Ebenezer and think: C’est moi! From now on, I shall live differently, more honorably. I shall reform.

Entire religions are based on what Scrooge experiences and on what he vows.

This is what Dickens sought to teach us nearly 200 years ago, and it is why his message resonates all these years later. “A Christmas Carol” has endured both because it is a great story and because it offers us an eternal example of the joy that is possible when we turn toward our better angels.

We will take to “A Christmas Carol” in this season, as have the millions before us, but with a special thump of the heart. Because the story believes in our better, more generous inner selves. And the actions of those inner selves are the only way we will be truly blessed. Every one.

- Wednesday, December 25, 2024 at 09:46:14 (EST)

Gratitudinal Suggestions

From the New York Times "Your Favorite Things" news note of 21 Dec 2024, three selections (lightly edited for format):

• Best way to attain a gratitude perspective: imagine you’re an extraterrestrial, observing the wonders of the world (cats, wind, pizza) with new curiosity. — Lucia Boyd, Chicago, IL
• Best rediscovered time of day: Dawn. — Nancy Minerva, Escondido, CA
• Best thing I can say about my worst enemy: He’s not a twin. — Mark Johns, Austin, TX

_{(cf Thanks For (2001-11-22), Gratefulation and Gratituding (2021-11-11), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-21}

- Saturday, December 21, 2024 at 07:39:10 (EST)

Democracy and Christianity

Bits from the transcript of a conversation between NY Times columnist David French (religious, evangelical Christian) and Jonathan Rauch (self-described as "gay and atheistic and Jewish") titled "What if Our Democracy Can’t Survive Without Christianity?". Rauch has a forthcoming book (Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy) and the dialogue relates to some of its key points. In Rauch's judgment:

... the three fundamentals of Christianity map very well onto the three fundamentals of Madisonian liberalism. And one of those is don’t be afraid. No. 2 is be like Jesus. Imitate Jesus. And No. 3 is forgive each other. And those things are very much like how you run a constitutional republic.

You can’t be afraid of losing all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to let the other team win. You have to trust in the system. You have to believe in traits like the basic dignity and equality and humanity of everyone, even the people you oppose. And you can’t be so judgmental that you think if you lose the next election everything is over, and that bad people win and you’ve somehow got to drive them out of the country."

Rauch concludes:

... I have learned that there are teachings at the core of Christianity which are beautiful and true. You don’t have to believe in Jesus to believe them. You can believe in James Madison to believe them because they’re similar, and that’s not coincidental.

And I think it can only do good and not harm to the country and to Christian witness, if Christians can do the work of rediscovering and elevating those elements of the Christian faith which uphold our democracy and which uphold the teachings of Christ. I can’t see that any possible harm would result from that.

And so what I come down to is addressing my Christian fellow citizens and saying, why not give Jesus a try?

- Saturday, December 21, 2024 at 07:03:26 (EST)

Little Book of Being

That's Diana Winston's 2019 The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. It's both disorganized and brilliant, as it explores an alternative to "classical mindfulness", the structured practice of focused attention. Winston says in the Introduction: "There are multiple ways to be aware: from the effortful to the effortless, from the narrowly focused to the wide open and spacious, from awareness of objects to objectless awareness of awareness." What a lovely summary of the entire enterprise!

The journey to Natural Awareness that Winston describes is gentle, meandering, rather first-person, and filled with delights. A few signposts along the way, starting in Chapter 6, "The Spectrum of Awareness Practices":

At one end of the spectrum is what we might call focused awareness practice. When we are practicing focused awareness, we're making an effort and focusing narrowly on an object—often our breath. When our attention wanders, we notice it has wandered and then return our attention to our breath (or other object of focus). Focused awareness practice is the classical mindfulness meditation practice most people begin with, and it is useful for training unruly minds. It helps us develop stabilization, concentration, and clarity of mind. ...

Next along the spectrum is what we might call flexible awareness practice, which is also taught within classical mindfulness meditation When we are practicing flexible awareness, our awareness has a wider field, rather than being narrowed to only one central focus (like our breath). Sometimes we flexibly move our attention to investigate other objects of awareness that pull us away from our main focus (such as a sound, a sensation, or an emotion) and then return to our main focus after a while. Sometimes our attention may appear to jump around from object to object, and we rarely return to a main focus. Effort is variable, attention is both broad and narrow, and we still focus on objects. ...

On the far end of the spectrum is natural awareness practice, which is not commonly included in classical mindfulness meditation. Natural awareness practice is usually effortless and objectless, emphasizing awareness of awareness. With natural awareness practice, we don't have to try so hard. Our mind tends to rest in a place of ease, and awareness seems to happen on its own. Typically, attention is broad, and it doesn't focus on objects ...

In Chapter 47, "Don't Do It Alone":

It takes just one other person to create a community. ... You can discuss your practice, share questions, and explore how to implement natural awareness practices in daily life all by phone, video chat, or text.

_{(cf Wherever You Go, There You Are (2008-10-26), Being with Your Breath (2010-02-20), Fully Present (2011-02-14), Find the Beauty (2011-04-03), Bringing Back a Wandering Attention (2013-02-13), Mindfulness for Beginners (2013-07-18), Beginning Mindfulness (2013-09-22), Metacognitive Awareness (2018-05-19), Mantra - Be Meta, Be Open, Be Love (2018-11-11), ...) - ^z - 2024-12-03}

- Tuesday, December 03, 2024 at 22:26:20 (EST)

Tragic Optimism

Brad Stulberg writes in his NYT op-ed essay "How to Keep Going Amid the Chaos" about the concept of "tragic optimism", defined by Viktor Frankl as arising from "the three tragedies" of life:

... The first tragedy is pain, because we are made of flesh and bone. The second is guilt, because we have the freedom to make choices and thus feel responsible when things don’t go our way. The third is loss, because we must face the reality that everything we cherish is impermanent, including our own lives.

Tragic optimism means acknowledging, accepting and even expecting that life will contain hardship and hurt, then doing everything we can to move forward with a positive attitude anyway. It recognizes that one cannot be happy by trying to be happy all the time, or worse yet, assuming we ought to be. Rather, tragic optimism holds space for the full range of human experience and emotion, giving us permission to feel happiness and sadness, hope and fear, loss and possibility — sometimes in the same day, and even in the same hour.

_{(cf Bennett on Stoicism (1999-04-29), Search for Meaning (2005-08-27), David Brooks on Being Human (2023-10-21), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-30}

- Saturday, November 30, 2024 at 11:20:11 (EST)

The Fault in Our Stars

Gentle, beautiful, and full of loving-kindness: John Green's 2012 young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars explores death, life, the universe, and much more. Its protagonist is Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl living with and dying of cancer. Most of its central characters are young people with cancer, or family members thereof. Its plot is a quest and a love story, with deep philosophy at its core. A few striking snippets, starting in Chapter 1 at a support-group meeting:

Isaac and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, he'd glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I'd shake my head microscopically and exhale in response.

... and much, much more.

_{(cf Search for Meaning (2005-08-27), Easter Morning Musings with a Friend (2008-03-24), Never Forgotten (2024-08-16), An Abundance of Katherines (2024-11-12), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-21}

- Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 11:21:45 (EST)

Against Panic

"Against Panic: A Survival Kit" by New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl paints a beautiful portrait of Nature and its power to preserve, protect, and defend the spirit, especially in times of turmoil. Best brief bits perhaps include:

• “… I will be fighting for the rest of my life to preserve the promise this country still holds for pluralism, for fairness, for decency, for true freedom. …”
• “… There is no cure for profound grief, but beauty and love and tenderness can walk alongside it and ease the solitude, at least. …”
• “… To fight the calamities that are coming, we will need to find what gives us joy even amid the fight, and we will need to find a way to rest when the fight is too much to bear. …”

It's all about staying strong, long-term, to help repair the World ...

_{(cf Vastness, Equanimity, Selflessness (2015-06-04), Joko on Joy (2015-09-03), Tikkun Olam (2019-12-11), Most Beautiful Day (2023-07-01), Love for Imperfect Things (2024-02-12), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-13}

- Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 07:40:17 (EST)

An Abundance of Katherines

By John Green, An Abundance of Katherines (2006) is a delightful young adult novel – beautifully written, hilarious in places – about various misadventures of Colin, an anagrammatic teenage prodigy (but maybe not genius) and his friends. There's a wee bit of math (that could have been done better) and a truckload of fun, all served up with a splash of thoughtfulness and Meaning-of-Life philosophy. From the epilogue:

... And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other—maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

And Colin thought: Because like say I tell someone about my feral hog hunt. Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as telling the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward—ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter—maybe less than a lot, but always more than none.

... beautiful, hopeful, true.

... pona lukin, pona tenpo kama, lon

_{(in Wikipedia with many spoilers: An Abundance of Katherines — and cf Worth the Cost (2004-02-03), Easter Morning Musings with a Friend (2008-03-24), The Meaning of Life (2008-07-24), Lines of a Story (2017-11-28), Never Forgotten (2024-08-16), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-12}

- Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 08:06:05 (EST)

Visible Mending

_{(New York Times gift-link and Youtube link — cf obituary of Mason Rankin, excerpt in McGs (2002-02-28), and Crochety Crochet (2011-03-14), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-10}

- Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 07:26:06 (EST)

On Trial

Much like the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, in the District Court on 2024-11-08 a series of diverse stories unfold — of justice and mercy, process and compromise, sin and redemption. Judge Amy Bills presides and:

• scoffs at and dismisses an "open container" charge with a $25 fine
• issues bench warrants for people who repeatedly didn't show up to their hearings
• lectures some who slipped back into addiction and crime, about their mental health, bad decisions, and the paths they can take to recovery — beginning with keeping their promises to follow probation rules and do their community service
• explains the entertaingly-named crime of "Rogue and Vagabond" in Maryland — entering a motor vehicle with intent to commit theft, and associated offenses
• reads — over and over, word for word, to each individual defendant — the official meaning of a "Guilty Plea", making sure they all understand precisely what they are agreeing to
• listens to evidence, hears statements by victims and offenders, accepts guilty pleas, and schedules future hearings
• issues sentences — often lenient, time-already-served, in many cases with "PBJ" aka "Probation Before Judgment" — a special new Maryland legal option that allows individuals to avoid a formal conviction by successfully complying with all terms of their probation

Bottom line: it's all about the third phase of the Social Process: after Rules (aka laws) are defined, and somebody is accused of Breaking the rules, then there is an open, fair, documented, auditable process to Interpret and Apply the rules. Fascinating!

_{(i'm there in case i'm needed to testify about events witnessed on 23 Sep 2024, when a mentally disturbed person took off their clothes and stood naked in front of several houses in the neighborhood, praying and chanting for souls that they felt were in need of help – as it turned out, the person entered a guilty plea and is getting treatment; cf Opaque Justice (2002-01-29), For Great Justice (2002-12-01), Winter's Tale on Justice (2014-11-03), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-09}

- Saturday, November 09, 2024 at 18:06:22 (EST)

Mathematical Mantras in Toki Pona

Numbers

wan en tu la mute

→ in the context of 1 and 2, many

Set Theory

ijo en ijo la kulupu

→ in the context of objects, collections

Boolean Algebra

lon en ala la tan

→ in the context of true and false, implication

Calculus

tenpo en ma la ante

→ in the context of time and space, change

Topology

open en pini la insa

→ in the context of openness and closure, interiors

Differential Geometry

sijelo la selo

→ in the context of a body, a boundary

Category Theory

nasin la nasin nasin

→ in the context of ways, ways of ways

_{(cf Mathematical Magic (2001-09-27), Ultimate Abstraction (2017-08-24), Why Care about Category Theory (2019-03-03), ...) - ^z - 2024-11-03}

- Sunday, November 03, 2024 at 06:58:11 (EST)

Language of the Spirit

Jan Swafford's Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music, is chatty and fun — a presto series of scherzos, short chapters of biography and anecdotes (including some too naughty to quote here!) plus commentary and recommendations for listening-learning. As Swafford summarizes it all in "Conclusions":

So, there's our tour of Western music from eons back to a few years ago. How do I, as a composer and writer, add all this up? Music is here to enjoy, to love, to be fascinated and moved and instructed and amused and scared and exalted by. I believe that a composer's job is to provide those experiences for us. If and when audiences for classical music are ready to be moved by myriad voices and languages, when audiences are as excited about hearing something new as they were in Mozart's day — then music will thrive. The works being composed today are part of an ongoing experiment in that direction.

To finish, I want again to take note of the stupendous scope of the music l've talked about. One of the great virtues of Western music is not only its enormous technical journey from monody to polyphony to homophony, from evolving tonality to evolving atonality, triads to tone clusters, simplicity to complexity, a small palette of colors to an enormous palette, austere to impassioned, calculated to crazed. It has also shown an ability to absorb into itself ideas and voices from around the world, and from popular music and jazz, while still remaining itself. For me the incomparable breadth of reference and style over the past millennium may be the most remarkable aspect of Western classical music. Of course, we haven't seen the end of that evolution and never will.

What do I foresee in the future? I decline to speculate. A recent study found that when it comes to prognostication, there's no difference between prophecies of the future and random outcomes. Whatever happens, it will not be what anybody predicted, unless by accident. What we can say is that the human spirit is endlessly creative, and musicians like all artists will keep doing what they do. In the process they will continue to reveal beautiful, sublime, enchanting, provoking, frightening, fascinating, exalted, comic, rude, marvelous things. Whether presented in terms of sounds, strings, brass, stone, wood, canvas, film, paint, or what have you, in the end art is all made of the same inexhaustible material as the human spirit.

_{(cf Buechner Magic (2000-12-27), Music Library (2001-04-18), Music Master (2001-06-04), Musical Values (2001-11-03), Mantra - Notice the Music (2014-12-06), Winter's Tale on Music Everywhere (2014-12-23), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-23}

- Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 20:53:04 (EDT)

Seven Ways to Love Better

From the "Modern Love" New York Times series, a list by editor Daniel Jones of "Seven Ways to Love Better":

1. Love is more like a basketball than a vase. — when there is conflict, a "relationship is made for bouncing ..."
2. Your curiosity is more appealing than your accomplishments. — "... being curious about people you meet is far more seductive than talking about your accomplishments. ..."
3. Be present, especially with your loved ones. — "... Be in the moment. Stop thinking about the future or the past, about what may or may not happen, and put away your phone. If a child in your lap asks about the best part of your day, say, 'This is.' ..."
4. Write well, love well. — "... the qualities of good personal writing — honesty, generosity, open-mindedness, curiosity, humor and humility — are the same as the qualities of someone with whom you would want to have a relationship. Likewise, the qualities of bad personal writing — dishonesty, withholding, blame, pettiness, dismissiveness and egotism — are the same as the qualities of someone with whom you would not want to have a relationship. ..."
5. Always lead with empathy.
6. Appreciate the beauty of impermanence.
7. Relationships don’t have to last to be good. — "... 'It’s not about getting over and letting go. It’s about honoring what happened. You met a person who awoke something in you. A fire ignited. The work is to be grateful. Grateful every day that someone crossed your path and left a mark on you.' ..."

_{(cf This Is How It Always Is (2018-02-02), Closeness Generation Questions (2021-07-20), Partner Change and Changing (2022-04-28), Mantra - Sit with the Void (2023-10-27), Zhiji (2024-09-20), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-13}

- Sunday, October 13, 2024 at 13:33:48 (EDT)

Tangentiality

Tangential speech and other symptoms of mental decline, as sketched in a recent New York Times article about a public figure:

• ... angry and rambling ...
• ... darker, harsher ... more profane and increasingly fixated on the past ...
• ... confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality ...
• ... rambles ... repeats ...
• ... roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical ...
• ... voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth ... digresses into bizarre tangents ...
• ... [uses] more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” ... more negative words than positive words ...
• ... confused about modern technology ... easily distracted ...

Scary stuff – worth watching for and (if possible!) avoiding or at least delaying ...

_{(cf Hypomania (2012-10-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-09}

- Wednesday, October 09, 2024 at 19:07:24 (EDT)

Mate, Over Here, You'll Want to See This

A lovely essay by Damien Cave — New York Times staffer who opened that newspaper's Australia bureau in 2017, and who now is moving on to open a bureau in Vietnam. Cave's message appears in the NYT "Australia Letter" #373 (4 October 2024). It's titled "A Rest, a Reset and a Thanks for the Banter". Among the best bits:

In my experience, Australians tend to be a generous and rambunctious bunch. It’s a big part of what led me to write a book about my family learning to be more Australian, and I leave with gratitude for all the times that someone threw their arm around me and dragged my gaze in a new direction.

With the exception of many politicians, who have yet to figure out what to do with The Times in this still too-secretive country, I feel like my time here has been filled with versions of: “Mate, over here, you’ll want to see this.”

I am thinking of the small-town community leader who passed me a little blue book with the mobile numbers of everyone who lived there; the old and young couples who stopped to check on me when I had a flat tire; the billionaire who pulled back the curtain on a few of his peers; the scholars who shared research from decades ago that are still relevant today.

I could list 100 more examples. But rather than go through all of those, or traipse through old newsletters or stories and offer up my favorites, let me just say what journalists probably do not say often enough to those who help shape our work: Thank you. Thank you for it all, the trust, the help, the open-mindedness, the feedback good and bad.

_{(Cave is the author of Parenting Like an Australian: One Family's Quest to Fight Fear and Dive into a Better, Braver Life — cf No Worries, Mate (2012-11-24), Mantra - She'll Be Right (2017-02-21), Mantra - Give More Praise (2019-07-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-04}

- Friday, October 04, 2024 at 08:22:09 (EDT)

Algorithms to Live By

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths (2016) is a fast, insightful book about technical tools for thinking better. Chapter titles summarize key themes:

1. Optimal Stopping
2. Explore/Exploit
3. Sorting
4. Caching
5. Scheduling
6. Bayes's Rule
7. Overfitting
8. Relaxation
9. Randomness
10. Networking
11. Game Theory

_{(cf unfinished draft "Think Better" — and other notes-to-self ...) - ^z - 2024-10-03}

- Thursday, October 03, 2024 at 10:27:38 (EDT)

Frederic Jameson, R.I.P.

Another recent death of another quietly thoughtful person, with two essays in his memory this week:

• "For Fredric Jameson, Marxist Criticism Was a Labor of Love" by A. O. Scott in the New York Times
• "Fredric Jameson Was a Generous Intellectual Giant" by Jacob Brogan in the Washington Post

A O Scott notes:

The characteristic Jamesonian sentence is stubbornly resistant to quotation — a long, intricate play of subordinate clauses and rhetorical reversals, sweeping generalizations and granular examples, embedded in a paragraph of baroque complexity, romantic grandeur and classical coherence — but there is one, just two words long, that I’ve always thought would make a great inspirational forearm tattoo.

“Always historicize!” Those are the opening words of “The Political Unconscious,” Jameson’s 1981 book on “narrative as a socially symbolic act.” He identifies “this slogan” as “the one absolute and we may even say ‘transhistorical’ imperative of all dialectical thought.”

The first page of the preface, and we’re already deep in the weeds! ...

Jacob Brogan shares:

... “The history of thought is the history of its models,” he wrote in the opening sentence of The Prison-House of Language (1972).

Yet the pithy precision of such phrases often belied the real difficulty of his work, which asked his readers to follow him through the bramble thickets of the whole history of thought without catching yourself on the thorns of one model or another. ...

Brogan ends his encomium with:

... Jameson argues, “To be influenced by somebody is not to write like him or her; rather, someone’s work suddenly opens up new possibilities that you never thought of before.” He’s speaking there about Faulkner and Sartre, but he could have just as easily been bragging about himself. Jameson affected others by showing them that more was possible in theory and criticism. He told no one what to think. He merely showed us what thinking is, how vital and vibratory it can be.

_{(for a dense sample of Jameson's writing about detective novelist Raymond Chandler see "Real Qualities of the Microcosm: Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles, USA") - ^z - 2024-09-28}

- Saturday, September 28, 2024 at 07:38:47 (EDT)

Hold Ideas Loosely

"Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too.", an interview with Gladwell by Emma Goldberg, brilliantly puts its key point in the title. Other excellent comments along the way:

• “… the goal of the book [is] to give people the sense that the world that you’re given is not the world you have to settle for …”
• “… Now that I am a parent, I don’t think I’ll ever opine on parenting again …”
• “… In these kinds of books, you can’t ever tell the whole story. You have to pick where you think the opportunities for advancing people’s understanding are the greatest …”
• “… you do need to communicate the uncertainty. It’s fine to have a beautiful idea that you’re presenting to people and helping them make sense of the way the world operates. But I do think that you have to communicate the understanding that this could be wrong. …”

_{(see New York Times gift-link to the interview, and here cf Science vs Stamp Collecting (2000-06-20), Retrospective History (2003-03-07), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-26}

- Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 10:54:25 (EDT)

Zhiji

"I Wanted to Crave Him, Not Have Him", a New York Times essay by Lei Wang, pirouettes around a wonderful Chinese word: zhiji, written zhī jǐ with tones, or 知己 in characters. It literally means "know yourself". Wang begins:

One of the most intimate relations in Chinese culture is known as the “zhiji” — the “know-self,” one who knows you like you know yourself. This is a connection outside of any social role, something beyond even best-friendship, like a platonic soul mate. The Chinese describe the feeling a know-self inspires as different from friendly, romantic or familial feelings: It is considered a fourth kind of feeling.

It is friendship with a certain spark, but not quite romance — the ideal spiritual relationship.

It's a "Modern Love" essay, and Wang goes on to tell her own know-self friend-forever story, plus confessional-commentary on other relationships. She shares delightful philosophical asides, e.g.: "What we call platonic now was actually the highest rung of Plato’s Ladder of Love, which ran from lowly love of the earthly to love of the celestial — love in its most spiritual form."

Bottom line in one word: invariable. Like the North Star (see Shakespeare's Sonnet 116) or the compass-point circle-center (see John Donne's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning). People who are always there, and always here, for each other. One.

_{(cf Mantra - We Are One (2017-04-18), Other Significant Others (2024-05-07), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-20}

- Friday, September 20, 2024 at 13:46:34 (EDT)

The Sentinel

"The Sentinel" by Casey Cep is a beautiful profile of Ron Walters, civil servant, head of the National Cemetery Administration. It's long, inspirational, kind, and thoughtful. A sample from near the end:

… “He would’ve made a great priest,” Rosemary Williams, a lifelong Catholic, told me. “There are people like Ron who work in the federal government, and you can tell they’ve answered a call. Ron always makes me want to be a better person.”

… “People who come into contact with him are inspired, and, to me, that’s the mark of a great leader.” I experienced it, too, leaving every interview with him wanting to be the Ron Walters of my writing, the Ron Walters of my exercise regimen, the Ron Walters of my marriage.

Who among us doesn’t want to be better at everything? Not just our work, however momentous or mundane it might be, but every aspect of our life: relationships, friendships, health, hobbies, community, stewardship of the earth, everything. Most of us, thankfully, aren’t terrible at what we do. We’re okay or pretty good. But Walters reminds us: Why not be better? Why not be the best? It isn’t impossible; it simply demands our constant devotion. Perpetual care, it turns out, is not just for cemeteries.

_{(see Washington Post gift-link for "The Sentinel"; see "The Canary", another Post profile of an amazing civil servant, via this gift-link — and here, cf Among the Missing (2001-10-20), Memorial Day (2002-05-28), Mantra - We're the Best (2017-11-26), 2020-08-26 - Haiti Cemetery (2020-09-09), Fifth Risk (2024-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-19}

- Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 08:00:45 (EDT)

Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis's 2018 book The Fifth Risk is well-written, thoughtful, and important. It's all about good government: how, thanks to dedicated civil servants, extraordinarily valuable services and products are delivered to the citizens of the United States. Unappreciated, patient people in the bureaucracy do amazing, creative things. Lewis tells their story beautifully, as he did for a single person (Chris Mark, Department of Labor) in his 2024 Washington Post profile-essay "The Canary". Powerful writing, meticulous research, excellent explanations, vital results.

And "The Fifth Risk" of the title? It's Project Management — and the risk is that ignorant, selfish individuals (and private organizations) will subvert the political process, break the mechanisms of competent government, waste or steal national resources, and ultimately kill people. It's scary, and it has happened in many societies, including the USA, throughout history ...

_{(see this gift-link for "The Canary"; cf MoneyBall (2004-06-07, Big Short (2011-04-24), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-18}

- Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at 15:53:41 (EDT)

toki sona - sina wile olin a

from How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 6: "... your home is an inanimate object .... it doesn't deserve to be cared for. You are a person. You deserve to be cared for. ..."

_{(semi-literally: "Your home is a dead thing. Your home does not need love. You are a person. You need love!") - ^z - 2024-09-10}

- Tuesday, September 10, 2024 at 16:23:34 (EDT)

toki sona - sina wile ala sona suli

_{(or more literally, "In the context of your working for a long time, you want to be smart, but you don't want to be hugely smart!")}

sina pali e tenpo suli la sina wile sona
taso sina wile ala sona suli

_{(Chris Mark, as quoted by Michael Lewis in "The Canary") - ^z - 2024-09-09}

- Monday, September 09, 2024 at 21:42:21 (EDT)

toki sona - mi sike mama taso

🥚

I am only an egg.

_{(from Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; cf Hurry Patiently (2008-12-14), Waiting Is (2011-01-17), Brightly, Brightly, and with Beauty (2012-06-25), Pure Waiting (2023-06-23), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-06}

- Friday, September 06, 2024 at 08:08:42 (EDT)

toki sona - o wile e lili

_{(cf More Fun Less Stuff (2002-10-01), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-04}

- Wednesday, September 04, 2024 at 11:28:13 (EDT)

toki sona - lape li pona

"Rest is a Right, not a Reward!"

If you need Rest, then Rest
Others may not take that away
Rest is good

sina wile lape la o lape
jan ante li ken ala weka e ni
lape li pona

_{(cf Chapter 24 of How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis) - ^z - 2024-09-02}

- Tuesday, September 03, 2024 at 13:56:52 (EDT)

toki sona - pona lili li pona sewi

🌱

🌱

🌱

_{(cf How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 22: "Good enough is perfect.") - ^z - 2024-08-30}

- Friday, August 30, 2024 at 07:33:36 (EDT)

toki sona - jan li jo e kon

💕

💕

_{(cf How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 5: "... care tasks are morally neutral, mess has no inherent meaning. ... Dishes cannot make meaning—only people can.") - ^z - 2024-08-29}

- Thursday, August 29, 2024 at 09:56:05 (EDT)

toki sona - o pana e pona tawa sina pi tenpo kama

💖

💖

_{(cf Chapter 2 of How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis) - ^z - 2024-08-28}

- Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 08:09:41 (EDT)

toki sona - o olin sina

Love thyself! — or perhaps, as said by KC Davis in How to Keep House While Drowning: "Self-compassion is key"!

_{^z - 2024-08-27}

- Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 08:37:47 (EDT)

toki sona - lawa open kulupu

An enigmatic mantra from the Insight Dice — perhaps suggesting:

• "Mindfulness begins with community"
• "Leadership opens society"
• "Rules engage teams"

... that last possibility echoes an observation by Michael Kimmelman (NY Times music critic, in Creative Devices): "Bach, whose music has the most rules, also gives the most freedom, a paradoxical quality of creativity."

_{^z - 2024-08-26}

- Monday, August 26, 2024 at 16:18:01 (EDT)

Letting It Go

Feeling deep sympathy
    — without taking in pain
Serving one another
    — without anything in return
Helping the needy
    — without removing responsibility
Forgiving the guilty
    — without approving the sin

🙌

_{(cf Carrying Our Own Stuff (2017-01-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-23}

- Saturday, August 24, 2024 at 05:51:05 (EDT)

Mantra - Mind Your Heart

Mind your heart.
Spend time with friends.
Know that you are loved!

or in Toki Pona:

💖

o lukin tawa pilin sina
o awen lon jan pona sina
o sona e olin tawa sina

_{(with special thanks to Dr 🌙 !) - ^z - 2024-08-22}

- Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 08:32:55 (EDT)

When a Bell Stops

When a bell stops ringing
At the moment a door closes
Between night and day
In the space between thoughts
Breathe

_{(cf Between (2009-12-10), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-13}

- Wednesday, August 14, 2024 at 15:53:50 (EDT)

United, States

A nation named not for a person,
Not for a tribe, but for a concept — unity

Like a partnership, a marriage
A mathematical set, a team

Together
One

_{^z - 2024-08-12}

- Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at 08:04:46 (EDT)

Because

Because — just because

Everything has a cause
And that cause has a cause before it
Back to the very beginning —
Or if there's a loop without a beginning,
Then the cause applies to the whole loop

Why?

Because — just because

_{^z - 2024-08-11}

- Monday, August 12, 2024 at 10:17:59 (EDT)

Free Will vs Determinism

🙉

Illusion or delusion?
      Is there any choice?
Compulsion or decision?
      Oh shush, Inner Voice!

_{^z - 2024-08-09}

- Sunday, August 11, 2024 at 12:59:56 (EDT)

Totality

All that is:
      Future, past
Outside, within
      Tiny, vast
Glacial-slow
      Atomic-fast
Below, above
      First and last!

_{^z - 2024-08-08}

- Friday, August 09, 2024 at 08:55:37 (EDT)

Resonance

🪺

Invisible bands
Together we run
Hands take hands
Two become one

_{^z - 2024-08-07}

- Thursday, August 08, 2024 at 09:33:37 (EDT)

Pure Seeing, Perfect Hearing

Pure seeing
Perfect hearing
Sensing what is
Without labels
Without judgment
Without choice
Only present

_{(cf Attention, Attention, Attention (2015-03-03), Bare Attention (2016-06-20), Attention Means Attention (2019-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-05}

- Wednesday, August 07, 2024 at 10:08:35 (EDT)

Invisible Ropes

Invisible ropes
Bind us together
Hold us back
Pull us forward
Rescue us when we fall
Carry words between us
Lead us through darkness
Until the day we
Cut the ropes
And go solo

_{^z - 2024-08-04}

- Monday, August 05, 2024 at 07:51:09 (EDT)

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