Emory Rosenow

Tag: ThemeoftheWeek

  • Make Space: Learning by Listening

    Make Space: Learning by Listening

    The most important part of making space is listening. No matter how you are trying to make space, you first have to learn to listen. You have to listen to yourself, and you have to listen to the other people in the space.

    If you haven’t already read Part 1 of my Make Space series, I highly suggest you go back and read it first. That’s where I have explained what it is I mean by “make space” and where I begin to flesh out how I conceptualize it.

    While most of us learn how to listen as young children, we often forget that it’s actually a skill we can and should practice. Usually we default to surface-level listening. We only passively hear the information that is pertinent to us in that moment, and disregard the rest. Only rarely do we venture into active listening or deep listening. With active listening, as the name suggests, you are actively paying attention to what you’re hearing: it becomes your focus. With deep listening, you bring additional attention to what it is you’re listening to, beyond how it immediately relates to and impacts you.

    Listening Inwards

    First, let’s examine the inner iterations of making space. This is when you yourself feel like you’re being crowded, be it by your physical surroundings, your own thoughts, or your emotions.

    Physical Space

    I know that listening to your physical space sounds a little strange, but bear with me. The important part of a space isn’t actually how it looks, but how it feels. No matter how aesthetically pleasing a room is, if it isn’t set up to be functional for how you need to use it, then it’s always going to feel difficult to be there.

    Sometimes this is a matter of rearranging the setup of your space. I am personally a complete dud when it comes to arranging furniture. My strategy has become multiple rounds of rearranging until the space feels welcoming and comfortable, which is how I prefer my spaces to feel. I have also found that (shockingly) using tips from design principles like feng shui is a helpful starting point. Mostly, though, I have to listen to my feelings after trial and error. Also make sure your furniture works for you: that your desk isn’t too high, that your chair isn’t too short, etc.

    Other times, it’s more of an issue of how you’re using the space. Humans associate places with the actions we typically perform there. This is why it can be hard to work from home if you haven’t before, or why sleep experts recommend only using your bed/bedroom for sleep activities. If you’re tight on space, you might have to figure out how to categorize and group activities and areas. Additionally, you could figure out a way to slightly alter the space for each activity by using different lighting, for example, or even just sitting in a slightly different spot.

    Thought Space

    Your thought space is influenced by your physical space, but not only by that. Our thoughts are also the patterns we give them. Similar to remapping physical spaces for what you want to use them for, you have to remap your thought space if you want to make any changes there. If you’re used to thinking about things from a certain angle, that is how your brain will default to thinking. If you try thinking from a different angle, things will look different.

    Let’s take a concrete metaphor of shifting perspective. If you’ve ever moved to a different neighborhood in the same city, you probably have experienced this phenomenon: nothing about the city itself has changed, but your center of reference has shifted. With this shift, locales can feel and even look different. Places that used to be convenient are no longer so, and new places have become more important. You may at some point realize that you haven’t even been down the street you used to live on in months or years — that street that used to center your lived experience. This is the equivalent change that has to happen if you want to recenter your thought space.

    Recentering and Diversifying Your Thought Space

    Unfortunately, you can’t up and move your self to a different part of your brain. But, stepping back, why might you want to go through the struggle of strengthening other neural pathways? Even if you’re happy with how you think right now, you would probably derive some benefit from experimenting with other ways of thinking. It’s part of over-specialization: anyone who exercises seriously knows the dangers of overworking one part of the body. Focus too much on your quads and not enough on your hamstrings, and you risk injury to your knees and lower back. Focus on only your abs and not on your back, and your whole body can be pulled out of balance. Think one way for too long, and you’ll forget the existence and validity of other perspectives.

    If, on the other hand, you know that there’s some thinking adjustments that you would like to make, your way forward is more clear. No easier, unfortunately, but more clear. Knowing where you want to end up helps to outline the path you’ll have to take. Just remember that goals don’t have to be set in stone: if, as you’re working on making your adjustments, you discover a new goal, you shouldn’t feel pressured to stay with your original destination. As you move and change, it’s perfectly reasonable for your goals to change too.

    What the Heck Are Other Ways of Thinking?

    Now you might be saying to yourself, hey Emory, cool metaphors, but I still have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s ok. (And thank you for calling my metaphors cool.) Thinking about thinking is kind of weird, and we don’t do that very much. Our thoughts happen how they happen, and that’s that.

    I think the most approachable method is to try thinking about things from someone else’s perspective. How do you think your friend, your coworker, your great-grandma, or your future self would think about things? How would you think about things if you lived somewhere else or were in a different personal situation? Try listening to your inner dialogue like it’s someone else speaking, and see how that changes how you feel about it.

    Emotional Space

    I struggled for a bit on how to separate out emotional space from thought space. They’re both inside your head, aren’t they? They’re both using that intangible space, so how should I separate them — or should I at all?

    Obviously, yes, I should. Your thoughts are not your emotions. Emotions are how you react to things, both internal thoughts and external events. You can think thoughts that you don’t agree with, or that you don’t believe. You can’t so much, say, feel emotions that you don’t agree with. In this way, there is an element of inherent personal truth to emotions. However, that doesn’t make them immutable. For instance, the things that made you incandescent with rage as a toddler probably now barely register on your emotional scale, because part of growing up is learning to manage your emotions, learning to manage how you react to things.

    Listening To What You Feel

    Listening to your emotions can be hard. It’s much easier to either just simply feel them, or to ignore them altogether. Listening to them means you both acknowledge what you’re feeling and why, while not being consumed by them. This takes patience. (Cool metaphor incoming!) It’s like learning bird calls. You can’t go outside and listen to the cacophony and miraculously know which sound belongs to which bird; you have to isolate the calls and learn how they attach to their owners. And just as a bird attracting a mate sounds different from one sounding the alarm, emotions will also feel different in different contexts. Feeling sad with friends is much different than feeling sad alone.

    Note here that I’m neither advocating for not feeling your emotions at all, nor giving into them wholesale. Of those two extremes, our society tends to lionize the former and ridicule the latter. This has obvious sexist underpinnings (hysterical women!), but it also has elements of Colonial-style racism (which to be fair is generally paternalistic and therefore an offshoot of sexism).

    Having emotions is part of being alive. Listening to them can enrich your life.

    When Emotions Take Too Much Space

    Emotions can be extremely weighty, though. Part of listening to your emotions is knowing when to stop: when you need to take a break from feeling all the things, when you need to take an emotional load off, when you need to take a step back from whatever is causing the emotions. For the most part, this is in the context of negative emotions, because (unfortunately) very few of us struggle with an excess of positive emotions.

    If you’re in a constant struggle to survive, it’s really hard to set your stresses – your emotions – aside. They’re always there, all around, constantly rearing their heads when you least expect it. Learning how to listen when faced with this kind of situation is daunting: you aren’t listening to the lone sparrow chirping, you’re living in an aviary full of angry corvids. (Am I writing this while being yelled at by a bluejay? Why yes, yes I am. Both physically and cool metaphorically.) You have to learn how to make your own little space of calm, where you can just breathe, for your own health and sanity. Then, once you’re in a secure place, you can take those emotions out an deal with them.

    Listening Outwards

    Making space isn’t just about you, though. There are billions of people and only one planet — there has to be room for everyone here. And not just physical room, but also space of acceptance and comfort.

    Many, if not most, societies are constructed on an exclusionary basis. You have to be the right kind of person to gain entry to the upper echelons, and if you aren’t, you receive fewer advantages. Even as we have developed incredible technologies that have the potential to feed, shelter, and clothe the whole world, we are still caught in a collective state of fear that we will suffer deprivations. Unfortunately, that fear isn’t unfounded: huge swathes of the world still struggle to survive, let alone thrive.

    Emotions About Space

    Objectively speaking, if someone has something that you too have — a phone, a sandwich, a friend —, your possession of that is not affected. If your coworker has the exact same model of phone as you do, that in no way impacts your phone or your ownership thereof. If you feel threatened by someone having what you have, it is because you perceive some advantage has been lost. Having better possessions, better opportunities, means that you have a leg up in the struggle for survival. You’re on a higher rung of the ladder. If someone else is on your same rung, you now have to fight them off too, right?

    Except. What is that ladder? Why are we climbing it? What’s at the top? And why, even in a place where there is more than enough to go around, do we so often act like the only way we can survive is by taking food from the mouths of others? Why do we act like the only way to climb that ladder is by knocking someone else off?

    How Wide is Your Ladder?

    I don’t know what’s at the top of the ladder. (I don’t believe there is a top. As far as I can tell, it’s just an obstacle course invented by those who have more to occupy those who have less. /RANT) By calling it a ladder, people naturally assume that it is narrow, with only room for one person abreast, as actual ladders are. Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that, should you wish to progress, someone on a higher rung than you would be in your way.

    This is only true if what you want is scarce, available only to a few. If you want to be head of a company, there is only the one spot. You gaining that position necessarily means that whoever is there now would have to move. However, this is not true if what you want is abundant. In that case, there is enough room on the ladder for others to be there without affecting you. This is doubly not true if it’s something immaterial.

    Of course this idea brings up plenty of objections. Physical limitations do exist. What if there isn’t enough for everyone? What if what you want becomes more scarce? Valid objections. We have to then ask, why is it that people want whatever it is? Is it something fashionable, that they can point to to highlight how high they have climbed the ladder? Or is it something necessary to their survival?

    Thought Space and Listening

    As many other people have said before me, in more detail and with more elegance, the internet is both a blessing and a curse for communication. It’s true that we can now physically communicate with infinitely more ease, but we can also tailor with equal ease exactly with whom we communicate — or don’t. We can build bubbles for ourselves in which conversations are functionally the same as talking to ourselves, if we want.

    Listening to Others

    Communicating with other people is at once the most basic element of being a social being and also one of the most complicated. We can never truly know what is in another person’s mind. Every additional difference between you and your interlocutor creates another opportunity for miscommunication. Gender, race, age, social class, physical location, life experiences, and more introduce more chances that attempts at communicating will go awry. Moreover, each of these elements reduce the chance that you’ll be communicating at all.

    But while we can only truly know ourselves based on what we have experienced, we can learn about other lived experiences by listening to the people experiencing them. And in learning about their lives, we can better communicate with them. We might then also learn more of what we don’t know, turning the unknown unknowns into known unknowns.

    Think of language versus dialect. If someone is speaking a language that you don’t know, you can’t understand what they’re saying. Moreover, you know that you don’t understand them. However, if someone is speaking a different dialect of your same language, you might think you know what they’re saying, because you understand the words they are using. But dialects are built on different connotations, different syntaxes, different lived experiences. You don’t know that you’re talking past each other, because you don’t know you’re using different dialects.

    Who is talking?

    There is more to communicating than the simple words. There’s tone and body language, which we know are lost in written and virtual communications. Sarcasm, for instance, is infamously hard to convey not just in writing, but also across dialects.

    Yet another element to consider when communicating with others is to listen to who is doing the talking. Are all parties sharing equally in the speaking time, or is one party dominating? If the latter, why? What is the context?

    Make Space For Listening

    It is unfortunately true that not everyone has an equal seat at the table. Further, those who have the most power believe it to be in their interest to maintain — and if possible, grow — that power. The more voice you have, the more you can advance your own interests. The more you can advance your own interest, the easier it is for you to live. The easier it is for you to live, the more space you have to breathe. The more space you have to breathe, the more you can use your voice.

    The more you use your voice, the less you can listen.

    One of the popular terms right now for people who have, shall we say, less room at the table, is marginalized. Marginalized people. People who have been pushed to the margins, who live on the margins, who have been marginalized. What’s fun about that phrase is that we pretend that “marginalized” is just something that happens, just a normal state of being, and not something that we cause. No Mom, I don’t know how the lamp got broken, it just fell off the table! No I don’t know how these people got pushed to the edge of society, it just happened!

    We know why people are marginalized. It’s not a secret. They don’t fit the exact mold that those with the most power — the loudest voices — have decreed is The Right Mold. Remarkably, the Right Mold looks exactly like the people with the power.

    Widening The Margins

    One cool fact about marginalized people is that they’re human beings. They have thoughts and opinions just like non-marginalized people, just like all human beings. The difference is they don’t have the same platform as the non-marginalized, and certainly not the same institutionalized megaphone as those who hold the reins of power. They’re just cramped into the edges of society, where it’s easier for those in the center to ignore them. Therefore, if we widen the margins, we bring them closer to the center, make them harder to ignore.

    We widen the margins by empowering those living on them. We empower them by listening to them. And in order to listen to them, they need the voice to be able to be heard, and the space to be understood. Not for someone to speak for them; while this brings them attention, which is a potential for a platform, it doesn’t actually give them power.

    There is enough room for everyone if we make the space. There is enough room for everyone’s voices if we learn to listen. We are all equal in our shared humanity, and everything else is just window dressing.

    And remember, friends, in a democracy, the ultimate expression of your voice – your power – is your vote. Make those in power listen to you. GO VOTE.

    I’m going to call this post here. I know I have glossed over and skipped bits, but this isn’t a novel after all. Take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. Learn to listen to yourself so you know how to listen to others. Be a good person.

    Want more thoughts? Keep reading here:

  • Make Space: Clutter, Attention, and Your Place in Society

    Make Space: Clutter, Attention, and Your Place in Society

    Where can you make space in your life today?

    So… it’s been a rough go of it lately. And it doesn’t look like things are going to get much better any time soon. In addition to the stress, anxiety, and depression contributing to my writers block, it also seems like every time I put together my outline for this post, some other major event happens that I feel the need to address as well. [For reference, the first (now wholly discarded) draft was pre-George Floyd.] History seems to be roaring past us right now.

    On the other hand, what has actually changed? All of the problems we have today have their echoes and equivalents in the past. And really, the people walking the Earth today are essentially the same as those who were walking around 5,000 years ago. There’s just more of us now, with fancier toys.

    Dedicated Readers of this blog may recall that I read and reviewed a book last year titled Make Space, and that I was not particularly thrilled by it. That is, the content was fine, but the execution was… lacking. In spite of that, the basic theory it presented has kept simmering in the back of my mind, intruding in on other topics. What better time to consider physical space than when faced with social distancing orders? To consider emotional space than when faced with racial justice protests breaking out around the country and around the world, or to consider mental space than when we’re all faced with news overload from this year? The original book was only about minimalism in interior design and self-help, but the principle of making space has much broader implications. My attempt here is to write what I wish that book had actually been.

    The Background of Making Space

    In order to make space, we first need to take stock of what is currently taking up that space. This means taking a good hard look at your surroundings — and you know I don’t just mean physical. What does your mental framework look like? How are your emotional underpinnings structured? Where is your attention centered?

    The design goal of Make Space is minimalism. Minimalism in design pares elements down to the understated essentials, which brings increased attention to the few things present. Minimalism in music is made by repetition and very gradual change, which focuses attention on the musical minutiae used. Similarly, minimalism in visual art often uses repetition in its geometric, structural shapes. The underlying idea is to set a homogeneous base from which subtle changes are magnified, and large deviations from the pattern have exponentially more impact.

    The book suggests getting rid of clutter and excess, whereby you can discover what is truly essential to you. It’s a version of Marie Kondo’s sparking joy. How much space can you clear? Once you have cleared the space, you have the room to truly enjoy life… or so the theory goes.

    Why Make Space?

    The physical space we occupy informs a lot of our mental space. The most obvious example of this is clutter. Some people work very well in a cluttered office, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of people are negatively impacted by that kind of environment, whether they realize it or not. If you live or work in a cluttered space and often feel overwhelmed or anxious, the clutter might be a contributing factor.

    However, there are other affective physical elements to consider, such as those that tend to impact only certain groups. For example, let’s take stairs. They might not be a notable feature for someone like me, but for someone who can’t walk very well or at all, they represent a big physical challenge. This physical challenge in turn becomes a mental strain. For every place they go, they have to consider the navigability of that place. While each individual instance of encountering stairs may not be a huge deal, in the aggregate it becomes a much larger mental load.

    The Power of the Individual

    Many of these discriminatory environments exist at a societal level. This means it is far outside the ability of any one person to control them, to make them less discriminatory. It’s human nature to just accept the things that are too big to control — especially if they aren’t impacting you personally. As a white woman, I have generally no reason to be afraid during encounters with police. But I also know this isn’t the case for everyone. There isn’t much that I personally can do about that societal fact.

    The power that I do have personally is to use the space that I have to open more space for others. It’s like if you’re walking down a narrow sidewalk, and someone pushing a stroller approaches from the other direction. It’s easier and safer for you to do what you can to give them room to pass, than to expect them to do so for you. Sure, it might be an inconvenience for you to briefly press against a building or step out onto the curb. But maneuvering a stroller like that is plainly more difficult. Additionally, that person pushing the stroller is already working harder to 1) maneuver around other obstacles, like curbs without cuts, and 2) just push the stroller in the first place. You have the power to give them space and lighten their load because you aren’t pushing a stroller yourself.

    Attention

    In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell touches on this concept through her lens of attention. She calls them the margins. It’s hard to miss the stroller approaching you on a narrow sidewalk: that’s an obvious obstruction. You can clearly see your opportunity there to make space. But there are also plenty of less obvious margins.

    There is a significant portion of people for whom the project of day-to-day survival leaves no attention for anything else; that’s part of the vicious cycle too. This is why it’s even more important for anyone who does have a margin — even the tiniest one — to put it to use in opening up margins further down the line. Tiny spaces can open up small spaces, small spaces can open bigger spaces. If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should.

    Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

    If the first step of making space is noticing where you need it in your life, the second step is paying attention to where you can make space for others. In this plane crash, you have to put on your own oxygen mask first, and only then can you help others with their masks.

    Just paying attention can itself make space. Having more people carry the burden doesn’t make the burden itself any lighter, but the weight is spread out so each person is carrying less. Being able to not pay attention to a problem is a privilege — and therefore an opportunity to make space for others.

    To Be Continued…

    Rather than trying to wrestle everything into one exceedingly long post, I’m going to split this up. Part 2 is all about making space by listening, in all its different forms.

    Further Reading / References

  • Trump and the United States’ Failed Response to Covid-19

    Trump and the United States’ Failed Response to Covid-19

    Prescript: I’m sorry, I hate to talk about and give space to Trump. However, I need (even if just for myself) to articulate the current problems we face as a country, as a result of our government.

    Hi everyone. Long time, still no see. It’s been a bit of a wild ride recently, as you might have noticed. Personally, it’s taken a while for my brain to be able to stop screaming into the void and be able to string together coherent sentences on a page. I wanted to be able to post some comforting-type essay on, I don’t know, the resilience of humanity, but I’ll have to leave that to other people for now. Because right now, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I need to rant.

    Don’t get me wrong. Humanity is indeed resilient, and I am so awed to see all the doctors and nurses who continue to work on the front lines, the teachers who have had to completely rework their curriculums, the people who have stepped up to make fabric masks as a stop-gap for desperate hospitals, the mayors and governors who have had to make hard decisions to keep their people safe, the companies who have volunteered to help produce necessary supplies…

    I am not awed by the federal government’s response.

    The Structure of a Crisis

    While the scale of this pandemic is unprecedented in the modern era, it shouldn’t have been something for which we were wholly unprepared. We have had several outbreaks of diseases in the last decade, including H1N1 and Ebola. We also have plenty of knowledge on historic global pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu. One of the four transition exercises that the Obama administration prepared in January 2017 for the incoming Trump administration was a spreading global pandemic. And, because I know that most of you don’t click on my neat citation links, I have taken screenshots of the key slides from that transition meeting, published by Politico. I strongly encourage you to read through them.

    • Trump transition team scenario
    • Trump transition team scenario
    • Trump transition team scenario
    • Trump transition team scenario

    The key point here is that this is a global issue in an increasingly globalized world. While some people may long for the good old days of isolationism, that ship sailed before women even gained the right to vote, and it’s not coming back as long as the internet is a thing. For better or worse, the US has been a global power for almost a century now. We have been able to shape global policy just by virtue of being the biggest gorilla in the zoo. And as long as you agree with the United States’ vision of How Things Should Be, that’s pretty cool. Even apart from our giant muscly military, we provide monetary aid to over 200 countries. This is a part of the “soft power” that is incredibly important to diplomacy.

    A global crisis like this should be addressed from the top down. Response needs to be coordinated between countries, because viruses don’t care about borders. Individual cities and states simply do not have the resources—not only the physical resources but also the intelligence resources—to put together an effective response.

    The Specifics

    Now let’s take a stroll through the specific failings of Trump and his administration to address this pandemic, up to this point. (For me it’s March 25, 2020, you time travelers out there.)

    Failure to Respond in a Timely Manner

    Trump’s daily intelligence briefings started including the potential threat from Covid-19 back in January. His first “serious” public address on the crisis wasn’t until March 11. (I put serious in quotes because it was so full of inaccuracies that were immediately debunked, one has to wonder what is going on in the speech writers’ room.) Until that point, Trump had continued to downplay the severity and encourage the narrative that it was all a hoax. Keep in mind, the first reported case of coronavirus in the United States was on January 21, and the first death was on February 29.

    Chinese scientists sequenced the virus’ genome and shared it online on January 11. Not only does this help track the origins and mutations of the virus, it provides knowledge needed to test for the disease. By January 17, the WHO had published a working test protocol. On the same day, the US announced their own test that they had independently developed. Unfortunately, while having multiple test versions is a good thing, US labs found that that test did not work. This irreparably set back US testing while they remanufactured the problem parts.

    Additionally, tests in the US have to first be approved by the FDA. While this is good in theory—I’m not one to advocate for looser regulations—the particular process for emergency-use authorization took weeks to clear. In pandemic terms, that’s too long. They relaxed requirements on February 29, following a plea from specialists the day before. On the other hand, the FDA approved a “rare disease” designation for a company’s experimental coronavirus treatment, which would give them a seven-year exclusive right to produce that drug without competition. Thankfully, the company requested that the agency rescind that designation. America, where we rely on companies to voluntarily do the right thing.

    Failure to Respond Globally

    Traditionally, US interventionism means that we’re on the front lines when problems arise. We like to be seen as the ones dispensing aid, fitting with our magnanimous image of ourselves. As the oldest continuous democracy in the world, we (traditionally) want to stand as a symbol of what democracy can achieve. We want to be the shining beacon to which other countries should aspire. (Or improve upon?)

    Right now, we are abdicating our global leadership role. This, of course, did not start with Covid-19. It’s just a feature of Trumpism. You cannot be a global leader if you denigrate and insult your allies, if you do not participate in discussions with them, if you abandon them. You cannot be an independent leader if you believe the words of foreign officials over your own officials. (And if you’re not independent, are you a leader?)

    We have not helped other countries in this crisis. We’ve even done the opposite. While Iran currently struggles with the 6th most reported cases in the world, the Trump administration has announced additional sanctions. Because everyone knows that the best way to garner good will is to kick people while they’re already down. Speaking of good will, the Trump administration has squandered more by reportedly attempting to secure exclusive vaccine rights. As for being global leaders, it certainly doesn’t look good for us that Chinese companies have been stepping up to assist other countries. If we don’t want other countries using Huawei’s 5G tech, it’s not a good look having them demonstratively donate masks to the Netherlands.

    Failure to Respond Humanely

    If you can say anything good-ish about Trump’s response to the Coronacrisis™, it’s that it has been consistent. He has consistently responded with both eyes on the stock market. And look, the reigning feature of modern “conservatism” has been a focus on the health of corporations over the health of, well, everything and everyone else. Full disclosure here, I’m of the opinion that a government of, by, and for the people should serve all its people. That’s right, not just the ones who can afford to buy politicians: all people.

    Trump has also been consistent in not taking responsibility, blaming other people, and sowing discord. These are, of course, all traits you should expect of a leader. Wait, no, I mean narcissist.

    And even with Trump’s response fully focused on Calming The Markets, he failed to effect that. They have been on an erratic but steep downward trajectory, only showing improvement with news of the Senate coming close to passing a recovery package. (I apologize on NPR’s behalf for that article’s lead photo.) However, the Trump administration has still failed to address how to maintain a functioning economy when over half of its citizens are under shelter-in-place orders, and experts have called for nationwide orders. We are likely facing record unemployment. Many states’ unemployment websites have crashed from high traffic. As mortgage and rent payments have not been suspended, millions of people are wondering how to make everything work – and no one has been at the helm to reassure them.

    Failure to Respond

    Additionally, Trump has not yet invoked the Defense Production Act. This would allow him to order companies to produce the supplies that hospitals desperately need, from ventilators to masks. His claim is that some companies are doing so on their own. Therefore, there’s no need for a mandate. While some companies have stepped up to do so on their own, there needs to be a coordinated national response. We still aren’t meeting the needs of hospitals. Some companies—with an eye on their shareholders—cannot afford to make those changes on their own. This uncoordinated response also adds to the confusion and uncertainty.

    Leaving the response up to states also means that they are competing against each other for those necessary supplies. This drives up prices and, again, increases confusion and uncertainty. At a citizen level, the uneven response from states also increases the chance that some people won’t take the threat from this virus seriously enough.

    If the federal government doesn’t feel the need to respond to a crisis like this, what on earth do they think they exist for?

    Trump and the trumpiest Trumpism

    Sadly, nothing that the Trump administration has done in response to this pandemic should be surprising. It is perfectly in line with everything else they have done. Trump has led the charge on redefining the presidency as an office dedicated to the glory of its holder. (This is in contrast to the idea of the president as the chief public servant, nominally espoused by many previous presidents.) His staff and advisors exist to stroke his ego, not to actually tell him what’s going on. And if they’re not doing that, they’re essentially babysitting him.

    The government of the United States, as set forth in the Constitution, is theoretically structured in a way to mitigate some of the repercussions should the American people elect a demagogue. Mainly, there are the checks and balances between the three branches of government. Unfortunately, those don’t help when multiple branches are complicit. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Turtle himself, has arguably done as much damage to the United States as Trump has. He has been happy to go along with the Trumpist form of government, as it gives him the opportunity to work towards his own ends.

    What does that mean? It means that we no longer have a functioning system of checks and balances. Instead, we have party divides acting in their stead. The problem with that, of course, is that political parties are private entities and not legally beholden in any way to the American people. Also, there are really only two of them. It’s hard to have a stool with two legs.

    Media in a Trumpian Age

    The Right-Wing Media has mostly consolidated around Trump, with hell to pay for any Republican who steps out of line. And Trump, for all his lack of political acumen, knows how to play the media. For their part, Right-Wing Media seems content to play the part of his propaganda arm.

    Centrist, balanced media, while not, er, singing Trump’s praises, is also not not contributing to the misinformation. By the mere fact that he occupies the office of the president, there is a certain duty they feel to report on his activities. This is where Trump’s ability to play the media comes in. Take, for instance, his March 11 live address to the nation. All four of his main points were false or misleading, but because it was The President speaking, all major news outlets reported on it. Even when they include the factual debunking in the article, they know that the headlines that sell (click?) are the flashy (even if false) ones. On average, Trump lies 32 times per day. It’s enough that fact checkers have given up on trying to keep up with every lie.

    My Disclaimer

    There’s always an irony to writing about media coverage of Trump, as that is itself media coverage. Giving him air time or column inches is often playing into his game. It’s a sort of prisoner’s dilemma, in which not reporting leaves you behind, even when you know better. So what on earth do we do? (I say this like I’m a media person too. Which, I guess, thanks to the internet and Social Media, we can all be part of the media! We are all media on this blessed day!) My solution today is See Something, Say Something. This administration has failed us, and I want everyone who cares to read what I write to know that. It means not just slavishly reporting what is said, but critically and thoughtfully responding.

    I don’t like to get into political discussions, not because I don’t have strong opinions, but because I kinda suck at articulating them. If you’re still with me here, two thousand words in, I hope I’ve at least put some new thoughts into your head. (I’m all about thinking here.)

    As a reward for your perseverance, here’s a fuzzy picture of Butters very sweetly snuggling with me when I was sick at the end of February with a low grade fever, dry cough, major fatigue, and muscle aches!

    Yes I was self-quarantining
  • In Defense of Boredom

    In Defense of Boredom

    So, one really cool thing about living in the times that we do is that we have the whole world at our fingertips. Smartphones give us near-instant access to any person we want to talk to, any fact we want to know, or any game we want to play. We have found the vaccine for boredom. We also now all know everything – isn’t that awesome!

    What Is Boredom?

    First, let’s establish some definitions. Boredom is the unpleasant feeling you get when your environmental stimuli don’t match up with your needs, or your expectations, or (crucially) your wants. This can happen in low-stimuli environments, like waiting in line at the grocery story. It can also happen in places that should be high-stimuli, like classrooms. If you don’t care about electron valences, you’ll feel bored listening to a lecture on them.

    Tangential Rant Time

    One article I read to do research for this post had a claim that boredom was “literally nonexistent until the late 18th century.” (Link here for citation purposes. It’s an ok article, and it does cite its own sources, but that one quote killed the whole already shaky thing for me.) The author claims that the transition into the Industrial Revolution gave rise to this novel and now “universal” human condition. Before that glorious time, people were too busy scrounging around in the mud for food and shelter to be bored. Mud farming being, of course, a famously stimulating occupation.

    Monty Python and the Holy Grail still
    Mud farmers were too busy to think of big picture items like the plight of the working class

    Humans did of course go through a sudden change during the Industrial Revolution. Good Queen Victoria waved her mighty scepter and suddenly we discovered that, thanks to spinning mills, we could get bored now. Before that, spinning by hand was a boredom-free endeavor. Ploughing fields with your good pal Daisy the mule was endless entertainment. Fishing was even more thrilling than it is today. Travel was constantly fraught with excitement like tigers and wolves and pits of lava—wait, no, that last one is Minecraft. Probably.

    Anyway. The point of this rant is that people have been bored since before they could even put it into words. (And I was probably kidding about Queen V waving her hand.) The only difference today is that we can so very easily assuage that ennui.

    Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

    Back to where we left off. Boredom is a negative feeling. It’s your brain telling you, go do something better! There is nothing inherently wrong with this: if you’re doing something you don’t like, it’s worth considering doing something else. We do however experience boredom during things that we have to do. Washing the dishes isn’t super fun, but it has to be done. If you want to earn a degree, you have to sit through those boring lectures.

    The cool thing we can do today is avoid boredom really well. All you have to do is whip out your phone and bam, you’re scrolling through your Insta feed and entertained AF. Get bored with that? Scroll through Facebook. Then you can move on to twitter when you’re truly desperate. The only reason to be bored today is by your own choosing… right?

    What We Do With Boredom

    Let’s look for a moment at the most bored population of humans: children. These sticky little urchins love bursting into rooms and declaring, “I’m bored!” for all to hear. “I’m bored! Entertain me!” I personally was not one of those kids (admittedly because the words “I’m bored” were strongly verboten in our house, one of our few firm rules), but I have seen such imps out in the wild. One of the best parts of children declaring their boredom is that you can hand them a literal stick and that’s enough to entertain them.

    Unfortunately, sticks aren’t the toy de jour anymore. Part of the impetus for this post was a concert I recently attended, at which a kid in front of me spent the whole time glued to a video (no sound) on his phone. I don’t think I saw him look up once at the stage. His entertainment, his way to avoid boredom, was 100% whatever was on his phone. Outside events need not apply.

    Phones are perfect for avoid boredom. You can choose your preferred method of entertainment and stick with it no matter where you are. In line? Facebook. Doing dishes? Podcast. Driving? Totes obvs the best time to text your bestie! This ability to choose exactly what to entertain ourselves with is an amazing power, and it’s also terrible for our brains. (Also for our safety put your phones down when driving I swear to everything that is holy if one more person tries to drift into my lane while on their phone…)

    Why Be Bored?

    Why then do I think that we should embrace boredom? First, let’s look at sleep. Weird move, I know, but bear with me. What is the primary function of sleep (probably)? It’s to rest our bodies, giving them a chance to heal and reset. This crucially includes our brains. We know that sleep deprivation has fun effects like forgetfulness and brain fog. We also know that sleep plays an important role in processing memories. Now, in order to sleep, we intentionally remove external stimuli and basically make ourselves so bored that our brains shut down. And our brains love it.

    So what’s going on here? Boredom feels bad, and our brains push us to avoid it, but it’s also maybe good for us? To answer that we have to examine what happens when we’re bored:

    1. We’re in a situation that is insufficiently stimulating
    2. We realize we’re bored
    3. We find some distraction

    The crucial step is No. 3, the distraction. We have two options for distraction, which I’ll call input and output. Input is the straightforward answer of finding something more interesting to do. This could be anything from pulling out your phone to reading a book. Whatever you’re doing, you’re changing your environmental stimuli to match your interest, inputting information to your brain. In contrast, output is when you change your focus without changing anything about your environment. Instead of pulling up Facebook, you observe your surroundings. Instead of reading, you think about what you’re going to do tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Output is thinking.

    Operation MATH

    RIP

    As this blog is called Thoughts of an Emory Rosenow, you can imagine that I have a few opinions on, you know, thinking. And, unlike the late great YangGang, I’m still here. But while it’s one thing to tell people to think harder, how do you actually do that? Think about an elephant. Now think about it harder. That doesn’t really work, does it? What we have to do instead is work outwards: did you think of a real elephant? How old is that elephant? Is she a wild elephant? Does she have a favorite color?

    Kanizsa Triangle, used here as a visualization of output boredom
    Kanizsa Triangle: a visual example of your brain making sense from abstract information

    Our brains don’t really do single thoughts very well. It’s not a matter of attention span, though. Thinking harder entails thinking broader, and making connections between things. In this way, wandering thoughts is not only normal, it’s good. It’s your brain making new pathways around, like a lone wolf patrolling his territory. (I include a badass-sounding example so that you know this isn’t all pansy spectral plane what-not nonsense.) Our brains have an amazing ability to make sense of things from very limited information, to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, and to understand different viewpoints.

    Input Distractions

    Allow me to take a moment here to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with input distractions. In fact, in order to have output, our brains need something to chew on in the first place. In order to make those connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, you need to know those seemingly unrelated ideas in the first place. The reason that I’m coming from an anti-input angle is because input distractions are the default for most people today, now that input is so dang easy. My only note here is to gently nudge you to think about the quality of your input distractions, because that will determine the quality of your output.

    Output Distractions

    Let’s go back to our child with the stick. A stick gives her practically no input. Its value as a toy is entirely what she makes of it: a sword, a wand, a baton. She thinks about what she has taken in recently and makes it her own story. This is classic output distraction: taking what is around you and thinking about it in your own way. It’s spacing off, it’s daydreaming. It’s letting your mind wander to wherever and whatever it happens across. Your teachers in school hated it.

    But it’s not just imagination at work here. There’s also introspection. If you never give yourself a break from input, it is nearly impossible to know what you yourself think. You become a parrot of whatever you heard last or most often, because that’s what’s in your mind. Think of how chefs taste food: they don’t shovel a bite into their mouths and swallow. They pause to let the flavors settle on their palates, or whatever floury (ha) language they use to describe it. We have to do the same with thoughts, letting them sit and settle and mature.

    The problem with that is that it’s not immediately rewarding. Input distractions are nice because you can open an app on your phone and you’re good to go. What’s more, we have scientifically optimized so much of our entertainment to be maximally engaging to our brains. So much of it is like mental junk food that choosing a healthier option, say a non-social media option, is like choosing kale chips over cookies. Where’s the fun? Of course we all know the benefits of eating healthy. Healthy entertainment has the same long-term benefits: increased attention span, more knowledge, better memory.

    A Note on Negative Thoughts

    Sometimes there’s also bad introspection, like when you start obsessively thinking about that time last week when your waiter brought out your food and said, “Enjoy!” and you responded, “You too!” It’s understandable to want to avoid these kinds of thoughts. If you suffer from anxiety it can be really easy to get stuck in these thought-ruts, and leaving yourself alone with your brain is then really scary. Do first and foremost take care of yourself in whatever way you need.

    If these thoughts are intrusive and interfering with your life, consider talking to a professional or even just someone you trust. We don’t always notice how bad things get until they’re really bad, but an outside take can put things into perspective. Additionally, professional therapists are generally pretty good at their jobs, and can get you the help you need. Ideally, your brain shouldn’t be preventing you from living your life, but there is so much that can go wrong with our bodies. Even just knowing what’s going on can be a huge help.

    The Point of Boredom

    Let’s put this all together now by going back to the beginning. Boredom is what happens when your external stimuli are insufficient to fully occupy your brain. You can cope by either introducing new stimuli (input) or by reassessing your situation (output). Input is easier, and (pending quality) can build on your framework of knowledge. Output is more difficult, because it’s not as immediately rewarding.

    Our modern society is so built around boredom-avoidance that actually being bored feels proportionally worse. Medieval women didn’t have an easy alternate entertainment option while they were scrubbing their clothes, so they simply had to learn to live with the boredom and monotony. Victorian children didn’t have video games, so they had to come up with really dark skipping-rhymes for entertainment.

    So what’s the real payoff for us in the modern era? Boredom gives us a ready-made moment to flex our gray matter. It’s like an impromptu meditation, defined by our insufficient surroundings and drifting thoughts. It lets us examine our present, and from that we can interrogate our future. It gives us space to make connections between thoughts, which in turn is what spurs creativity. Boredom is ultimately what allows us to progress as humans, and by extension as a society. It allows the space for longer strings of thoughts, making stronger chains to plumb new depths. Boredom is the time for our thoughts to happen.

    If you made it to the end, congratulations! Have some cat pictures in reward. If you’re still in a reading mood, check out some of my other themes:

  • Theme of the Week: The Village

    Theme of the Week: The Village

    No, not the M. Night Shyamalan movie. Or the People. I’m thinking about the concept of a village. It’s the one that people mean when they use the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I touched on a facet of this concept a while back in my post on isolation, but I still have some thoughts left.

    The Traditional Village

    Thatch roof cottage in a traditional village
    THATCH ROOFED COTTAGES

    Let’s start by looking at the traditional, stereotypical village. This is a settlement of around a few hundred people, or as Wikipedia says, 5 to 30 families. These clusters of families usually formed for mutual defense and aid, and because most humans like being near other humans (bonus points if they’re not related). In pre-industrial times, people did a bit of everything: rugged menfolk worked fields and cared for animals, rugged womenfolk cared for animals and made clothes and meals, rugged childrenfolk did whatever was asked of them (and were always seen and never heard).

    Your social circle was made up of whoever lived near you, and you probably knew all of them. If you strayed from what was expected of you or broke a social norm, there were social consequences. On the other hand, you could probably rely on the other villagers to lend a hand if you were struggling. So while villages worked for the greater good society as a whole, they weren’t always great for individuals.

    The Modern Take

    Growth of a village

    Now let’s fast forward to the modern era. We updated our communication strategies and discovered other people, then we invented industry and sent all the poor rugged childrenfolk through ringers. Next, we got scared of all the “other” people, killed each other a lot, invented weapons that could kill the planet, and now it’s today.

    Modern sociability is no longer dictated by physical proximity alone. Now, you have options. Your classmates are not the same people as your coworkers, and neither of those are the people you see in the grocery store. Which ones do you interact with, and which do you choose to make meaningful connections with? Most people have very few interactions with their neighbors, so they’re not relying on that to make friends.

    The digital age makes it easy to connect with virtually anyone, anywhere in the world. This means that you don’t have to be friends with Karen from HR if you don’t want to. It means you’re free to ignore the people living around you. You can be friends with only the best people, and if someone bothers you? There’s seven billion more to choose from.

    Your Village

    Alpine village

    The cool part about that is that you get to build your own village. You can fill it with all the people who love and support you, the ones who share your ideals and values, and who like the things that you like. Making these connections is fun. It’s really easy to be social with people who are like you! What’s more, it’s healthier when you have people you can talk to.

    Of course this self-sorting has downsides too. If you’re able to choose with whom you interact, most people naturally choose more similar people. It’s the path of least resistance. But, that leads to fun things like increased confirmation bias and groupthink. If your village is based on a certain trait, then that becomes a integral part of your identity. This is what gives rise to the legions of rabid, toxic fandoms: their friends are all X fans, so to stay friends they have to be just as committed to X, or risk being thrown out of the group. So, really, it’s just like a traditional village, only with more memes.

    The Answer

    A model village
    A Model Village
    https://www.gardenvisit.com/gardens/babbacombe_model_village

    Allow me to, in my excessive wisdom, propose an answer. But first, so the answer makes sense, let’s ask the question: why on earth am I talking about any of this?

    Humans are social creatures. Yet, in the modern world, lots of social interactions are discouraged: don’t talk to strangers, don’t talk to people on the subway, don’t talk to people in the gym, don’t even look at homeless people. You never know when one of these people might turn out to be a crazy person. It’s safest to keep yourself to yourself. We crave the comfort of the familiar, and create our own fortresses from it.

    So I might be talking about this because there is a lot of “othering” happening in the world. My side is right, and your side is wrong, but maybe we should all come together and sing songs in a circle. Maybe I’m talking about this because I’m really hungry and villages always make me think of awesome local bakeries. I’m probably talking about it because I want to reiterate once again that we need other people, and therefore it is in our best interest as a society to make sure that other people are taken care of, even those outsiders who aren’t fans of X.

    Really though, I just want to giggle at model villages again.

    Want more of my thoughts? (Bless your soul if you do.) Latest posts:
  • Theme of the Week: Motivation

    Theme of the Week: Motivation

    This week’s theme is an offshoot of my practicing posts: how do you find your motivation? What keeps you coming back to the practice room, or for that matter back to the gym or class or work? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why do you keep doing anything?

    What is Motivation?

    Motivation for the plants
    Copyright ME

    Motivation is one of today’s hot button issues. You can find it in the many webpages devoted to motivational quotes, or your instagram feed filled with #MondayMotivation, or another TED talk making the rounds. Maybe your elementary school classroom had a picture of a kitten dangling from a tree branch, with the words HANG IN THERE on it (classic).

    Whatever you find to keep yourself going is motivation. There are two basic types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is an internal motivator, while extrinsic is and external, environmental factor. I’m going to talk about both, and both are perfectly valid. However, I’m going to argue that while intrinsic is more valuable (at least for our purposes), extrinsic can be more useful.

    Extrinsic Motivation

    Do you go to work so you can get that paycheck? That’s an extrinsic motivator: seeking a physical or external reward for doing something. If you convince yourself to go to the gym by telling yourself you can have ice cream after, that’s extrinsic. If you want to do well on a project so your teacher is proud of you/gives you a good grade, yup, that’s extrinsic too. These are 100% perfectly valid reasons for doing things. Build fire, cook food. Find nice cave, stay dry. They’re great for meeting your physical and even emotional needs. But, they break down when you need to do things that don’t have an obvious, external, reward.

    Intrinsic Motivation

    So what motivates us internally? These are the things that we want to do because they’re enjoyable, because they seem meaningful, because they’re rewarding for us. Doing them gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment, if you will. There’s no physical gold star or public recognition (necessarily), you do it because you want to. That’s why this is frequently associated with artistic-type endeavors. There is no real, concrete reason to make music: pretty sounds don’t feed or clothe or shelter. It’s just something that we enjoy.

    Know Thyself

    Are you struggling to stay motivated?* Looking for some tips and tricks? My step one is get to know yourself. I don’t believe that complex problems have simple solutions, and motivation is pretty complex. Therefore I’m going to take a more holistic approach.

    If you’re not sure how to motivate yourself, I’m going to suggest first checking out Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz (I think you have to enter an email address to get your results, which is dumb, but you can opt out of all the marketing). It’s your basic personality quiz thing, a step up from buzzfeed at least, but I think it’s a good starting point for knowing what can help motivate you, especially extrinsically. Can you keep yourself accountable, or do you need other people keeping an eye on your progress? Or do other people’s expectations make you not want to do something?

    In Which I Tell You To Write Things Down

    Next, I want you to consider what it is you want to stay motivated to do. Write it down in as concrete terms as you can. Now figure out what is your main discouraging factor. What is preventing you from doing it? Are you afraid of failing? Do you struggle to stay focused? Are you struggling to find inspiration? Is it too big of a goal (for now)? Do you lack some necessary knowledge or skills? Write that down too.

    The next step is to find your hook. Why do you want to stay motivated to do what you want to do? You’re probably now going to have to find some intrinsic factor. What is it inside you that is driving you? What is it that has its steely little claws in you, saying do this? This is your hook. (If you can’t find one, ask yourself if you have an extrinsic motivator. If you don’t have that either, then maybe what you’re trying to do isn’t for you – and that’s ok.) Once you’ve found it (or them!), write it down.

    *If you’re suddenly and/or chronically struggling to stay motivated, that can be a symptom of depression. This doesn’t mean that you’re SOL, just that it’s going to be more difficult and you might need more help. This is not a failing.

    What To Do

    Now I’ll tell you what to do! It’s so easy! All you have to do is… do it.

    Now that you’ve written down your big goal, your discouraging factor, and your hook, you should be good to go, right? You know what you want and you know what’s stopping you! That’s the biggest hurdle! Go get ’em, tiger!

    Ok obviously there’s more at work here. Even people who know all about what they want and what’s stopping them struggle with motivation. The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You have to find what works for you. I’ve put together some of my favorite solutions to get you started though!

    Baby Steps

    You (hopefully) don’t eat a whole cake in one bite, right? And you don’t learn to bake by starting with a croquembouche. Break down your goal into bite-size steps, identifying skills and sub-skills that you might need to work on to get there. It’s much easier to be motivated to do a task that you know you can accomplish.

    Progress Tracking

    Keep a journal or a log of your practice, so you can see how far you’ve come! This also works if you’re trying to keep a habit going. I like to make a little weekly chart of tasks that I can check off each day, and see how I’ve done that week.

    Anti-Distraction

    If you’re struggling to stay motivated because doing something else is more interesting in the short term (AKA if you can’t get off facebook), finding ways of minimizing distractions is for you. I use the app Forest to keep myself from wasting time on my phone. You might also be distracted by environmental considerations: if being at home is too distracting, consider going to the library or a coffee shop or a park. If being out in public is distracting for you, try to find or cultivate a little distraction-free sanctuary for yourself.

    Support Group

    There’s a reason that AA is so popular: having other people help keep you motivated can work really well. Tell your friends or family what you’re trying to do, and enlist them to help keep you on track. I use the app HabitShare to keep track in a very controlled public way. Ideally your friends/family are the supportive kind. You can also try to find a club to join: if you want to write more poetry, see if there’s a group for that near you (or online).

    Set a Schedule/Deadlines

    Did you find it easier to get things done in school, when assignments had due dates? You can make those for yourself! Often it can be hard to stay motivated to do open-ended things, so setting a schedule and deadlines for yourself will give you a framework to build on. You can also find actual deadlines to work towards: if you want to get into running more, sign up for a 5K.

    Motivational Quotes

    Find some quotes that resonate with you, and keep them handy. Print them out and pin them above your desk, or keep a notebook of them, like a motivational florilegium. These can be specifically “motivational quotes” OR they can be whatever you personally find to be helpful. And if that’s not words but, say, Rembrandt prints, you do you. I suppose that means this also covers motivational playlists and podcasts, or really any literature…

    Final Thoughts

    Motivation is tricky, and struggling with it just means that you’re human. We’re at a point in society developmentally where many of us no longer struggle to have our basic needs met, and our big powerful brains don’t know what to do with themselves. We also have so many easy entertainment options to keep us from attaining our goals. There also seems to me to be a misconception that motivation is something that you have or don’t have, instead of a skill that you have to work on. I think staying motivated boils down to this: do you care enough to put in the work?

  • Theme of the Week: Fear

    Theme of the Week: Fear

    Continuing on my self-care kick, I want to talk about fear. I like keeping things fun and light-hearted, you know? Hopefully you can bear with me through another frivolous frolic through the fields of fantastic fun and… what else starts with F?… oh yeah, FEAR.

    What Is Fear?

    If you don’t know what fear is, then either you’ve led an incredibly blessed life or there’s something actually wrong with you. Fear is a very basic biological and emotional response to threat stimuli. It’s what makes you run away from the hungry cave lions instead of trying to make friends with them. Basically, it’s your body doing its best to keep you alive and your brain doing its best to remind you about dangers.

    So at its core, fear is very useful. However, it can also keep us from pursuing things that might be beneficial. Too much fear of cave lions can prevent you from going out in search of food that you really do need; too much fear of social interactions can prevent you from going outside. At some point these fears tip into the world of phobias, or irrational fears, in which your biological/emotional response far outweighs the actual threat.

    We also have an upgrade to fear called anxiety. This happens when you start to be afraid of being afraid. Again, it’s something that can be very useful in motivating you to do things, but there’s also a tipping point of too much. Then we’re in the world of anxiety disorders, which includes not only general anxiety, social anxiety, and panic disorders, but also posttraumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (DSM-5). In general, these develop from both genetic predisposition and environmental stimuli.

    Should We Be Afraid?

    First answer, yes. As I said before, fear is useful in keeping us alive and progressing. It is perfectly normal and healthy to be afraid in dangerous or threatening situations. If you’re in a situation like that, please be afraid. Use that increased adrenaline to get yourself to safety.

    Second answer, in moderation. Fear triggers the classic “fight or flight” response, which isn’t super useful when what you’re afraid of is intangible. And, of course, the modern world is full of intangible fears: public speaking, job interviews, performances, tests, and all kinds of interpersonal interactions. The physical symptoms (elevated heart rate, increased sweating, adrenaline shakes) can easily get in the way of what you’re trying to do. So we have to learn to manage our fear.

    Third answer, do you want to be? It is October, the time of Halloween, haunted houses, and scary movies. Some people enjoy the thrill of being afraid. Some people are adrenaline junkies and enjoy cliff diving. If that’s your jam, then go for it! Just don’t invite me to watch that scary movie with you.

    Scaredy cat
    Mr. Butters also does not like being afraid; please do not scare the Butters.

    Fear and Self-Care

    Obviously, there’s a complicated relationship at work here. We have to find a balance between having enough fear to care about things, but not so much that it becomes debilitating. Where that balance is varies from person to person, so you’ll have to find your own point.

    If you feel like you are excessively anxious, know that this is not a failing. We are hardwired for fear; your wiring is just a little more aggressive than you need it to be. The good news is that there are plenty of resources available to help! You just have to get over the initial hurdle of seeking that help. There are three main (non-exclusive) methods of treating excessive anxiety: therapy, drugs, and our good friend self-care.

    Self-care can also be a preventative measure to developing anxiety disorders. The median age of onset of generalized anxiety disorder (which, for the record, is a specific disorder) is 30 years old. This is, probably not coincidentally, also around the age at which life starts to set in (like a stain). You’re probably either established in your career and might be getting disillusioned with it, or you’re not established and you’re panicking that you’ll never succeed. Either you have a family and you’re (just a little) mourning your loss of freedom, or you don’t and it feels like you never will. There is always something to worry about, if you want. Self-care can help us keep things in check.

    Using Fear

    Fear can be a powerful inhibitor: it can keep you from pursuing your dreams, it can keep you from making changes, it can keep you from seeking help. It can also be a powerful motivator, as a drive to stay alive (fear of dying), a drive to succeed (fear of failure, fear of disappointing people), or a drive to thrive (fear of all kinds of starvation). So how do we find that balance that allows us to harness fear, instead of the other way around?

    This is starting to sound like the cult-y kind of self-help seminar. Unleash your inner wolf! Grab life by the horns! Say yes to everything! Eat a bowl of scorpions! FACE YOUR FEARS! … ugh

    But really. Baby steps. Fear exists for a reason, we just have to find ways of working with it. Try to identify what you’re afraid of, or what triggers your anxiety. I personally have to break things down into steps in order to do them, because big projects paralyze me. An overload of information or stimuli is a common stressor. So is a loss of control, or a feeling of needing to meet expectations. While fear is causing these stresses, it could also be your route to overcoming them. Find a way to be just afraid enough.

    Managing Fear

    One common way of treating phobias is desensitization. You are exposed to what you fear (in a controlled environment) until you’re no longer afraid. This works for lower levels of fear too. Think of basic animal training: if your dog is afraid of people, you can gradually and gently acclimatize him to family, then friends, then maybe strangers. If your horse is afraid of flapping objects, again you can gently acclimatize her. See if you can gently acclimatize yourself to your fear.

    Fears and anxieties are also helped by sharing them. For whatever reason, our brains just love other brains. Just talking to your friends, family, and/or therapist can help a shocking amount. Try communicating today!™

    Other methods include meditation and exercise. Quiet time alone, intentionally quieting your ever so noisy brain, can help you reset to a calmer state. Exercise can help burn off the extra energy that your body likes using to fuel its anxiety. Or you can combine the two and do yoga, or maybe some kind of martial arts (I’m not an expert on those).

    Fear and Society

    You thought maybe you’d escaped my soap-boxing, didn’t you. WRONG. Fear isn’t just an individual thing, it can also be societal. A generalized fear of change is what can keep societies from adapting and progressing, but it can also help hold societies together. It is also a method of control: Machiavelli, whose ideas are still influential today, (in)famously wrote in The Prince that it’s better to be feared than loved. Fear is also a common undercurrent in dystopian novels and shows, as well as in real-world oppressive regimes.

    As with managing personal fears, managing societal ones starts with identification. What about a change scares you? Is it a loss of status, the fear of the unknown, or historic precedents that indicate bad idea? We first need to know the root cause before we can do anything about it.

    Fear can be infectious. If Gorp goes running past looking terrified, it might be a good idea for you to be primed for being afraid to, so you’re ready when the cave lion comes into view. The problem is that our brains aren’t great at discriminating between CAVE LION AHH and POOL TABLE AHH. Herd mentality based in fear is something to watch out for, lest it sweep you up and away from your rational thinking.

  • Theme of the Week: Isolation

    To continue from last week’s Intro to Self-Care, I want to talk about isolation for this week’s theme of the week. It might not seem like the most logical progression, but I think that to actually talk about self-care, we first have to look under the hood and think about some of the underlying factors.

    What is Isolation?

    Isolation is the state of being alone. Humans in general do not deal well with being alone, especially involuntarily; we are social animals. This PBS article on solitary confinement illustrates some of the psychological consequences of isolation. There is clearly something about social interactions that is necessary to the health of the human psyche.

    Let’s think about social interactions as a muscle. You have to exercise it in order to stay in shape. There is a minimum level of activity required to keep it from atrophying altogether. On the other hand, as any weightlifter will tell you, a key part of building muscle is rest. Constant social interaction doesn’t leave you time to rest your brain. This time alone is when your brain moves things from short to long term memory, and when you have a chance at some introspection. Whenever you’re in a social situation, you choose some public persona: your work self, your hanging out with friends self, your family self, etc. This is just a form of code switching. It’s good to spend time by yourself, learning who you are beneath your social personas.

    It’s also possible to isolate a community. The Galapagos Islands are a famous example of isolated species, and how they changed from their parent species. The many and varied human cultures are partly due to community isolation. In modern society we also now have isolated online communities added to the mix. Under increasingly adverse conditions, isolated communities and individuals can feel pushed to radicalize.

    Isolation vs. Loneliness

    While isolation is the state of being alone, loneliness is the state of feeling alone. It’s an emotional reaction to insufficient social interaction. You can be isolated without feeling lonely, and you can feel lonely without being alone; however, I believe there is always an element of isolation in loneliness.

    I personally am a raging introvert. I love my friends and family, I even enjoy interacting with strangers, but if I don’t get my time alone I start to get hilariously grumpy (my description, definitely not anyone who’s with me at the time’s description). I’m not sure I’ve ever felt lonely when I’m by myself. Instead, I feel most lonely when I’m in a social situation and I feel isolated from the group.

    Loneliness requires that there are people you would like to be with, and for whatever reason can’t be with. Recent studies suggest that loneliness is a widespread and increasing problem, especially in the United States.

    American Isolationism?

    Americans traditionally pride themselves on rugged individualism, a belief that an individual is entirely capable of complete self-reliance. This is of course a nonsense philosophy. Especially as modern society develops, there is simply no way to completely isolate yourself from the rest of society without reverting to a primitive lifestyle. It is a very seductive idea though, that you can be clever and powerful enough to not require any assistance from other people. It’s especially seductive when you’re already alone, to fantasize about not needing anyone instead of going through the work and pain of finding people to be with.

    However, humans are social creatures. Wherever we go, we build societies so we don’t have to be alone. As our societies grow, we create governments to structure them. Sometimes the governments create their own governments. We create complex systems of communication. Humans need other humans.

    Having a society means that you can rely on other people to do some things for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. This ranges from trusting that Gorb will stay awake to keep the fire and you alive through the night, to trusting that engineers know what they’re doing enough to keep your house/office/roads from collapsing. The bigger and more complex a society gets, the more individuals can specialize.

    Isolation and Self-Care

    But we’re getting away from isolation and self-care, aren’t we? Or are we? Self-care is all about staying alive physically and mentally. Social interactions seem to be a big part of mental health. Isolation (from social interactions) is therefore also a big part of mental health, and therefore also of self-care. So where does American Isolationism come into play?

    The theory of rugged individualism has become pervasive in our society. Take care of yourself, because no one else will. To quote from two paragraphs ago, having a society means that you can rely on other people, or in other words, societies run on trust. If you don’t trust anyone around you to help, are you really still part of that society? If everyone in a society is expected to be self-reliant, then is that really a society? Or is it just a loose collection of people living roughly in the same area?

    Self-care exists to deal with stress. One of the main stressors is resources, which in modern times is mostly money. (Because we trust the supply chain of goods.) Our main expenses are housing (plus utilities, etc), food, transportation, children (if applicable), retirement (theoretically), education, and healthcare. American society has unfortunately decided that rampant inequality is just how life works, which has the effect of making people despondent, and erodes their trust in society. And now we’re to every man for himself. That billionaire needs to keep their money to create jobs? Looks like keeping people alive is a business now. Grandma’s too old to outrun that cave lion? Guess we’ll see you in the next life, Nana. You shouldn’t have gotten so old.

    Society and Self-Care

    None of this is exclusive to the United States (we’re not that special, friends), but some of it we do “better” than most. Other societies have dedicated resources to reducing some of those financial stresses for its citizens. As Americans (and welcome to the pool party, Brits, we see you dipping your toes), we just have to work a little harder at self-care.

    For the sake of your brain, don’t check out of society. But also for the sake of your brain, take some time for yourself, alone, without your phone or the TV. As my good pal Hesiod once said, “Moderation is best in all things,” and that applies to isolation too.

    What do you think about isolation? What are your opinions on self-care? Comment below, because I love more thoughts! Subscribe by email in the sidebar if you want to stay up-to-date on my blog, and check out some older posts if you’re new or behind.

  • Intro to Self-Care

    It’s the hot button issue that’s sweeping the internet: Self-Care! Buy this book and you too can learn Self-Care! Read this list of 45 easy steps to achieving Self-Care! #TREATYOSELF! There’s a lot of literature out there on how to care for yourself, but not a lot on why it’s important (or not?). Therefore here’s my intro to self-care, and why it has become an issue in my humble opinion.

    What is Self-Care?

    Ok, so, first off we need to establish what self-care is. At the core of it, it’s literally everything you need to do to take care of yourself to stay alive. It’s also, crucially, what you need to do to stay mentally alive (am I hearing THOUGHTS??). This article does the best job that I’ve found of explaining the different facets of self-care, so I’ll let that do it for me.

    Why is Self-Care?

    Why does self-care suddenly seem to be such a big deal now? Humans have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, modern humans have been trucking along for tens of thousands of years, so why should we care so much now? (Prepare to clutch your pearls, anthropologists, there’s some potential pseudoscience incoming.)

    Perhaps you’ve noticed, but modern life is stressful. Of course our ancestors had it pretty rough running from lions and having to track down their next meal for days, but those were problems that we’re relatively well equipped to deal with. We’re good at covering large distances, we’re great at using our hands, we’re exceptional at communicating, we kind of suck at dealing with existential fears. As a society, we have moved past the hunter-gatherer stage and zipped right into a world dominated by incredibly fast-paced technology, while our brains are still reacting to office job stresses like they’re a pack of cave lions.

    This of course sets off a chain reaction of chemical responses, the good old fight-or-flight as we like to call it. This was intended to help us fight off another angry human or run away from an exciting nest of cobras. It was not intended to help us deal with the long term issues that we face now: worrying about making rent, wondering if we’ll ever succeed at our professions, climate change, whatever your particular brand of stressor is. Therefore we need to find some way of calming that constant influx of stress-reaction-inducing stimuli. Enter self-care.

    How Do We Self-Care?

    First, some depressing news: self-care is about reducing stress of various kinds, not all of which are under our individual control. These are stresses like lack of access to healthcare, lack of a social safety net, inadequate access to healthy food, worries about the stock market, concern about Mother Earth getting tired of our shenanigans and yeeting us off (I unironically love this term, FIGHT ME)… and so on. You know, existential stresses. Some societies do a better job than others at mitigating some of these concerns. An American has a far smaller social safety net than, say, a Dane. There is stress that is under your control, though, and this is easier to address. You can also address your stress responses.

    This is only an intro to self-care, so I’m not going to get into any nitty gritties just yet. But I want to get you started thinking on self-care. It is essentially individual, so you have to find what works for you. The end goal, though, is to reduce your stress. Why does this matter? Because stress can make you sick, reducing your quality of life significantly. It can also make you angry, and then you might end up as a bitter old person who’s really just scared of everything.

    Intro to Self-Care

    There are plenty of articles out there that will tell you how to self-care (I wasn’t joking about the 45 Easy Steps), and to be fair these can be a good starting point if you’re starting from scratch. You can absolutely do self-care wrong: it’s not all about indulging yourself, and it never comes at the cost of anyone else. It’s about taking care of your body and mind in a deliberate way.

    Start by identifying the things that make you most stressed. Then think about things that make you feel good. In some ways this is like banishing a boggart: how can you make those big stresses less stressful?

    More on this anon. I have more thoughts, but they’re not congealing today. You can sign up for email updates if you don’t want to miss out on what’s to come, or check out some past thoughts! In the meantime, I will provide a spot for you to sit while you think about your version of self-care.

    Intro self care bench
    Wood bench in the Alps, perfect for self-reflection

  • Theme of the Week: Standards

    I’m trying something different this week, so bear with me: it might be a little rough. My idea for Theme of the Week is to take a word or short phrase, put it under a microscope, and suck all the meaning out of it that I can. (If you’re thinking, hey that sounds suspiciously like Harry Potter and the Sacred Text… you’re not wrong. If you’re thinking I don’t remember that book! Do yourself a favor and check it out. If you’re thinking that in no way sounds like Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, you’re probably not wrong either.) So buckle up, put your thinking cap on, and join me in thinking about standards.

    What are Standards?

    Ok so I can already hear you saying Emory what on Earth are you asking? You know what standards are. This isn’t a mystery. You’ve got high standards, low standards, standards of excellence, standards of care, slipping standards, etc etc, whateverwhocares. Standards are what we use to judge the world around us.

    So in a way you can think of standards as the lens you use to view the world. You walk into a new restaurant, you put on your restaurant standards glasses; you meet someone new, you put on your persons standards glasses; or you are looking for a new job, you put on your job standards glasses. We are constantly assessing and judging, and standards are the tipping point at which we approve or disapprove.

    The question now is, how do we form standards? They seem to be a pretty integral part of our lives, but is it a conscious process or something that just happens? I think that, while that’s a little more science-y than I am qualified to answer, we can definitely pseudo-science our way towards some theories. Step one: let’s go digging into the backstory of standards. Part of assessing things is comparing them against previous experiences. In this way, we can form expectations for future experiences, which then pave the way for forming standards.

    Vs. Expectations

    I’m going to assume for my own ego that you agree with the progression from expectations to standards, because I feel that it’s a brilliant point (I’m setting the standards low here). So if we assume that standards are the crystallization of expectations, forming standards seems to be at its core forming expectations. Alright, cool. Why do we care again?

    Expectations have enormous power over our mental states. For a better take by an actual psychologist read this article. Basically this states that there are realistic and unrealistic expectations, and the latter leads pretty directly to unhappiness. Wait, what? How did we get to happiness from expectations?

    You smarty pants already know this one: happiness is what happens when your expectations are met (no we don’t quote Wicked here, our standards are higher than that). When your expectations aren’t met, then you are disappointed.

    Butters is disappointed because he expects more food than he gets.

    Managing Expectations

    You’ve heard this before. Don’t expect the moon, because it doesn’t even know you exist. (I definitely just made up that phrase, but I’m running with it.) Expectations should be grounded in reality.

    If this is something that you struggle with, there are endless articles on how to manage expectations in all kinds of situations. Most likely, there is a method out there that can work for you. One key point here though is that the phrase is managing expectations, not lowering expectations. There is a minimum level of expectation that you really should have, just for the sake of self-preservation. If you have zero expectations from any interpersonal relationships, then you’re going to accept being treated terribly just the same as being treated well, and you’re worth more than that.

    So we need to find a balance between unrealistic and enough. That’s going to look different for each person, so you’ll have to decide for yourself what your standard of happiness is. HOLD UP – standards again?

    Managing Standards?

    Now this isn’t a phrase you’ve heard before. If you search this term, Google tries to redirect you. But should it be a thing? If you manage expectations, and standards progress from expectations, can you manage standards? I’m going to argue no.

    As I said earlier, standards are a crystallization of expectations, meaning that they become set from expectations, so in order to manage them you have to start back with managing expectations. Therefore, standards are not immutable, but they can be hard to change. Should we care about changing them though?

    Vs. Principles

    Let’s go one step further then. Is there another progression point that standards can develop towards? If you read headings then you can guess that I’m going to say yes! I like metaphors, so let’s build one. If expectations are minerals, over time (and pressure and stuff) they can crystallize and form into gems. Then we cut and polish the gems and put them in pretty settings and show them off to our friends and say, “Look at my beautiful jewelry!” And BAM, you’ve got principles.

    So what did we add to the mix to get principles? Just a small heap of morality and belief. Principles are what you can display and show off and make big deals about their immutability. You can be a principled person, and that makes you just a little bit better than everyone else. You’ve taken expectations and made them into beliefs.

    Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with principles and morals and beliefs, those are great to have, right? … Yeah, sure. It’s important to believe in things, and it’s important to have a moral compass. And yes, it’s important to have lines that you won’t cross. Why the disdain then? Because I’m a pacifist, and principles can be weaponized.

    Ouch, my feelings!

    Yes, I’m being dramatic. But only a little. Principles become a problem when you expect other people to abide by your personal ones. Everyone has different life experiences, so even with fairly similar morals (I think that’s the gem setting in the metaphor) the resultant principles can look wildly different. That seems reasonable, right?

    Expecting other people to live up to your principles is like expecting them to have the same life experiences as you, and then giving yourself free rein to be disappointed with their inevitable failure. How is this weaponizing? For starters, is there a worse feeling than disappointing someone you look up to? People know when you’re disappointed with them, and if you’re disappointed for reasons outside their control, all you’re doing is breeding ill feelings and resentment.

    It’s also hurting you too. You’re choosing to be constantly disappointed, which can have real physiological and psychological ramifications. Having such strong and public principles can also lead to them becoming an integral part of your identity, at which point any personal development becomes much harder to achieve.

    In the modern era, this principles as identity problem is magnified by online interactions. These are facilitated by setting up online profiles with facts about yourself, and finding other people with the same fun facts and self-identity. In this way we end up with globalized village ladies looking in and judging everyone outside of their tea circle and then maybe you’ve found a group to hang out with but you’re never challenged, are you?

    Anyway. Standards.

    I think I got off track a little bit. Maybe. My brain power is running low. I only said this was thoughts, I never said coherent thoughts. Overall though we’ve looked at a gradient of expectations-standards-principles, and my personal conclusion is that as useful as they are, it’s dangerous for them to be set in stone.

    I have definitely ignored/forgotten/left out aspects of standards, so do comment any thoughts that you have! If you’ve made it this far, maybe unwind with some quality cat or plant entertainment, or learn about standards of behavior in orchestra rehearsals!