Inspiration
• Check out this brief article describing the story of a boy born very poor in Haiti who met US Army troops and had a dream to become a helicopter pilot. That young man is Second Lieutenant Alix Schoelcher Idrache and he just graduated from West Point in the top of his class, studying physics. The powerful photos show how proud Alix is, and how determined he is to continue his accomplishments.
• “My dad always said, ‘education is the only gift I can always give you, because I don’t have any anything material to give.’”
Flow Thief
• Maybe it doesn’t happen often at work. But at least in your hobbies, you likely get immersed in a state of concentration where you lose track of time and even yourself. Playing with your kids, hanging out with your spouse when you have no urgent responsibilities, and reading or working out. Flow usually signifies meaning, and leads to improved wellness.
• Check out this article on what disrupts those flow states: Thieves of Flow: How Unfinished Tasks at Work are Related to Flow Experience and Wellbeing. Unfinished tasks negatively affect flow experience and [therefore] wellbeing.
• Tips from the paper: Divide large tasks into small, achievable subtasks. Eliminate distractions. Separate periods for working on tasks from those in which you could achieve flow (answer emails at a different time of day than creative work; batch your tasks). You can also use to do lists, which will provide something similar to the Zeigarnik effect, helping to offload nagging concerns by putting it down on paper. Thanks Jacob for the article.
Should you buy a new book before you finish your current one?
• Answer: Yes. Umberto Eco called his massive collection of unread books his antilibrary, and Nicholas Nassim Taleb popularized that story.
• An alternate term for this is the Japanese word tsundoku. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for the stack(s) of books you’ve purchased but haven’t read; a combination tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dukosho (reading books).
• “Many other studies have shown reading habits relay a bevy of benefits. They suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills. And that’s just fiction! Reading nonfiction is correlated with success and high achievement, helps us better understand ourselves and the world.”
• Fiction is important, but students should also read nonfiction. Nonfiction should be incorporated into classroom libraries, and many children that do not have enthusiasm for fiction might be reached by nonfiction.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
• In his book The Hidden Habits of Genius, Craig Wright has a chapter devoted to gender considerations, and various female geniuses in history.
• Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval nun Renaissance woman, a “polymath long before Leonardo da Vinci. Preacher, poet, painter, politician, theologian, musician, student of biology, zoology, botany, and astronomy. She corresponded with four popes (calling one an ass) and fought with Church authorities, who tried to silence her by placing her under interdict. For centuries after her death, Hildegard languished in obscurity. But beginning in the 1980s, with the advent of women’s studies programs, Hildegard’s reputation as a medieval visionary was restored. In 2012, Pope Benedict XIII canonized her as Doctor of the Church, the fourth woman of thirty-five saints to be so designated.”
Viewpoint Diversity
• Jonathan Haidt and others have argued that political polarization is intensifying since the 1990s, as less politicians reach across the aisle, and as more people in each party agree with all of the positions of that party, rather than personally thinking through each issue. But this is not a new phenomenon:
• John Stuart Mill wrote that political systems have “a party of order or stability and a party of progress or reform.”
• Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the two parties which divide the state, the party of conservatism and that of innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made,” and he went on to conclude that such “irreconcilable antagonism must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human condition.”
Bitter makes you Better
• Do you like bitter foods? Coffee, dark chocolate, arugula, ginger, cranberries. Our taste for bitter foods appears to be genetic, and polymorphisms associated with bitter taste preference correlate with longevity. People who prefer bitter foods may live longer!
• One explanation is that plants produce bitter toxins to poison us, we evolve pathways to detoxify those poisons, then they make more, then we eat them and evolve more pathways, in a continuous cycle. If interested, see this article.
• So just as with exercise, one (the?) reason plants are so healthy for us is that they are poisonous. We eat very small amounts of toxins and become stronger after confronting them. And in a wild twist, when we eat plants that are stressed during their own life we derive even more health benefits (see dry wine farming). So even if you don’t enjoy bitter tastes, you can probably get the health benefits by dabbling in some bitter foods.
• Many foods have digestion enhancing properties, exploited by traditional cuisine around the world. A shortcut to the benefits of these foods is digestive bitters. You can buy Angostura bitters at Target even, or check out this “traditional European remedy.”
Quotes
The man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient, is no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god. – Aristotle
Trying to solve the problem of God is like trying to see your own eyeballs.
– Thomas Merton
