Thoughts from John Karahalis
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
—Unknown, often incorrectly attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre
There may be hundreds of quotes from Stoicism and other traditions that make a similar point. I also wrote something along the same lines in “You're the only person you can control”.
It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards.
—Søren Kierkegaard, as translated by Palle Jorgensen
This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: “You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.” Based on the stories I've heard of Jobs, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew he was borrowing from Kierkegaard.
This fairly recent obsession with metrics in the workplace is driving companies insane.
A while back, I watched a video about all the ways hotels are trying to save money by, among other things, eliminating storage space, making the bathroom less private, removing desks, and pressuring guests to work at the bar, where they can spend more money. (By the way, that bartender? They're also the receptionist.) These changes are, of course, driven by metrics like “GSS” and “ITR,” whatever the f@*k those are.
Is there a kernel of truth to all of this? Sure. Aloft Hotels are cozy, and they seem to follow this playbook. I didn't mind staying in one when I was stuck in San Francisco for one night more than ten years ago. Would I want to stay in one of their rooms during a business trip or anything else lasting more than a couple of days? Hell no. I'd like a desk and somewhere to put clothes. (I know, I'm so needy. I travel with clothes.)
Metrics are fine, sometimes, when their use is limited and their shortcomings are genuinely appreciated. Taking them too seriously and letting them make the decisions, however, is a recipe for disaster. Hard questions demand more thoughtfulness than that. “GSS” and “ITR” are meaningful until they aren't, and nobody is going to find solace in those abbreviations when generations of potential customers steer clear of your business because they actually want something good.
Sadly, I don't think most businesses think that far ahead.
Show me the metric which proves that your business isn't incurring massive risk by ignoring common sense. Until then, I don't care about “the numbers.”
The video If TikTok Were Honest is surprisingly good. It does a great job of explaining the harms of social media in general and the harms of TikTok in particular.
Say you're into politics. [TikTok] will push you further and further into the extreme edges of whatever side you're on. Why? Because outrage and confirmation bias keeps you glued to your screen! This isn't just bad for your worldview, it's bad for society. Echo chambers breed division. They make people more certain they're right, more hostile to differing opinions, and less likely to engage in actual conversation.
Let's not gloss over the reminder that this is bad for your worldview. That's one of my biggest problems with social media. In making people more extreme and less aware of differing opinions, their persuasive ability weakens and they become counterproductive in their activism. To add insult to injury, they sometimes actually come to think of themselves as the sacred protectors of their various causes. Give me a break.
Don't leave social media because I told you to. Leave social media because it's making you hurt the people you're trying to help.
I heard this phrase recently, in a conversation where one person was trying to get through to another person who was being uncooperative. I think it's a great line, and I'm going to try to remember it for the future.
“I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.”
The problem is, that's pretty curt. I don't think most people would be able to really hear that, and I think we have a responsibility to make sure our words are heard. If we know our words won't be heard, what's the point of speaking at all? Is it to feel better about ourselves? It shouldn't be, in my opinion. We have enough of that already.
For that reason, I might try something kinder first when talking with an ornery person. In the past, I've used the following, and people seem to take it well.
“I'm sorry that's not the answer you want, but that's my answer.”
Substitute the word “answer” for “request,” “advice,” or any other word as needed.
I've come to feel that any belief, philosophy, or endeavor taken too seriously causes extreme harm. The most benevolent religious commitments taken to the extreme go completely off the rails, as do the most reasonable philosophies taken to their furthest logical conclusions. Even attempting to do no harm perfectly is likely to do immense harm, albeit in some unexpected way.
I'm self-conscious that it's taken me so long to see this, because it seems so obvious now. It only became clear after learning a bit about Nietzsche's criticism of philosophical stoicism, including that it leads adherents to act callously toward others and forego the most important challenges in life. I haven't noticed stoicism encouraging that kind of attitude, but when taken to its extreme, perhaps it does! That's one more reason for me to proceed with relative caution, rather than thoughtlessly adopting the worst of that worldview. Learning more about cults, in particular the Heaven's Gate UFO suicide cult, also helped me see this. Cult members, even those who commit terrible acts—especially those who commit terrible acts!—are not evil or stupid. In fact, they're often very intelligent and they almost always have the best intentions. They're just extremely committed.
If you find yourself in the 99th percentile of some endeavor, stop, slow down, and re-evaluate. A little common sense goes a long way, and at that high level of attainment, that's what you need most.
Distrobox is amazing. It's like Linux Subsystem for Linux in the best possible way. (That's a play on the name Windows Subsystem for Linux.) With one command, anyone can spin up the shell environment of another Linux distribution, and the host files will be right there. Are you using Debian because you value desktop stability, but you want to use the latest Neovim? No problem. Use Distrobox to create an Arch or Fedora environment, install Neovim, and use it. That's it!
I'm surprised, disappointed, and a bit embarrassed I didn't know about it until now.
In August, in an effort to lose weight, improve my health, and learn to cook, I took the Jumpstart class with the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute. Any attendee who participates fully—measuring changes in their health, attending meetings, etc.—is allowed one free retake within 12 months. I'll be beginning that retake on Monday. I'm grateful for the opportunity, because although I learned a lot and developed good habits the first time around, I got off-track with Kika's passing and the holidays. I try not to make excuses, though. I didn't want that change enough. I didn't want it enough to overcome those challenges, anyway. I hope that the retake helps me to rebuild those habits and stick with them.
The RLMI recommends a whole-food plant-based diet. I've been vegan since the summer of 2011 for ethical reasons, but over those years, I became a junk food vegan. There's plenty of highly-processed vegan food out there, full of sugar and salt and fat, and it hasn't served me well. Although I'm not one of those people who thinks any diet can work miracles, curing cancer or some such thing, I do think eating more real food from the earth is probably better for everyone. This program helps participants learn how to do that. (If you do believe a certain diet can work miracles and cure cancer, that's fine, but please don't rely on that at the exclusion of modern medical treatment. It won't work.)
Although I had followed other diets in the past, some very successfully, taking the course in August opened my eyes, for the first time, to how terrible most grocery store food is. Most of those items with big, bright logos, fun packaging, and exciting new flavors are filled with stuff that nobody needs. I'm not even talking about complex chemicals which have difficult-to-pronounce names—those things can be found in bananas, too. I'm talking about the heaps of salt and oil and sugar these brands pack their foods with to make them as delicious (and as unhealthy) as possible.
Since then, I've been struggling to come up with a term for this kind of food. Everyone knows the term junk food, of course, but that doesn't quite describe the food I'm talking about. Many people consider ice cream to be junk food, for example, but not oatmeal that's unnecessarily packed with sugar. I think we need a term for the latter.
After lots of thinking, I finally came up with one: funhouse food. If it has bright colors, a bold name, a cartoon character, fun packaging, or exciting new flavors, if it's loaded with salt or sugar or fat—if it's too much fun—it's funhouse food.
May I endeavor harder and harder to avoid it.
I know many people who use social media only to follow businesses they care about, so that they can hear about specials, promotions, events, and changes to hours. It's true that some businesses don't update their website or provide a newsletter, so I can understand the appeal of using social media to follow them. The situation seems to be getting better, though, with more and more businesses maintaining a healthy online presence outside of the big, centralized social platforms.
I don't want to be too cynical, but using social media for this purpose does seem like opt-in advertising on some level. It's too bad that many with these users will also be manipulated into liking, commenting, buying, sharing, following, radicalizing, and you know, dismantling democracy.