MAÔ – Page 87 – Michael's Musings

Politizing a pandemic

July 13, 2020July 13, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Politics

“The White House is taking aim at the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. In a statement Saturday, a White House official told CNN that ‘several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.'” (CNN)

When the first confirmed case of COVID appeared in America, President Trump said in an interview that, “We have it totally under control.” At the time, there was no reason to doubt that. China was facing the brunt of the disease, and here in the US, there wasn’t even a push to truly begin testing.

Nearly six months later, we’re looking at nearly 3.5 million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths. But how are we addressing it? Sadly, it seems to depend on how you vote.

While we should all be in agreement over handling this crisis, we can’t come to terms with even wearing masks to reduce the possibility of spreading a potentially deadly disease.

Around the world, the politics of countries are shaping how the nations are responding to the virus. Some are doing a better job than others. While we can’t be certain about the reporting across the board, we should accept that the virus has caused a much larger, and longer-lasting problem than we would have hoped.

Now, with the president and the CDC clashing over the best course moving forward, the nation’s hopes of unity in facing this crisis seem more unlikely.

Make better choices

July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Advice

Most of our days are segments into small chunks of choices. To wake up with the alarm or to hit snooze. To have coffee or tea. Eat breakfast or don’t. Healthy or sugary. A morning workout, or prayer, or meditation.

Not even ten minutes into the day, and already a dozen or more choices assail pout mental processors.

If we consider the ability to make decisions as a commodity – a resource that is finite within the scope of one twenty-four hour period – then it makes sense to spend our decision-making currency os frugally and responsibly as possible.

Budgeting for decision-making isn’t much different than budgeting for personal finance. There are some key differences, however, the primary one being that we may be aware of how much decision-making capital that we will have to allocate for a given day.

This “choice capital” isn’t a constant. It is subject to variations based on mood, day, and numerous other factors. Mental strain, restlessness, outside factors weighing upon our mental faculties, and carried-over excess from previous days can also reduce the quality and quantity of our ability to adequately make decisions.

Something our education system does well is showing us how to stagger our usage of choice capital while we’re children. It’s an excellent primer for how to partition our days into chunks of time to allow us to focus on an individual subject. All of our decision-making and attention in the school system are maintained in one course at a time, usually in a block not exceeding ninety minutes.

Not only are we shown how to set aside time to work on one thing, but we’re also taught that overworking one subject won’t produce better results – only mental strain.

That the modern workday isn’t divided as such shows that, while we were once carefully taught, we’ve abdicated the opportunity to segment our own assignments into a system that prioritizes mental clarity and task optimization.

Another factor in the improvement of spending choice-capital is to factor in routines, thereby limiting the need for daily decision-making in unimportant tasks. For instance, meal planning, scheduling exercise blocks, and setting up a general wardrobe scheme are all examples. Rather than waking up and thinking, “What will I eat?”, already knowing let’s you push your brain into its next steps.

Imagine a whole morning where you:

Wake up
Eat (the same thing as yesterday, and you’ll have the same thing tomorrow)
Do your morning practice (work out, make the bed, meditate, write, etc.)
Put on your clothes (Maybe you’ll have Mon-Fri outfits, or a set weekend go-to. Steve Jobs liked jeans and turtlenecks. President Obama had two suit colors, and would alternate each working day)

And there you have it. Two hours of your morning, and not a single ounce of choice capital expended.

Something about art

July 11, 2020July 11, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Art

“Art is the highest expression of the human spirit” – Joyce Carol Oates

There are certain times when artistic expression is more important than we might otherwise think it is. We don’t pay much attention to what’s being produced, performed, or created when we go about our lives on the day-to-day. We work, watch television, read, go to bed.

However, now with so much time on our hands for many Americans, we get to really delve into the meaning behind where we get joy.

In 1970, Leonard Bernstein gave an address at the opening exercises of the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts: “…Dr. Norton said, ‘It is the artists of the world, the feelers and thinkers, who will ultimately save us, who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing, and shout the big dreams. Only the artists can turn the not-yet into reality.'”

Understanding the world

July 9, 2020July 9, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Science

The world is structured and ordered in a very particular way. What we know of it isn’t the way itself. Rather, it is our interpretation and narrative of what we can understand.

This is similar to the Tao of Eastern philosophy. According to Lao Tzu: “The Way that can be named is not the Eternal Way.”

What we try doing by understanding – mostly through the sciences – is to shine a light on the potentially unknowable. The closer we get to the understanding of all things, the more complicated and in-depth the answers seem to become.

For instance, one philosophy class I had considered the creation of the Universe in such a way:

Querent 1: The universe was formed during the Big Bang. There was no god necessary.
Querent 2: But what caused the Big Bang?
Querent 1: At the singularity, where all matter was densely gathered, a quantum event caused the matter to explode outward and form the mass and matter of the universe.
Querent 2: So what caused this quantum event?

And so on, and so on…

It’s like the joke of the astrophysicist told by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time:

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever”, said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

And you know what? Maybe it really is turtles all the way down.

Fear

July 8, 2020July 8, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Thoughts

Fear can be a deciding factor in whether or not we do something.

It can overwhelm a person, making it impossible to act. Or it can be a motivating factor.

While fear itself will not drive discovery, it can cause a person to be more apt to act in some situations.

When fear arises, listen to it. What is it warning you away from? It may be that what scares you is the thing you need most to head towards.

Refilling the well

July 2, 2020July 2, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Work

Inspiration isn’t something that can be emptied. Sure, we can feel blocked at times. But in reality, it’s just our own self getting in our way.

There’s no real trick to finding inspiration. One study suggests that focusing on a non-mentally demanding task can free up the subconscious to do its work. It’s why showers often bring good ideas, and thinking of a question before going to sleep can net you an answer upon waking.

Another good practice is to experience the ideas of others. I’m torn by what Seneca says about reading – “Be careful, however, that there is no element of discursiveness and desultoriness about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. The same must needs be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying vists to them all.” (italics for my emphasis)

I do see the value of spending time reading one author’s work and digesting it, not just glancing over it. This rumination could be akin to what Cal Newport calls deep work.

However, it’s also good to gain perspectives from many sources, especially when looking to pull from your own source of creativity. Gaining a multitude of ideas is how the well is filled.

That brand of yours

July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 by MAÔ, posted in Work

Building a brand is easy, assuming you have one unified interest. But, what if you’re someone who likes to dabble in many fields, to try new things?

The tech mogul who wants to improve healthcare. The reknowned actress campaigning for social justice. Or the one holding down a job while doing anything creative on the side.

The most important thing is just to stick with it.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison