April 10, 2016 · 10:03 pm

Body

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

I recently decided to take a look at the life of one of the greatest men to ever live, Theodore Roosevelt. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris describes Roosevelt’s life up to the moment when he became President of the United State. In it Morris recounts many of the stories that have become famous about Roosevelt’s early life; one of which was how as a boy he was asthmatic, frail and often sick. Recognizing the importance of a strong, healthy body, his father called Theodore in to tell him that he must make his body, as told by Morris:

“Theodore,” the big man said, eschewing boyish nicknames, “you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”
Mittie, who was an eyewitness, reported that the boy’s reaction was the half-grin, half-snarl which later became world-famous. Jerking his head back, he replied through clenched teeth: “I’ll make my body.”

At a young age Roosevelt was already showing that he had a powerful mind, despite his sickly body, expressing interest in a variety of subjects and frequently reading books. After talking with his father he began working out regularly to build his body and after a few years was no longer the frail, sickly boy he had been and was already suffering from asthma attacks less frequently.

Years later upon returning to New York after having spent a few months working at his ranch in the Dakotas, many were surprised to see him fitter than ever. Morris describes what a friend who had not seen Roosevelt in years had to say after seeing him again:

Throughout that summer Roosevelt continued to swell with muscle, health, and vigor. William Roscoe Thayer, who had not seen him for several years, was astonished “to find him with the neck of a Titan and with broad shoulders and stalwart chest.” Thayer prophesied that this magnificent specimen of manhood would have to spend the rest of his life struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of a powerful mind and an equally powerful body.

Morris also notes that after his time spent ranching in the Dakotas there are no further mentions of asthma in his correspondence, he had finally built a body to be worthy of the powerful mind it also contained.

Both a powerful mind and body take time and dedication to develop and can find themselves at odds as one must balance the time required to maintain both. The work required to build and maintain a healthy body can also help one to build a powerful mind, as the discipline that must be exercised to workout consistently can also be used to help motivate oneself to read and study frequently as well.

Walden

Looking back at some other historical figure’s thoughts I found that a similar recognition of the importance of building both a strong mind and body was expressed by Henry David Thoreau in Walden. Using the idea of our body as a temple, Thoreau explains how it is our responsibility as the painters and sculptors of our bodies to shape them into our own unique temple, saying:

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

If we practice restraint and consistently work at sculpting ourselves, over time we will eventually refine our body’s features, while if we frequently indulge ourselves, we will tend to, over time, mask them. Although it can’t be seen directly, we must also sculpt our mind, working to shape and build our knowledge of various subjects and life in general. Even though our mind cannot be seen visually, others can still can get an idea of it through their interactions with us, and learn whether we have been working to refine our mind as much as our body, or allowing it to atrophy.

Recognizing the difficulty and mental strenuousness of truly reading and studying a book beyond a superficial level, Thoreau makes an apt comparison to physical exercise, explaining:

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

To read a book with deliberation and intention will tax ones mental abilities through the process of working to understand what an author is saying, and to more than just understand it; but to really absorb the ideas being expressed in a book and meld them into your own existing ideas. This process is one which requires a considerable mental effort that can leave one feeling exhausted and in need of a break or rest similarly to how a difficult workout will require a rest period before moving on to the next exercise.

The writing process takes a considerable amount of deliberation,consideration and thought on the part of the author to craft each line and express each idea clearly and concisely, yet we can frequently read these same sentences without stopping to give a second thought to what we just read. By reading with intention and putting in the mental work to truly understand what is being said we can help to justify the author’s efforts.

Without a strong body, the mind cannot grow to its full potential, as exercising the body can have positive effects on the brain. While, without a strong mind the body also cannot reach its full potential, as techniques which could be used to grow stronger or run faster may be missed. The body and mind work synergystically, improving one can help lead to even greater gains in the other.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Body

Tagged as , ,

April 3, 2016 · 9:59 pm

Change

How to Win Friends and Influence People

I was recently reminded of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and was tempted to reread it. I was struck by what appeared to be a common theme throughout the book, which was finding a way to affect change in others without directly, or at least minimally, criticizing them, so as to not cause resentment and make them unmotivated, or reluctant to make the requested change. Carnegie offers a few different potential tactics one can use when attempting to affect change in others, either personally or professionally.

Instead of criticizing, the book instead suggests the use of praise, not just for attempting to get people to change their behavior, but also in relationship building. There is, however, an important distinction between genuine praise and flattery. People can generally tell when they are merely being flattered, versus being genuinely complimented for a particular attribute or job well done. By rewarding good behavior, rather than criticizing bad, we can hopefully over time cause a shift in behavior, without incurring any negative feelings against us, or as Carnegie explains:

B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

Another suggestion for changing behavior is to appeal to one’s higher motives. Even people who knowingly do wrong can come up with reasons to justify their behavior. When we decide to do something, there’s potentially two reasons why we are doing it, the real reason, and the reason we tell others, as Carnegie explains:

J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one.
The person himself will think of the real reason. You don’t need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists at heart, like to think of motives that sound good. So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives.

By appealing to one’s nobler motives and showing that what we are asking is for the person to choose to take the honorable path, even if we know that their true motives are still selfish, they can still change. By painting an image of them as a noble person for doing, or not doing something, they will be more inclined to live up to the image we have presented of them.

Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life

At the same time that we may want to change others, they may also want to change us, and even if they do not, we likely would like to change something about ourselves. The topic of working to change others reminded me of what Eric Greitens had to say about changing oneself in his book, Resilience. There’s almost always some aspect of ourselves that we would like to change or improve, as we’re not born perfect, and despite a lifetime of effort, will never come close to being it, so there’s always room for improvement. There’s likely also plenty that others would like to see change in us, even if they haven’t explicitly told us. We should therefore always be working at changing and improving ourselves, Greitens says:

Don’t expect a time in your life when you’ll be free from change, free from struggle, free from worry. To be resilient, you must understand that your objective is not to come to rest, because there is no rest. Your objective is to use what hits you to change your trajectory in a positive direction.

The goal then, is not to get to a point where we feel we don’t need to change anymore, because then we would stop growing as a person, but to always be looking for, and working towards, positive change in our lives. Whether we want it or not, life will throw situations at us that will require us to change and adapt to get through and passed them, so we might as well be ready and working to change ourselves, before life eventually forces us to anyway.

It’s not enough to just know how we need to change, but we must also continuously practice these changes to see any real improvement. As Greitens points out, not practicing enough when attempting to change people is a problem than can even affect those who are professionals at trying to help people change and improve, he says:

Many programs run by the professional improvers of society are built on education, not training — on delivering facts rather than strengthening practice. Knowledge matters. But our efforts too often stop at knowledge, because it’s easier to measure what we’ve told people than it is to measure how we’ve changed people. It is easier to preach to people than to practice with them.

Even if we do observe the change we would like to see in the other person, it can be difficult, if not impossible to measure their improvement. As they change, our expectations may continue to shift, so that instead of being glad and grateful that they are changing, we instead continue pushing for them to change, because we cannot remember and measure their true level of progress so far. In this case we should just continue to do as Carnegie suggests and praise their continued good behavior and not take it for granted that they will continue to behave in the new, improved way out of habit.

Life demands that everyone change over time, we don’t have a choice in that, but what we do have a choice in is if it will be for the better, or the worse. Along with us, everyone else is changing as well, and at times we will want them to change along with us. If we are going to attempt to change others, instead of criticizing what they do wrong, we should attempt to focus upon suggesting possible ways of improvement, and encourage any positive changes, whenever we see them. By minimizing criticism and praising good behavior, we can help to encourage others to improve, without causing resentful feelings for asking them to change.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Improvement

Tagged as , , ,

March 27, 2016 · 9:24 pm

Science Fiction

The Martian Chronicles

This week I decided to read something a bit different, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, which is a series of stories describing humans colonization of Mars. Science fiction allows an author to make a commentary on humanity, or actions that humanity has taken in the past, and comment on them, in a way that allows them to be discussed without necessarily bringing up the reader’s prior associations with the event. By taking the context and freeing it from having anything to do with reality, such as moving it to an alien world, we can more objectively look at our actions and consider and judge them without our prior thoughts and biases influencing our perceptions.

Early on in the book an expedition from Earth arrives on Mars and encounters its inhabitants, but they don’t quite get the welcome that they are expecting. After being passed around from person to person the following encounter takes place:

Mr. Iii answered his door. He was on his way to a lecture, but he had a minute, if they would hurry inside and tell him what they desired. . . .
“A little attention,” said the captain, red-eyed and tired. “We’re from Earth, we have a rocket, there are four of us, crew and captain, we’re exhausted, we’re hungry, we’d like a place to sleep. We’d like someone to give us the key to the city or something like that, and we’d like somebody to shake our hands and say ‘Hooray’ and say ‘Congratulations, old man!’ That about sums it up.”

As we’re just now seriously considering the possibility of a manned mission to Mars, an event unprecedented, since the Moon landing, it would be probably the greatest accomplishment in human history to date. It’s funny but also kind of sad that they end up among a group that care nothing for their achievement, as they’re expecting them to have the same values and level of appreciation, when they know nothing about them.

Later after the initial pioneers have proved it’s possible to travel to Mars, echoing the European colonization of the Americas, the common people quickly follow suit and work to change things to feel more like home, as Bradbury says:

The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night.

Even as far from home as being on another planet, it is still typical of us to want to change things to suit our tastes, not being content just to survive, but to need bring along all of the comforts of home as well.

The Left Hand of Darkness

I was reminded of another science fiction book I’d read recently, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin in which a single human emissary visits a planet on which the inhabitants are androgynous until it is time to mate, when they take on a particular gender. The book opens with a brief introduction from Le Guin in which she explains that much science fiction is a thought experiment, in which the possibilities of a particular scenario are explored.

In the introduction, Le Guin explains the role of fiction writers in explain truths about humanity and human nature through the use of, what are essentially, lies, saying:

“The truth against the world!”—Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!

By imagining a planet of androgynous beings, Le Guin can explore the possibilities of gender equality without the restrictions of an Earth-like environment. The book’s human narrator explains the problem in trying to deal with a race without a definite gender, when gender is a fundamental aspect of our thought processes, saying:

When you meet a Gethenian you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectations of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex. Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

By combing both male and female traits into a single being, Le Guin creates a world in which many of the problems caused by differences in gender have been eliminated, but is still far from perfect, illustrating that some problems are caused by our fundamental nature. Without gender in some ways communication becomes easier for them, as they have the same basis upon which they perceive the world, but makes it quite difficult for the narrator, who has to figure out how to deal with the blended communication styles.

With the freedom to imagine impossible scenarios science fiction writers can make points that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to do in the context of dealing with only humans on the planet Earth. An intriguing context could also draw in readers and expose them to a message that might not receive elsewhere by wrapping a message in a story in which things can be taken to extremes to more fully explore a point.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Reading

Tagged as , ,

March 20, 2016 · 9:52 pm

Frugality

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

I’d been meaning to read a proper biography of Benjamin Franklin, having previously read his famous autobiography, and now finally have. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson gives a full account of his life and his numerous contributions not just to the creation and founding of the United States, but to humanity in general through his many inventions and scientific discoveries. Besides these great contributions Franklin is also remembered for his list of twelve virtues which he famously practiced in an effort at self-improvement, one of which he also frequently encouraged others to practice is frugality as a means of not just becoming wealthy, but to better aid mankind.

In addition to frugality Franklin also commonly espoused the virtue of industry, for together they allow one to secure a sufficient living to support oneself and not be indebted to others. For by remaining debt-free one can live for oneself and not be subject to the whims of others when payment comes due.

Perhaps the largest platform Franklin used to attempt to spread these virtues was in his Poor Richard’s Almanac in which they were a major theme, as Isaacson points out:

Frugality became for him not only a virtue but also a pleasure. “Industry and frugality,” he wrote in describing the theme of Poor Richard’s almanacs, are “the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue.”

Franklin did not just practice virtues for his own personal improvement, but also tried to help encourage others to improve themselves and become part of the growing middle class at the time. Even as a child Franklin was already practicing the virtue of frugality, as Isaacson explains:

As a young apprentice, Franklin had read a book extolling vegetarianism. He embraced the diet, but not just for moral and health reasons. His main motive was financial: it enabled him to take the money his brother alloted him for food and save half for books. While his coworkers went off for hearty meals, Franklin ate biscuits and raisins and used the time for study, “in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.”

Frugality does not mean that one must completely deny oneself of all luxuries, or even of seemingly essential necessities, like food, as Franklin did, but merely taking time to consider the value to be gained by spending money today, versus the value it could have if saved for the future. Through his industry and practice of frugality Franklin was able to retire at the age of 42 and could then spend his time studying and inventing and generally working towards more than just earning enough to survive.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin he describes how when he was first starting out in business he practiced the virtues of industry and frugality to build not only his business, but himself as well. Having helped to fund a subscription library in Philadelphia, Franklin took advantage of it to read and study in his free time instead of going out and spending money on less educational pursuits. Franklin describes his practice of the virtues and gives them as some of the reason of his success saying:

This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day, and thus repair’d in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allow’d myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolicks of any kind; and my industry in my business continu’d as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was indebted for my printing-house; I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for business two printers, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having, among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, “Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men,” I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encourag’d me, tho’ I did not think that I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened; for I have stood before five, and even had the honor of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to dinner.

Once Franklin became successful he allowed himself more luxuries, but still spread a message of frugality and industry to others as a means of securing their own wealth to enable them to more easily practice virtue, as he says in his autobiography:

In 1732 I first publish’d my Almanack, under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continu’d by me about twenty-five years, commonly call’d Poor Richard’s Almanac. I endeavour’d to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that I reap’d considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it, I consider’d it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurr’d between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.

By practicing both the virtues of industry and frugality, one can over time accumulate enough wealth to live comfortably. Industry being important for earning a sufficient income to have enough money to allow for some of it to be saved. And frugality being important to resist the temptation to spend all of the money that one earns through their industry immediately. While both virtues can be beneficial to have on their own, the combination of the two allows for a freer and less stressful life when one does not have to constantly worry about having enough money to cover current expenses.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , ,

March 13, 2016 · 9:55 pm

Privacy

Data and Goliath

Having just read Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier it seemed like a good time to write about a topic I’ve been meaning to discuss for a while, privacy. In the wake of the revelations revealed in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden we now know a great deal about how the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been monitoring practically all global communications in the wake of the September 11th attacks. In addition to mass government surveillance, there is another source of mass data collection that is not discussed quite as much, but is also a major topic in the book and that is corporate surveillance, both through the data we voluntarily give to corporations in our everyday dealings with them, and data that they trade amongst themselves to attempt to build a complete picture of us. Schneier illustrates the problem with this type of information sharing, saying:

News stories about mass surveillance are generally framed in terms of data collection, but miss the story about data correlation: the linking of identities across different data sets to draw inferences from the combined data. … It’s also the ability to correlate that identification with numerous other databases, and the ability to store all that data indefinitely. Ubiquitous surveillance is the result of multiple streams of mass surveillance tied together.

There are companies whose sole purpose is to gather data from all of the disparate sources where it is collected, and compile it together in an attempt to build a profile of us. They then take this profile, group it together with similar profiles and sell the data to other companies who are looking to target particular groups of people. This all goes on without our knowledge and perhaps even indirectly with our consent, as we typically agree to it in those privacy policies that nobody reads.

Most websites on the Internet provide their services, seemingly, for free, although there is the implicit agreement that you will view advertisements on the site in exchange for the service it is providing. The companies that provide the ads have a great interest in knowing as much about you as they can, as that knowledge allows them to better target ads for you and make their money. As the saying goes, “If you’re not paying, you’re the product.” Often we’ll agree to this bargain without giving it a second thought and without considering what personal data we might be giving up in exchange for the service.

We frequently give out our personal information,with the assumption that it will only be used by those we are giving it to, without considering any potential privacy impacts. For the most part, we don’t actively recognize when we even have privacy, and therefore, do not value it properly, as Schneier explains:

The costs of insecurity are real and visceral, even in the abstract; the costs of privacy loss are nebulous in the abstract, and only become tangible when someone is faced with their aftereffects. This is why we undervalue privacy when we have it, and only recognize its true value when we don’t. This is also why we often hear that no one wants to pay for privacy and that therefore security trumps privacy absolutely.

Dragnet Nation

It is only through the loss of our privacy that we really notice that we had any privacy in the first place. I was reminded of a similar idea expressed by Julia Angwin in her book Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance where she says:

In essence, when you don’t have privacy, you feel less pain from losing it. Instead, you feel the pain of having to “buy back” privacy. This inability to accurately assign value to our data is one reason that most products that are sold to protect privacy fail. And it’s one reason that turning personal data into a currency–without any enabling legislation to make personal data scarce, and thus more valuable–could just enable and legitimize ubiquitous surveillance.

There are very few protections on what companies can do with our data, with the exceptions of health and financial data, they are pretty much free to do whatever they want with it, governed only by their own privacy policies.

One of the things I found most striking in Angwin’s book was her look at the beginnings of modern mass surveillance, she said:

In my quest to understand the history and origins of mass surveillance, I kept returning to the year 2001. Not only was it the year of the devastating terrorist attacks on the United States, but it was also the year that the technology industry was left reeling from the bursting of the dot-com bubble. These two seemingly unrelated events each set in motion a chain of events that created the legal and technical underpinnings of today’s dragnets. For the U.S. government, the terrorist attacks showed that its traditional methods of intelligence gathering weren’t working. And for Silicon Valley, the crash showed that it needed to find a new way to make money. Both arrived at the same answer to their disparate problems: collecting and analyzing vast quantities of personal data.

It’s not entirely coincidental that both government and corporate surveillance really took off at the same time, as they’ve developed a symbiotic relationship in which government collects data about us, which it sells to businesses, which then combine it with other data they accumulate about us, which they then sell back to the government.

Once we are aware of the shear amount of attempts to track us and collect our data going on, there are some steps we can take to work to reduce the amount of data being collected about us. Perhaps one of the easiest things we can do is change the search engine we use to one that does not track its users, such as DuckDuckGo. We tell a search engine more about us than we likely tell anyone, all of which could potentially be saved, possibly forever. By carefully selecting the companies whose services we use, and choosing those that place a clear value on protecting user privacy, we can try to ensure that at least some of our personal data remains private.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Privacy

Tagged as , ,

March 6, 2016 · 10:02 pm

Time

A Brief History of Time

This week I decided to re-read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time in which he describes the origins of the universe and the history of our attempts to understand the laws that govern it through science. In the book Hawking literally starts at the beginning, with the question of when time began, and if it existed before the beginning of the universe. He starts off by looking at some philosopher’s thoughts on the beginning of time, before going into an explanation of our current scientific understanding, say:

The questions of whether the universe had a beginning in time and whether it is limited in space were later extensively examined by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in his monumental (and very obscure) work Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781. He called these questions antinomies (that is, contradictions) of pure reason because he felt that there were equally compelling arguments for believing the thesis, that the universe had a beginning, and the antithesis, that it had existed forever. His argument for the thesis was that if the universe did not have a beginning, there would be an infinite period of time before any event, which he considered absurd. The argument for the antithesis was that if the universe had a beginning, there would be an infinite period of time before it, so why should the universe begin at any one particular time? In fact, his cases for both the thesis and the antithesis are really the same argument. They are both based on his unspoken assumption that time continues back forever, whether or not the universe had existed forever. As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: “What did God do before he created the universe?” Augustine didn’t reply: “He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.” Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.

Even if there was something that existed before the beginning of our current universe, as Hawking explains, any information about it would have been lost when our universe began. Just attempting to ponder what could have possibly existed before the beginning of the universe is enough to make one’s head hurt.

After giving a summary of our major scientific theories and discoveries, Hawking eventually gets to Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity. One of the major aspects of the theory is that time is not absolute. Each person, or observer, depending on their speed and location can experience the passage of time differently, in relation of another observer’s perception of it. As Hawking explains it:

An equally remarkable consequence of relativity is the way it has revolutionized our ideas of space and time. In Newton’s theory, if a pulse of light is sent from one place to another, different observers would agree on the time that the journey took (since time is absolute), but will not always agree on how far the light traveled (since space is not absolute). Since the speed of light is just the distance it has traveled divided by the time it has taken, different observers would measure different speeds for the light. In relativity, on the other hand, all observers must agree on how fast light travels. They still, however, do not agree on the distance the light has traveled, so they must therefore now also disagree over the time it has taken. (The time taken is the distance the light has traveled–which the observers do not agree on–divided by the light’s speed–which they do agree on.) In other words, the theory of relativity put an end to the idea of absolute time! It appeared that each observer must have his own measure of time, as recorded by a clock carried with him, and that identical clocks carried by different observers would not necessarily agree.

For example, for someone traveling at near the speed of light, they might experience the passage of a few years, only to return to earth and find that a few thousand years have passed there. Relativity also plays a very important role in the functioning of GPS satellites, where differences between the time on the satellite and that on the surface must be accounted for in order to accurately determine one’s location.

Although Hawking is talking about the actual passage of time, I was reminded of what Joshua Foer had to say in Moonwalking with Einstein in regards to our perception of the passage of time. We can find ourselves looking back at the past and wondering where the time went. As Foer explains, if we are not often having memorable moments, then our memories of our recent past will tend to blur together, leaving us with little to recall, and wondering what we did with our time, he says:

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next–and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

Our brains tend to ignore and discard common occurrences, which is why we might get to work and realize that we don’t remember anything from the drive there. By frequently having new and novel experiences or adventures, we create more opportunities for memories to form and stick, thereby lengthening our perception of time when we later recall our lives, even though time might have felt like it sped up during the experience. The opposite of course also holds, during a boring or routine experience, our perception of time in the moment may make it feel like it goes on forever, then later we will likely find that we can hardly recall anything about it. This phenomenon is known as psychological time, which Foer explains with a quote from the pioneering psychologist William James:

William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890: “In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous and long-drawn-out,” he wrote. “But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older.

By attempting to live a varied and interesting life although it may feel like it goes quickly at the time, we will be able to look back and recall many of the interesting experiences we have had and hopefully feel like we have lived a full life. Whereas if we fall into a routine and experience little variety we may feel like our life is long as we live it, but then later find ourselves looking back at our life and wondering where the time went, as we have little to show for it. The passage of time is relative, we therefore have a choice as to how we would like to experience it, and the way in which we live our life is how we go about making that choice.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , ,

February 28, 2016 · 9:59 pm

Obstacles

The Obstacle is the Way

This week I decided to take a look back at The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday, which serves as a modern introduction to Stoic philosophy. Using a variety of famous figures from more recent history as well as more recent historical events, Holiday explains how we can use Stoic philosophy to deal with the obstacles that we encounter in our lives. One of the main sources of inspiration for the book is of course the famous Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius and his book Meditations. On dealing with obstacles, Marcus said in Meditations:

Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it–turns it to its purpose, incorporates it into itself–so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.

When nature encounters an obstacle it does not allow the obstacle to stop it, instead nature keeps pushing and working until it has found a way around, or through, the obstacle. This is perhaps best expressed through the metaphor of flowing water. When water encounters an obstacle, it does not stop, it eventually either finds a way around the obstacle, forces its way though it, or just drags the obstacle along with it, it does not allow the obstacle to stop it from proceeding for long. We should therefore attempt to be like the flowing water, not allowing obstacles to get in our way and simply just continue on in whatever course we can possibly follow.

In our own lives we will frequently encounter obstacles, and it is up to us to determine how we will face it, will be give up at the first sign of difficulty, or rise to the challenge and find a way past. One of the main tenants of Stoicism is being grateful, or expressing gratitude, for everything that happens to us, regardless of whether we actually wanted it to happen or not. On this point Holiday said:

It’s a little unnatural, I know, to feel gratitude for things we never wanted to happen in the first place. But we know at this point, the opportunities and benefits that lie within adversities. We know that in overcoming them, we emerge stronger, sharper, empowered. There is little reason to delay these feelings. To begrudgingly acknowledge later that it was for the best, when we could have felt that in advance because it was inevitable.

Often after something bad has happened to us, when we reflect back on it later, after having gotten past our initial reactions to it, dealt with it as best we could, and gained some perspective, we can find that ultimately there is a positive takeaway from what happened. As we were forced to find a way to deal with what happened. In the moment we are generally so occupied dealing with what is going on that we cannot take a step back and look at the event in a larger context and see how it might benefit us, only hindsight can really show us how we were able to grow and adapt because of it. If we try to keep in mind as bad things are happening, that when it is all over, we will emerge as a better and stronger person, it can help to keep us going and give us the strength to face the challenge before us.

Early in The Obstacle is the Way Holiday quotes from Marcus Aurelius in Meditations in which Marcus gives a concise explanation of how it is that we deal with, and benefit from obstacles when he says:

Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.

When faced with an obstacle we are forced to adapt, obviously we cannot continue in the direction that we were going and must change our approach. When we think that something has stopped us from proceeding, it really has not, if we are determined, we can continue on, it may just takes us longer to get where we were going now, as we have to find an alternate course.

Life is nothing but a continuing series of obstacles, each time we think that we have made it past and are in the clear, another one arises to block our path, or as Holiday put it towards the end of The Obstacle is the Way:

One does not overcome an obstacle to enter the land of no obstacles.
On the contrary, the more you accomplish, the more things will stand in your way. There are always more obstacles, bigger challenges. You’re always fighting uphill. Get used to it and train accordingly.

After we have faced an obstacle and have grown and adapted from the challenge, instead of getting easier, things will tend to only get harder. As we have proven ourselves facing smaller obstacles, we will be presented with greater challenges, which will only have more, and larger obstacles for us to face. This is good for us, as the obstacles help to keep us busy and our life remains interesting. As frustrating and discouraging as it can be at times as we struggle to surmount the obstacle in front of us, consider how boring life would be if we were never challenged.

There will always be obstacles in life, that we cannot control, what we can control is our reaction to the obstacles that life presents us. Do we get frustrated and complain and ask why life is being so unfair to us, or do we take on the obstacle and find a way past it, and use it as an opportunity to grow. We will never reach the end of the obstacles, as long as we continue living, all that we can do, is accept that we will encounter obstacles along the way, and attempt to prepare ourselves to handle them as they come along.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , ,

February 21, 2016 · 10:02 pm

Music

The Song Machine

This week I decided to read something a bit different, The Song Machine by John Seabrook, which details how many of the most recent biggest hit songs came into being and the effects that changing technology has had on the music business. Early in the book Seabrook asks a question, that very rarely gets asked, because the answer seems like it should be obvious, he asks:

Who are the hit makers? They are enormously influential culture shapers–the Spielbergs and Lucases of our national headphones–and yet they are mostly anonymous. Directors of films are public figures, but the people behind pop songs remain in the shadows, taking aliases, by necessity if not by choice, in order to preserve the illusion that the singer is the author of the song.

It’s generally common knowledge that most major artists these days, at least in pop music, although other genres as well, do not write their own songs. What is less commonly known is that there are generally a small handful of people behind most of the biggest hits that dominate the charts.

While it is nice to picture an artist working away and carefully, painstakingly, crafting the lyrics to a song, the reality is quite a bit different. Lyrics, often by many different writers, are swapped between songs to find something that fits the music. There are even different specializations in which certain people write only specific parts of songs, such as verses or choruses. Although it is disappointing to shatter the illusion, it is also hard to argue with the results, at least in terms of producing hits.

As technology has shifted the importance of a hit single has only grown. Whereas previously a hit single was generally all that was needed to drive album sales, the shift to an iTunes model meant you no longer had to buy the album to get the single. Meaning artists need to put out singles more frequently to continue driving sales, further increasing the importance of hits. Now the shift towards steaming is causing a new shakeup in the music business, as people no longer even need to buy the hit single.

One of the main ways in which a song becomes a hit is through repetition. Pop stations typically play the same few songs in a heavy rotation, ensuring maximum exposure whenever we might happen to tune in. There is a biological reason why repetition works so well, and how upon subsequent listens, a song will typically grow on us. Seabrook quotes from another book to explain this:

But why does hearing a song over and over again make us like it? In her 2014 book On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, Elizabeth Margulis, who is the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, explores this topic. She explains, “When we know what’s coming next in a tune, we lean forward when listening, imagining the next bit before it actually comes. This kind of listening ahead builds a sense of participation with the music.” The songs in heavy rotation are “executing our volition after the fact.” The imagined participation encouraged by familiar music, she adds, is experienced by many people as highly pleasurable, since it mimics a kind of social communion.

This reason not only explains how a song gets to be a hit, but why we continue to want to hear the same older songs years or even decades later, beyond just for a sense of nostalgia. Beyond just entertainment, music has the power to bring back memories of good times we have had, or to comfort us when we are upset. It’s often when we are sad or want to reminisce that we can turn to our old favorites and get a warm feeling as we commune with the music.

Music can also be highly integrated into our memory, just hearing a song can cause us to remember where we were or what we were doing when we first heard it and even after years without hearing a song we can often still recall the lyrics, without even trying, when we finally do hear it.

While thinking about music and the effects it can have on us, I was reminded of a famous music lover, Thomas Jefferson, and what his biographer, Jon Meacham had to say about his love of music in Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power:

As always, music was Jefferson’s ally. To him singing or the playing of the violin or the pianoforte was more than entertainment, more than the means of passing the hours when time grew heavy. Music, rather, offered a window into a man’s soul–or into a woman’s.

Jefferson did not just enjoy listening to music, but also played it as well. At that time of course if one wanted to hear music frequently you either had to learn how to play it yourself, or know someone else that could, making it much more important and common for someone to be able to play at least one musical instrument.

At one point in the book, Meacham quotes some advice which Jefferson gave to his daughter, a beautiful statement, comparing each person that we might meet to a slightly flawed piece of music, which we should still value greatly, despite its, or their, flaws.

He advised his daughter Patsy to approach all people and all things with forbearance. “Every human being, my dear, must thus be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections this world would be a desert for our love,” Jefferson wrote in July 1790. “All we can do is to make the best of our friends: love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way of what is bad: but no more think of rejecting them for it than of throwing away a piece of music for a flat passage or two.”

Music can deeply affect us, shaping our taste, style, even who we choose as our friends. Given the important role music can play in our lives, having an understanding of how it is made, and who is actually creating it can be interesting, although perhaps it’s better to just sit back and enjoy the music.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Music

Tagged as , ,

February 14, 2016 · 9:52 pm

Memory

Moonwalking with Einstein

This week I read Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, the story of how he went from a regular journalist, to U.S. Memory Champion in one year. Because who wouldn’t like to be able to remember more? In addition to the story of his journey to being champion, he also describes the methods which he used to train his memory to be able to recall things such as the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards or a string of random digits.

The book opens with a concise summary of the problems most of us face with our memories on a daily basis, which Foer put as:

Every day there seems to be more to remember: more names, more passwords, more appointments. With a memory like Ben Pridmore’s, I imagined, life would be quantitatively different–and better. Our culture constantly inundates us with new information, and yet our brains capture so little of it. Most just goes in one ear and out the other. If the point of reading were simply to retain knowledge, it would probably be the single least efficient activity I engage in. I can spend a half dozen hours reading a book and then have only a foggy notion of what it was about. All those facts and anecdotes, even the stuff interesting enough to be worth underlining, have a habit of briefly making an impression on me and then disappearing into who knows where. There are books on my shelf that I can’t even remember whether I’ve read or not.

If it weren’t for the notes I’d underlined and copied down, I’d never be able to remember what I found interesting in a book, even just a few weeks after having read it. We spend so much time reading a book, knowing all along that we will soon forget most of what we have read, it can become quite frustrating at times, having such a constrained and limited memory.

Of course the main reason for reading the book was to find out how he’d managed to improve his memory so much. It ultimately comes down to being able to convert information into images, which can then be stored in a “memory palace.” The human brain is much better at remembering spaces and images than text or numbers, so by converting them into images, we can make them much easier to remember.

One quote that really struck me was in regards to the importance of memory to learning, beyond just the ability to recall facts. Foer said:

The more tightly any new piece of information can be embedded into the web of information we already know, the more likely it is to be remembered. People who have more associations to hang their memories on are more likely to remember new things, which in turn means they will know more, and be able to learn more. The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it.

When we first starting learning about a new subject it can be difficult, as there is so much that we don’t know, it can quickly become confusing. After time though, as we get past the beginning and work through the basics, things will tend to become easier as we make more connections between what we already know and what we are learning. The trick then, is to persevere through the early difficulties, and to acquire a foundation upon which to build.

I was reminded of what Danial Kahneman had to say about memory in Thinking, Fast and Slow. First he illustrated how our memory, or at least our knowledge that our memory will likely forget what we are currently seeing or doing can affect the way in which we live our lives. Kahneman said:

The frenetic picture taking of many tourists suggests that storing memories is often an important goal, which shapes both the plans for the vacation and the experience of it. The photographer does not view the scene as a moment to be savored but as a future memory to be designed. Pictures may be useful to the remembering self–though we rarely look at them for very long, or as often as we expected, or even at all–but picture taking is not necessarily the best way for the tourist’s experiencing self to enjoy a view.

Often when we are out seeing the world or trying something new a good part of our attention is focused upon capturing and recording what we are doing and seeing, rather than focusing our full attention on actually enjoying and savoring the experience, all, at least partly, because we do not trust our memory to be able to adequately recall the moment later.

We are often so focused on how easily we forget things, that we fail to appreciate how good our memory often is and how critical it is to our ability to live our life. Kahneman reminds us of the role that memory plays in the acquisition of skills by saying:

Memory also holds the vast repertory of skills we have acquired in a lifetime of practice, which automatically produce adequate solutions to challenges as they arise, from walking around a large stone on the path to averting the incipient outburst of a customer. The acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions. When these conditions are fulfilled, skill eventually develops, and the intuitive judgments and choices that quickly come to mind will mostly be accurate. All this is the work of System 1, which means it occurs automatically and fast. A marker of skilled performance is the ability to deal with vast amounts of information swiftly and efficiently.

If it weren’t for memory we would not be able to acquire even the most basic skills which allow us to function as human beings. It is through practicing our skills that we find the small changes which we must make in order to improve, which our memory then allows us to recall the next time we go to use that skill and to thereby increase our performance.

While we’ll likely never be able to recall everything we would like to be able to, there is one easy way in which we can attempt to better recall our life and that which we find worth trying to remember. By making a deliberate effort to focus on what we are doing, and being mindful of it, it makes it much more likely that we will be able to remember it later, because we can’t remember that which we don’t pay attention to.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Learning

Tagged as , ,

February 7, 2016 · 9:24 pm

Adventure

Shadow Divers

In one’s life there are many ways of obtaining a sense of joy, satisfaction and accomplishment, one of which is adventure. Adventures allow us to get away from the stresses of everyday life and do something both fun and challenging. They give us a real feeling of being alive. While contemplating the importance of adventure in one’s life I was reminded of some tales of real adventures I’d recently read. The first of which was Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson, the story of a quest to identify a sunken German U-Boat found off the coast of New Jersey, where no such boats were supposed to be.

The location of the wreck was originally given to Bill Nagle, one of the pioneers of wreck diving, who dove to depths nobody had been to before and was the first to explore many wrecks.

Nagle pushed deeper. Diving below 200 feet, he began doing things scientists didn’t fully understand, going places recreational divers had never been. When he penetrated a shipwreck at these depths, he was often among the first to see the vessel since it had gone down, the first to open the purser’s safe since it had been closed, the first to look at these men since they had been lost at sea. But this also meant that Nagle was on his own. He had no maps drawn by earlier divers. Had someone visited these wrecks before, he might have told Nagle, “Don’t brush against that outboard beam in the galley–the thing moved when I swam by, and the whole room might cave in and bury you if you do.” Nagle had to discover all this by himself. It is one thing, wreck divers will tell you, to slither in near-total darkness through a shipwreck’s twisted, broken mazes, each room a potential trap of swirling silt and collapsing structure. It is another to do so without knowing that someone did it before you and lived.

With no guide to follow every dive was an adventure for Nagle, with the strong possibility that he would not come back up.

One of the divers Nagle brought with him to find out what was at a set of coordinates he was given, was John Chatterton. Chatterton had also been breaking ground in wreck diving, going deeper, and into seemingly inaccessible places before anyone else.

For the next three years, Chatterton owned the Doria. He penetrated into third class, second class, the first-class galley–all groundbreaking achievements that for years many had thought impossible. In a sport famous for hoarding, he gave away priceless Doria artifacts, asking fellow divers, “How many teacups does one guy need?” He gained a reputation as one of the best shipwreck divers on the East Coast; some said he might be among the best in the world. One day Nagle paid him the highest compliment by saying, “When you die no one will ever find your body.”

Like Nagle, Chatterton pushed the limits of what seemed possible, and unlike many other wreck divers, did it not for the treasure he could get, but more for the adventure of going where no one else could.

Switching to the opposite end of the adventure spectrum, I also recently read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer an account of disaster at the top of Mount Everest. While attempting to reach the summit an unexpected storm came in, forcing many to fight their way back to camp, and ultimately killing five climbers.

Early in the book Krakauer gives a summary of the values of the climbing community. For them climbing is less about just getting to the top and more about the way in which one gets there, taking the most difficult paths.

And climbing provided a sense of community as well. To become a climber was to join a self-contained, rabidly idealistic society, largely unnoticed and surprisingly uncorrupted by the world at large. The culture of ascent was characterized by intense competition and undiluted machismo, but for the most part, its constituents were concerned with impressing only one another. Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable. Nobody was admired more than so-called free soloists: visionaries who ascended alone, without rope or hardware.

Deliberately choosing to take the more challenging path results in a greater adventure as you face the greater challenges encountered along the way, and a greater sense of accomplishment when you do finally make it to the top. As we complete each adventurous task we set for ourselves, repeating the same feat over again can quickly become boring, so we must then look for new mountains to climb, or new ways of climbing the same mountain, to maintain the same sense of adventure.

The slopes of Everest did not lack for dreamers in the spring of 1996; the credentials of many who’d come to climb the mountain were as thin as mine, or thinner. When it came time for each of us to assess our own abilities and weigh them against the formidable challenges of the world’s highest mountain, it sometimes seemed as thought half the population at Base Camp was clinically delusional. But perhaps this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality.

For most, the only reason for wanting to climb Mount Everest, is simply because it’s there, it’s a challenge to be faced, and conquered. Just getting to the top is liable to be the greatest adventure of one’s lifetime, assuming, of course, that you also make it back down.

To face the biggest challenges in life, even when we know that the odds are against us is what makes for the greatest adventures. Although, for most people, simply doing something new and different is enough to qualify as an adventure, even if others have done it before us.

Just getting out of the house and exploring where we live could be considered an adventure. Or trying a new sport. There are opportunities everywhere to create our own adventures and really live our lives, we just need to look for them and see the potential in the areas that surround us.

While we can’t all necessarily dive deeper or climber higher, finding someway to squeeze a sense of adventure into your life is what makes life worth living. Adventures are an opportunity to learn about yourself, who you are, and what your limits are, and the chance to push yourself to, and beyond them.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , ,