The Goal of the Argument

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Looking to ‘own’ someone in argument has the wrong orientation, that of domination not only during the exchange but afterwards. Instead, we should approach our particular and individual exchanges with the hope that we can set the stage for a more respectful and honest culture of reasoning together. For sure, this is but a hope, but it’s better to serve as an example of that aspiration than as an example of how argument can go wrong.

Scott Aikinis writing in Psyche

Random Acts

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Research (published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology) found that people who perform a random act of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And they believe that miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others more often.  “We have this negativity bias when it comes to social connection. We just don’t think the positive impact of our behaviors is as positive as it is,” said Marisa Franco, a psychologist.  “With a study like this, I hope it will inspire more people to actually commit random acts of kindness,” she said.

Catherine Pearson writing in the New York Times

A little better than today

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Maybe it’s waking up early, starting an exercise program or learning a new skill; if there’s something you want, start taking steps now to get there, no matter how small. Instead of looking at the goal itself as some looming, insurmountable burden, look at what you did today and figure out how you can improve upon it tomorrow. Tomorrows add up quicker than you might think. -Alex McDaniel (born Oct 5)

Doomed by Success

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Few firms are good at recognising their own flaws (which helps to explain why only one company from the original Dow Jones Industrial Average of 1896 is still on that list: General Electric).

Henry Ford was so allergic to evidence that America was falling out of love with the Model T that he dismissed sales statistics as fakes and fired an executive who warned him of disaster.

Sears started to build its giant headquarters—the 110-storey Sears tower—at exactly the moment, in 1970, when its fortunes began to go south.

IBM allowed Microsoft to take over the PC operating-software business because it thought that the money was in hardware.  

Nokia allowed a substandard boss, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, to run the company for four years before finally getting rid of him.

In “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School argues that companies are often doomed not by their failures but by their triumphs. They may realise that the world is changing. But they are so good at doing what they have always done—making mainframe computers in IBM’s case—that they make a hash of embracing the new.

Schumpeter writing in The Economist

 

Grammatical correctness ≠ Voice

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The function of most punctuation—commas, colons and semicolons, dashes, and so on—is to help organize the relationships among the parts of a sentence. Its role is semantic: to add precision and complexity to meaning. It increases the information potential of strings of words.

What most punctuation does not do is add color, texture, or flavor to the writing. Those are all things that belong to the aesthetics, and literary aesthetics are weirdly intangible. You can’t taste writing. It has no color and makes no sound. Its shape has no significance. But people say that someone’s prose is “colorful” or “pungent” or “shapeless” or “lyrical.” When written language is decoded, it seems to trigger sensations that are unique to writing but that usually have to be described by analogy to some other activity. 

One of the most mysterious of writing’s immaterial properties is what people call “voice.” Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as “the voice on the page.” Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the “voice.” There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn’t insure it. 

Louis Menard writing in The New Yorker

Love and do what you will

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In the early fifth century, Saint Augustine summarized all of human ethics in the dictum “Love and do what you will.” The happiest people have lives focused on love: of family, of friends, of others through work that serves, and in some cases of the divine as well. Research on people who wind up happy (and healthy) as they grow old shows that the most important part of life to cultivate is a series of stable, long-term love relationships.

Aquinas defines love as “to will the good of the other.” You can’t choose how much love you will get, but happiness depends more on how much you give. And what you give your love to matters just as much. 

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

Top five regrets of the dying

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What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life? An Australian nurse who counsels the dying recorded the most common regrets she heard from people at the end of theirs lives. Bronnie Ware put them in a book called The Top Five regrets of the Dying.

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result. 

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. 

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

Happiness v Meaning

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In a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, psychological scientists asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward meaning, happiness, and many other variables -- like stress levels, spending patterns, and having children -- over a month-long period, the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver."  

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write.  

Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic

Does refusing to act your age delay aging?

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In a UK study, researchers found "people who thought old age began earlier were more likely to have had a heart attack, to be suffering from heart disease or be in poor physical health generally when they were followed up six to nine years later."

Becca Levy of The Yale School of Public Health "followed more than a thousand people who were at least 50 at the time. She found that people who had positive ideas about their own ageing (who agreed with comments such as "I have as much pep as last year" and who disagreed that as you get older you get less useful) lived for an average of 22.6 years after they first participated in the study, while the people who felt less positively about ageing lived for just 15 years more on average."

Claudia Hammond writing for BBC Future suggests "People who think old age starts later in life may be more conscious about their health and fitness and therefore take active steps to stay in better shape. They think they are younger and so behave in younger ways, creating a virtuous circle."