(note to self: insert title here when a clever one comes to mind)

• PassionJune 14, 2023

  I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks back. He’s got a son, almost 2 years out of high school, who has a real job (with benefits, union representation, overtime, etc.). The kid is a good employee, works hard, gets overtime, all that stuff. He never wanted to go to college, wasn’t into school, so almost immediately upon graduating HS he went to work. My friend is concerned that his son is in a job that is good enough for now, but that his son has never shown any passion about…well, anything. And he’s worried that without a passion, without something to aim towards, he’ll just be in this job (or a series of jobs like them) that don’t really lead him anywhere. (The son is living at home, so his expenses at the moment are light, but that’s not the primary concern of my friend’s right now.)

  I wasn’t really sure what to tell him, to be honest. In my profession, I see a lot of teenagers who “are passionate” about this, that, or the other thing, but don’t have the ability to follow through – to actually do the grunt work needed to get where they think they want to go. Or they get their “passions” from elsewhere – society, parents, other family members. Those shallow passions will struggle to carry them when they’re in college, in year 2 of pre-med, and they are slogging through organic chemistry (which they don’t really love, but they know they need to pass in order to accomplish that goal, that arose from who-knows where, of going to med school).

  I struggled to come up with something to say to my friend because he clearly has a kid who is willing to do work, but it’s not work that could lead to an accomplishment of a long-term goal. To the satisfaction of a passion.

  I also struggled to say anything positive because, frankly, I stopped having a passion that would connect to a career when I was about 23, during year 2 of grad school. I stuck through grad school (yep, it’s possible to slide through a PhD) because there wasn’t any other option I could see open to me, and did the postdoc thing for a year or so for the same reason, until I finally broke and went a different direction. Lord knows, I didn’t leave a postdoc because I was passionate about the thing I would be going into; I did it because staying with the postdoc would have driven me quite mad with frustration. And now, in my early/mid-50s, I can safely say that passion hasn’t been a driving force in anything I have done professionally since my early 20s. Thus, the difficulty in coming up with anything intelligible to say to my friend.

  I wonder if part of the issue is the idea of “being passionate about X”. Is that necessary for a full life? For a meaningful one? Sometimes I wonder if this is why I find Stoicism and Buddhism so appealing – they seem to be philosophies for living that are explicitly anti-“passion”. I don’t know what to tell my friend about his son, except that I think living a life in which your job and its prospects for advancement are what matters most isn’t a life I’d recommend. And, that I do hope his son finds genuine meaning in something positive. I hope that for everyone, frankly.

• SpectatingMay 11, 2023

  I’m not sure if this is a verb; if it is, it’s certainly an archaic one. Whether grammatically correct or not, it seems to be how I am spending large chunks of my time of late.

  I should back up a bit. My profession requires me not just to observe others, but to actively engage with them. To “take the temperature of the room”, using a horrid cliché, and to adjust how I am presenting the information I am obliged to. In addition, I have to gauge the individuals I’m presenting to – are they having bad days? Are they having good days? Distracted? Focused? Neither? (Typically, for each person, a graph ranging between “distracted” and “focused” as a function of time would look like a white-noise spectrum as a function of frequency. It’s basically random.)

  

  As I get older, I’m finding that to be increasingly more challenging. Not because my audience has changed – they have not, not really – but because I have. With every passing year, I’m having a harder time wanting to engage with those I’m supposed to engage with in a positive way. I don’t mind the observational part, so much, but it’s the adjusting-my-responses-to-what-I-see part that has become harder.

  It might be the stresses of the last few years, both in the “waves hands at everything” sense as well as specific stresses in my job (many of which I’ve been able to leave behind, fortunately). It might be simply getting older and having a more expansive sense of how I am actually spending the remaining time I have left – and not being happy about it. It might be a vitamin deficiency. Who knows?

  So, back to “spectating”. I’ve always, always, always found people fascinating. I guess that’s at least partly why I have been able to do what I do for the last quarter-century or so. It’s also why I used to be known as a good listener – from the time I was in high school listening to girls I wanted to date complain about their rotten boyfriends (well, to be honest, there were probably other motivations then than just generally being fascinated by people) to now. People don’t seem to mind talking to me. And I have often enjoyed engaging with them, too – being sympathetic to their drama, being a shoulder to cry on, to have a laugh with. But right now, outside of a very, very small circle (my immediate family, basically), I’m not sure I can engage in the same way. It’s become too emotionally taxing. Maybe I am really an introvert at heart, and haven’t given myself the time needed to recharge my emotional batteries. Maybe I’m just tired. But I have this repeated dream that I can just be a fly on the wall and just listen without being expected to respond in any way. I want to be simply someone who watches, listens, understands.

  The problem I have with that is that I don’t feel like that’s fair in some abstract moral sense – I feel like if I take from someone (which, to be honest, is what I’d be doing by just watching/listening), I owe them something in return. They are offering a part of themselves to me, and it feels churlish to not give something back. So things go around and around; I listen to other people’s dramas, respond as sympathetically as I can, and hopefully help them in some fashion. But this exhausts me, which also makes me feel that I’m going around in circles. Sometimes I think retreating to monastery or a small cabin in the woods where I didn’t have to deal with anyone for a few weeks (months?) would be the solution, but I don’t want to abandon those I love. Partial retreat, then, and allowing myself to “spectate” when I have the emotional/mental space to do it…

  (There’s heavy irony here in writing about this, because I’m clearly not a person who can do without the attention of others. If I were I would hardly write about this on a public blog. I guess my hypocrisy runs deep – I claim to only want to be an observer and to not interact, and yet, here I am. My only defense is that I really would love to know that I’m not alone feeling like I need to escape from the dramas of others. For the first time in a post, I’m opening it to comments, if anyone wants to weigh in.)

• SimplifyingMarch 15, 2023

  I was on Twitter for almost (?) a decade. I posted/retweeted/etc. over 30,000 times.

  I deactivated my account today. Long overdue, probably.

  Something I have long struggled with is making things more complex than they need to be. I suppose, if I think about it, it’s because for me making something more complicated means that I’ve REALLY REALLY THOUGHT IT THROUGH. Which means that I’ve taken some control over the outcome (even if the outcome didn’t work out the way I wanted). And control, alas, is something I’ve always wanted to have. I’ve never been good at just rolling with things.

  An incredibly stupid example is my Twitter account. Having an account on Twitter, and then deciding to slowly delete it (a complex solution to a simple problem: stay on the site or no?), gave me the illusion of control over something, because I could REALLY REALLY THINK THROUGH WHAT I WAS DOING as I deleted tweet after tweet after godforsaken tweet. But goodness, what a waste of time. And hell, I was probably adding to E**n M**k’s engagement numbers while I was on there doing that. Talk about unintended consequences.

  So, finally, I’m going to consciously attempt to simplify matters in my life, starting with deleting that stupid account. (If anyone ever posts anything on that site @quadrivial after today (March 15, 2023), it’s not me.)

  That was an easy one. Will see how well the effort at simplifying elsewhere in my life goes.

• Appeal to EmotionJanuary 17, 2023

  

  The more of these “logical fallacy” posts I do, the angrier I get about people.

  Because they are so easily manipulated; so foolish, so small, so incurious.

  They only see what is in front of them, and only hear what they want to hear. They never act in their own nobler interests – they react only to baser emotions (lust, anger, jealousy). They would rather wallow in the muck of petty envy and greed than lift each other up. They have no beliefs, other than the ones passed down to them from generations long gone. They are living in a technological era, where everyone could potentially have what they need, while being OK with billions living precarious existences at best. They worship people who “made it” in spite of not realizing that they “made it” on the backs – on the labor, blood, and sweat – of countless others.

  They can’t speak to each other without comparing status – everything is a competition.

  They can’t relate to nature – it is something only to be exploited until it is gone.

  They can’t relate to IDEAS – thinking is hard.

  And yet.

  The more of these I do, the sorrier I feel for most people.

  Because they are so easily manipulated, and have not been given the tools to not be foolish.

  They could be great, and often are, but not often enough and not enough of them are great often enough.

  They are incurious because they don’t have the time for it (curiosity is a luxury in a neoliberal world, just like it was in a feudal world, just like it was for slaves from time immemorial, just like it always has been for peasants everywhere). Time is a precious resource in a world where everything has to be bought and sold.

  They compete because the world tells them to compete rather than cooperate.

  They can’t relate to nature because it’s been taken from them.

  They can’t relate to ideas because no one has ever bothered to show them why (some) ideas can be great and good, and can make you greater than you thought you could be.

  They can’t see or hear anything beyond what they want to see or hear, because it’s safe. They are often greedy and jealous because they see others as being safer than they are. In a precarious world, safety is paramount. This is where appeals to emotion become particularly important – defining in-groups and out-groups is a wonderful heuristic for dealing with the safety issue. This (person/religion/gender/etc.) is “okay”, so I don’t have to worry about them; this one is “not OK”, so I need to get my fight/flight response fired up.

  Someday, perhaps, we’ll do better.

• Books of 2022January 2, 2023

  I kept track again this year, and in spite of my concern that the number of books I would read in 2022 was less than the number in 2021, I managed to keep consistent: 46. The secret was to read shorter books, in general. It’d be interesting to keep a page count someday. Here are the ones I enjoyed the most, with numbers referring to the order in the year I read them.

  3, 35, 45) Maigrets by Georges Simenon: The Cellars of The Majestic, Maigret and the Wine Merchant, Maigret and the Calame Report

  I don’t know why I keep coming back to these, but I do – they are like candy to me. I appreciate how Simenon was able, so briefly, to outline characters in such a way that they felt fleshed out. It’s sort of like that famous video of Picasso painting a bull with just a few strokes – you know what it is he’s doing, you can follow it yourself, but it requires real skill to pull off. Not sure how many I’ll get to in 2023 but I’ll bet it’ll be at least another 3. Side note: I also read another Simenon, a non-Maigret book called The Engagement (#28). Bleaker than others, yet still truly human.

  [Simenon] does not present the inconsequence of human life in order to convert the reader to any gospel. His aim is simply to show the naked human animal. It is as if he is saying, “This is a human life; do not turn away.” We do not turn away. Simenon achieves the rare feat of entertaining us with the truth.

  Afterword by John Gray, “The Engagement” by Georges Simenon

  25, 29, 40, 43) The Ægypt Series by John Crowley (The Solitudes, Love and Sleep, Dæmonomania, Endless Things)

  I have read these numerous times, but never so close together in time, and now having done so they made more “sense” to me. The last book in the series, Endless Things, in particular felt more like a natural completion than I had remembered it being. What lovely writing, and what a lovely idea of how our thoughts can create – or uncreate – worlds. And Pierce Moffatt is as unlikely a protagonist as they come.

  1) The Art of Solitude, Stephen Batchelor

  He is a guide and a companion to me, and I think would be to anyone else who is afraid of being alone with their thoughts. 32 short essays on different experiences he has had with solitude, and the effects they’ve had on him. One I will return to.

  12) Anarchist Communism, Peter Kropotkin

  What is there to say? “The right to well-being: well-being for all”. I appreciate his ability to be idealistic in spots while realistic about what people actually need in their lives to thrive: food, clothing, shelter at a minimum. Once those are achieved for all, then the work of the revolution can truly begin.

  20) Life A User’s Manual, Georges Perec

  This was one of my two “big books” for the year. Interlinked stories about real-seeming people – fitting together like a puzzle. I was fearing wordplay and showing-off, but what I got was humane and elegant storytelling (and writing; I can’t imagine having translated this thing). Beautifully done.

  38) Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, Miki Berenyi

  I loved the band Lush. I loved the songs, the arrangements, the musicianship, and I am still thrilled I got to see them more than 30 years ago. To read about Miki’s childhood (equal parts scary, thrilling, sad, toxic) and how she got from there to being in a band I adored was fascinating. I would love to read Emma Anderson’s take as well, which, who knows, maybe that will get written someday; but I am so happy to have read this, and it makes me appreciate what she and Emma and Steve and Chris and Phil accomplished even more.

  I think those were the highlights. 2022 was a good year for me to find things to read as well as to listen to, so I am grateful. Best wishes to all for a grand 2023!

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