Words

This song came to me through some magical moments, all of twenty years ago.....

Vantage is Paramount

What we see, is what we do, is what we get.

What we see depends on the vantage we view from. We can spend a long while, maybe even a whole life time viewing things from one vantage, and nothing will alter what we see.

Almost like 'hole with a mint' or 'mint with a (w)hole'. Which one?

To alter your experience....look at changing vantage.

It's finally a choice.

1000 th Post

Why miss an opportunity to call out,  why let go of a moment that matters, why miss a chance to say thanks.

I just realized I'd done my 1000 th post, and I couldn't but pause to reflect.

What started August of 2014, from a perhaps casual and in retrospect, providential conversation. I was in a district bus, on the road from Mandya to Bangalore. It was my first week at SELCO, and I was out on a visit to one of their installations near Mandya. I was so taken in and amazed by the work they were doing, and I was telling a friend about it. 

He said "you sound so excited, and it's so momentous, you should write about it....better still, why not start a blog".

I was like, "me? and write publicly? no way, what would I write"

He said "You could write about anything, maybe your experiences with SELCO, just start, and try to maybe do one post a week".

The seed was sown.

I got home and wrote about that visit. I sent him a draft. He said "looks great, right from the heart, go ahead, post it". 

Not a single correction. 

I now know it was not one of my better written posts, it was sketchy, no pictures, no formatting......but I know I owe my biggest thanks there. A single word of criticism, or even suggestion might have derailed it for me...I would have set it aside. I doubt I would have ever got back there. I was that scared.

Today I convey my deepest gratitude..... for enabling me to embark on one of my life's dearest and most cherished of journeys.

The blog has become not just my favouritest means of expression, but also my connect into myself. Thanks pal !

The Psychology Of Self Righteousness

Krista Tippett in conversation with Jonathan Haidt:  from  'On Being'.

The surprising 'psychology behind morality' is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research.

While the talk was really interesting, I'm putting here a few points which stand alone also seemed interesting enough.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s School of Business. He’s the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

“When it comes to moral judgments,” he says, “we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.”

"Psychologically,  people who identify as conservative tend to like order and predictability, whereas people who identify as liberal, they like variety and diversity. 

I have one study where we have dots moving around on a screen. Conservatives like the images where the dots are moving around more in lockstep with each other. Liberals like it when it’s all chaotic and random."

Tippett:  So a premise is that morality “binds and blinds.”

Haidt: This is the one I’m most excited about. This is the one that I feel unlocks so many of our hardest problems.

Jonathan Haidt describes five primary moral foundations that are held across individuals and cultures. People who are liberal and conservative, he says, value two of these in common, compassion and fairness. But conservatives simultaneously juggle three other moral values — of loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

Tippett: And you also point out that when you talk about intuition, that our behavior is not primarily consciously driven. And that’s the same thing that Buddha said, and it’s the same thing that St. Paul said, and Moses and all of these people.

Haidt: One thing that you find in most of the great wisdom traditions is the idea that reality as we see it is an illusion. It’s a veil, it blinds us, and enlightenment is taking down the veil, seeing things as they are, transcending dualities. 

When you get people to actually understand each other, and they let down their guard, and they learn something new, and they see humanity in someone that they disliked or hated or demonized before, that’s really thrilling. And that, I think, is one of the most important emotional tools we have to foster civility. 

Haidt: from what I’ve learned, here are a few pointers. One is, what I was saying earlier about how our reasoning is driven by our intuitions, our gut feelings, our emotions, that’s just why you cannot reason somebody to — once there’s a conflict, you can’t use reason to change their mind. So don’t even try the direct route, which is, “Let’s just discuss it.”

Once you accept that, then you say, well, OK, what does change reasoning? And now relationships become absolutely crucial. This is why it’s so hard to influence people just by putting a message up into message space.

Haidt: Diversity is generally divisive, and it has to be managed. There is some interesting research showing that when you celebrate diversity and point it out, you split people, but if you drown it in a sea of commonality, then it’s not a problem. So anything you can do to emphasize how similar we all are is good. Anything you can do that celebrates — “Look at how different we are.” — that tends to make it harder to have any group cohesion and trust.

Tippett: Drowning things in commonality can also make everything superficial. Right?

Haidt: Well, what do you want? Do you want authenticity, or do you want peace and harmony?

Tippett: I don’t want to have to choose between the two.

Haidt: I think you might.

Tippett: you’re really talking as a social psychologist about “conservative” and “liberal” as two ways of being human.

Haidt: That’s right, these are psychological traits. That’s right. There are dimensions. So openness to experience is the main psychological trait that has been found to correlate with the left-right dimension. 

We’ve got a lot of sociology working against us here. Part of becoming more modern and individualistic is that we make our life choices based on what we like, what appeals to us. 

Well, it’s freedom. The more you are free and have the resources and have a society based on markets and businesses that will cater to what you want, and those are generally good things — well, if people choose where to live and who to associate with, they get ever more segregated.

Tippett: So progress leads to incivility.

Haidt: Of a sort, but again, progress leads to peacefulness, non-violence — but also to being shut off from each other, yes.

Jonathan Haidt has written this: “To live virtuously as individuals and societies, we must understand how our minds are built. We must find ways to overcome our natural self-righteousness. We must respect and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own.”

Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

Excerpts from a write up by Maria Popova: Ursula K. Le Guin on 'The Power of Language to Transform and Redeem'

“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them,” - Emerson

Hardly anything does this for us more powerfully than art — it unsettles us awake, disrupts our deadening routines, enlarges our reservoir of hope by enlarging our perspective, our grasp of truth, our capacity for beauty.

This singular function of art is what Ursula reflects on

"The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said.

The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.

The paradox, of course, is that words are both our instrument of truth and our weapon of distortion. We use them both to reveal and to conceal 

As a writer, you want the language to be genuinely significant and mean exactly what it says. That’s why the language of politicians, which is empty of everything but rather brutal signals, is something a writer has to get as far away from as possible. If you believe that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

We can’t restructure our society without restructuring the English language. One reflects the other. 

What literature does, Le Guin points out, is enlarge our understanding of our own experience by enriching its container in language:

There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It’s one reason why we read poetry, because poets can give us the words we need. When we read good poetry, we often say, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I feel.’

Clouds

There's stuff that can make you speechless.

It's been cloudy for a while now, and all these are pre-dawn, rather pre sunrise.......different forms and hues of cloud........each so momentary. 

While all others are from my balcony, this ones at the park, on my walk

This one's from today, inspiration enough for me to go back and find the ones I'd caught over the last couple weeks.

Whisps of nature.......fragile, silent and beautiful

Mom's Innovative Idea

Last month, a casual conversation, and mom said something about hiring someone to come once a week to do cleaning, of what doesn't get covered as part of daily household cleaning.

I simply loved the idea.

While she was talking for herself, (and she's still contemplating :), I came home and implemented straight off. Spoke to Faizan, and we agreed to an additional hour every Sunday, separately paid for and exclusively devoted to the beyond usual.

It's subtle. It's stuff that's not in your face, not very visible, easily ignored. But now, because I pick one room per Sunday, I'm finding so much more that can do with cleaning, even buying new material and implements to reach places earlier not easily accessible, or even thought of.

It's been three Sundays now, and it's quite amazing how good it feels. Almost like the house has a new gleam and sheen to it.

Thanks ma !

The bigger takeaway: we mostly function by set patterns, by habit, by what's already known....do what is considered necessary per our own set standards. Key here is 'set'. They get too set. So set that we can get stuck inside that space, it becomes comfort zone. And to know it's not easy, cleaning brings out muck, deep spaces....settled muck, it can muddy the space. It's tough.

This could apply everywhere....at work, our physical health, mental well being, our relationships, our learnings .....anything. 

What would it take to shift things to the next level? Whichever chosen facet. Can it become a rite of passage.....clear the pathway for better energy flows.

A bigger thanks ma !