Scree – Page 129 – Craig Constantine

Empathy and compassion →

Published December 25, 2021 · All posts on Dec 25

With emotional empathy, you actually experience a weaker degree of what somebody else feels. Researchers in recent years have been able to show that empathic responses of pain occur in the same area of the brain where real pain is experienced.
~ Shane Parrish from, Making Compassionate Decisions

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It seems obvious to me that being empathic is helpful since it suggests where to direct one’s compassion. However, is it necessary to be empathic in order to be compassionate?

Without compassion is empathy beneficial? Without compassion might empathy actually be harmful?

Why is my mission creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion?

Before the fall →

Published December 24, 2021 · All posts on Dec 24 · Thought and Philosophy, Self-Awareness

Pride is generally an emotion encountered only when looking backward. But we can also experience it when looking forward to each day, each month, each year, each decade, and even to the end of our life when imagining what we were able to accomplish in that time.
~ Chris Bailey from, What do you want to be proud of?

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I’m also familiar with, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” I’m not certain the meaning of haughty, although I’d bet that one who exhibits indignation, (anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment,) would qualify as “haughty.”

And I sometimes joke that “indignation” is my other superpower.

All of which, I suppose, it a good thing. There are situations where indignation is righteous. But I’m well aware that my indignation—when it flares—is not. So maybe this exercise of looking forward could be a way to refine my pride? If I imaginatively project forward I can consider something I’d be proud of. Then, if I imagine not succeeding at that something, the pride disappears… and does indignation appear?

Does that seem right? …if success or failure in something, which is never actually in my control—reminder: the dichotomy of control—determines whether I experience pride or indignation, is that something actually one worth pursuing?

Could I find instead something about which I’d feel pride regardless of success or failure?

Which hour to value →

Published December 23, 2021 · All posts on Dec 23

However, the value of saving the marginal hour today is to increase the total number of one’s working hours by one, resulting in a new hour at the end of one’s career, not a new hour at their current skill level.
~ Mark Xu from, Your Time Might Be More Valuable Than You Think

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I’ve made the point that it’s endlessly useful to put an explicit value on my time. I believe my logic and reasons still hold. But this idea, about needing to consider the value of the additional hour towards the end… well that, I’d never thought about. Which is daft of me, because I do often think about the marginal cost of things, and this idea is simply pointing out the marginal value gained by saving something now.

Hopefully, my occasionally marking, “duh,” on my map as a reminder to myself, helps you in some way.

What to focus upon →

Published December 22, 2021 · All posts on Dec 22

The practice is simply this: pause to consider what you’d like to focus on.
~ Leo Babauta from, Becoming Nimble at Dealing with Ever-Changing Plans

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I’m great at focusing, but am weaker at intentionally choosing what I’m focusing on. I’ve no idea when I realized I was weaker at the latter point. While it’s clear I have a lot of habits and behaviors which work well to help me deal with the weakness, I cannot recall if those developed simply by trial and error.

One habit which works well to avoid disaster is dump it out of my brain into an outline. An emergency spillway prevents complete failure of a dam, but if water ever goes over the emergency spillway, something is terribly wrong. That’s me and brain-dump outlining. I flip my 40-minute sand timer and start a fresh outline, saving it to my computer desktop. (Aside: There is never anything on my computer desktop.) As I’m outlining, panic often nips at my heels. Eventually, I get most everything down. I find long strings of knock-down-doable domino tasks. And I usually find at least one Big Question buried in there.

And then I close the document. It’s cathartic. It’s as if, having written it down, it’s in some sense done.

Total control →

Published December 21, 2021 · All posts on Dec 21

In Part II of our series, we move out of the 01960s to explore the work of three artists who created their major works during the 01970s and 01980s. We see a shift with these artists to a focus on complete control over the exhibition of their work and meticulously curating the experience the viewer has coupled with a goal of permanence of the artwork in situ.
~ Ahmed Kabil from, Lightning, Stars and Space

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I’ve little to add here, other than to attempt to convey how arresting I find the artwork in the article. The older I get, the more I find myself being delighted into pausing, often at the smallest coincidences. An alignment of trees, the color of the light, or sound traveling long distances or being altered by terrain and structures, are just a few things that catch my attention.

First anniversary →

Published December 20, 2021 · All posts on Dec 20

tl;dr: Yes, it really does work.

It’s been one year since I started collecting my thinking in a slipbox. In the photo, the box on the left is full of materials—blank slips, dividers, etc. The box on the right is the older portion of my collection of quotes; It’s the portion of the quotes which has been released as daily podcasts for the Little Box of Quotes. The center box is the meat of the slipbox and contains over 1,000 new slips, with about 250 of those being new quotes. But, enough with the statistics.

What can I do with it? A startling amount of interesting things come out. I’m not going to write up an article right here to prove it. But suffice to say I’ve recently been dipping into the slipbox to augment something I was writing. I’m trying to remember, any time I’m writing anything, anywhere to pause and ask the slipbox about it. When I do that, I almost always find something to add.

One really big question I had when I started the slipbox was whether I wanted it to be physical or digital. I’m happy to report that I made the right decision. So much of my life and things that I do are digital. I’m so tired of digital stuff. Any time I can be doing something in the physical world, that’s a plus. Never once have I regretted not being able to free-text search the slipbox. Instead, it remains a pleasantly tactile experience to search, retrieve, and create.

What shall 2022 be? →

Published December 19, 2021 · All posts on Dec 19

I’ve begun pondering what shall be 2022’s touchstone phrase, or word. 2021’s “festina lente” has served me well. I’ll miss it, but it’s been worn smooth after a year.

I was flipping through my notes. First my notes about previous years’ phrases, but then wandering through the slipbox. I wandered into the section audaciously labeled, Mastery Projects, and then swung a left into the aisle labeled, On Learning Itself. There’s a stack of slips in there, many of which are notes from a book. This captured quotation held my interest:

If writing is the medium of research and studying nothing else than research, then there is no reason not to work as if nothing else counts than writing.
~ Sönke Ahrens from, How to Take Smart Notes

Perhaps something chosen to remind me to write? …or why I want to write? “Seize the pen?” I feel I’m too far off in the weeds . . .

The next aisle is labeled, Fitness & Health and I swing in there. There’s a slip in there about one’s “first body” versus one’s “second body”, which I noted in 2017 based on a podcast with Jerzy Gregorek. That reminds of something else Gregorek said. I had to go elsewhere in the slipbox—via his name, and then into the huge section on Analects, to find his comments about, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.“

“Choices” then, perhaps?

cerne sapienter?

Longplayer →

Published December 18, 2021 · All posts on Dec 18

There was, for about 10 years I think, a dedicated Parkour space, called the Chain Store, on Trinity Buoy Wharf. That’s right smack on the Thames, in the Docklands (far eastern) part of London.

I’ve been there several times, and the first time I went there—as I often do wherever I go somewhere new—I took the time to stroll around the surroundings. Around two corners of the building, I found this odd little display. It was sort of like a wooden phone booth—American-style I mean, not the British style—or sort of like a little shed. It had a sign on the little door, in a pinkish or perhaps simply very faded, sort of printing. It was odd. There’s absolutely zero foot traffic at that spot. It’s around the back of a building, facing directly out onto the Thames. (Which at this part, is a huge wide muddy dolorous river with these enormously high wharf sea walls going straight down into the water. i.e., unapproachable by water.) The spot with the sign is off a light-rail transportation, turn the easy-to-miss “other” way on the platform, down those other stairs, hug a huge fence, walk around a traffic circle, down a side street, round a corner between high walls fronting on construction sites . . . out onto the end of a wharf that’s surrounded by “water” . . . you get the idea. Way out nowhere.

Anyway. Little shed. Sign. I open the door. If memory serves, it was literally a shed. With a little phone in it. Looking behind me—seen too many movies, so I’m watching for someone to sneak up behind me while I’m distracted by the phone… Looking behind me I pick it up to listen…

Silence.

I read the sign again. It has this circular sort of design that looks like an elementary school drawing of the solar system. And says, “Longplayer.” I took a photo, and went back to my wandering the surroundings.

This is How You Perform a Piece of Music 1,000 Years Long

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Dnt fd th trlls →

Published December 17, 2021 · All posts on Dec 17 · Internet Tech, Snark

One of the challenges for any website that allows for user content — no matter the size of the website — is how to deal with trollish behavior. There are a variety of options available, including just deleting such comments, but one option that got attention in the mid-2000s was the idea of disemvoweling.
~ From Content Moderation Case Study

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Tee-hee. How did I never know about this?

But to be clear: No this isn’t something that I’m going to implement in any of the spaces where I wear anything like a moderator hat. It’s like amending graffiti; or trying to do censorship “correctly.” Those both are at best really hard, and at worst actually feeds the troll.

Another one →

Published December 16, 2021 · All posts on Dec 16 · Books

Saint-Exupéry extends the invitation to reorient to this particular skyborne machine — and, by a proximate leap of imagination, to technology in general — as something that, rather than alienating us from the rest of nature, could bring us into more intimate and conscientious contact with the world of clouds and creatures.
~ Maria Popova from, Recovering the Wonder of Flight

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The Little Prince is one of those books that has been on the to-read pile for so long. And now Wind, Sand and Stars seems to be another. One of these days! So many good books, so little time.