I saw an IG reel the other day where a musician was talking about success. His advice was to set a tangible, achievable goal.

His observation is that when there is no goal, people who are legitimately "making it" have no way to gauge that for themselves. Instead, they're anticipating a feeling of making it, which never materialises.

I've been thinking about that a lot recently.

As I try to process all the jostling ideas of whatever could be -- and should be -- I think the truest statement I can make is: there are always costs beyond the costs.

That's not an excuse for inaction, or a reason to accept status quo. Rather it means that when we decide, we're *really* deciding.

It would be very interesting if the Fulton County Sheriff's Department decided to protect their copyright regarding what is likely to be the most famous mugshot in history.

I get resistance nearly every time I say this, but I'm convinced it's an important truth: feelings are facts.

By this I simply mean that how we're feeling is a fact. Emotions don't need to come with judgement, or self-recrimination, but they shouldn't be met with denial either.

Western (or Northern) civilisation has a very strange/strained relationship with emotions. They end up running the lives of people who don't believe they even have them.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Asking people what they hope for, or what they're looking forward to, can reset a conversation that's trundled off in a negative direction.

There are other words for this like chaos-agent and outrage-monger, but I think that conflict entrepreneur is an important term because it ties the phenomenon to the incentive:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2022/01/30/conflict-entrepreneurs-amanda-ripley-stelter-rs-vpx.cnn

Human being are notoriously bad at guessing one another's motives, yet we do it regularly, with great confidence.

“It is obvious to anyone who has studied a little history that to explain what did not happen is about as rigorous as fiction."

--Nathan Sivin, as quoted in The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent.

It's an important point about speculation, in this case about history. Speculation reveals at least as much (probably more) about the person doing the speculation as what they are speculating about -- it reveals cultural and personal values not necessarily shared by the subject of speculation.

Generally, people who have an antagonistic gut-reaction to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have never had to think about themselves not being the centre of something.

Probably the only thing more annoying than a meeting that should have been an email is an email that should have been a meeting.

#ShowerThoughts This morning I was reflecting on differentiation and integration. Those are both terms from calculus, and I'm quite sure I will never understand it adequately to be conversant in it. (I've tried.)

They're also words which describe our self, and they're also so complex/complicated I may never understand adequately them in that sense either.

Our self can never be perfectly isolated, or assimilated; we are in an inescapable interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic.

There is a complex relationship between intuition and observation. There are people who trust either one or the other.

To me, these phenomena work together.

Intuition leads us to what we can observe, and then guides us as we interpret the meaning/implications of what we are observing.

I hate it when I'm talking to a car dealership about a new mini-van and an early-70s Mustang fastback rolls by.

Engaging with story is an imaginative & creative experience.

While propaganda (or spin) has a discernible effect, we don't just passively receive stories.

We filter.
We evaluate.
We curate.

Cultural stories provide a powerful spark for shared understanding. But this is not linear or predictable -- how we interpret and internalise stories is a uniquely individual phenomenon.

Developing a keen appreciation for stories is at least equally as important to our culture as telling stories is.

Where are the stories of men which complicate simplistic narratives, which dig into extrinsically-imposed expectations, limitations and obligations, and which deeply challenge social/societal masculine stereotypes?

I mean, why are we so comfortable with masculine gender essentialism, after feminine gender essentialism has been so successfully deconstructed?

I believe that for men to flourish as complex humans, we need to stop telling them they're simple.

I've been pondering all the ways girls and women are seeing female protagonists they can relate to: strong, capable and accepting their call to adventure, and how often boys and men are treated as set-pieces in those stories.

I get that this is correcting an imbalance. I celebrate stories that are giving women glimmers of their potential.

But if women know the cost of hollow, cardboard-cut-out representation, are they really comfortable with boys and men being treated this way?

I started watching Painkiller tonight, the story about the heroin-derived drug, oxycodone.

It's made me the most sympathetic I've ever been to the vaccine-hesitant.

The US and Canada have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust and credibility. The entire pharmaceutical industry is tainted with greed.

Yes, a vaccine is very different than an opioid, but to the average person, taking medicine is a matter of trusting a whole medical system; we need to acknowledge how that trust has been abused.