Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Writing

  • How, Not What, Do You Think?

    With Seven Practice Questions
    How do you know what you know? Did you discover it by thinking, or were you simply told?

    As I work my way through the excellent essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, I am experiencing anew a particular delight , common in my grade school years, of registering how the critical, skeptical, rational mind approaches a question. I am thrilled (which is exactly the correct word) to observe and follow Berlin thinking his way through complex questions about the nature of liberty, more than I am by any conclusions drawn. 

    I distinctly remember this feeling when very young; when I was first learning how to think, and not merely what to think. So much of my formal education, even at the college level, consisted in being told what, and not how, to think. (But that’s another topic).

    It is a rare treat to discover a writer or speaker with the mental and psychological discipline to use his mind when approaching a question, and not be used by it. One who employs his mental faculties to see a problem the way one utilizes a magnifying glass, or a microscope, or an MRI machine. Neither the glass, the scope, nor the imaging machine impose preference upon the subject matter. They simply observe it, (but at increasingly higher resolution, depth, and granularity of detail). 

    Too often, presuppositional prejudices in the mind are a blinding filter, canceling some of the information needed for the fullest view. When the search for evidence supporting a pet theory or ideological point of view usurps the place of pure truth as the ultimate pursuit of inquiry, the resulting conclusions are always suspect. Berlin’s treatment of the subject of Liberty doesn’t fall prey to petty bias. It is an exemplary reminder of how bifurcated issues should be approached by the intellectually honest.

    Here is a particularly thought-provoking quote from the essay: 

    ”[From the standpoint of Liberty,] ‘Pagan self-assertion’ is as worthy as ‘Christian self-denial’ All errors which [a man] is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”

    Some statements are worth reading at least twice. (The bracketed words are mine, for context). Go ahead. I’ll wait.

    Can you deduce what Berlin is asserting? He is not saying that Paganism is as worthy as Christianity. He is making no comparative argument about their respective virtues at all. He is referencing the respective practitioners solely in terms of their equal use of liberty in choosing to act for themselves without outside interference or coercion. Their respective liberty to choose their own path is equal. He is making no claims regarding the comparative value of what they choose.

    For many readers, seeing the terms ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ in such proximal juxtaposition, will cloud the mind with prejudice so that the the point being addressed is missed entirely. And for some readers, the juxtaposition may reveal a different type of prejudice. That only those practicing socially, culturally, religiously approved liberties, should be allowed to do so; while those believing or acting contrary to the mainstream view must have their choices curtailed by restrictive laws to protect them from harming themselves, or polluting the mainstream.

    What do you think about the following questions? Remember – What you think is determined by How you think – so try to imagine your mind as a magnifying glass looking at each question afresh just to see all that is there to be discovered.

    1. Is it better to A) erect a barricade of laws – out of benevolence – to prevent a man from committing errors that my harm himself, thus prohibiting him the liberty to do so, or B) allow the man liberty to commit errors and suffer the natural consequences? 
    2. Which is the greater evil to the man in question? 
    3. What are the ramifications of either course? 
      1. What if the potential self-harm has the possibility of becoming public harm?
      2. Is this the most clearly revealed dividing line between private and public acts?
    4. How far-reaching might the ripples of consequence extend for either choice? 
    5. How large – or how intrusive – a barricade of restriction might be needed if A is selected?

    These questions and their answers are central to freedom. They form the heart, not only of Libertarian political philosophy, but circulate throughout both Conservative and Liberal ideologies. We all seem to share the idea that there is something wrong with allowing another to determine what is good for us, and then by force of law to constrain us to their, and not our own, ”choice”. Such an enforced ”choice” is no choice at all, in any normal sense of the word. Stop to think how many laws and policies have just this element of intrusive interference as their foundation. 

    These are things to think about, Dear Reader. These ideas make up the substance of the great questions of morality; and as politics is merely a branch, or social outworking of moral philosophy, we owe it to ourselves to get it right. And to do so, we will need to stop listening so intently to those voices on either side telling us what to think, rediscover the inward joys of how to think, and then get busy with it.

  • An Easter Story

    “Why do you seek the Living among the dead?“

    This question is at the heart of the Easter story. Setting aside for now all the technical and theological aspects inherent in the Passion story, the essence boils down to finding and assimilating and celebrating life. Easter focuses the attention on expectation, disappointment, hope, and the kind of certainty that is present in true faith. 

    At the end of this Year Of Death, where now will we find life? Has death overcome it? The disciples came to look for Life in a cemetery, and specifically, in a tomb. They were scolded. They had received enough instruction that they might have known better. But the reality of what they had seen, overcame the reality of what they could not yet see. Being certain of what their eyes and experience told them, they acted as they did. They came to do homage to a dead body.

    It is thankful that their faith wasn’t the cause of God’s acting. Else, Jesus would still be buried behind that stone. Because they had none. No, they had been invited to believe in the Faith that God has in Himself to achieve what He achieves, with or without our believing. Their failure to give credit to what they had been told, more than to what they had seen, did not constrain God in the slightest. 

    But, it did cause them to look in the wrong place. And once there, this reliance upon their own ability to see caused them not to recognize Life in the form of a gardener. I guess if we must see something in order to believe it, then even when it is presented to the eyes, we won’t recognize it for what it is. Where have you been looking for life? What do you have to see to know if you’ve found it? 

    A gardener knows the secret to Life is patience. He is not a day-trader. He knows that there is much more going on beneath the surface than what can be seen above it. He knows better than to trust his eyes for determining truth.

  • Heteronomy or Autonomy, You Choose

    If you are regularly (perhaps even daily), buffeted by contrary winds, whether they be social, cultural, religious, or political, can you say of yourself that you are free? If your emotional state is impacted every time you turn on the News, every time you read an article, every time you see a Twitter or Facebook post, are you not voluntarily giving power, real power to forces outside yourself?

    These voices aren’t making me happy! Can’t they just leave me alone?

    Each of us faces opposition to our preferences. When the opposition is internal, we recognize the working of reason putting up a bulwark or providing reinforcements so that we don’t succumb to baser desires. But when the opposition to personal preference is external, and beyond direct control, how then do we deal?

    Friend, exactly what is happening when you get upset over opinions that are different than yours? Why does a different viewpoint elicit irrational behavior? Are we not each entitled to our own opinions. To what degree does a complete stranger’s beliefs have an existential impact on you? What is the cause so dear, that results in you slinging zingers at the opposition? Do you suppose that deriding or defeating political opponents will create lasting happiness within you?

    This you???

    Does everything in your external world, things over which you have no control, have to be perfected aligned with your preferences in order for you to experience internal peace? Do you feel it your duty to verbally hack away at every perceived threat to your personal perspective? That does not make you smarter. It reveals your ignorance. It reveals the contradictions in the things you claim to believe.

    If your state of mind as an individual human is impacted over and over again by the willful statements and actions of politicians, celebrities, the group to which you claim membership, or social media strangers (regardless of whether their names are on your ”friends” or ”followers” lists), then you are living under the domination of a form of heteronomy.

    Who has you surrounded? Who is controlling you? Who gets to determine the “real” you?

    Your mental and emotional states are shaped, dominated, and ruled by outside factors that are non-responsive to your own will. And you may well be deceiving yourself that you are autonomous, self-directed, free, and impacted in life only by the things you will and choose. In Reality, you are just a bi-pedal version of Pavlov’s dog, and just about as free.

    As they say, “If the collar fits…”

    You have allowed yourself to be classically conditioned to respond to all sorts of stimuli that you have No. Power. To. Change. Instead, those external things are changing you.

    For me, not a single thing either Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Kim Kardashian or Matt Gaetz or Bob Weir or Mitch McConnell or Major League Baseball says or does today will add or detract from my actual life. My hunch is that is equally true for you, Dear Reader, if you would allow yourself to take off your ”Angry glasses” or your ”Victim glasses” or your ”Righteous glasses” and just look with your own eyes and reason, at the measurable impact on your life these people (you either feel so allied with or so opposed to) actually have on your day.

    You can reclaim your autonomy. You can.

  • We Don’t All Value The Same Things

    Every direction on the internal compass points toward what is valued…

    One of the most intriguing verses in the Bible is this:

    Every man’s way is right in his own eyes… ~ Proverbs 21:2 NASB

    This is a statement, in scripture, that confirmation bias and self-enhancement fallacies are universal. It is not a positive affirmation that whatever you think, and whatever you do, is right! It is a statement declaring that every person believes themselves and the conduct of their lives to be right.

    Clearly, everyone’s ways are not right.

    This raises two puzzling questions: What is right? Who determines what is right?

    Now, I am not making an appeal to you, dear Reader, that you believe the verse is true by using the authority bias and appealing to a scripture that you may hold no truck with whatsoever, which is, of course, your prerogative. I just find it fascinating for such a clear declaration of a linked set of universal biases to be sitting in the middle of sacred texts. 

    Rather, my appeal as to the veracity of the text is to the evidence of your own life. Do you make decisions and take actions because you believe yourself to be wrong? Or, do you do what you do, believing yourself to be right, at least right for you?

    The outworking suggested by the verse has been true for me, and I suspect, has also been true for you. One effect is that it causes us to project our own set of values, norms, and beliefs onto others. We will have a tendency to judge others by standards we hold to be true for ourselves. We may deceive ourselves into thinking that everyone shares the same value hierarchy that we ourselves hold. We may think everyone prefers and is pursuing the same thing. This is not the case.

    We don’t all value the same things. Even long-time couples, whose lives are intertwined in a myriad of ways so that they end up more as one thing, than two separate things, may have different values, different preferences and pursuits. They may entertain different goals and hopes. Enough difference between ultimate ends and there is a problem.

    If we all shared the same values, we could easily produce an algorithm that would assure us of using the appropriate means to achieve the goals we seek. The only debate would be about means, not about ends, since those would all be universally shared and agreed upon. Everything from dietary choices to politics would be easy. 

    But we don’t all value the same things. It is a plausible argument that we should, but most of us are too myopic to look down the road far enough to see what true value looks like, that state (I posit here that true value consists in states of being, not in things possessed) in which you say, ”This is a good as it gets. I am content. I am satisfied. I could ask for no more.”

    In the political realm (which by extension affects the social aspects of Americans, at least), Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence inked in some values. These were well thought out by the political philosophers of his day, vis. ”all men are created equal”, and the idea that each of us has been endowed with some inalienable rights, among which are ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. 

    These Rights, these Values, are a package deal

    These are value statements. If like me, you’re American, you will give hearty assent that these are valuable ends, worthy of pursuing and protecting. But Dear Reader, consider; what is life to a man who has no liberty? What is liberty to a man who is not treated equally? How can either pursue happiness?

    These values are interconnected, they fall apart if pursued singularly, with a willy-nilly disregard for their interlocking nature. Which, of course, is why Governments are instituted among men. (The sentence immediately following the enumeration of inalienable rights above). Inherent in the very idea of government is the individual’s sacrifice of unrestrained liberty.

    Yet to some, having not well considered these things, and believing their ways to be right, Liberty is the highest value. And so they have proven they are willing to use their liberty to jeopardize their neighbors lives during a pandemic. To them, the pursuit of happiness is more important than either equality, or life. But I submit that unrestrained liberty is as equally devoid of true value as unrestrained pursuit of happiness. And is as equally un-American as it is inhumane.

    The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel. ~ Proverbs 12:15

  • A Narrative About Narratives

    Narratives are everywhere! Pssst! You’re living one, right now!

    The word narrative is a noun meaning: a spoken or written account of connected events, a story.

    That’s it. That’s the whole definition. There is no lurking subterfuge. There is no attempted brain-washing. There is nothing nefarious about the word. 

    Are there some narratives that do those things? Undoubtedly. The purpose of some narratives is persuasion. The objective of others is merely revelation. But those who use the word narrative as a pejorative are doing a disservice to the language which is the coin of the realm when it comes to attempted communication.

    We all listen to narratives, if only the one in our heads that assigns reasons and meaning to the things that happen in our lives. Some of those inner narratives are devoid of rationale, betraying our own neuroses and biases and fears. 

    External narratives are all around us. They make up the lyrics of your favorite song. They are buried in visual ads that tell the story of how much sex appeal you will instantly invoke if you buy this brand of deodorant or shampoo. Certainly, they are present in media ”stories”. How could they not be. A narrative is, after all, nothing but a ”story”.

    The trick is to recognize both the point of view of a story (narrative), and its object. Is the narrator attempting to show you something, or trying to get you to believe something? If you hear a story presented in the format, People like us, believe X,Y, and Z, I advise that you proceed with caution, someone is selling something.

    All stories fall apart unless they are told from a point of view, and unless they have a point to make (Even when the point is entertainment). Objectivity is impossible for a storyteller. The best storytellers can even change points of view so skillfully you don’t know it’s happening. (For a sample, try reading the excellent, Sometimes A Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. He’ll put you right inside the head of Canada Goose dropping through fog to land on a wind-tossed Oregon river.)

    I find the following lines from a song to be insightful regarding the role of storytellers. 

    ”The storyteller makes no choice

    soon you will not hear his voice.

    His job is to shed light

    Not to master.”

    ~ Grateful Dead, Terrapin Station

    Narratives are only scary if:

    1. You’re unskilled at determining the perspective of the storyteller, 
    2. you find it difficult to differentiate between statements of opinion and statements of fact,
    3. you struggle with recognizing what the story is meant to do, and finally,
    4. you believe everything you’re told.

    If that describes you, perhaps earmuffs and blinders are a solution while you learn to do so.

    In case you have followed along to this point and missed the clues I’ve dropped:

    This essay is a narrative told from the perspective of me. It is my opinion. (Except for the definition above, which is a provable fact). The point is to rescue the word ‘narrative’ from disrepute, so that we may disarm both it, and those who misuse the word against us. Finally, I could be wrong, so evaluate my statements carefully and appropriate them at your own risk.

    You have no doubt heard the wise and oft-repeated maxim, ”Consider the source.” Which we should all do, all the time. Even when, or perhaps especially when, evaluating the narrative playing in our own heads.

    So the next time someone tries to bludgeon you with the claim that you are just listening to ”So-and-So’s Narrative” about a particular topic, you can smile, nod, and know that they are listening to someone else’s narrative, too. 

    Thus endeth the story…er, narrative.

    That wasn’t so scary was it?

  • Independent Thought & Individualism – Myths of a Kind

    Looks easy but may be the hardest thing of all for any of us to do…Think for ourselves.

    Is it possible that the most difficult thing for a human is to have an independent thought?

    It has been said that everyone is the unconscious exponent of some dead philosopher or other. In other words, we’re all drinking somebody’s Kool-Aid. Every idea you have has been borrowed. Every belief inculcated. From birth, each new idea is absorbed brick by brick from the people around you. This continues on into school, high school, college, books you choose, media you consume.

    If true, then what we Americans like to think of as individualism is just a certain species of social confirmation theory. In other words, we reinforce (and are reinforced by) the ideas we and our adoptive tribe subscribe to. In too many ways we are automatons, conditioned  to thinking, saying, and doing what we’ve been reinforced by our preferred social group to think, say, and do. (In the military for instance, independent thought is not a value, it is rebellion.) What would your friends think, or your ”followers” if you happen to voice an idea outside the accepted orthodoxy of your circle? So you don’t. You want to be accepted. You want to fit. You want to belong.

    To push that idea further, that means there are no true individuals in the classical sense; that being who is truly independent, non-reliant, un-attached, un-molded, un-shaped and unique.

    Certainly not you if you’re reading this. You’re dependent on someone even for the ability to read. Somebody else, long ago, turned these squiggles into a language that you were taught to speak and read. Your brain sees the squiggles and with no effort on your part, converts the shapes to meaning. You didn’t do ANY of that for yourself. 

    And the squiggles appear on magical virtual paper in front of your eyes. They aren’t carved in stone, or painted onto papyrus, or inscribed on vellum, or scratched into bark. Unless you developed the technology to display abstract language on a screen using only ones and zeroes, some silicon, glass, and light supplied by electricity. You are dependent on those who did. You are this moment dependent upon those who keep the electricity flowing to your device of choice for reading this. Mic drop. 

    It is very difficult to escape ethnocentrism. We believe the culture we are born into is the best one. This is probably not unique to Americans, but it may afflict us to a worse degree. America’s greatest export by volume, is our culture, or at least the pop-Art aspects of it. But is one’s birth culture really the ”best” one? Or is it merely familiar? 

    But wait, Americans aren’t satisfied with being simply American, are we? You need a jersey to wear. Red, or blue for you? And you need a code to follow. We divide along dogma and credo down to the granular level. And be mindful not to step on the cracks of separation, or you’ll get labeled, ”other”. 

    It fascinates me that in Japanese there is no word for ”individualism”. A deeper dive removes some surprise since they have a culture shaped by Shintoism with its profound veneration and appreciation for ancestors. A Japanese citizen is not too proud to acknowledge the help they’ve received to become what they have become. To think they’d done so on their own would be a sacrilege.

    In America, individualism is a religion in its own right. I am more convinced than ever, that it is a form of cult-like psychosis. There is a willful denial of the interwoven, inter-dependent nature of our lives. What a particularly Orwellian brand of ”group-think”, in which the adherents ludicrously claim ”individualism”, while parroting the same words, wearing the same clothes, supporting the same issues, flying the same flags. Oh, right, individuals…I see. 

    I find ironic humor in the fact that so many professors of independence and individualism make their claims via the megaphone of billion-member social networking platforms. Kinda belies the claim, doesn’t it? 

    Americans have arrived at a cultural, social, and political inflection point at which we must determine if we are flexible enough to allow for a plurality of viewpoints. Are we going to continue to splinter and fragment? Are we going to wage the RL version of Battle Royale against one another? Is your group so sure of its righteousness that it is willing to go to war with a differing group? Even a war of words using the weapons of vilification, condescension, and ridicule is counter-productive and mutually destructive. Are you that certain you can do without them?

    The idea of America is quite literally coming apart at the seams. I’m not unique in believing this house is too divided to stand. Can we recover? Maybe. If we’re willing to embrace the ideals that the country was founded upon. If we adamantly reject all disinformation from whatever the source. If we hold crooked and lying politicians on both sides accountable. If we look more for similarities than for differences in one another.

    I think in the next few decades, not just in America, but globally, it will take all of us, working together, pulling together, mutually dependent, and mutually benefitting to stay alive on this planet and help it recover before we go extinct ourselves.

    This planet we ride on can do just fine without any of us, and it will recover speedily once we are gone. It doesn’t need us. Consider that.

    I have seasonal allergies. My body responds to pollen as a pathogen. It attacks it as harmful and invasive. Pollen is certainly not a pathogen. It is the substance of fecundity and life. There is something wrong with me, not the pollen, or the trees, and other flora producing it.

    Just because this stuff attacks me, doesn’t mean its bad and I should attack it. It’s doing its job, the problem is mine.

    In our melting pot society, different cultures and ideas have always melded and blended, and coalesced and cooperated. Our cross-pollination is what makes us unique among the roster of nations. Differences of opinion, experience, history, and perspective should not be treated as pathogens! They shouldn’t be attacked, but embraced, understood, mined for truth, and winnowed for better ideas. 

    The differences between us are the pollen of a society fertilized and pregnant with possibility. If you’re allergic, it’s likely there is something wrong with you.

    Americans by nature are allergic to concepts that challenge “rugged individualism”, but we can grow up now. It’s ok. There’s plenty of Kleenex to go around.

    And we might as well start with the idea that none of us is really all that independent. None of us is really as individualistic as we might puff ourselves up to be. Lean in. Here’s a tissue.

  • Take No Thought

    Yesterday’s post posed the question: would you accept a salary that would meet all of your needs for the rest of your life? I then discussed some pitfalls pursuant to chasing wants.

    My morning ritual involves coffee, a quick run-through of automated reminders about bills due, and a quick check of banking software to assure the resources are available for the bills, lest I should need to move funds.

    I start each day making sure that I have the financial resources on hand for that day’s financial needs.

    But what other resources do I need for today? And can they be stored up? Can they be transferred from account to account?

    I’ll need breaths. Lots of them. Even more if I can squeeze in a walk or bike ride. I dare not try to store them up.

    He’s gonna need a much larger bag, no?

    I’ll need Grace. Lots of it! That can’t be stored either. Grace is deposited via the conduit of Faith on an as-needed basis and must be spent immediately.

    I’ll need my heart to keep beating. I don’t have any way to put the needed beats in an account that I can withdraw from if I start to run low.

    I need all the neurons and axons and dendrites in my neural cortex to fire correctly all day long. No neural storage banks either…

    Anyway…made me think.

    The most valuable things I’ll need for today, I’ll have to receive moment-by-moment as the need arises. Like the manna of old, I’ll have to gather only what I can use today. Attempting to store more than a day’s worth will spoil and breed worms.

    I think maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, ”Take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

    The things we take for granted, like breaths, and heartbeats, and mental processes are where the really important things reside. While we spend our energy and our time chasing and storing up, ”bread that does not satisfy.”

    Have a nice day! It’s the only March 29th, Two Thousand and Twenty-One that you’re ever gonna get.

  • Wants Are Not What They Are Cracked Up To Be

    Have you ever stopped to consider it is your wants that get you into various troubles, and rarely your needs?

    I asked my 17-year-old son the other day if he would accept a job offer that would guarantee him all of his needs being met for life: food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical, educational expenses, etc. Not surprisingly, he said, no…emphatically! 

    Whereas, I would take that deal in a heartbeat. 

    When I pressed him to explain his decision in our hypothetical scenario, he said, there’s stuff I want, and stuff I want to do. I agreed and praised him for the recognition that often times those kinds of things are over and above ”needs”. But I warned him that indulging wants is very often a never-ending, ever-enlarging cycle of displeasure, disappointment, and disillusionment.

    His demeanor displayed the fact that accepting a life-time salary that would meet every need did not feel like a win for him. When you’re 17, that feels like settling. So, I asked him how much would be enough? If you could earn twice as much as you needed, would that satisfy? He said maybe. In reply, I asked him to consider the nature of a want, and just how important those wants would really be, once his needs were already met.

    My hope was to get him to focus on nailing down his needs; and making decisions about wants fully aware of the different ways that they far surpass needs in total cost of ownership. And how they drive you into an endless state of discontentment.

    Once a desire has it’s hooks in you, you must determine if you have the means to scratch that itch. And if you don’t, your dissatisfaction with your status quo deteriorates. Now, you need another job, or a lucky windfall. Or you need a different house, or a different husband, and so it goes…

    I found out a long time ago what a want can do to my soul. (with a tip of my cap to the Eagles for taking artistic license). What I’ve wanted has too often proven to be the worst thing I could have gotten, once I’d done and spent all that was necessary to obtain it.

    But the least amount of time I’m forced to devote to providing for my necessities, secures me with the true wealth of self-directed time. And friends, they aren’t making any more of that.

    As Bob Dylan, that Nobel-prize-winning-master-of-poetry-and-literature, with the voice of an angel (…albeit one with a very bad sinus infection), said in Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues,

    ”Up on Housing Project Hill, it’s either fortune or fame

    You must pick up one or the other

    Though neither of them are to be what they claim”

  • Happy Birthday Rachel

    My daughter Rachel, has a birthday today. I wanted to share a few words about her.

    She is talented, and giving, and nurturing, and a healer. 

    Which is a miracle. She should be hardened and bitter and bruised and fragile, maybe a little broken and bent.

    As the firstborn of what eventually become a tribe of 7 (over the unfolding of 16 years), her mother and I often referred to her as our plow. It was no jest. She hit every rock in the field as our well-intentioned hearts, but unskilled hands tried to cultivate an environment for the family, using Rachel as the unwitting test case. She got dinged up in the process through faults that were not her own. In retrospect, I wish I’d had the wisdom to discover the myriad hidden rocks of parenthood and child-rearing other than with a firstborn plowshare named Rachel.

    I guess being a plow made her adventurous, pretty fearless, and certainly not afraid to take a calculated risk.  For years now she has carried the family’s entrepreneurial flame, having started her own business with unflagging determination, the sweat of her brow (literally), and out of her own pocket. 

    She set the stage for her own success during a post-divorce (family disaster) period of several years when we were unfortunately very much estranged (Though by the mercies of God, I am thrilled to have again been part of Rachel’s life for many years past.). Undaunted, she channeled her beautiful, stubborn, willful, independence into an amazing, thriving, service-oriented business. 

    I may be my daughter’s equal in stubbornness, but I’m not half the entrepreneur, and not a quarter the businessperson she is. And that is awesome to me! I am delighted that she has eclipsed my feeble modeling by such wide margins!

    She owns a massage therapy business with two high-end locations in the city where she was born at home. Because of necessary Covid lock downs, this past year has been a struggle for her. The mandatory shut down forced her to furlough her carefully curated staff. She had to negotiate lease arrangements with multiple landlords.

    She then had to do the same searching, and haggling, and negotiating, and juggling to patch together enough income to keep her own home. 

    She lost at least $120K of irrecoverable personal income in the past year due to lost revenues from mandatory shutdowns. This was through no fault of her own. 

    So, you’re damn right I’m glad the part of the government that actually cares about people voted to give some of that back! But it’s a drop in the bucket in comparison to what she lost.

    Finally able to reopen, she retained her former staff, and chose to adopt even safer guidelines and policies than mandated to protect both staff and clients. It’s worked! Her business has not seen a single case of Covid arising from the literal ”hands on” service they offer their clients.

    Though our conversations in the first few months of lock down shed some light on the efforts she was making, and all the bureaucratic red-tape she faced, she only very recently revealed just how dark those months of being shut down got for her. She did what Rachel does. She plowed ahead. She faced down the challenge, put on a brave face and soldiered on. 

    I complained with more venom in those paragraphs above more than I’ve heard her complain this year. She doesn’t complain. She seeks a solution. She implements it. She survives, and she thrives. And she shares the success with those in her orbit.

    At the beginning of the month, I wrote that my oldest son is my kindest child. Well…my oldest daughter has the toughest shell. But inside that shell is a warm, generous soul more concerned about your well-being than she is about her own. A caring nurturer who can heal you with her very touch! Her name in Hebrew, means ”Ewe”. All of the connotations of ”Ewe”, from nurturer, to comforter, to provider, to economic sustenance, each are manifest in my Rachel.

    Thanks for indulging a thimbleful of my pride in wishing her a Happy Birthday! 

    Happy Birthday, Rachel. 

    PS- I’m still heartbroken over letting that little lab puppy nip your one-year-old’s finger at Freedom Park that day I was carrying you on my shoulders and kneeled down to let you pet it.

    I wish I could have protected you better then…and every day since, from every nip and bite that my kneeling down to circumstances and pressures caused you to endure. Please know that from the first time your emergence into this world splashed me with salt water, all your cries have always broken my father’s heart. And all your smiles and successes have healed it again with gratitude and pride!

  • The Availability Heuristic

     I recently bumped into a fascinating term with which I was quite familiar by practice, but not by name. It is called the Availability Heuristic. The link will go to a wiki page with a more precise definition and some examples of how the phenomenon applies in various categories of life. 

    In short, the availability heuristic is a mental phenomenon in which a person relies upon the recall of  information that can be brought easily to mind to form the basis for opinions and decisions. (The word heuristic is a fancy term for ”problem-solving” or ”decision-making”.)

    If something can be easily recalled, it is available to the mind to serve for ”facts”, and there is a tendency (bias) to give it more weight and credence. 

    If you spend a week watching Shark Week on television and then are invited to swim in the ocean, your exposure to all of the gruesome shark attacks during the past week will be readily available when you decide whether or not to venture into the water. 

    Nah, there’s nothing to see here.

    The availability heuristic predicts that you will feel a higher probability of a shark encounter than had you not watched all those shows. The actual statistical probability of being attacked does not change a fraction based upon your television habits or your ability to recall the frightening scenes. Meanwhile, you remain blissfully ignorant of the much higher statistical probability of being involved in a serious car accident on the way to the beach.

    Immersion in any pool of information makes it seem more true and more predominant than it may actually be. 

    This bias is exactly what gives rise to social media ”Echo Chambers” regarding political, social, and cultural views. 

    Exposure shapes opinion. Opinion shapes worldview. Be careful out there.