"Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing at the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind. They believe in the future as if it were a religion; they believe that there is nothing they cannot accomplish, that solutions wait somewhere for all problems, like brides." Frances Fitzgerald in Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Haidt Paraphrase
The baseline does the job for now. There needs to be a good reason to consider additions. Shying further away from future planning. Baadh ki baadh deekhengee. Meditated. More and more reluctant of dependency or the pretense of dependency.
Read Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. Reaffirms what I've been wondering about for some time. A small part of me wishes I'd been taught this with our alphabets.
1. "Some things in life are worth striving for". Happiness doesn't come solely from within. Happiness comes from "in-between"
2. Romanticizing adversity (Nietzsche's "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger") can be quite harmful to decision-making. "Depression, anxiety, heart disease and posttraumatic stress disorder all result from ... the notion that stress and trauma can actually be good for people (Haidt, 2006)
3. Noise - Variable or intermittent noise interferes with concentration and increases stress.
4. Commuting - Even after years of commuting, those whose commutes are traffic-filled still arrive at work with higher levels of stress hormones.
5. Lack of control – One of the reasons noise and traffic affect happiness is that you can’t control them.
6. Shame - Surprisingly, people who undergo plastic surgery report (on average) high levels of satisfaction with the process, and they even report increases in the quality of their lives and decreases in psychiatric symptoms (such as depression and anxiety) in the years after the operation. The biggest gains were for breast reductions and breast augmentations. Haidt explains this increase in well being as resulting from being freed from the shame and self-consciousness of being “different.”
7. Relationships – Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people. But having conflict in relationships reduces that happiness because we never adapt to interpersonal conflict and even on days when you don’t see the people you have conflict with, you may think about it.
Read Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. Reaffirms what I've been wondering about for some time. A small part of me wishes I'd been taught this with our alphabets.
1. "Some things in life are worth striving for". Happiness doesn't come solely from within. Happiness comes from "in-between"
2. Romanticizing adversity (Nietzsche's "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger") can be quite harmful to decision-making. "Depression, anxiety, heart disease and posttraumatic stress disorder all result from ... the notion that stress and trauma can actually be good for people (Haidt, 2006)
3. Noise - Variable or intermittent noise interferes with concentration and increases stress.
4. Commuting - Even after years of commuting, those whose commutes are traffic-filled still arrive at work with higher levels of stress hormones.
5. Lack of control – One of the reasons noise and traffic affect happiness is that you can’t control them.
6. Shame - Surprisingly, people who undergo plastic surgery report (on average) high levels of satisfaction with the process, and they even report increases in the quality of their lives and decreases in psychiatric symptoms (such as depression and anxiety) in the years after the operation. The biggest gains were for breast reductions and breast augmentations. Haidt explains this increase in well being as resulting from being freed from the shame and self-consciousness of being “different.”
7. Relationships – Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people. But having conflict in relationships reduces that happiness because we never adapt to interpersonal conflict and even on days when you don’t see the people you have conflict with, you may think about it.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
What do you hoard?
Like a bodybuilder
Muscles to last us a lifetime.
A carry-on luggage
Place for clothes that can cover us in every season.
A wooden room
That can shelter us in its simplicity
The doors to which we may open in the mornings and shut at night
A kettle that can purify our water
Books that engage us till we are ready to go out and build a new world,
One that is based on equality
Muscles to last us a lifetime.
A carry-on luggage
Place for clothes that can cover us in every season.
A wooden room
That can shelter us in its simplicity
The doors to which we may open in the mornings and shut at night
A kettle that can purify our water
Books that engage us till we are ready to go out and build a new world,
One that is based on equality
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