reading clearout - august 2021

A little later than usual (and a little longer than usual given the Sunday slot) but who cares? Time for this month's edition of reading clearout, where I briefly cover a few books I won't summarize in a full reading review. 

Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola (July 2021)

This is a highly regarded instructional work for creative nonfiction, but for me it fell short of expectations. It's almost certainly a question about fit - Tell It Slant seems designed to guide coursework for an introduction to creative nonfiction, but given the lack of alternatives for slightly advanced levels I think others have deputized it as an appropriate resource for writers with more experience.

There is certainly plenty for any writer to learn from this book, most of which I've collected in my book notes. There are some good insights about craft, such as how using present tense is a way to avoid the temptation for summarization, or that reviewing variants of "to be" is a necessary step for sharpening prose. I liked the obvious but easily forgotten idea that the best topics often follow from the details of our lives that others find the most interesting, generally revealed by the manner or intensity of their questions. I think the suggestion to ask interview subjects their preferred questions has application beyond the scope of researching for a writing project. There is even a helpful technique for finding endings - if you keep the theme of the work in mind while writing, it simplifies the search for the right conclusion.

It may be worth noting that I read the third edition of the book, which has an anthology of example essays. I reread "The Coroner's Photographs" from this section. It also contained "Math 1619", a work I highlighted when I reviewed Shell Game back in December 2019.

A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf (June 2021)

This is actually a reread (I first read it at the end of 2015) but I doubt there will be a third round given that after this reading I couldn't figure out what I liked so much about it a few years ago. This isn't necessarily to criticize Woolf's diary, but the sense is that my future forays into her work will focus on her essays and novels.

A short glance over my book notes points out some interesting comments (my top pick being that nothing bores like meeting a new person who says the same old things) but I think the best parts from the work were the short insights into Woolf's philosophy about writing. She notes, for example, the difficulty of continuing her work while she is lacking sufficient praise, or that a major challenge for writing is the necessity to keep going long after losing a project's creative spark. These comments are much like the common contemporary remarks about writing in the way they accept the general difficulty of the craft, but Woolf never drifts toward clichés and metaphors when she has a concrete supporting detail within reach. Perhaps these direct remarks were enabled by the fact of the diary having been written outside the view of the public, but I also think it speaks to her superior writing ability - just as she can write a better novel than her peers, she can also write a better commentary on the craft.

Amusingly, what's remained with me in the weeks after reading is a note she makes about America's climate - it's almost entirely disagreeable, particularly in the summers when everyone sweats all day and no one can sleep at night. It's perhaps necessary to remind readers that Woolf wrote these entries in the shadows of two world wars, when no one had access to today's (micro) climate-changing amenities. Still, as a longtime complainer about our summers, I did feel slightly vindicated to have a giant of world literature on my side.

Memoirs of a Kamikaze by Kazuo Odachi (May 2021)

It's a shame that in these times I never had the occasion to hold this book in front of my face on a crowded Green Line commute - distracted passersby have a tendency to make comments about such books, where the topic represents something about which they know just enough to forget they know nothing. That said, it's not clear to me how I would have responded to any questions about this book while I was still reading it. This is based on a recent realization that it's the type of book about which readers might be better off maintaining a certain public silence, lest any remarks discomfort those who've long settled for the simplified understanding of war offered at the local middle school.

Odachi was a teenage pilot who was assigned to a kamikaze unit in the final year of World War II. The first 75% or so of this memoir is a gripping and sometimes difficult account of his experience. A firsthand account of this period is a highly unusual find on an English language bookshelf, and there were a few surprising details that I pulled into my book notes. I think the reason why these books are important is stated in a comment made by Odachi himself about his service - by facing and acknowledging death, he and his peers discovered a meaning of life in the sense of achieving an understanding about how to be human, which is a realization that often proves elusive to the average experience. By reading such accounts from the brink of the unique oblivion generated by the grinding reality of war, we relate to a perspective from afar that gives us a brief but invaluable reminder that others found significance even during lives defined by such hopeless circumstances   

leftovers - proper corona admin, vol 103 (supplementing STEM)

My post from mid-June about... well, I just read it, and who knows what it was about, but anyway, that post had some ideas in there about the way STEM education, often closely linked to the importance of educating young people about the critical role of scientific thinking, tends to fail in terms of educating students about a crucial life skill - making decisions within uncertainty. It suggests the natural conclusion that these courses should therefore focus on addressing this shortcoming, but I think there is another way to think about the problem. What if the role of subjects such as history, English, or art, previously described in ways that justify their importance alongside the supposed superiority of STEM-centric curriculums, was instead framed as a necessary supplement to the technical aspects of STEM coursework? The distinction, in a word, is uncertainty - STEM classes would retain the illusion of certainty as a necessary evil for the greater good of teaching technical skills while the other courses would have the task of educating students to thrive in situations defined by uncertainty.

Of course, this mentality will require its own type of rethinking in the context of non-STEM classrooms. I remember a lot of examples from my own student days of such classes focusing on the facts and figures of the subjects, with certainty often implied in the way materials were presented to us. It could be necessary for history classes to regularly debate the merits of decisions rather than merely study the details of events, or for English finals to offer essay prompts such as "Did you think Romeo and Juliet was any good? Explain." The idea that I have for education, whether it ultimately be the task of non-STEM courses or not, is to find ways to introduce students to uncertainty at an early educational stage. My fear is that if students are not prepared for uncertainty, they will not be prepared for the real world, where following the science means a process that only leads us to the crossroads of a necessary decision.

the balancing act

There is no doubt that describing someone as a balanced person is a compliment acknowledging some aspect of their perspective, mentality, or temperament. The overwhelming negativity associated with the opposite of balanced is perhaps the best evidence of the widespread reverence for the concept. The seeming universal approval for balance may explain the need in some situations for a restoration of balance, with balanced individuals often among the top candidates for taking on the task. But I think there is a certain problem with assuming that a balanced individual is also the right person to restore the same quality to a situation or a group. This isn't meant to suggest that I disagree with the intuition of the idea - who better to find balance than someone who can see both sides? - but as I work out the details of this concept, I cannot help but notice a few issues.

 

Let's suppose there is a dispute about spending money - one side wants to spend, the other side wants to save. The balanced person brought into this situation could be tasked with deciding the best course of action, and indeed a decision could be reached that is satisfactory to all parties. But the problem is that the three parties - saver, spender, and balanced thinker - can't really relate to each other at all, both before and after the dispute. The saver always saves and the spender always spends, but the balanced thinker doesn't really consider either of those two perspectives whenever he or she makes a decision; the balanced approach means spending for reasons entirely unrelated to the "always spend" or "always save" worldviews held by the opposing sides. The arbitration process is helpful in reaching a decision, and perhaps there is a time and place for prioritizing a resolution simply to allow life to keep moving forward. However, it's important to remember that everyone involved in this process will wake up the next morning with their perspectives intact, and the underlying cause of the dispute will therefore remain unresolved, a fact that will be all too obvious when a new situation once again puts the two sides on opposing sides of the issue.

In other words, just because two sides shook hands and moved on doesn't rule out the recurrence of the same conflict the next time they encounter a similarly divisive decision. It's like expecting kindling to resist a new flame for the fact that a fire was put out last week; equilibrium is not always the same thing as balance. The question of how to avoid the inevitable return of previously settled conflicts points to the difference in the way balance works for individuals and groups - the individual finds balance by avoiding conflict while the group finds balance by resolving conflict. If this difference is accepted, then it points to a contradiction in the common way two sides will seek a balanced mediator to help resolve their conflicts. At the most basic level, the balanced person simply has no relevant experience at the task because - as an individual - balance has always meant avoiding conflict rather than resolving it. It's possible that a balanced person can overcome this issue and grow into the responsibility, but it remains the case that for a balanced individual it will be a significant task to relate to the extreme perspectives on both sides of a given question.

The challenge that opposing sides must face, together, is establishing a process for resolving the inevitable conflicts that emerge whenever multiple perspectives are brought together under the banner of a single group. The impulse to call in a third-party is a form of procrastination for the way it postpones the crucial task of working together for the sake of ensuring the arbitration process is executed correctly. I think this issue is exacerbated by the way arbitrary determinations by a third-party always result in a form of majority. There is a sense that a democratic process means groups move forward by respecting the unquestioned sanctity afforded to the principle of majority rule, but the closer I look at the American system the more I see evidence that democracy is less about majorities and more about amplifying the minority voice (in the strict sense of being in the minority of a voting proportion). If two sides in conflict over any issue came together to resolve the problem, it would require at least an acknowledgment of the various perspectives as a starting point. The alternative of involving some kind of arbitrator doesn't necessarily rule out this outcome, but I suspect in most cases the third-party eventually stifles the perspectives that will not be aligned with the eventual decision.

There is an extension that follows from this thinking which I considered removing from this post, partly because I suspected it was dangerous but mostly because I feared it was useless, yet I think it's potentially important enough for a brief consideration - is the balanced person the unlikely culprit for disrupting an otherwise stable group? I mean this in the sense that a pitch-black evening has a destabilizing effect on two people using a see-saw. It may be helpful to think back to the earlier example about a spending dispute. The balanced person examining the situation will likely conclude that the two sides need to meet somewhere "in the middle", perhaps demonstrated by spending more than would be preferred by the savers while also falling short of the target demanded by the spenders. So where does this leave us? I would imagine the savers would have some disappointment about being forced to open the checkbook while the spenders would lament that the outlay falls short of a critical threshold, but the most important result in my mind would be the inevitable resentment that would accumulate on both sides, with most of it directed at the opponent. If the spending analogy is unclear, let's think of it in a generalized way - essentially, there is a dispute regarding whether to prioritize the present or the future, and an arbitrator has arrived on the scene to kick the can down the road. The problem is that while this can bounces along the pavement each side is becoming increasingly resentful of the other, with both citing the opponent as the sole cause for a specific set of grievances. When the next arbitrator comes along to reassess the situation, the escalating nature of the dispute will increase the temptation to once again delay the inevitable, and the cycle will repeat itself.

This leaves me wondering what role, if any, the balanced thinker can play in a group setting. I think the answer has something to do with generating trust, which I admit is a disappointingly vague response. The trust I'm thinking about would enable opponents in any dispute to find a resolution through conversation and cooperation without resorting to the transactional nature of negotiation. It would define advancement as one smooth, shared stride onward rather than the volatile progress resulting from taking one step backward for every two paces forward. This may seem like a trivial distinction on the surface, but I think the accumulating costs of this volatility - felt in various temporary forms of regression, stagnation, and anxious uncertainty - is no longer justifying the gains from the occasional burst of rapid advancement. The sting of stepping back is negating the joy of moving forward, which you can feel if you listen closely to that lamenting minority voice, or note the urgent tone that returns the moment it finds itself once more on the collapsing crest of the majority. 

Whether the trust problem is one best suited to the balanced thinker is of course impossible for me to know, but it's clear that addressing this issue is perhaps the most urgent of short-term challenges. No collective problem can be solved without trust, but we are running a deficit of this necessary ingredient. There is something simmering beneath what I once dismissed as meaningless labeling - the accusations of fascism, censorship, socialism, corruption, cancel culture, rigged elections, totalitarianism, groupthink, and so on. The simmer is the way labels can be used to hide a specific grievance within the ambiguity of multiple interpretations, like how knowing the water temperature alone is not enough to determine if the pot is going on or off the boil. I think these labels are intended to identify difference, but these days I am noticing cases where the label is used to mark an existential threat, and I think these instances are becoming common enough to regard as an urgent concern. The breaking point in a group is when disputes are resolved by eliminating a perspective rather than reconciling differences, and the idea of this playing out on a larger scale doesn't seem so far-fetched to me as it would have even a few years ago.

The first step, then, for whoever tries to balance a group must be to reintroduce enough trust such that the group can see its various perspectives as differences rather than threats. There may be a seat at the table for the balanced thinker, after all, because it plays to the tendency of avoiding conflict without being forced into the thinly-veiled farce of creating majorities. The ideal permanent situation for the group is one where it can resolve its own conflicts rather than relying on a third-party or its dictates, which is in a sense a version of meeting in the middle, but without that outside presence waiting there to welcome the arriving parties. This isn't a likely condition until there is enough trust within the group to take those first steps to the center. The problem of employing the balanced thinker as someone who can see both sides isn't an obvious obstacle to this goal, but if you think about it having someone doing the work for the group makes the group less capable of doing its own work. The best fit for the balanced thinker may indeed resemble something of a central role in the end, but it would always be with the intent to step aside at the key moment - when both sides come close enough that they can finally see the other and acknowledge that a difference is never an existential threat.

the european stupor league

There was a soccer story back in April about the formation of the European Super League (ESL). I want to make something very clear about the ESL - this was not just a huge soccer story, it was a huge story. I figured this out when the people in my life with little to no interest in the sport (this represents 98% of the people in my life) were constantly asking me about the ESL. What do you think about the ESL? What do the fans think about the ESL? Are you going to watch the ESL? Are you going to write about the ESL? It's the most reliable way to know whether a huge soccer story has actually reached the point where it's just a huge story - when people who don't follow the sport ask about it, it's a huge story.

The problem was that I didn't find anything interesting about this huge story. I suppose this could have been due to a number of reasons - the competition itself wasn't due to start right away, the format of the tournament lacked imagination, the ESL had always felt inevitable to soccer fans, and so on. I suppose it's even possible that I was simply exhausted from a year of pandemic life. But as I think about it now, I suspect my disinterest was based on a far simpler explanation. The ESL, in short, was an attempt by the sport's greediest club owners to consolidate their wealth at the expense of everyone else. This is a story that happens every day, every hour, in every industry on the planet, which means the only things I could have said about it were the most predictable responses to the most predictable prompts. What do I think about the wealthiest people on the planet crying poverty as an excuse for reinforcing structural inequality? What do you think I think? 

If talking about the ESL meant dusting off the script ahead of a new version of the same conversation, then it's pretty clear to me why I felt no compulsion to share my views back in April. There is a certain stupor that comes along when you spend too much time reciting the lines instead of expressing yourself. It may have something to do with the way I become so predictable to myself in these conversations that I lose interest in hearing my own voice. It's probably for the best in these sorts of circumstances that I've learned to walk away rather than regurgitate the same canned lines we recycle into our everyday interactions. What do I have to say about the ESL? It's going to be the same thing I thought the last time you asked, weeks or months before the ESL ever existed, because the details of the ESL don't introduce enough novelty to make me consider changing my perspective. It's the same reason why I'm so worn down by having to comment on pop culture, or the weather, or politics - whatever I say I've heard before, and each time I'm reminded that the predictable thing never quite felt worth saying.

UPDATE | toa email subscriptions

Quick update regarding all those panicked posts from the past month predicting the imminent end of TOA emails - the conversion date, though hardly set in stone, seems to be for sometime in mid-August. This means if you haven't switched over the email subscription from TOA classic (the email contains the newest post) to TOA 2.0 (a list of the three most recent posts, sent each morning whenever I post something new) then you need to email me at admin@trueonaverage.com and let me know you'd like to make the change. If you'd like more details, here's a link to one of the posts describing the change.

For those who clicked on this link expecting a new post, my apologies. Here's a quick throwback to a post from last August, which for some reason has been getting a lot of attention lately according to the pageview metrics.

We'll be back tomorrow with an actual new post. Thanks for reading!

leftovers #2 - intuitive eating (tactics)

Let's finally close the book on Intuitive Eating - which I wrote about (once and twice) back in June - with a couple of comments on specific tactics I pulled from my book notes.

One idea I liked was the range of three to five hours as an appropriate interval between meals. This is particularly important for anyone whose hunger signals include sensations not typically associated with hunger (such as headaches). In these cases, the authors suggest sticking closely to the above range until normal signals are reestablished. The specifics of the best range for individuals differ for a variety of factors, but a good sign of having waited too long that applies to all is urgent eating - if you wolf down the food as it appears on the plate, perhaps eating a little sooner is a good idea for the next meal.

Those who struggle with satiety cues should experiment with short time-outs during a meal, and only resume eating if hunger remains after a five- or ten-minute break. Eliminating distractions is also helpful because they can obscure fullness signals, which means making eating the sole activity at mealtime - no books, no TV, etc., while eating. Taste can sometimes offer reliable cues, so a good point to stop eating might be when the taste is different from the start of the meal. Finally, those reliant on food to soothe certain feelings should start simply by acknowledging the reality of their feelings before starting the work of separating physical and emotional fullness cues.

The consistent challenge that remains between hunger and satiety - or perhaps the other way around - is to make better choices without falling into a diet mentality. Any restriction, even in the name of health, can lead to the same effects suffered among dieters. The most compelling example for me is the threat of overconsuming replacement items, such as when switching from full-fat to no-fat yogurt results in increased yogurt consumption. The approach I suggest anytime I'm asked about improving food choices is to start with the healthiest foods you like, then just regularly eat those foods as a way to "crowd out" some of your unhealthy choices. If this means a renewed focus on health leads to a week of eating roasted red peppers alongside your main meal, so be it. The result of adding the healthy item is less room on the plate for the unhealthy, and over time you can build on this pattern of subtraction by addition that doesn't rely so much on the restrictive approach of the dieting mentality.

the toa newsletter - august 2021

Yes folks, after three or so decades, it's finally happened - I've switched over to the dark side, making the move from audience member to segment subject, sitting in a puddle of my own disbelief as I look at the calendar and shake my head. Could it be? Could it really be?

I can't believe it, but it is.

It's finally August.

Busy

Not sure if we'll be able to sort out what happened, but perhaps a classic Proper Admin can at least start us down the right path. My theory is that I've been busy, capital-B Busy, a fact known to recent readers. This result was driven mostly by a combination of work and an apartment search. The latter is settled (unless I am the unwitting victim of the most complex, slow-moving scam of all time) so I'm hoping August is a little easier for me in terms of finding time for TOA.

Busy, so what?

The biggest problem with being busy is related to a point I highlighted in a review of Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing - an erosion of attention makes it difficult to live a life where we want what we want to want. I think a busy time in its own way is an erosion of attention, in the sense that the insights from paying attention don't have an opportunity for immediate application. Being busy means that decisions regarding what we want are rendered effectively meaningless because we are too busy doing something else to exercise choice. I know there was a version of July that I would have enjoyed, but it didn't really happen because of the other commitments on my calendar.

If being busy is such a problem, why is everyone happily busying themselves being busy all the time?

I suspect that as hard as it is to be busy, it's harder to have nothing to do. If you are busy then you might be dissatisfied knowing that you aren't living the life you want to live, but if you aren't busy then you might become dissatisfied with the realization that you have no idea what kind of life you want to live. I think if you ask people to choose from those existential crises, they would overwhelming prefer the former, and that's why everyone is so busy.

If I'm in a certain type of crowd (let's say this means I'm more likely to casually say "bullshit" than "reparations") then I'll describe this as a problem of imagination. I think it's easier for people to accept this fact about themselves if it's framed in such a way. The problem when you aren't busy is that at some point you need to call on your imagination, your creativity, but for most people this is where the real problem starts because you slowly realize that living the life you want to live starts by imagining it.

There's a version of this problem I notice at work that makes a great example. I occasionally encounter people who enjoy being busy, but it seems that these people are always in some kind of operational capacity where being busy represents a form of career opportunity. On the other hand, there is no more demoralized person in your organization than the busy creative. If your job requires creativity but your calendar is full, you might as well just stop answering emails and start updating your resume.

I mean, if you have this much to say about being busy, why not just write a post about it? Why waste time doing this half-assed proper admin?

I'm too busy.

Wait, how do you know you're busy, anyway? Walking around and sneering at tourists isn't being busy, it's being ob-

I had my suspicions all month, but I knew for sure twenty minutes ago when I was relieved that August 1 fell on a Sunday, freeing me of my self-imposed obligation to write a Serious Sunday Post. Like I mentioned just now, being creative is a massive challenge when there are twenty little admin explosions going off all over your schedule. There are also some other compelling stats to back up my claim - my overall writing time is way down compared to this time last year, and my total reading for 2021 is behind the pace required if I want to read somewhere between 60 and 72 books this year.

Another way to think about being busy is to compare it to my priority list and see what's hurting. Longtime readers may recall that I once figured out my personal priority list, which essentially calculated the way I manage time based on a study of my actual decisions. Reading and writing are down at the bottom of the top ten just behind groceries and laundry, which makes sense - there have been a couple of times in July when I had to postpone grocery shopping plans. 

On a side note, I think the list holds up today with one exception - internet admin. I am spending far too much time on the internet now, likely at the expense of sleep. My tentative updated list would need to move internet admin up to #6, bumping sleep down to #7. Maybe I should do an official update sometime in August.

OK, busy bee, so what's the plan?

I think being busy is similar to a lot of low-grade afflictions. The remedy is a combination of patience, self-care, and a willingness to take charge of whatever is in my control. In terms of work, I'm planning on taking a page from (certain) helmet football playbooks and working on a version of a script for the first few minutes of each day. I'm envisioning something that will help me get a sense of what's going on, setting priorities, and the like - simple, basic stuff, but the kind of necessary work that tends to get forgotten during a busy period when we succumb to the temptation of becoming purely interruption-driven. I think if I can devote the first fifteen minutes of each day (and possibly the last few minutes, as well) for scripting, it should have a good effect on how I manage the rest of my time.

The personal side is a little different. Unlike with work, where there is sometimes little we can do in terms of exerting control over the schedule, the personal life is more about acknowledging that a lot of what happens is partly a result of our own choices (I am, after all, choosing to move). I think there is also more to learn because there is less of an external structure holding things in place, allowing for greater spontaneity and iteration when compared to work. I have noticed, for example, that being busy is helping me resolve a very specific problem - I am now waking up by 7:30 AM on most days. This isn't a result of going to bed earlier, but it does suggest an opportunity if I could find a way to move my bedtime forward by an hour or two. The key step is probably back to that internet admin - if the computer is closed and shut for good by 7 or 8 PM, it puts me on track for better sleep, which might help restore the energy levels required to get through the busy period. More importantly, if I take this opportunity to establish a better sleeping habit, then in some ways the inconvenience of having been busy over these past few weeks will have been worth the hassle.

It's not a clean solution, but the problem isn't exactly rocket science, either. It's something like what Barry Hearn said thirty minutes into the podcast I highlighted two weeks ago - the solution to a recession is to start an hour earlier and finish an hour later. I'm not sure if Barry Hearn is qualified to explain macroeconomics, but the spirit of the insight is invaluable. There is an aspect to every problem that can be defeated with hard work, and although it shouldn't be the only tool in the arsenal it should always be utilized to its fullest capability. I suspect my solution to being busy is something in that ballpark - since I'm already feeling a bit maxed out from the hours perspective, it's about finding a better energy level for those hours, and that's going to take some hard work in terms of improving my sleep.

Sound like you have a lot to do!

Have you been listening? I said I was busy, and I am busy, so it's time to go.

Thanks for reading! See you in August.