What about synchronicity and meaningful coincidences? Haha. That was a test. We covered it on Friday as a discussion section of Conclusions in The One-Year Natural Experiment Report.
“5” Steve Howey, 42: “Try not to get hung up on having a final, polished result because your time is better spent solving a number of problems, which you’ll never get to if you try to make any of them perfect.” Cancer
Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 34 in Season 3 of “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 24th day of April in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year
S3 E33 — Do Meaningful Coincidences Really Exist?; S3 E32 — But, Why Should You Care?; S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things
Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year
S2 E34 — Why Is This Kicking Off the 4th Industrial Revolution?; S2 E33 — What Happens When Your Business Collapses?; S2 E32 — Trapped and Bored? Or Unleashing a Reinvention Wave?; S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly
Related from Season One, The Normal Year
S1 E34 — Day 34 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E33 — Day 33 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E32 — Day 32 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment
Context
Oh, except this passage about coincidences from President Obama’s recent memoir, “A Promised Land” when he recounts his nomination at the party’s convention:
“ … formally making the motion to vote me in as the Democratic nominee, the full meaning of my nomination hit me. By coincidence, it was the forty-fifth anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s historic ‘I Have a Dream’ at National Mall on that day in 1963: ‘We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.’”
What’s the purpose of the report you ask?
To explain the gap between the subliminal seduction of horoscopes across the chasm to the “land of people with hardened filters” so entrenched they only see what they believe and consciously or unconsciously disregard the rest.
Is there any hope for a path to bridge two polarized political extremes as Americans? Which sets up a deeper dive into the “Magical Thinking Tour” to unfold later.
Each morning, usually at 5:30 or 6 am, I do two things that activate my conscious and unconscious filters. One for selecting horoscopes and my second daily project, for screening lists of headline stories from each Apple News sources.
How long it takes to select a flip-worthy story.
Reminds me of how I remember my Masters thesis advisor saying he didn’t understand my research but gave me an “A.”
I got to use a camera to record the scan path — where a person looked as I presented images a little faster each time and had them decide if it was the same or different image.
I got to see if there was any connection between the speed of recognition of an image held in short-term memory and a similar eyeball pattern of search to find distinguishing features based on which to name the object.
My one take away was at speeds when college freshmen couldn’t tell you what they saw, they could still recognize it.
So, stuff comes in and we can’t see it, but we can react to it.
Which leads to a moment maybe three years earlier when I knew in my heart of hearts that law school wasn’t for me and returning to psychology was.
Our professor using that annoying Socratic teaching method to sharpen our budding legal minds and kept on it and on it challenging everybody’s timid answer to why a holding in a legal case made good law.
I hated it. I read and reread case material I didn’t understand as homework. I lived by myself in a studio apartment on the more dangerous, but more affordable student side of the university town.
But the professor in his mid-forties with dark hair and wire rim glasses drove home the point — a turning point for me — about the reliability of witnesses.
“When you and your girlfriend exit a movie theatre with another couple and one of you tries to fill the silence by asking, ‘So what did think about the movie?’ what do you say? Do you list the plot structure attributes or how stunning the actress or handsome the leading actor was, or the music score, or …? No, you answer you liked it or didn’t first. And, then you list all the reasons why.”
The second part becomes a position you discuss or defend with your friends over drinks.
I realized I was much more interested in that sequence than imagining some future court room scene where I tried to trip up a witness on the stand into revealing there was a possibility she was wrong.
I wanted to know why someone did what they did. Why your “lizard brain” has already decided and your logical brain explains your lizard’s choice after the fact.
Evidence
So Lizard, how did I do?
Random ones that make me want change my sign.
Am I? No, not really. As much as I love your duet, I’m not lifting your Holiday Tau today. Sorry.
“2” Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “You’re torn about whether to invest in a new tool. Definitely, using something different will amplify your capacities. Don’t rule out that which you make yourself. Tools of your very own will open up fresh avenues of exploration.” Gemini
Can I apply your Holiday Tau to writing the Report about My 1-year Experiment, and composing the second year — the pandemic experiment, and of course this year — the post-pandemic year (I hope) and the comparison of three years in April?
“5” Steve Howey, 42: “Try not to get hung up on having a final, polished result because your time is better spent solving a number of problems, which you’ll never get to if you try to make any of them perfect.” Cancer
G&G, your TauBit of Wisdom tantalizes me today. I forced myself to publish the first 9 days of My 1-Year Experiment in an evolving format. I forgot some of the editing and media limitations and the rules I followed before, which slowed me down at first, but maybe I should look forward to surpassing previous limits, eh?
“4” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “If you keep the same rules, you’ll get the same shaped result. You’re going for something else. Your process is evolving. Take away one of your rules to let it expand unimpeded by previous limits.” Virgo
Thanks for the afternoon off, today Steve. You Holiday Tau’s permission reminded me of a cartoon I saw of a teacher in a class room calling on a kid who raised his hand. Yes Billy she asked and he said, “May I be excused my brain is too full?”
“4” Steve Harvey, 62: “Mindfulness gets plenty of play in your world lately — so much so that one might forget about the utter joys of the opposite state. Mindlessness certainly has its merits, especially in the sunshine of spring!” Capricorn
What’s Going On …
Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll
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- @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8068 organically grown followers
Foresight
Quality-of-Life
Long-Form
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- “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge” by E.O. Wilson, an entomologist who studied colonies of ants for their insights. But didn’t stop there, according to The Wall Street Journal, “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.”
- “True Believers,” the novel by Kurt Andersen (which seems to precede Fantasyland)? I like how he goes back and forth from now to the ‘60s in which the main character is writing a memoir, but needs “Okays” from her friends who had been hiding a secret for 40+ years that could ruin their careers? Like, what’s my equivalent
- “Disappearing Through the Skylight” by O.B. Hardison, Jr. which proceeded “Consilience” by a decade. Hardison’s been described as a polymathic renaissance man who wrote, “… Nature has slipped, perhaps finally beyond our field of vision.” What does it mean for “… science, history, art and architecture, music, language, ultimately, for humanity”? This one provides missing chunks of understanding where we came from and where we’re going.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate
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