Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

in Life, Psychology | June 9th, 2009

Pico Iyer, the British-born essay­ist, has a nice real­i­ty check in today’s New York Times, and it’s now the most emailed arti­cle of the day. Here are a few key pas­sages:

“I’m not sure how much out­ward details or accom­plish­ments ever real­ly make us hap­py deep down. The mil­lion­aires I know seem des­per­ate to become mul­ti­mil­lion­aires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose moti­va­tions they are no longer sure of). And I remem­ber how, in the cor­po­rate world, I always knew there was some high­er posi­tion I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guar­an­teed nev­er to arrive and always to remain dis­sat­is­fied…”

“…my two-room apart­ment in nowhere Japan seems more abun­dant than the big house that burned down [in San­ta Bar­bara, CA]. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nib­bling at sweet tan­ger­ines in the sun. When a Sig­ur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplen­dent. And then it seems that hap­pi­ness, like peace or pas­sion, comes most freely when it isn’t pur­sued.”

On a relat­ed note, you might want to check out this piece in the The Atlantic, What Makes Us Hap­py?, which takes a look at Har­vard’s long effort to answer that ques­tion.

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Google Co-Founder Speaks at U. Michigan Commencement

in Life | May 4th, 2009

Google co-founder Lar­ry Page spoke at com­mence­ment this week­end at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. While the talk may not rise to the lev­el of Steve Jobs’ mas­ter­ful pre­sen­ta­tion at Stan­ford back in 2005 (the grad­u­a­tion speech that real­ly stays with me), it does have a nice per­son­al touch, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the begin­ning and end. And there are some pearls of wis­dom in between. Some­what curi­ous­ly, these speech­es seem to make more sense the old­er you get. They mean lit­tle at 22. More at 32. And even a bit more at 42. So how about this. New rule: Save the speech for the first mean­ing­ful reunion.

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Talent = 10,000 Hours + Luck

in Comedy, Life | April 19th, 2009

Take Mal­colm Glad­well’s new book, Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess. Boil it down. Make it fun­ny. And here you have our next video pro­duced by Kir­by Fer­gu­son. NB that there are a few words sprin­kled in that won’t be safe for work (unless you work in a spe­cial kind of place).

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Is Anybody Listening?

in Current Affairs, Life | March 22nd, 2009

It’s time to put a human face on the dis­heart­en­ing eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics that we’re hear­ing almost dai­ly. This video fea­tures stu­dents from a South­ern Cal­i­for­nia high school talk­ing can­did­ly (and with­out scripts) about how the eco­nom­ic col­lapse has affect­ed their day-to-day lives. Unem­ploy­ment, par­ents leav­ing the fam­i­ly, home­less­ness, scarce food — it’s all part of the real­i­ty they’re now liv­ing. Fit­ting­ly, this video project grew out of an AP lit class (more on the back­sto­ry here) that hap­pened to be read­ing F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s The Great Gats­by. There’s noth­ing like a good tale of mate­ri­al­ism and deca­dent moral­i­ty to get strug­gling kids talk­ing.

There’s some­thing of a hap­py end­ing to this sto­ry. This video made its way to Wash­ing­ton, and it result­ed in Pres­i­dent Oba­ma vis­it­ing the school last week dur­ing his trip to Cal­i­for­nia. So, yes, some­one is lis­ten­ing. But how much will it real­ly change the lot of these kids?

Last­ly, you may want to check out this pho­to gallery called Scenes from Reces­sion. It offers “some glimpses of the places and lives affect­ed by what some are call­ing the Great Reces­sion.” Stun­ning and depress­ing stuff, to be sure. But that’s our world.

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The Tolstoy Bailout, Or Why The Humanities Matter

in History, Life, Literature, Philosophy | March 10th, 2009

Writ­ing in The New Repub­lic, Leon Wieselti­er offers a response to the Feb 25 piece in the NYTimes: In Tough Times, the Human­i­ties Must Jus­ti­fy Their Worth. His argu­ment is worth a read, and here is one lengthy mon­ey quote:

The com­plaint against the human­i­ties is that they are imprac­ti­cal. This is true. They will not change the world. They will change only the expe­ri­ence, and the under­stand­ing, and the eval­u­a­tion, of the world. .… It is worth remem­ber­ing, then, that the cri­sis in which we find our­selves was the work of prac­ti­cal men. The secu­ri­ti­za­tion of mort­gages was not con­ceived by a head in the clouds. No poet cost any­body their house. No his­to­ri­an cost any­body their job. Not even the most pam­pered of pro­fes­sors ever squan­dered $87,000 of some­one else’s mon­ey on a lit­tle rug. The cre­ativ­i­ty of bankers is a lux­u­ry that we can no longer afford. But now I read about “defend­ing the virtues of the lib­er­al arts in a mon­ey-dri­ven world,” as the Times says. I would have thought that in these times the per­spec­tive of mon­ey would be ashamed to show itself. What author­i­ty, real­ly, should the stand­point of finance any longer have for Amer­i­can soci­ety? Who gives a damn what Ken­neth D. Lewis thinks about any­thing? … The study of reli­gion, defend­ing itself to cap­i­tal­ists? …

In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings.… We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.

Very well said, and the log­ic out­lined here could be one rea­son why the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram that I help lead — which is heavy on meat & pota­to human­i­ties cours­es — is so far far­ing quite well.
via the TNR Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

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Ricky Gervais on American Optimism

in Comedy, Life | March 9th, 2009

Ricky Ger­vais, the come­di­an and brains behind The Office, talks here about the dif­fer­ence between British and Amer­i­can humor, and it real­ly gets down to deep cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. Opti­mism, the belief that any­thing is pos­si­ble, ver­sus an ingrained pes­simism and pen­chant for the under­dog. I won­der whether UK read­ers would agree with this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. And, more so, I won­der which out­look, the British or Amer­i­can, can bet­ter get you through these dif­fi­cult times. The answer, to me, is not obvi­ous…

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The Life You Can Save

in Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2009

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Peter Singer is an Aus­tralian-born philoso­pher who teach­es at Prince­ton and who wrote Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion in 1975, help­ing to launch the ani­mal rights move­ment. A prac­ti­tion­er of applied ethics, he has also tak­en con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on euthana­sia. Nowa­days, he’s work­ing on less sen­si­tive issues. His lat­est book is called The Life You Can Save: Act­ing Now to End World Pover­ty, and it makes the basic point that most of us could be doing more, with very lit­tle effort, to save lives around the world.

It’s a giv­en that we would rush to save a small child about to step into oncom­ing traf­fic. That’s a no-brain­er, an instinct. But, if we’re told that we can save the lives of chil­dren world­wide by giv­ing token amounts of mon­ey each month, we often react indif­fer­ent­ly and then go out and con­sume. In this inter­view heard on San Fran­cis­co air­waves this morn­ing, (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Singer gets into how small sac­ri­fices can make big dif­fer­ences, and why we should make them. And if you’re look­ing for char­i­ties that can help make these dif­fer­ences, Singer pro­vides a help­ful list on his web site.

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What We Can Learn from Past Presidents

in History, Life | March 2nd, 2009

Appear­ing at the TED Con­fer­ence in 2008, Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win talks about what we can all learn from Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, includ­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly Abra­ham Lin­coln and Lyn­don John­son. This is not anoth­er talk about what makes pres­i­dents great. It’s more about the bal­ance between work, love, and play, and how we can gen­er­al­ly be pro­duc­tive, shiny, hap­py peo­ple.

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