It is "the big reveal."
The unfolding of truth. The depths and heights, gradually, unveiling their magnificence. And only through the vivid clouded window of the inner light.
All gratitude for the opportunity. The experience. The only thing of value.

With love,

Me. And all of it.

Economics of Health Care

Have you ever walked into a pharmacy and noticed that you have to pass through isles of candy on the way to the medicine? Often, on the way back to the register, you'll pass more isles full of alcoholic beverages (depending on the state), before you face directly, as you're paying, a wall of cigarettes. The medicinal services now occupy a small corner of most chain pharmacies now.

Seems odd that a pharmacy, whose original purpose was to distribute agents of good health, is principally engaged in distributing illness. How can I trust the pharmacist who chooses to work in such a place with my health?

This, to me, feels like one of the most stark examples of how our economic system is failing to serve the public good. These sorts of counter-examples pop up anywhere that basic human needs are regulated (in any part) by monetary economies with any amount of "free market" forces allowed to play out.

Perhaps health should be managed by the people, all of us, rather than by industry.

Distinction

Evidence 1: I heard this great story on radiolab the other day. It was about how it is entirely possible that members of ancient cultures, despite the same physical capacity as modern people, could not identify the color blue. Apparently such a distinction had no inherent value for them (no blue food, enemies, art, etc.).

Evidence 2: There was a decade in there when I got really into drawing copies of nature photos (originally my ADD coping strategy for college lectures). One if the discoveries I made, which drastically improved the quality of the drawings was that there are no real lines in nature; that separations are all gradations with various degrees of severity. If you draw harsh lines on the edges of anything, it ceases to look realistic.

Evidence 3: They say babies are born unable to distinguish anything from themselves. The separations that define ”this” and ”that” are not immediately apparent. Gradually, as necessities and interests develop, one thing or another becomes important, and children learn to identify the particular thing. Some learning occurs when a distinction dawns on a person, and previously fluid concepts become discrete, at which point new conceptual manipulations become possible.

Conclusion/hypothesis: Separations are artificial constructs of the human mind. We (everything) are all one, maybe.

If this is true, then what of those elegant manipulations? Are they commonly accepted because they reflect some objective reality, or merely because we develop in a shared society, with reference frames overlapping?

Contributing member of society

I had begun to lose faith in humanity.   

Having spent some weeks frequenting an urban hospital that serves a diverse population, I had encountered a shocking number of people who function on an astoundingly low level. I've always argued that very few people are utterly hopeless. I've had numerous debates with conservative friends and family wherein I take the side of those whose livelihood depends on social safety nets (don't we all rely on the security inherent to our social contract to some degree?). But over the past month it started to dawn on me that there is a pretty substantial population of legitimately dependent, utterly un-self-aware people in this country, simply going through the motions, however distasteful, however physically uncomfortable.

I wondered:
Is this a local phenomenon?
Is this a recent thing?
Have there always been large chucks of society that are essentially on autopilot?

A few thoughts emerged from some discussion and pondering. Initially, it didn't seem possible that this has always been the case, as we have been through some tough times as a species, and I'm sure we didn't, and couldn't, lug around such dead weight through that. So did this just crop up, or is it instead a new manifestation of something that has been around but maybe not an issue in the past, when environmental/social circumstances would have provided a productive outlet for these tendencies?

Maybe, I wondered, freeing most people from the burden of decision-making is adaptive in the long run? Maybe that human ballast functions as a keel at times, rather than our modern result: dragging anchor-like.

I like that explanation. So I'll run with it for a bit...

The problem, then, is that the default actions of the choiceless many are only recently dysfunctional. The unstated barking orders of our modern times are destructive; the culture/paradigm of the impoverished among us is polluted with toxic expectations and norms.

I have seen the other end of the spectrum, where folks are brought into a high functioning culture. It would be easy to attribute their functionality to good breeding, but the same proportion of adherents exist there, only they adhere to policies and practices that work better, and their families work hard to ensure that this is so. They live in "bubbles" of high-functioning humanity, buffeted against the din of the dominant American paradigm.

And here I'm unfairly casting, as nearly all people (myself included) exhibit the behavior patterns I'm referring to as ”adherence,” as opposed to independent decision-making. Truth is, the analysis required to thoughtfully make choices is taxing. Perpetually questioning the paradigm is exhausting. So it is that we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well.


Let the goal be to immerse our people in cultural habits that promote health, opportunity, and happiness. Let us enrich our world and provide fall-back protocols that carry us through trying times. May we fold more of the masses into the security and empowerment of well-being.

Grass-roots can only grow in reasonably rich soil. Let's rid ourselves of the toxic...

The Invisible Hand

Something that keeps coming up with colleagues is a conversation about motivations.  At my school, there is a general movement away from the contrived motivations of grading scales, toward an emphasis on the process of learning and the intrinsic human tendency to explore and investigate.  We are learning machines, and so it is argued that we should be set loose to learn, not constrained to do so for some manufactured or abstracted reason(s).  "Unbridle the learner within," seems to be a sort of mantra among us.

Diligent skeptics in the field argue that there are necessarily structures that keep focus, maintain order, and teach discipline (none of which occurs naturally to most young students).  This is true, of course, but I argue that the ultimate rationale for those structures should be to better permit effective and natural learning to take place, rather than structure and discipline for its own sake.

Generating enthusiasm, building motivation, and then channeling that motivation toward the less exciting, but necessary, aspects of exploration--the aspects of science that separates it from relatively chaotic and inefficient "stabs in the dark" that constituted the proto-scientific curiosity of past millennia--can be as effective as fear- or penalty-based schemes.

What I'm talking about is tapping into motivations that are intrinsic, rather than creating new and "artificial" ones. We are driven to discover, to master, and to be a part of something greater than ourselves. We are driven to be both individuals and part of a collective. Our species has this duality to thank for much of our success.  We have transcended biological evolution by employing a diversity of continually evolving ideas and a need to exchange those ideas.

So in continually discussing all of this with colleagues and researchers, I can't help but see that there is a contradiction between what we are trying to do in the classroom--what the research tells us works best--and what we see in our larger society. If successful, we are creating collaborative, exploratory, inventive, enthusiastic citizens who are adept at tapping into their own passions, and applying intense effort for the collective good of their community. These concerned and connected citizens then step out into a world where competition abounds and decisions are routinely made which lead to excesses for some and deprivation, even death, for others.

We, the "givers-back" who have dedicated ourselves to the future of our society by choosing this field are modeling those same empathetic, connection-based motivations for our students. And, when successful, we see the best of humanity come out of them. But the world we live in does not necessarily reflect this value system.

I was asked in grad school whether schools should be charged with creating a new social order; whether it is our place as teachers to envision and move toward what might be the next best steps in our cultural evolution, or if such a charge revealed a touch of arrogance and self-importance.  I feel that our job description includes an element of vision, but that even though we are the adults in our environment(s), among "mere" children, our students are as much a part of the vision as we are. We are increasingly teaching a "student-centered" paradigm, and as such, our classroom values reflect, more and more, much of what is in their nature, in our nature.

And research shows this to be true. Clearly, we are hard/soft-wired for empathy and collaboration, for creativity and exploration.

Much of the dysfunction in our world seems rooted in values that don't appear to be intrinsic in our nature; values that are taught and scared into us. To me, the solution seems to necessitate some sort of revolution in social consciousness, and we, with our exponentially increasing ability to share and create ideas, are poised to launch such a revolution.  It has already started.

I imagine a future where the invisible hand of the market has little or no connection to material wealth, but is all about the things that motivate us intrinsically: mastery, creativity, participation, and purpose. The sense of being "really useful" is powerful and important, and can replace the sense of being materially powerful (wealthy) as the prime motivator. I get excited thinking about the sort of competitions that would emerge from this connective and collective will.

And, I believe, the only thing holding us back from this shift is a concerted effort by a majority. Many are in a struggle for survival, and making choices that simply allow the next day to come, but this doesn't have to be. We are thousands of times more productive than our isolated ancestors, with 10,000 years of technology behind us. If we were to band together, focus our attention on meeting the basic needs of everyone, we could end that sense of struggle. We could free humanity to do what we do best. We could set the stage for the new motivational schemes that I'm describing.

Skeptics tell me that without a struggle for survival, "human laziness" will turn our society into an "idiocracy."  "How else do you explain multigenerational welfare families?" they ask. But I have seen that this is not the case. Just look at the children. Children are transparent, less complicated examples of our human nature.  And I have seen them respond when given the opportunity to be a part of something, instead of the mandate to do so. When people see a group of others celebrating a collaborative effort, we can't help but long to join in.  Freed from the self-centered and individualistic biases trained into us, I am confident we would be continually participating in this sort of collective enterprise.

the emotional experience

Someone told me once that we tend to be repulsed by those traits in others that we loathe in ourselves. I've heard that several times in my life, now that I think of it. I suppose the implication in that philosophy is that everything that we experience outwardly is somehow really an internal experience; perhaps our outward reality is filtered through our selves. I don't know if it'd ever be possible to conclude that this or another metaphysical psychology is entirely accurate, but my subjective experience sure seems to support it. Let me share my most recent episode.

When I was a little guy, you'd be hard pressed to keep me away from any available body of water. If I disappeared for some length of time, you could almost certainly find me hovering near or over the closest pond or creek, holding some version (home made or otherwise) of fish-catching apparatus. I was close to obsessed with fishing, and with fish in general.

As soon as I was deemed old enough, my father bought me an aquarium, to show his support (and also to reward a good report card). And from there the household population of tanks grew steadily through high school. There was even an outdoor version, a huge hole dug into the back end of our property filled with water from the hose, into which an unfortunate bass was placed and fed a not-so-steady diet of nightcrawlers (whose harvest was dependent on the rains), for a length of time that I can't recall.

When I went to college, this passion only grew; I majored in fisheries resources, took a job at an Alaskan fishing lodge, and learned to fly fish the trout streams of Idaho. I told fish stories around campfires, daydreamed about fishing, often reminiscing silently about this or that high mountain lake I'd sought out for its particularly colorful cutthroat trout.

But something happened along the way. Somewhere the experience started to change. My highlight reel had less and less to do with the fish, and more to do with my company. I started reveling in others' successes nearly as much as my own, and cherishing the bond that fishing (and later, hunting) created between me and my buddies. With hunting, this camaraderie was amplified as it extended to anyone participating in the celebratory feast(s).

So, this tale brings me to Alaska, once again. Here, I've had the opportunity to catch countless fish, successfully landed the final of the 5 species of pacific salmon (king), and even experienced a new type of fishing: the bottom-fish (halibut) skate [which, awesomely, was likened to unwrapping a christmas present... you're pulling up this rope, hand over hand, waiting to see what's producing all the weight from the many circle hooks, "wondering if it'll be the ipod (halibut) or the mismatched socks (some unsavory species)."

Over this summer, I managed to conjure up some of those old feelings from my elementary school days, losing myself in the act of fishing alone. But far more powerful now is the relationships I develop with those who share in the experience somehow, whether actually fishing with me or just enjoying a delicious dinner after the fact.

And this isn't a loss in any way. To me, it's a deeper experience. Sure, there's still the direct, sensory input, with all its stimulation and beauty. But the connections between previously discrete things, in this case, between me and others, and with the surroundings, greater than the bits and pieces I'm directly interacting with, feeds some part of me in a much more enduring and subtle way.

And now I come to the point. With age, I find that there are so many things that are long gone from my life experience; things that were once fundamentally important, and that can trick me into feeling a loss. But with that loss, there is new space in my soul for things that seem broader, usually less intense and immediate, but at the same time more powerful and permanent.

With what seems to be some growth in perspective, now the same world, the same once-beloved experiences, are filtered in a different light. And that filter tells me something about who I am.

Hope you enjoyed my personal, self-indulgent journal...

Sitka, AK

Change of pace with these blog posts here. Just because I recently re-discovered a tool that I was introduced to a couple years ago by one of its designers, at microsoft.

So I find myself in Sitka, AK, for the summer while my wife interns at the local radio station, reporting the news. Sitka, in case you're unaware, is an amazing place, particularly if you're like me and your "church" is anywhere that reeks of untamed wildness. In the past, I've tried to capture my "religious" experiences with unsatisfying results; whether in writing or through photos. I finally have a tool that does a respectable job. Here's the first attempt. More to come...