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Everyday thoughts
Because habit risks seduce us into sentimental somnolence, Seneca entreated us to spare a little time each day to think of everything that could go wrong.
– School of Life
Pessimism is the CURE for ANGER
Agitation is a result of a sudden defeat of personal expectations. ANGER results from dangerously optimistic ideas about what the world and other people are like. Expectations are reckless enemies of serenity while PESSIMISM is the royal route to calm.
School of Life
http://www.thebookoflife.org/the-secret-optimism-of-angry-people/
CALM
When it comes to our dealings with the world, expectations are reckless enemies of serenity. Pessimism is the royal route to calm.
“Nothing ought to be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all the problems, and we should consider, not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.”
What drives us to fury are affronts to our expectations. There are plenty of things that don’t turn out as we’d like but don’t make us livid either. When a problem has been factored into our expectations, calm is never endangered.
Because we are agitated most by what we do not expect, we must teach ourselves to expect everything. Our frustrations are tempered by what we understand we can expect from the world, by our experience of what it is normal to hope for. We aren’t overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied something we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it…anger is always the result of certain rationally-held ideas; if we can only change the ideas, we will change our propensity to anger. Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground-rules of existence.
A Senecan Praemeditatio:
[The wise] will start each day with the thought… Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own. Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of men, no less than those of cities, are in a whirl. Whatever structure has been reared by a long sequence of years, at the cost of great toil and through the great kindness of the gods, is scattered and dispersed in a single day. No, he who has said ‘a day’ has granted too long a postponement to swift misfortune; an hour, an instant of time, suffices for the overthrow of empires.
How often have cities in Asia, how often in Achaia, been laid low by a single shock of earthquake. How many towns in Syria, how many in Macedonia, have been swallowed up. How often has this kind of devastation laid Cyprus in ruins. We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die. Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. Reckon on everything, expect everything.
Exercise:
– Make up your own Praemeditatio. What are some of the things you should prepare for?
CONTENTS: Key Calming Ideas
– The Importance of Pessimism
– Pessimistic Resilience
– Itemising Anxieties
– Budgeting for ‘small’ problems
– Accepting the limits of Free Will
– Nature and Calm
– History and Calm
– Other People are different
– Intentionality and Agitation
– Others as Children
– Forgiveness
– Bureaucracy
– Acceptance and Anxiety
Abridged Article published by School of Life
http://www.thebookoflife.org/calm/
Human Universe – Brian Cox
Young people ‘feel they have nothing to live for’ “Almost a third of long-term unemployed young people have contemplated taking their own lives.”
Dutifully Firm
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
Climatologist Who Predicted California Drought 10 Years Ago Says It May Soon Be ‘Even More Dire’
So, yes, climate change has undoubtedly worsened the drought, which was Holdren’s point in the first place. He wrote: “In my recent comments about observed and projected increases in drought in the American West, I mentioned four relatively well understood mechanisms by which climate change can play a role in drought. (I have always been careful to note that, scientifically, we cannot say that climate change caused a particular drought, but only that it is expected to increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought in some regions ― and that such changes are being observed.)”
These four mechanisms are:
- In a warming world, a larger fraction of total precipitation falls in downpours, which means a larger fraction is lost to storm runoff (as opposed to being absorbed in soil).
- In mountain regions that are warming, as most are, a larger fraction of precipitation falls as rain rather than as snow, which means lower stream flows in spring and summer.
- What snowpack there is melts earlier in a warming world, further reducing flows later in the year.
- Where temperatures are higher, losses of water from soil and reservoirs due to evaporation are likewise higher than they would otherwise be.
Our brains sometimes process images of people who are poor or homeless as if they were not humans but things.
Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Comparison Divides Us
Abstract
Comparison compels people, even as it stresses, depresses, and divides us. Comparison is only natural, but the collateral damage reveals envy upward and scorn downward, and these emotions, arguably, poison people and their relationships. Summaries of several experiments—using questionnaire, psychometric, response-time, electromyographic, and neuroimaging data—illustrate the dynamics of envy up and scorn down, as well as proposing how to mitigate their effects. Initial studies suggest the importance of status. Other data show how scorn down minimizes thought about another’s mind; power deactivates mental concepts. Regarding envy up, other studies demonstrate that Schadenfreude (malicious joy) targets envied outgroups. However, counterstereotypic information, empathy, and outcome dependency can mitigate both scorn and envy.
Americans like to think that we are beyond social class, that only Europeans make class distinctions, as a remnant of feudalism or maybe a byproduct of restricted mobility. We often hear that Americans mostly identify as middle class, that we offer exceptional opportunity, and that hard work pays off (Correspondents of The New York Times, 2005; Lareau & Conley, 2008). Unfortunately, these cultural myths are less true than we would like to believe. Received wisdom claims that most Americans feel middle class, but this has not held true since some of the first Gallup polls in 1939 (Gallup Poll News Service, 1939; Hout, 2008). Mostly, we split evenly between working class and middle class, leaving 10%–20% to the upper and lower extremes. Although people’s ability to move above their parents’ social class is limited and no better than it is in other places, we all endorse the American dream (Kluegel amp; Smith, 1986). Our collective belief is that America offers opportunity, so the system is fair. In a meritocracy, people get what they deserve. The irony is that if we think people get the social class they deserve, then we should value elites. If we believe in meritocracy, why is being elite a liability in election years? Perhaps upward comparison breeds envious resentment because people think elites look down on them with scorn.
Social class is just one example of social comparison. Psychological science is especially suited to address interpersonal side effects of comparison. As in our political life, so too do envy and scorn invade our social lives. People do not always admit to comparison with friends, family, and colleagues, but we all do it. To be sure, people differ in their proclivity, but comparison is pervasive. People compare to evaluate themselves, to improve their standing, and to enhance their self-esteem (e.g., Taylor amp; Lobel, 1989;Wood, 1989).
If comparison contaminates, envy and scorn are worse, but for better reasons. Comparison at least can be adaptive, providing information and motivation, but the feelings that follow can be poisonous. Envy says, “I wish I had what you have,” but it implies “And I wish you did not have it.” Scorn says, “You are unworthy of my attention, but I know you are down there somewhere.”
Comparison emotions can corrupt the comparer. Envy humiliates and angers people (see Smith, 2008, for recently collected research). Feeling below someone makes people feel ashamed at their own inadequacy. If a peer can succeed, then people feel inadequate for not doing equally well. Envy also makes people angry at the injustice of their low-status positions. Those who succeeded must have had unfair advantages. Envy correlates with depression, unhap-piness, and low self-esteem.
Scorn likewise scars the perpetrator. Power self-centers people (Keltner, Gruenfeld, amp; Anderson, 2003), so power can desensitize the high status to the needs of others.1 Powerful people can be clueless about subordinates (Fiske, 1993; Goodwin, Gubin, Fiske, amp; Yzerbyt, 2000). Powermakes people focus on their own goals and needs, neglecting people with less power, unless they are useful somehow (Fiske amp; Berdahl, 2007; Guinote, 2008). Thus, downward scorn contaminates interactions.
If envy and scorn are so toxic, how does their poison play out between people? In an ongoing program of research, my colleagues and I explore the interpersonal dynamics of status divides caused by societal comparisons. We set out to shed some light on the comparisons that divide people from each other, focusing on envy up and scorn down. Even first encounters in psychology experiments reflect the stuff of social comparisons. The research program summarized here begins to describe the interpersonal dynamics of people making sense of each other, in the context of contrasting social status. Using various methods, from online vignette studies to neuroimaging, we hope to triangulate on envy and scorn, as well as discover some cures to get people beyond comparing.
Nature Enthusiasts 