Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
Here in central New England we're enjoying our first major snow fall. Starting next Thursday the days will start to get longer again. Somehow the changing of the seasons makes it easier to keep going, even when the going is tough.
Happy Friday.
Teaching
A teacher is asked what he makes. The inquisitor meant financially.
This brilliant performance comes from the final stage of the 2000 National Poetry Slam in Providence, RI. Teacher Taylor Mali recalls being grilled by a lawyer at a dinner party. When Taylor is asked what "he makes", he takes the gloves off. "I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor, and I can make an A- feel like a slap in the face, 'how dare you waste my time with anything but your very best'". And he's only just getting started.
Video: SlamNation: Taylor Mali - "What Teachers Make"
How We Live
It is enormously empowering – even intoxicating – to lose yourself to a crowd. That is why we need contrarians.
"Herding engenders a paradoxical form of identity: you are somebody not despite the fact that you’ve melted into the crowd, but because of it. You may be nobody on your own, and your life an empty shell, yet once you’ve managed to establish a meaningful connection with the herd, its volcanic, boundless life overflows into yours and more than fulfils it. You will not be able to find yourself in the crowd, but that’s the least of your worries: you are now part of something that feels so much grander and nobler than your poor self. Your connection with the life of the herd not only fills an inner vacuum but adds a sense of purpose to your disoriented existence. And the more individuals bring their disorientatedness to the party, the livelier it gets. And all the more dangerous." - Costica Bradatan
Article: The Herd in the Head
How We Live
A growing body of research suggests human behavior on social media is strikingly similar to collective behavior in nature.
Starlings at Hedgecourt Lake by Tom Lee, via CC
"While much is still mysterious and debated about the workings of murmurations, computational biologists and computer scientists who study them describe what is happening as 'the rapid transmission of local behavioral response to neighbors.' Each animal is a node in a system of influence, with the capacity to affect the behavior of its neighbors. Scientists call this process, in which groups of disparate organisms move as a cohesive unit, collective behavior. The behavior is derived from the relationship of individual entities to each other, yet only by widening the aperture beyond individuals do we see the entirety of the dynamic.
"A growing body of research suggests that human behavior on social media — coordinated activism, information cascades, harassment mobs — bears striking similarity to this kind of so-called “emergent behavior” in nature: occasions when organisms like birds or fish or ants act as a cohesive unit, without hierarchical direction from a designated leader. How that local response is transmitted — how one bird follows another, how I retweet you and you retweet me — is also determined by the structure of the network. For birds, signals along the network are passed from eyes or ears to brains pre-wired at birth with the accumulated wisdom of the millenia. For humans, signals are passed from screen to screen, news feed to news feed, along an artificial superstructure designed by humans but increasingly mediated by at-times-unpredictable algorithms." - Renée Diresta
Article: How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds
How We Live
"Disagreement is a feature, not a bug of democracy.”
"It’s not only important to encourage diversity of viewpoints so new ideas can emerge but also to be confronted with ideas we disagree with, as it 'forces us to clarify and refine our own thoughts,' says Stanford University professor Dan Edelstein.
"Those on social media or watching broadcast news often see only one form of dialogue, which is debate and involves trying to persuade others to one’s point of view with little exchange of ideas, Edelstein explains.
'Really what we want our students to practice, and what I think we need more of in our country and in democracies around the world, is deliberation,' says Edelstein, citing the work of Stanford scholars James Fishkin and Larry Diamond on deliberative democracy. 'It’s a way to frame a disagreement so that you keep the conversation alive and propel it forward, rather than turning it into a clash of viewpoints.'" - Chelcey Adami
Article: How to Disagree Without Fighting
Economy
Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.
Aubagne in France is one of almost 100 places worldwide offering free public transport. Credit: Viennaslide/Alamy
"Many industrialized countries are now struggling to grow their economies, given economic convulsions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resource scarcities and stagnating productivity improvements. Governments face a difficult situation. Their attempts to stimulate growth clash with objectives to improve human well-being and reduce environmental damage.
"Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being. This approach, which has gained traction in recent years, can enable rapid decarbonization and stop ecological breakdown while improving social outcomes. It frees up energy and materials for low- and middle-income countries in which growth might still be needed for development. Degrowth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize economies and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike recession, which is chaotic and socially destabilizing and occurs when growth-dependent economies fail to grow."
Article: Degrowth Can Work — Here’s How Science Can Help
Linguistics, Learning
Terms borrowed from the 1.75 billion people around the world who speak English are enriching the language we share.
A protester in Hong Kong with a sign saying ‘add oil!’ – a local expression of support. Photograph: Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images
"Speakers of world varieties of English are remaking its vocabulary to better express their identities, cultures and everyday realities. In Hong Kong, people exclaim add oil as a show of encouragement or support, an expression literally translated from the Cantonese gā yáu, with reference to petrol being injected into an engine. In the Philippines, many houses have a dirty kitchen, which is not actually a kitchen that is dirty in the sense you think, but a kitchen outside the house where most of the real cooking is done – a necessary convenience in a tropical country where it is best to avoid trapping heat and smells indoors. In Nigeria, a mama put is a street-food stall, and its name comes from the way that its customers usually order food: they say 'Mama, put …' to the woman running the stall, and point to the dish they want so it can be put on their plate.
"Meanwhile, the Japanese have invented, and South Koreans have popularised, the word skinship, a blend of the words skin and kinship that refers to the close physical contact between parent and child or between lovers or friends." - Danica Salazar
Article: English is Picking Up Brilliant New Words from Around the World – and That’s a Gift.
Related Article: Curse Words Around the World Have Something in Common (We Swear)
Communication
No one's reading most of what you write, and three other truths every communicator needs to understand.
Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz are co-founders of both Axios and Politco, so they know a thing or two about getting your message across. They've written a suitably quick summary of how to say more with less. This summary of the book is even quicker.
Article: The Power of Saying more With Less
One-liners
'Tis the season of year-end summaries and new-year predictions. Here's a few that I've noticed.
Article: Pentawards tips tactile details, smart packaging and cans as 2023’s packaging design trends
Article: Crystal clear: our branding predictions for 2023
Article: Best Jazz albums of 2022
Article: The 103 best book covers of 2022
Article: Instagram’s favorite New Yorker cartoons in 2022
Playlist
One of the things I like best about the winter holidays is holiday music. So I was thrilled to see that Love & Work favorites, Allison Young & Joshua Lee Turner, have released a delightful cover of the Vince Guaraldi Trio's Skating, and one of Allison's own songs, When I'm With You (Christmas Every Day). They make spirits very bright.
Video: When I'm With You (Christmas Every Day) - Allison Young & Joshua Lee Turner
Image of the Week
Night Guardian” by Javier Lobon-Rovira.
Location: Veragua Rainforest, Costa Rica
“Expertly camouflaged, a smooth helmeted iguana blends into the mossy tree trunk it clings to.”
Article: Winners of British Ecological Society Photo Contest Celebrate the Diversity of Nature
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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