Last night I attended a corporate awards banquet. Many of these employees are very hard working and dedicated people in a field that requires great social skills or connections, and a type A personality. The atmosphere was very supportive and positive, rewarding those who have succeeded in their field, and encouraging everyone to continue the hard work so they too can one day stand on the podium and accept an award.
I learned some pretty interesting facts about some of the most successful people in the room. The awards began with a leading woman in her client community who is retiring this year. Two of her grandchildren gave very touching speeches about their love for their grandmother and gave her a "Family Achievement Award". She tearfully accepted and then gave a speech
focused on her loving and supporting family through the long hours away
from home, concluding, as she became increasing emotional, with advice to all in attendance not to let the
job consume their lives and keep them from their family. An obvious admission of guilt and regret. This was followed by award after award for exceptional sales, including another woman praising her daughter for being so patient and growing up so well, even though her parents couldn't be there for her and nannies had largely raised her. Another woman, who is the top performing partner, goes to sleep at 1 AM and then wakes up at 4:30 AM everyday so she can start having meetings with her agents by 5:30 AM.
Is this the face of success, or is this the face of a corporate martyr on the cross of modern capitalism?
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Subjectivity
Scientific research is often assumed by the lay public to be objective and value free. Thus, the public can feel safe in assuming that results coming from empirical observation are valid representations of the real world. Anyone who works in the sciences, especially those of purely social science or human-environment interactions, knows that objectivity is a goal that we sometimes unconsciously or consciously fail to achieve.
Subjectivity can enter research during the researcher's observations and analysis of data. This is due to our own internal biases about what we chose to observe, what is important in our observations, how we feel about the observed or the subject of the research, and the ultimate meaning of the results. Our perception of the world is based on, among other things, our environment as a child, and our genetically ingrained temperament or personality (i.e. the nature and nurture influences).
I just finished reading the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. As an introvert, I identified with the book and found it interesting and a valuable read for anyone, but especially for extroverts who don't understand introverts, or people who you know who you think are introverted, but feel uncomfortable with themselves due to the pressures of an extroverted society. Having just finished this book it was fresh in my mind and when I was alerted to a highly publicized ranking of the 10 Least Stressful Jobs of 2013 as ranked by Careercast.com. See link below:
10 Least Stressful Jobs of 2013
So it turns out that being a professor is the least stressful job in 2013, not sure why it is this year but wasn't even on the list in the previous year... My fear though is that those who already have been working publicly to denigrate and demoralize the profession to push political and commercial agendas in higher education will use this as further fuel in their efforts. However, that is ancillary to my point.
Many professors are introverts who work in a field where major proportion of our responsibilities involves weekly, if not daily, public speaking. This can be in front of a small seminar of graduate students, a moderately sized class of upperclassmen, or an auditorium sized freshman level course with hundreds of students. Public speaking is one of the most feared and stressful responsibilities for any occupation. Many people can relate to he feeling of nervousness or fear before being forced to stand and speak before and audience. Of course, those who do this frequently become accustomed to public speaking, and standing before classes becomes more normal with preparation and repetition. However, it never becomes relaxing, especially for those, i.e. the majority of professors and as much as 30-50% of the world population, whose personality causes them to feel discomfort in public and social situations and who are most comfortable and productive in small groups or individually. Teaching is quite exhausting for introverts.
Extroverts may think this sounds rather strange. These individuals are comfortable in social and public situations and actually thrive on interaction with many people. Extroverts may perceive the stresses of a professor's occupation differently than introverts. Thus, the conclusions of a study about what career is most or least stressful could ultimately be directly related to the personalities of the people conducting the research. Can we be so unbiased to ignore our own personality and truly put ourselves in the shoes of others with different personalities and perceive how they relate and feel in the course of their lives? Are we empathetic enough to cross the boundary of personality to understand another person's internal world? How often does this personality issue arise in science or just daily life?
Subjectivity can enter research during the researcher's observations and analysis of data. This is due to our own internal biases about what we chose to observe, what is important in our observations, how we feel about the observed or the subject of the research, and the ultimate meaning of the results. Our perception of the world is based on, among other things, our environment as a child, and our genetically ingrained temperament or personality (i.e. the nature and nurture influences).
I just finished reading the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. As an introvert, I identified with the book and found it interesting and a valuable read for anyone, but especially for extroverts who don't understand introverts, or people who you know who you think are introverted, but feel uncomfortable with themselves due to the pressures of an extroverted society. Having just finished this book it was fresh in my mind and when I was alerted to a highly publicized ranking of the 10 Least Stressful Jobs of 2013 as ranked by Careercast.com. See link below:
10 Least Stressful Jobs of 2013
So it turns out that being a professor is the least stressful job in 2013, not sure why it is this year but wasn't even on the list in the previous year... My fear though is that those who already have been working publicly to denigrate and demoralize the profession to push political and commercial agendas in higher education will use this as further fuel in their efforts. However, that is ancillary to my point.
Many professors are introverts who work in a field where major proportion of our responsibilities involves weekly, if not daily, public speaking. This can be in front of a small seminar of graduate students, a moderately sized class of upperclassmen, or an auditorium sized freshman level course with hundreds of students. Public speaking is one of the most feared and stressful responsibilities for any occupation. Many people can relate to he feeling of nervousness or fear before being forced to stand and speak before and audience. Of course, those who do this frequently become accustomed to public speaking, and standing before classes becomes more normal with preparation and repetition. However, it never becomes relaxing, especially for those, i.e. the majority of professors and as much as 30-50% of the world population, whose personality causes them to feel discomfort in public and social situations and who are most comfortable and productive in small groups or individually. Teaching is quite exhausting for introverts.
Extroverts may think this sounds rather strange. These individuals are comfortable in social and public situations and actually thrive on interaction with many people. Extroverts may perceive the stresses of a professor's occupation differently than introverts. Thus, the conclusions of a study about what career is most or least stressful could ultimately be directly related to the personalities of the people conducting the research. Can we be so unbiased to ignore our own personality and truly put ourselves in the shoes of others with different personalities and perceive how they relate and feel in the course of their lives? Are we empathetic enough to cross the boundary of personality to understand another person's internal world? How often does this personality issue arise in science or just daily life?
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Fragility
The cliche that life is precious is often tossed around in common conversation, but often the full weight of this statement isn't appreciated by those uttering the phrase or those listening. In a casual conversation with friends or family the occasion may arise to repeat the cliche, but the current circumstances of our lives or our own psyche's need to maintain optimism in the face of our own mortality allows us to shrug-off its constant presence. On the one hand this is a blessing to not be cognizant of our fragile existence, but on the other it may result in a habit to "fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way".
Yesterday I was reminded again of our mortality in two distinct and different ways. First, my father called (my nickname for him is the grim reaper, because he is always the one to call with bad news) from his cell phone, which he never does, always from the landline, to tell me that my mother had been in a car accident. She was driving to the store just a few miles from her home when another woman t-boned her, forcing my mother's car off the road, through a fence, a shrub, and into a tree. My mother sustained a broken rib, broken hand, and the car was totaled. Coincidentally, my brother totaled my first car at this very same intersection over 20 years ago.
This reminded me of my own brush with death nearly a decade ago, when a tractor trailer rear-ended me, the car in front of me, and 3 other tractor trailers in front of them on an interstate highway. Two people in the car in front of mine were killed instantly. I was knocked unconscious, with a concussion, multiple cuts, bruises, and with damage to my shoulder and back that bothers me to this day. My car was totaled, and my girlfriend at the time was left with PTSD, she stayed conscious through the whole ordeal while I remember nothing. The last thing I do remember from that day was my girlfriend telling me she needed to use the bathroom, and I told her I would stop at the next rest area or exit. We never made it that far, but that could have been the last thing I ever communicated in my life and I never would have known.
The second reminder was the film The Impossible, the true story of one European family, on vacation for the Christmas holiday in Thailand, who were caught in the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004. The film was quite moving in the intimate details of one family's ordeal, separation during the event, physical and emotional pain, and eventual reunion and escape. It was stark in its depiction of the suddenness and overwhelming power of the tsunami, complete destruction of the coastline, immediate mortality and long-term suffering of the injured, overwhelming of the healthcare infrastructure, and the survivors' desperate searches for sometimes living, but frequently deceased relatives.
Imagine, in the course of any normal event in your life, going to work, school, the store, vacation, or just at home, and an act of nature wrecks complete destruction on everything natural and human-made in your surroundings. Vacation for the holidays and 230,000-280,000 people are killed around you and a paradise is swept out to sea. Driving to see your family for vacation, and a tractor trailer slams into the back of your car, forcing it underneath another semi and removing your head from your shoulders. These are the everyday realities we live with on this planet. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, car accidents, firearms...
Our brains are adapted to compartmentalize the fear of pain and mortality from the day-to-day living of our lives. It is perplexing that we are such intelligent creatures, able to collect data, long-term memory, language to communicate events around the world, knowing the constant risks we take and uncontrollable events that may occur, but we can so easily ignore the undeniable fragility of our existence. We take constant unnecessary risks with our lives, driving, drinking, smoking, drugs, the search for an adrenaline rush, living in earthquake or tsunami prone locations, or places prone to hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. But we are able to compartmentalize fear of pain and mortality so that we can take risks to survive, improve our situation in life, contribute to our society, and enjoyment. Where would we be if humans never took risks? We would be hiding in a hollowed-out log, or a hole in the ground, only peaking out when we were sure all was safe.
Our lives are insignificant against the size and time-spans of the universe. Births and deaths make no impact on the billions of light years of space and millions of millions of stars and planets. On the one hand, one might then conclude that since life is inconsequential on the grandest scale that we could take any risk we please and take meaninglessness to a mortal conclusion. Of course this is a fools conclusion, because it only increases the probability of a shortened existence and a self-fulfilling prophecy of an inconsequential meaningless life. On the other hand, it puts into perspective how short our lives are, and how we should try everyday to wring out of life every last drop, living constantly for now, living to the fullest while we can. Wasting nothing, especially our time on the foolish. Always striving to make our lives have the greatest meaning to ourselves as we possibly can.
How much are you willing to risk and energy are you willing to spend to die satisfied that you have created as much meaning out of your short days as your mind and body would allow? Will your risks be foolhardy and wasteful, or strategic and productive?
Yesterday I was reminded again of our mortality in two distinct and different ways. First, my father called (my nickname for him is the grim reaper, because he is always the one to call with bad news) from his cell phone, which he never does, always from the landline, to tell me that my mother had been in a car accident. She was driving to the store just a few miles from her home when another woman t-boned her, forcing my mother's car off the road, through a fence, a shrub, and into a tree. My mother sustained a broken rib, broken hand, and the car was totaled. Coincidentally, my brother totaled my first car at this very same intersection over 20 years ago.
This reminded me of my own brush with death nearly a decade ago, when a tractor trailer rear-ended me, the car in front of me, and 3 other tractor trailers in front of them on an interstate highway. Two people in the car in front of mine were killed instantly. I was knocked unconscious, with a concussion, multiple cuts, bruises, and with damage to my shoulder and back that bothers me to this day. My car was totaled, and my girlfriend at the time was left with PTSD, she stayed conscious through the whole ordeal while I remember nothing. The last thing I do remember from that day was my girlfriend telling me she needed to use the bathroom, and I told her I would stop at the next rest area or exit. We never made it that far, but that could have been the last thing I ever communicated in my life and I never would have known.
The second reminder was the film The Impossible, the true story of one European family, on vacation for the Christmas holiday in Thailand, who were caught in the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004. The film was quite moving in the intimate details of one family's ordeal, separation during the event, physical and emotional pain, and eventual reunion and escape. It was stark in its depiction of the suddenness and overwhelming power of the tsunami, complete destruction of the coastline, immediate mortality and long-term suffering of the injured, overwhelming of the healthcare infrastructure, and the survivors' desperate searches for sometimes living, but frequently deceased relatives.
Imagine, in the course of any normal event in your life, going to work, school, the store, vacation, or just at home, and an act of nature wrecks complete destruction on everything natural and human-made in your surroundings. Vacation for the holidays and 230,000-280,000 people are killed around you and a paradise is swept out to sea. Driving to see your family for vacation, and a tractor trailer slams into the back of your car, forcing it underneath another semi and removing your head from your shoulders. These are the everyday realities we live with on this planet. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, car accidents, firearms...
Our brains are adapted to compartmentalize the fear of pain and mortality from the day-to-day living of our lives. It is perplexing that we are such intelligent creatures, able to collect data, long-term memory, language to communicate events around the world, knowing the constant risks we take and uncontrollable events that may occur, but we can so easily ignore the undeniable fragility of our existence. We take constant unnecessary risks with our lives, driving, drinking, smoking, drugs, the search for an adrenaline rush, living in earthquake or tsunami prone locations, or places prone to hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. But we are able to compartmentalize fear of pain and mortality so that we can take risks to survive, improve our situation in life, contribute to our society, and enjoyment. Where would we be if humans never took risks? We would be hiding in a hollowed-out log, or a hole in the ground, only peaking out when we were sure all was safe.
Our lives are insignificant against the size and time-spans of the universe. Births and deaths make no impact on the billions of light years of space and millions of millions of stars and planets. On the one hand, one might then conclude that since life is inconsequential on the grandest scale that we could take any risk we please and take meaninglessness to a mortal conclusion. Of course this is a fools conclusion, because it only increases the probability of a shortened existence and a self-fulfilling prophecy of an inconsequential meaningless life. On the other hand, it puts into perspective how short our lives are, and how we should try everyday to wring out of life every last drop, living constantly for now, living to the fullest while we can. Wasting nothing, especially our time on the foolish. Always striving to make our lives have the greatest meaning to ourselves as we possibly can.
How much are you willing to risk and energy are you willing to spend to die satisfied that you have created as much meaning out of your short days as your mind and body would allow? Will your risks be foolhardy and wasteful, or strategic and productive?
Perspective
There are an estimated 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 100 sextillion, stars in the universe. It is also estimated to be
greater than 150 billion light years in diameter (a light year is 9,500,000,000,000 km) and almost 14 billion
years old.
The circumference of the Earth is ~40,000 km, or 0.000000004% the distance of a light year. Consider the distances you are familiar with that seem far or difficult to overcome due to lack of funds to pay for a plane ticket or time off from work or school. These distances are nothing against the universe. The life span of the average North American, ~80 years, is 0.000000005% the age of the universe. Consider all the events you will experience in your life. Your life span is unrecorded against the history of the universe.
Imagine, 110 years ago our species hadn't made a plane that could fly. By boat it took weeks to months to circumnavigate the globe. The fastest speed reached by a manned winged aircraft is 7,273 km/h in 1967 in the X-15, or a speed fast enough to fly around the globe in 5 1/2 hours. The fastest speed ever achieved by a human was in the Apollo 10 spaceship, ~39,000 km/h. Voyager 1 has traveled past the edge of our solar system at a speed slightly over 62,000 km/h, and the fastest speed ever reached by a man-made object was Helios 2 at 241,400 km/h.
Even at traveling as fast as Helios 2 it would take 6450 years to reach our closest neighbor star Alpha Centauri, which is a little over 4 light years from our sun. Perhaps the closest solar system with a planet in a habitable zone orbit is Tau Ceti, 12 light years away.
Will our species ever be more than a grain of sand on the beach of the universe? Will we ever be able to even get from our grain of sand to the one next to ours? The average animal species has a life-span of 1 to 2 million years, and we have already blown about 200,000 of those years just to get to this point. We better get moving...
The circumference of the Earth is ~40,000 km, or 0.000000004% the distance of a light year. Consider the distances you are familiar with that seem far or difficult to overcome due to lack of funds to pay for a plane ticket or time off from work or school. These distances are nothing against the universe. The life span of the average North American, ~80 years, is 0.000000005% the age of the universe. Consider all the events you will experience in your life. Your life span is unrecorded against the history of the universe.
Imagine, 110 years ago our species hadn't made a plane that could fly. By boat it took weeks to months to circumnavigate the globe. The fastest speed reached by a manned winged aircraft is 7,273 km/h in 1967 in the X-15, or a speed fast enough to fly around the globe in 5 1/2 hours. The fastest speed ever achieved by a human was in the Apollo 10 spaceship, ~39,000 km/h. Voyager 1 has traveled past the edge of our solar system at a speed slightly over 62,000 km/h, and the fastest speed ever reached by a man-made object was Helios 2 at 241,400 km/h.
Even at traveling as fast as Helios 2 it would take 6450 years to reach our closest neighbor star Alpha Centauri, which is a little over 4 light years from our sun. Perhaps the closest solar system with a planet in a habitable zone orbit is Tau Ceti, 12 light years away.
Will our species ever be more than a grain of sand on the beach of the universe? Will we ever be able to even get from our grain of sand to the one next to ours? The average animal species has a life-span of 1 to 2 million years, and we have already blown about 200,000 of those years just to get to this point. We better get moving...
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Inheritance
The film Django (the Tarantino version) struck a cord with me this evening for one fundamental reason. I am the descendant of people who owned slaves in the American South prior to the Civil War. Not large slave holders with columned mansions and thousands of acres of land, but small scale middle class crackers with a clapboard house full of children and a small handful of slaves obtained by marrying a woman from a more prosperous family. All the same, slave holders and southern loyalists who also fought in the "War of Northern Aggression".
Tarantino makes good films, from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction up through Inglourious Basterds and even Django, but with this last the murder and vengeance was directed closer to home. The vengeance of someone so inhumanely treated, as a representative of all those victimized by slavery, feels cathartic, as if our society can overcome the past by accepting theatrical revenge by the oppressed (as if theatrical vengeance 150 years hence makes a difference to those who lived and died at the hands of their oppressors). However, concomitantly, horror at the attitudes and deeds of the theatrical oppressors and cheering for vengeance serves to reinforce continued anger directed at Caucasians and reinforce the inherited guilt that some of that race carry in their consciousness. Can we overcome the past if our representations of the past contain murder and destruction of characters inhabiting that past?
Inherited guilt is the guilt of descendants of ancestors who performed sinful, illegal, or immoral acts. From the Holocaust, the gulags in the former Soviet Union, genocide against Native Americans, to slavery, around the world individuals, groups, races, and nations have raped, destroyed, and murdered throughout history. How do the living deal with the deeds of their fathers, mothers, grandparents, great great great grandparents, etc...?
The following two links are about inherited guilt. The first is more philosophical, and makes some interesting points about the potential absurdity of inheriting moral guilt. The second is specific to descendants of Germans who were integral to the Nazi Holocaust.
Inherited Guilt
Nazi Legacy
A descendant of a commander at Auschwitz, Rainer Hoess, is quoted at the end of the article as saying, "To receive the approval of someone who survived those horrors and knows for sure that it wasn't you, that you didn't do it. For the first time you don't feel fear or shame but happiness, joy, inner joy." But who is alive to remove blame and guilt for descendants of American slave owners? Can descendants of former slaves have the same effect of removing the inherited guilt, or is the first person effect lost? Whether or not it is absurd for following generations to feel guilt for their ancestor's deeds, the feeling still exists. Maybe it is a minor burden to have to carry in the face of the burden carried by African or Native Americans, or Jews, or...how many millions more victimized through history?
Inherited guilt is the guilt of descendants of ancestors who performed sinful, illegal, or immoral acts. From the Holocaust, the gulags in the former Soviet Union, genocide against Native Americans, to slavery, around the world individuals, groups, races, and nations have raped, destroyed, and murdered throughout history. How do the living deal with the deeds of their fathers, mothers, grandparents, great great great grandparents, etc...?
The following two links are about inherited guilt. The first is more philosophical, and makes some interesting points about the potential absurdity of inheriting moral guilt. The second is specific to descendants of Germans who were integral to the Nazi Holocaust.
Inherited Guilt
Nazi Legacy
A descendant of a commander at Auschwitz, Rainer Hoess, is quoted at the end of the article as saying, "To receive the approval of someone who survived those horrors and knows for sure that it wasn't you, that you didn't do it. For the first time you don't feel fear or shame but happiness, joy, inner joy." But who is alive to remove blame and guilt for descendants of American slave owners? Can descendants of former slaves have the same effect of removing the inherited guilt, or is the first person effect lost? Whether or not it is absurd for following generations to feel guilt for their ancestor's deeds, the feeling still exists. Maybe it is a minor burden to have to carry in the face of the burden carried by African or Native Americans, or Jews, or...how many millions more victimized through history?
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