Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands came highly recommended. The title refers to the effect that being enslaved had on his grandmother, and Menakem traces the violence of racism through the specific perspectives of people on either end of racial conflicts. Beyond just explaining how racism affects all of us in
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A Puff of Absurdity: Seligman’s Hope Circuit
Martin Seligman is famous for a learned helplessness study I wrote about a few years back: In a famous experiment, dogs were put in a compartment and trained to jump a barrier when given an electric shock. After one or two tries, the dogs jumped the barrier immediately after being
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Anxiety
I just finished John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, which I read because he claimed it was his way of trying to put words around what it’s like to live with profound anxiety, and then I saw this article asking “Why are more American teens than ever suffering from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Absurdist Victory: All is Well
A while back I wrote about a video comparing Stoicism and Existentialism. The video also touched on different psychology principles developed from each philosophy. Stoicism is easily seen in CBT and REBT, which start with the premise that when we’re upset it’s because of our perception of things, not the things
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Comparing Existentialism and Stoicism
This summer, I went on one camping trip with a book on Stoicism, then another camping trip with a book on Existentialism, and I was intrigued by the many similarities. Then I came across this video that has some overlap with what I had noticed. As they say in the video,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Regret
I’ve taken many questionable risks in my life. I lean toward leading a life that’s lived fully over a safe and secure existence. Most I bounced back from easily from typical childhood falling from trees when I’ve climbed too high to dropping out of high school and somehow ending up
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Year that Kicked My Ass, and That Time My Ass Kicked Back
Well, it’s starting to kick back, ever so slowly. I went on another Wild Women adventure, this time to Georgian Bay to try my hand at kayaking for a change. I was with a whole new group of women, our ages spanning three decades and from a wide variety of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Taking Comfort in Stoicism
When thing take a turn for the worst, no philosophy helps me like re-reading the writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. I had a dream last night that I was at a bike show (about bicycles, not motorcycles), talking to a distance rider, when, after a long conversation, I
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Philosophy of Mr. Money Moustache
A friend pointed me towards this podcast in which Tim Ferriss interviews Mr. Money Moustache (MMM), a man who retired from work in his 30s to live on the interest from his investments and then got a significant following as a blogger. The podcast describes the kind of life I’ve
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Justified Worry
I’m going to be writing more personally for a bit. I have a lot to get off my chest. Literally. I’m getting a double mastectomy today and an oophorectomy for good measure (which sounds to me like something Willy Wonka might do), because I have all the fancy genes that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Desires and Commodities
I’ve just been reading books and watching films lately. I’ll write again soon. But check out this passage from The Obsolescence of Man by Gunther Anders, first published in 1956:
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The mere fact that I had no car and therefore could be caught…
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What’s a Mother to Do?
It’s always harder to have something taken away than to never have it in the first place. But still… A local high school is removing a few dozen students from the school bus route because the board realized the kids are within official walking distance to the school – 3.2
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On John Stuart Mill, Free Speech, and Climate Change
I got caught up in a few arguments about climate change recently that just reinforced to me, that there’s still such a strong bashlash against the entire idea that we’re unlikely to move forward quickly enough to be effective. Paper is trees! My school board is fundraising for the Philippines,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Stoic Environmentalism
I’m doing the Stoic Week thing this week. It’s just a matter of contemplating specific quotations each day. Even though I studied them years ago, and teach about them even, and maybe should have figured this all out long ago, I’m still stuck on the first reading. I’m a slow
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Humans: Too Invasive or Too Compassionate to Survive
In my last post, and elsewhere over the years, I went all Agent Smith and suggested that humans are a virus that can’t be contained. All other animals work within their environment to regulate their population. As long as people don’t mess things up by moving animals around (like bringing rabbits
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Stoic Resurgence
In reading a few other blogs lately, Stoicism has come up a few times, and I’m seeing it in a few books I’ve been reading lately too. Maybe it’ll stick this time. In Robin Hanson’s blog discussing why middle aged people are most pessimistic, I suggested that maybe it’s a
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