Things Worth Fighting For

A rather long article about courage, and fighting for what you believe in. (And if you don’t like reading, there’s an audio version available on the link).

Most (most, not all) of this works even if you replace America with India, btw.

A few key quotes (that worked for me, might not work for you – read/listen to the whole thing for yourself to decide):

1. One of the core lessons of what’s happening right now in Ukraine is that fighting for noble causes matters—indeed, it is the only thing that matters. It can mean the difference between life and death. Between freedom and slavery.
2. The first is that one can acknowledge the lies and the hypocrisies of our experts and our institutions. I do. But acknowledging it says nothing about the reality that Russia is actually bombing maternity hospitals. That it is killing journalists.

And if you have hardened yourself to that—if you hate us or part of us more than you hate that—then you have lost the plot. Then you are justifying the unjustifiable.

The second thing is that you can oppose the lies and the hypocrisies without giving up on America and its exceptional proposition. Indeed, the way to recover America isn’t to become moral relativists or isolationists or apologists for evil. It’s to look our moral and practical failings in the face and fix them.

3. societies that are conquered from outside can recover. But societies that destroy themselves from within cannot.
4. Reckoning with the flaws and failings of past generations, grappling with our history are part of the civilization for which we are fighting. But that cannot be confused for a second with the zeal to purge and purify, to cancel and punish and tear down, to the nihilists who say we have to repudiate the tools that allow us to improve and progress and forgive. The tools that have made our civilization the freest in all of history.
5. There are people who fought very hard for the freedoms and privileges that we have. And a lot of Americans are using those freedoms to turn on other Americans. To suggest that disagreeing about the war makes them traitors.

Others are sleepwalking. Giving them up without a second thought. That’s what Putin and the rest of the world’s tyrants are counting on. They are counting on the fact that the superpower that considers receiving groceries in under an hour its major achievement won’t interrupt a good online sale for anyone else’s sake.
(In this point, replace America with India, and see what happens to your worldview)

Ageing vs longevity

What a great interview with folks who are actually trying to solve the problem of ageing better, not just living longer!

1. The life course is a social, cultural construction. We can put these extra years anywhere we want, and we can then begin to chart a course forward that identifies the challenges that come about because of longer lives and start finding solutions. It should not be focused only on old age. Rather we need to envision healthy, engaged century-long lives and modify the world so that most people achieve them.

2. Our educational systems were built for young people. We didn’t have public education in the United States until the early 20th century, and initially states required children to complete only a few years of school. Now high school is the end of required education, when you’re reaching 17 or 18 years old. Even if you extend your formal education into your mid-20s, that doesn’t make sense if your working life extends for many decades, especially during a historical time when information generation and technological advances are so rapid.
It did make sense, however, if you were going to live to 50, which was the case at the beginning of the 20th century. It made sense to follow those kinds of norms: get an education early; get a job; work like a dog; retire, if you’re lucky, for a couple years; and then die. You try to make sure your kids survive, and you launch them off to start their own families, and so on. Again, it made a lot of sense for lives half as long as the ones we have. But if we’re going to live for 100 years, we’re going to work a lot longer. That means we need to learn a lot longer, and we should rethink what the educational system is about. We need to continue to learn throughout our lives.

3. When you take on a big social problem, whether it’s policing or the need for deep culture change around longevity, there isn’t a single discipline that’s going to solve it. There isn’t one expert who knows the answer. It takes multiple voices and perspectives to solve it and still more to implement needed changes. I think you’re exactly right that when people try to set up multidisciplinary programs in a generic way, it often fails. I think that’s because people struggle to talk across their languages, views, and perspectives.

4. The opportunity here is enormous. Longer lives mean we have more time to spend with our loved ones, to chase our dreams, to realize our goals. Living longer is a terrifically wonderful gift. We have this extra time, and it’s really up to us find ways to make sure it improves quality of life at all ages and stages. The great thing about this challenge is that if we address it, life gets even better at all stages. But we need to be creative and think out of the box. If we do, we can make century-long lives the best thing that ever happened to us.

Glass – Half or Full

Terry Pratchett on life & attitude

Professionalism

What a brilliant letter! Please do read it in full.
“I have to be comfortable with the amount of money you pay me, but it’s your money, and I insist that you be comfortable with it as well…
I trust you guys to be fair to me and I know you must be familiar with what a regular industry goon would want. I will let you make the final decision about what I’m going to be paid. How much you choose to pay me will not affect my enthusiasm for the record.”

On loss & grieving

Natasha Sholl tries to make sense of our attitudes to the grief of losing someone:

Human nature is to put boundaries around the loss, so we know it’s something that happens to other people. We say that they’re in a better place or to just remember the good times, because if we spoke the truth – that tragedy comes for us all, that sometimes life is random and cruel and painful and beyond comprehension – I mean, how would we even function? So, we speak in platitudes. They roll off our tongue. But they don’t help the person who is grieving; they exist to comfort the person on the other side of the loss, those bearing witness to the grief…
We tell those grieving to move on. We hear that we need to get over the loss. Over. On. As if it is something to be climbed. And this is what is missing from the language of loss. It fails to acknowledge that the grief is not a separate entity. It exists within us, and wherever we go, it will follow.

Role & behaviour

A great actor isn’t always one who steals the scene, but one who recognises the need of the hour/shot, and presents himself appropriately. Sometimes this requires stepping back to make the others look good. Likewise, a great manager!