Yale has a wonderful writing class called Daily Themes. This class has been taught at Yale for over 100 years and requires students to write a story each day of about 500 words. I always wanted to take the class but never did. So I started to do some of the writing on my own based on the prompts my friend Aaron Gertler online from the 2015 class. My favorite one so far is:
Create a conversation between two characters in which everything said on either side is in the form of a question and every question advances the conversation. Avoid rhetorical questions and repetitions.
I hadn’t realized this but the instructor had put in a link to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s “Questions” game — which was what popped into my head as well. With that preamble, I now give you…
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at 40
How did we get here?
Weren’t we promised a happy and fulfilled life if we just gave our life to the company?
Isn’t that why we went to business school?
Wasn’t that the promise once we got out?
Do you feel likely we have climbed a giant mountain up through the clouds only to see more mountain?
Do you think we are at the top of the mountain and can finally see clearly?
Are we getting close to the end?
Do you feel like we are in that Tom Stoppard play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?”
Or maybe Godot?
So what do we do now?
Should we change our focus and get off the hedonic treadmill?
But what would we do then?
Don’t Zen monks talk about this problem?
Could we leverage some of that?
Why do you always have to talk in business speak?
Aren’t you afraid of death?
Aren’t we dying every minute?
Do you think that’s the secret – living completely in the moment?
Is there any other way?
Why don’t we treat every moment as our last by being fearless and vulnerable and not afraid to fail?
Are you saying failure is good?
How can you have anything valuable without failure?
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (audible) is the amazing story of Robert Peace, a prodigy who grew up in inner city Newark, got into Yale, excelled there and ended up dead as a drug dealer back in Newark.
It’s a journey into a world that I’ve never really known, except for the Yale section which seems pretty accurate. The author, Jeff Hobbs, Rob’s Yale roommate wrote this story mainly to understand what happened to Rob and to share it with others. After Rob’s funeral, many people saw this amazing man as just another drug dealer but Jeff started getting so many stories that he decided to write a book. Jeff does the most amazing job digging through the story. He interviews Rob’s drug dealer friends who were forbidden from attending the wedding. He interviewed Rob’s boss when he was a drug dealer. He interviewed Yale masters and deans. And he got a whole lot of material from Rob’s secret society friends who he’d told his life story.
What’s amazing is that as much as you’d like the author to give an answer, he doesn’t. It’s frustrating but makes it that much more worthwhile. It’s a book about listening, not talking. Jeff talks about not giving answers here:
Maria Popova talks about how rare it is to not give answers and live with uncertainty in the first of her 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings. She says that we live in a culture where people are pressured to have an opinion, even when they have no basis for that opinion. Because they’re uncomfortable saying “I don’t know,” they fake it and just regurgitate something they read or saw on TV. They don’t invest the time to truly have their own opinion because they don’t feel comfortable staying in that nebulous zone of uncertainty. But, she says, “It’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.” For a great little blog post on the value of uncertainty, read Maria’s musing on John Keats and “Negative Capability.”
If you want to see the opposite, take a look at this guy who thinks he has the answer. In one of the most jarring questions I’ve seen in a long time, he wants Jeff to comment on his theory that Rob Peace had a death wish. It’s clear that the questioner is not comfortable living with uncertainty.
Read the book and wallow in this unfamiliar space with wonderful characters, no answers and no heroes.
I created this card around 2015. I wanted to show my creativity off when I met someone, rather than just tell them where I worked. I wanted to own my own personal brand.
I came across these cards from Apple online. The card read, “Your customer service just now was exceptional. I work for the Apple Store and you’re exactly the kind of person we’d like to talk to. If you’re happy where you are, I’d never ask you to leave. But if you’re thinking about a change, give me a call. This could be the start of something great.”
I loved the sentiment, so I borrowed it for my own cards and made this:
But where did I get the idea of a personal card in the first place?
It was the summer of 1999 and Merrill Ford gave me her calling card at the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA). The IDCA was the forerunner to TED—Richard Saul Wurman wanted to head the IDCA, but they didn’t let him, so he went off and started TED instead.
A calling card is different from a business card, slightly larger and with different dimensions. People used to leave it at a house when visiting someone who wasn’t home, a small note that you’d called.
My team had won the student design competition by creating a pen that transcribes what you write, and we were presenting our idea. These are pretty typical now, but they were a novel concept in 1999.
I was walking down the street with my friend Jeremy when we were stopped by three older people. “What are you doing walking!” they said. “You should come to lunch with us.”
So we went.
We started talking. Merrill gave me her calling card. The naïve 21-year-old I was, asked “Do you ski?”
I didn’t realize how silly a question it was at the time. I didn’t have Google then, and it took me years to realize that I was being taken out to lunch by some of the founding members of the Aspen community.
Merrill said, “Of course, but not since the injury.”
She walked with a cane, but not because she was old. She’d been one of the first Obermeyer ski models. Merrill had been married to Stein Eriksen, one of the most famous skiers. But she was in a horrible car crash in 1973 and since then, walked with a cane.
Merrill was sitting next to her boyfriend, Major General Robert Taylor, who everyone called “The General.”
Merrill would tease that people asked when she and The General were going to get married. “When I get pregnant,” Merrill would say. She was in her early 70s at the time. They eventually married in 2001.
The General said, “I came out to Aspen to ski. I’d learned to love the sport when I was in Europe in World War II. But now that I’m 85, my knees can’t take it anymore.”
Then we got to Ruthie. She said, “No. I don’t ski much.”
Then Merrill teased Ruthie: “Oh come on Ruthie. They named the second run on the mountain after you.”
It’s true! The third member of their group was Ruth Brown. The first run on the mountain was Roch Run. It was cut by volunteers in 1937 and was steep and difficult—the only other option was a sideslip down Spar Gulch. A decade later, that was still the only way down. But, as Ruthie told the Aspen Times, “To be perfectly frank, I was never a great, fabulous skier. All I did was just go down and have fun. I wanted to get down the mountain.” So she gave $5,000 to the Aspen Skiing Corporation to cut a kinder, gentler way down in the summer of 1948. Ruthie’s Run opened on December 16, 1948, with Ruthie leading the way, snowplowing down through 3 feet of powder.
That’s why I made my own cards in 2015. Not to show off where I worked, but because Merrill Ford taught me that the best cards say “I’d like to know you better.”
They’ve all passed on now. The general in 2003, Merrill and Ruthie both in 2010, just two months apart. I still have Merrill’s calling card. And at Aspen, Ruthie’s Run is still the kinder, gentler way down the mountain.
What amazes me is how casually they invited us in. They were founders of Aspen, married to Olympic champions, had ski runs named after them. And they treated two college kids like we belonged at their table.
This a post I wrote in 2017. I figured I’d publish it now given the unrest on campus.
In the last few years, there’s been an increasingly polarizing discussion around freedom of speech and values in the US — especially on college campuses. It reminded me that in contrast to the he said / she said of political debate, Yale took a much more thoughtful view on the topic starting 4 decades ago.
Yale’s President Peter Salovey referenced these two issues in his freshman addresses of 2014: On Freedom of Expression at Yale and 2015: On Calhoun College. As the debate on these subjects get’s less and less civil, I thought it would be good to take the long view here.
“Daddy, what is the meaning of life?” says the child.
“It’s complicated,” says the dad.
“Why don’t you ask Google?”
Laugh if you will but the question makes perfect sense to kids. Google knows everything doesn’t it? “What’s the weather?,” “How do I get to San Francisco?”, and even “Why is the sky blue?” The big question is: “What doesn’t Google know?” Or, stated another way, “What knowledge can’t we outsource to Google?”
Knowing Facts vs. Gaining Understanding
It really comes down to two different kinds of knowledge: knowing facts and gaining understanding. The Farnam Street blog has a good description of this and there’s a great video of Richard Feynman explaining it. In summary:
Knowing Facts. You know what something is called and what it looks like. This is the type of information that Google is very good at.
Gaining Understanding. Taking various bits of information and really making it your own? This is the type of thing that you can’t ask Google because it’s about changing who you are (i.e., learning).
One good way to know the difference is the difficulty of what you’re reading or watching. If you can read it quickly you’re probably reading for facts. Reading for understanding requires you to sit down at the foot of the author and realize that things may not make sense in the beginning. I think of true learning as fundamentally changing myself. Kind of like in the Terminator 2 movie where the T-1000 changes his shape in the face of adversity.
Knowing Facts
So what does Google know:
Define a word (like epistemology)?
What’s happening in the news?
Who starred in the princess bride?
When is Mothers Day?
How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?
Rad Bradbury had a great section on knowing facts in Fahrenheit 451. The book is a metaphor on how books can be explosive with ideas. But the government can provide so many facts that people don’t have room for ideas:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
Filling in the Gaps
Data and facts can be useful but you need a framework to use them. William Poundstone has a great book on the topic called Head in the Clouds: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy. Poundstone’s key point in the book is that Google can’t teach you what you need to Google. In order to do that, you need a framework of understanding. Facts are like bricks in a wall of knowledge. There can be some gaps and the wall will maintain its structural integrity. But if we remove too many, you have bricks hanging in midair and the wall collapses.
Gaining Knowledge
Gaining knowledge is about more than gathering facts. The best guide to gaining knowledge is from How To Read A Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren. The book was written in 1940 and revised in 1972 and it holds up incredibly well. The key idea is that to read a book well, you don’t just read the words or learn the key points. You need to understand the knowledge inside that book and let it change you — which takes effort. For a summary of the key points, the Farnam Street blog does a good write up. But if you really want to learn from these guys, you really have to read the book.
In short, the book says that an engaged reader needs to ask the following questions:
What type of book am I reading? What do I hope to gain by reading it?
What is the author’s high level points / argument?
How does the author make this argument? At this point you don’t agree or disagree with the author by bringing any predefined prejudices to the argument.
After reading the whole argument, going back and asking “Is it true in whole or in part?”
For the pieces that you find true, “What are you going to do about it and how does it change your world view?”
In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury talks about what makes an engaged reader. These are the people the government is concerned about. As one of the rebels says, there are three things needed to engage with a book:
Quality Information: “What does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more `literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail.”
Leisure: “[When] you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four wall televisor…. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!'”
Action: “The right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two. “
If this all sounds difficult, that’s the point. You can’t expect to have other people do your thinking for you. You need to pose questions and answer them. You need to argue with the author once you’ve understood him or her.
Why is this Important?
Google in many ways is like the world’s most awesome encyclopedia or your friend with a photographic memory who watches TV all the time. He’s a great guy to have around but not someone you should trust with important decisions. In an age when you can type a few keystrokes and feel like you’re changing the world it’s hard to put in all that effort.
But getting back to the original question, the reason that Google can’t answer “What is the meaning of life?” is that it needs to be figured out by living. It’s a question that’s only answered by learning and discussion. Basically, it requires gaining knowledge throughout your life.
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”.
In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Updated 9/2020: With all the technology we have today, you’d think that Big Brother would be even more powerful. We see the government of China doing this with a Social Credit System. Russia seems to have taken a different tack with the creation of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian Troll Farm, a more grassroots approach to getting people to align with the current regime. The New York Times published a great expose on The Agency and also has a narration on The Daily Podcast.
From Lewis Menand’s review of Smart, Faster, Better, I learned that all self help books have the same goal — to get us to be the people we know we should be. These books don’t have have any new solutions — they just reiterate common sense through the current cultural or businesses lenses. Menand points out that Dale Carnegie’s famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People (which I love) could be summed up in the sentence “If you are nice to people, they will like you.” But, he continues, the purpose of these books is not “What would Jesus do? but How, exactly, would He do it?” Carnegie’s book has some great tips on how to be nice to people like, “Be a good listener and focus on what the other person is interested in.” To me, it’s a fundamental point that none of these books, as much as they try, have the answer — we already know the answer. But they do have some good tips and tricks on how help us anyway.
We are currently in an attention economy. Companies like Google, Facebook and many others are trying to convince you to spend as much time as possible on the web viewing ads. This is not in your best interest.
My Solution: (Go to Medium for the Full Story): I figured out how to use micropayments to replace Google Display ads with my To Do list. Building on an idea Matt Cutts had on his blog, I used Google Contributor and Remember The Milk to substitute advertisements with my To Do list. Now I have my To Do list follow me around the Internet. It’s just like a persistent targeted ad that won’t leave me alone. It’s Awesome!
Manoush Zomorodi’s Solution: Manoush Zomorodi has a podcast called Note to Self where she focuses on how people relate to technology. There’s a great video of Manoush from the GEL conference which talks about how to disconnect from the internet. If you want to learn more about how to reclaim your time and be more creative take a look at Bored and Brilliant and Infomagical.
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