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May
May 31 Please, someone — please! — explain why people write in all lowercase (even Emma Chamberlain's name is lowercase in her podcast's metadata — huh?). What is the vibe I'm supposed to feel from it? I probably don't read any of the all-lowercase prose long enough to feel the vibe; I click away because of painful editor-brain overload. Do you want me to struggle to understand where each sentence starts and ends? Are you intentionally disrespecting all the capitalization-worthy nouns, like your own name?
May 30 Anything will work, as long as you do.
The most beautiful places in conservative towns are individual homes. The most beautiful places in liberal cities are public spaces, like parks and libraries. No matter the political bent, places of worship are the most beautiful, especially in places with more money (like New York City). This is indicative of a few things: (1) conservatives want money to stay with private citizens, whereas liberals want money to serve the collective; (2) we use excess money to create beautiful things; (3) we believe that creating beautiful things will bring us closer to God.
May 29 Dreams are at once the most private and the most universal part of the human experience.
May 28 The most fruitful introspection involves three stages:
- Honest self-reflection ("Am I headed in the right direction?")
- Diligent self-projection ("Where is it that I truly want to go?")
- Action ("What is the next step I can take between who I am and who I want to become?")
Are you a cartographer (compass-person) or a conquistador (telescope person)?
There are mediums and catalysts for introspection. You need to find at least one of each that works for you. For me, the primary mediums are writing and conversation, and the best catalysts are silent stillness and mindful movement.
The truth will set you free. My truth will keep you caged.
The hyphen joins words into one. The en dash links words but keeps them separate. The em dash separates words, using as much space and distance as possible — without divorcing the two clauses with a period.
The hyphen conjoins. The end dash connects. The em dash appends.
There are only two ways you'll stop learning: (1) believing that you have it all figured out or (2) believing that you won't ever figure it out. The trick, if you want to keep learning forever, is to always be aware of how much you don't know and believe that you can figure it out. It's a paradoxical blend of intellectual humility and confidence: "I know nothing; I can learn anything."
May 27 "Nor"
"Nor" is the latest addition to my list of favorite words. But it's not because of how it sounds or for a curious etymological history. It's because of what it literally, logically means: not "or." This word is rare, because it has a perfect analogy with formal logic. Rather than writing !A & !B ("not A and not B"), you would write !(A | B)("not either A or B"), for simplicity and clarity. That second notation is like a logical contraction; it cuts out superfluous symbols to communicate the same meaning.
The word "nor" is the logical and linguistic opposite of "or," and it's a contraction: "not or" == "n'or" == "nor." And like all contractions, it makes meaning quicker, makes clauses more dense and simpler. Would you rather write/read:
- "Not A and not B"
- "Not either A or B"
- "Neither A nor B"?
I don't know about you, but I would not use option 1 or option 2. (Notice that the previous sentence doesn't use "nor," because of the preceding negative "not," and for the absence of "neither." Never use "nor" after "not," because "not" plus "nor" means "or": !(!A & !B) ("not either not A and not B") == A | B ("A or B"). That'd be the opposite of what you mean to say.
May 26 Your sleep and dreams are a measure of the path. "How far are you from the person you want to be?" is the same question as "How well do you sleep at night?"
May 23 Why are we obsessed, in The West, with knowing why things are the way they are. How much better would our lives be if we spent a little less time learning why things are pleasurable, or how to optimize a morning, and more time feeling the pleasure and enjoying the morning?
Derek Thompson just asked on Twitter for theories explaining why relaxing by large bodies of water lowers your blood pressure. Maybe, instead of reading those scientific papers, he could drive to the beach and hang out with some friends in the sun — just an idea.
There are two types of non-duality. Most simply, they are: "both" and "neither." Either, both sides of the dichotomy are true, in some portion. Or, the entire dichotomy is an illusion, and truth only lies outside of it.
May 21 The voice of Van Nestiat: He's somehow both emphatic and self-conscious, calculated and authentic, reverential and grumpy.
The rules of grammar and mechanics are less like traffic laws and more like normative ethics. As a writer, you have a duty to make meaning with your words, and to do it as coherently, clearly, and concisely as you can. The rules of the English language equip you with all the tools you need to uphold your duty to your reader: effective meaning-making.
Ignoring the rules is wrong. Overriding the rules is only right if it is in the name of more effective meaning-making. Follow the moral law (the rules of English), if you want to do your duty the world (your readers).
On Meaty Hooks
Give the reader something to chew on right away. If your first sentence/paragraph goes down like a gulp of water, there's no reason to keep reading. Give your reader the sense — immediately — that there is more of this good-tasting thing to come.
"Call me Ishmael" (from Moby Dick) is such a good opening line for this exact reason: you instantly have a whole character to chew on, someone who is talking directly to you, someone you'll come to know deeply over the course of the story. You no doubt want to read on.
A good hook is like a bite of steak precisely as big as what you can fit in your mouth at once. You have to gnaw on a bit and salivate before you can break it up and get it down. By the time you swallow, there's another chunk of meat on the page ready for you to devour.
Compass vs. Telescope
There are two types of people: those who navigate with a compass and those who use a telescope.
The compass-people look down at their feet and peer into their hands and navigate life by asking, "Am I headed in the right direction."
The telescope-people peer through the looking glass into the distance and navigate life by asking, "Am I headed toward my destination."
Both types of people veer off course, sometimes losing their way and sometimes changing their heading, or choosing a different destination. When they lack direction, in the midst of aimlessness, the each recalibrate; the telescope-people ask, "What's the best way to get there?", and the compass people ask, "Which way should I go from here?"
May 20 The goal of a relationship isn't to be together forever. The goal is to be together every day, in a certain way: where you help each other grow more into yourselves. The goal is to grow through each other every day, into a version of yourself that is ever closer to your nature.
That goal is a little more difficult to achieve than not breaking up for as long as you shall live. And if you can no longer be together in that certain way, every day, it'd be better for both of you to part ways.
May 18 Hyphens are Heroes
"I went through it with a fine tooth comb."
"I've never heard dental floss described that way. What is this 'fine' brand of 'tooth combs' that you use?"
"My apologies, I miss-wrote and neglected the most versatile punctuation mark of them all. 'I went through it with a fine-tooth comb.'"
May 17 Warren Buffet's investment philosophy (in my words): Buy the cheapest eggs (as long as they're intact), and don't sell them until they hatch.
Anne Lammot in Bird by Bird:
"The one thing I knew for sure was that if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."
May 16 The ideal ought not to be that two become one flesh but that the two create a third flesh. Marriage is more about mating, building a family, and propagating the species than it is about two people melding into one bond through some conceptual promise. May the two create a third flesh and rear him/her to be capable of ten thousand things.
The tension in our society between the values of material success and homemaking can be summarized by how people misunderstand the message of The Wizard of Oz. Everyone quotes "You're not in Kansas anymore" as a way to say, "Congrats, you made it out!" But Dorothy's entire journey is one about getting back home (not just metaphorically but literally). The most important quote from the movie, its core message, comes at the climax: "There's no place like home." Dorothy wants to get back home, because there's no place like Kansas (for her).
The internal conflict is about how she sees her home and the people in it. She hates them at first and sees them as evil, restricting her and limiting her in life. But after going on a grand adventure with these characters' dream-equivalents in Oz, she learns that they love her, and that they will care for her and make sure she always finds her way back home.
May 15 Be careful confusing your subjects and objects. Your reader needs to know intuitively how your phrases/clauses relate to one another. You don't want your reader to stumble; you want them to cruise.
Take this example:
"The most western point in China is closer to Germany than the most eastern point in China."
This is an interesting fact, especially with a map, as in the original post. But the meaning is not clear from the language alone.
Here's the ambiguity: are we measuring the distance from Germany, for both the westernmost point and the easternmost point of China? Or, are we measuring the distance from the westernmost point of China, for both Germany and the easternmost point of China?
In other words, you could read this and think "Of course the westernmost point of China is closer to Germany than the easternmost point of China, because Germany is west of China!".
(Not to mention the confusion of "most western point," which is a sort of misnomer — it could be confused for "the most Western part" of China, which would make the entire sentence a commentary on culture rather than geography.)
Here's the best way to resolve this:
"The westernmost point of China is closer to Germany than it is to the easternmost point of China."
May 14 One of the best parts about being at altitude is seeing the shadows that clouds cast. From up there, you can see that a sunny day is just hours away. On the ground, though, you'd be in the midst of the dark or the rain, unaware of the light that surrounds you. This perspective-shift is a ripe source of gratitude and acceptance/detachment. Sometimes, you'll have the privilege of seeing a storm-front roll toward you, like a molasses-wave. It's a perspective that we're rarely afforded in life: accurate foresight. It's one that requires great effort; that perspective is a reward for great effort.
False summits are some of the toughest moments in life. The Universe makes you pause and ask: "Is this the mountain I really want to be climbing? If it is, do I have the will to make it to the summit?"
May 13 What Is Meta-Modernism?
In this stellar video essay, Thomas Flight explains meta-modernism, with the context of modernism and postmodernism in art and film. These cultural trends have never gone away; they just keep evolving in response to one another. And meta-modernism is a response to postmodernism that injects some of the sincerity and optimism you'd find in traditional (modernist) narratives.
Modernism: explicit values, duality of good and evil, straight-forward narrative structure
Postmodernism: self-conscious and -referential, ironic and cynical, morally ambiguous (e.g., anti-heroes), fragmented structure, subversion, often lacks clear resolution
Meta-modernism: self-aware, morally nuanced, winding and subversive structure but lands on a clear resolution, sincere and earnest on the whole
I've been thinking about Nolan's The Prestige a lot lately, and I'm not quite sure if it's postmodern or meta-modern. It's non-linear, definitely meta (with commentary about filmmaking through the metaphor of magic). It has a definitive conclusion with no mystery, but that resolution doesn't advocate for any certain values, really (rather than proving the way to tell a good story / do a good magic trick). It's probably postmodern for that reason: there's really no winner or loser except for the viewer, who no doubt enjoyed the ride of the movie.
Schrödinger Deadlines
As a teacher/professor, make it a feature of your class that for big assignments (papers/essays), the deadline given is true only half the time. Set a deadline, and then on the day it's due, reveal whether they have extra time to work on the piece of writing. This counteracts, and leverages, a feature of the human psyche: procrastination. It also opens up the opportunity for a rare outcome in an English class: if you extend the deadline by a week and the entire class already has a draft they were prepared to submit, then maybe they'll spend the week revising, making it an even better piece of writing.
May 12 We need to declare the meanings of these important Buddhist/Hindi terms. Sorry, Taylor, karma is not "a boyfriend" or "a relaxing thought."
Karma = The immutable, universal law of cause and effect
Dharma = Your divine duty (good karma comes from following the dharma)
Samsara = The cyclical world of death and rebirth, perpetuated by grasping and clinging to desires
Nirvana = The world liberated of craving and the illusions of appearance; the fruition of dharma and the realm of the awakened/enlightened
May 9 There's work, and then there's meta-work. Meta-work is higher leverage than what you do and get paid for day to day.
Meta-work is:
- Cold-emailing the recruiter to get an interview
- Rehearsing your speech 10 times ahead of your pay review
- Busting it after hours on a side-project to build out your portfolio
- Or distributing your work so that more people know about it, people who will surface new opportunities for you.
Meta-work is good for anyone to do, no matter your industry or your occupation. It's the type of work you don't get paid for, but it's the type of work that improves your pay. It's the kind of work that reveals to others what you're worth.
Don't just work and get paid. Give effort, energy, and time to the meta-work, so that you eventually get paid more for your work.
Use en dashes for salutations and quote attributions, not the em dash. Most style guides would suggest the em dash, but here's why that makes no sense:
- The em dash, with its many uses, is on the whole about interjecting with supplementary information. In the case of a quote attribution, the information is essential and not an interjection. It's the next logical step, whether it's the final line of an email ("– Garrett Kincaid") or attributes a quote to an author ("Speak your latent conviction..." – Ralph Waldo Emerson).
- The en dash in its normal function serves to join two things, visually and conceptually ("Did you see the McGregor–Mayweather fight?"). In other cases, it takes the place of linking words, like "to" while linking two things ("He rode on the London–Paris line."). That's its typical function, whereas the em dash is meant to separate one clause/phrase from another. The em dash visually and conceptually separates, whereas the en dash links.
- The author of a quote, for instance, is not an aside, as an em dash would suggest; it is the next logical piece of information your reader wants to know. Who said that? your reader asks immediately. "That quote is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson," you render concisely with an en dash: " – Ralph Waldo Emerson."
- The en dash takes the place of the words "attributed to," in the same way it does for "London to Paris line."
- In the case of both a quote attribution and a salutation, you are certainly linking two pieces of information: either a quote to its author, or the body of an email/message to the sender. You don't want these pieces of information to be more separate — visually or conceptually; you want them to be closer, to indicate that they are inextricably linked.
An all-timer from Emerson's "Self-Reliance":
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."
Writers don't write to get rich. If they have any financial motivation, it is to make enough money from writing so that they continue to do it until they die, meanwhile living a lifestyle they love.
I really appreciate and admire people who give specific compliments. It's a form of eloquence and a sign of empathy. Not only do they understand how their feelings well enough to articulate them in detail but they also choose the details that would elicit the most positive possible feelings in the recipient of the compliment (quelling their insecurities, validating their effort, affirming their values).
May 8 Introspection and a growth mindset in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
"With my tears go into your isolation, my brother. I love him who wants to create beyond himself and thereby perishes." – Nietzsche
May 7 One definition of enlightenment: it comes after the cessation of the desire to be otherwise or elsewhere.
"This craving to be otherwise, to be elsewhere, permeates the body, feelings, perceptions, will—consciousness itself. It is like the background radiation from the big bang of birth, the aftershock of having erupted into existence." (Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs)
May 6 I have the morals of a "good Christian boy," but I'm agnostic.
Monks are intronauts; shamans are psychonauts.
There's only one reason to give up something good: to go for something better. The problem is that you don't know how good it is until it's gone.
Spend your effort and resources on prevention, to avoid spending them on treatment. This goes for both mental and physical health.
May 3 Always returning to the still mind and subtle body...
May 2 Rush and hurry are modern inventions, not any older than the wristwatch. They are fabricated emotions. Urgency is innate, the motivational counterpart of hunger. But once the masses become well-fed and hunger turns figurative, you manufacture counterfeit forms of urgency, among them: rush and hurry.
(I always seem to have this brand of thought when I commute to New York City. Today, I happen to be 30 minutes early for breakfast with no tight deadlines for work, so I'm feeling especially zen and emotionally accomplished in contrast to my fellow commuters.)
May 1 Too often, writing feels like I'm trudging through a thick swamp. Words drip out slowly, like a waterfall in eternal winter — never to flow again. But after sitting with it long enough, the page springs to life. I start surprising and delighting myself with my words, and I wonder why I ever dreaded the work of writing.
Compression is not a measure of length but of density. It's the ratio of meaning to words, just as density is the ratio of mass to volume. That means there are only two ways to make a piece of writing more concise: either (1) fold more meaning into the same number of words or (2) express the same meaning with fewer words.
On the Horseshoe Effect
Opposites are closer than we think. It's easy to go from joyful in one moment to sorrowful in the next, from utter bliss to debilitating anxiety. It's easy for a society to go from authoritarianism to anarchy. That's because both extremes are farther from truth than they are to each other. Possibly the best example of this is "stank face." Disgust is one of the emotions that most influences behavior. If you are disgusted by something, you will avoid it at all costs. It's visceral; we can all recognize a look of disgust, and we never want to receive one. But "stank face" is an expression of disgust that means its opposite. Look at a jazz bassist mid-riff or B.B. King during a guitar solo, and you'll see a look of disgust in appreciation of the sound they're hearing. It's so good, so pleasurable, that it's disgusting. That face, that emotion straddles both ends of the horseshoe.
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