Back to the Old Normal?

As the covid-19 restriction policy has been loosened a bit, it feels like we could soon be back to "normal" life. But are we ready to welcome back our "old normal"? 

There has been a bunch of discussions about anxiety around going back to normal: 

。Some people expressed their anxiety towards re-attending social events after months of life without social interaction. 

。Some people worried that their work-life balance would be interrupted and that their quality of life would be crushed as they go back to a 9 to 5 office life. 

For me personally, I feel like we have taken a big rest and should be prepared for another phase of life, which is as usual fast-paced, productivity-oriented and success-driven. And this time it will definitely become tougher. 

 

Let's read this month's article: We shouldn’t go back to “normal.” Normal wasn’t good enough.

But there’s a second category of worry here. And this one, arguably, might be worth cultivating: the worry about returning to a global normal we’d rather not come back to. The pandemic broke open public discourse around issues that were either typically sidestepped — mental health struggles, for instance — or accepted with little resistance, like the rigidity of the modern workday. Will returning to normal life mean sweeping these hard conversations back under the rug?

As University of San Diego student Lily Yates told me, “I think people’s increased willingness to intentionally care more for their mental health during the pandemic reveals the problem of just how taboo it is during ‘normal’ times. We shouldn’t need to cite a global pandemic to take extra time for ourselves and set necessary boundaries at work and school. The idea that everyone is ‘okay’ at all times — and that we should pretend we are if we’re not — has been shattered, and it should stay that way.” 

John Berger About the Naked and the Nude

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. In John Berger's Ways of seeing, he argues that a woman’s social presence is very different from that of a man. Men treat women as objects. Men survey women, and how a woman presents herself determine how she will be treated.

In European oil painting, nude is an ever-recurring subject that particularly manifests how women have been seen as a sight. In today’s discussion, we will take a closer look at some of these paintings and discuss how certain ways of seeing construct women's sense of themselves and the world.

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Crème de la crème: the essence of life

 "In French, they have an expression: crème de la crème. ... The cream of the cream. It means the best of the best. The most important essence of life—that’s the crème de la crème. Get it? The rest is just boring and worthless." -- First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami 

Crème de la crème is quoted from Haruki Murakami's short novel First Person Singular. The full story drags one into Murakami's typically weird weird (in a good sense) world: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/cream

 

However, today we are not going to talk about the story. We will be delving into the topic of the essence of life, that is, or as Murakami called it, the crème de la crème.

 

Here is an overview of today's discussion:

1. What would you say is the essence of life or 'the cream of the cream'? 
2. Is it the 'cream of the cream' really the thing that makes our life good? 
3. What constitutes a good life? What are the elements? 
4. How does one approach creating a good life? Does it take time to learn? How do you learn it and where do you learn from? 

 

Rethinking Our Identity

Today's Guide

✨Be prepared to jump out of boiling water 

You probably have heard of this story. If you put a frog in lukewarm water and slowly heat it up, it won’t survive. The situation is changing but the frog lacks the ability to rethink it. A warm bath then becomes a death trap. 

Are we smarter than frogs? Are we able to sense these slow-boiling pots and get out of them? Probably not, if we are reluctant to rethink, as Grant suggested. 

So what to rethink exactly? 

You can rethink your career, your habits, your relationships and your identities. Plan for rethinking as if you are going to the doctor for an annual checkup. Nothing goes wrong normally, and you can keep working on whatever you’re up to. 

✨An identity checkup 

In today’s discussion, we will focus on rethinking of identity. Let’s watch the video again starting from 5:00. 

His story is relatable, isn’t it? You might have a similar version. There are some roles we desperately want to fit into, and yet we struggle a lot seeing ourselves in these roles. A fancy psychological term “identity foreclosure” was introduced here. Identity foreclosure refers to a situation when you settle too early on a sense of who you are and close your mind to alternatives selves.  It happens when you reject asking yourself with the thought, “If I am not a _______, who am I?“ The blank for Grant is 'diver'. But you can turn this question into an actual inquiry:

“If I am not a _______, who am I?“ (share)

✨Know your values 

But how? Grant’s method is simple but inspiring. He started by asking himself, what are my values? For him, his values were to grow, excel and contribute. 

Okay, so here let us take some seconds to think about a question: What are my values? 

Discerning where his values lie, Grant realized that he needn’t be a professional diver to grow, excel and contribute. Diving is a passion, not the purpose. By identifying his values, he opened his mind to new possible identities. Freeing himself from an old identity, he got time to dig into something else. Later on he became a psychologist, a professor and a amateur magician, where he grows, excels and contributes. 

Some questions to consider: Is your path leading you to these values? Does your current position help cultivate your prospects? Are you settling for a relationship that fails to comply with what you cherish the most?

The Pleasure of Ownership

Today, we are going to see how much pleasure we get from owning things. 

First, share an item and its story.  It can be a light bulb, a fan, a desk, a laptop, an oven, a CD player, a bicycle, a rice cooker, a pair of shoes, a coat, or anything, really. 

Second, recall where and when you got this item and assess its qualities.

And finally, evaluate how much pleasure you get from owning this product.  

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Here is the format: 

1. Item (Take a Picture)

2. How long

3. Special qualities

4. Reflection
    1) Please evaluate your pleasure in owning it
        How often do you use this item? Do you take special care of it? How? How often?
        If it wears out, what will you feel? 
        Are you likely to purchase it again? 
    2) Share your habits or rules of purchasing

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Rethink under the Pandemic: Who are meritocratic "winners" and "losers" and how are they created?

Watch this video →Michael Sandel: The Tyranny of Merit

Meritocracy deepens the conflict and divide between "winners" and "losers". According to Sandel, we have to rethink three aspects of our civic life: The role of college, the dignity of work and the meaning of success.

Here's some questions we'll discuss:
1. The dignity of work: "What you learn makes what you earn." "The money people make is the measure of their contribution to the common good." Do you agree or disagree?

2. The meaning of success: How is success defined in a meritocracy? Do we live in a meritocracy? What is a better system? What's the meaning of success to you?

3. What is the heart of Meritocratic Ideal?

4. What does Sandel mean by "The hubris of merit"?

5. According to Sandel, meritocracy is corrosive to the common good. What common good may it be? How have definitions of 'common good' possibly changed during the Pandemic?

6. The role of college: Nearly two-third of Americans don't have a four-year college degree. Is a four-year college degree necessary? What is the role of university? What's the problem of creating an economy that makes a university diploma a necessary condition of dignified work and a decent life?

7. Why do you think Michael Sandel calls it "the tyranny of merit"? Why 'tyranny'?

The Moral Dilemma for Self-driving cars: Who should be protected?

Driverless cars are rapidly growing in popularity around the world. Have you ever thought of having one? And before you purchase, have you ever wondered who this self-drving car will preferentially protect in a car accident: its passengers or pedestrians?

Moral Machine is a moral test designed by MIT Media Lab to gather human perspective on scenarios that self-driving cars will encounter. Go ahead and do it. As you play, make a note of your feelings. Are you uncomfortable? Are you satisfied? Are you convinced? Or are you confused? It will be useful in our discussion this week.

Why are we free yet unhappy?

Our material today was excerpted from Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm.

Warm up:
Today we're going to talk about freedom.

• Three words to describe freedom
• When was the last time you felt like you were free?
• Do you think you are free now? How about compared to your younger self?
• Do you think a child has more freedom?
• Do you feel like you have more freedom living in Taiwan rather than somewhere else?

Our Malady

In Our Malady, historian Timothy Snyder shares his personal experience of struggling to navigate America’s healthcare system during a serious illness, providing shocking insights into racial and income inequality that continue to plague Americans. Below are extensive exerpts from the interview, I don't expect we'll be able to discuss all of them, but hopefully most!

Congressional Inquiry into Health Insurance

Rep. Katie Porter: What I'd like to do now, Mr. Bradway, is I'd like for you to please explain to the American public why you and four other executives deserve to pay yourselves tens of million dollars each year. I've got an empty whiteboard ready to take down your justifications.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: I recognize that that's a considerable sum of money. I would, of course, point out that I don't have any direct input to my compensation: that's derived by the board, and it’s the board to a vote of the shareholders who overwhelmingly supported the compensation package for me and the other main executive officers–
Rep. Katie Porter: Reclaiming my time, sir. Do you not know why you're getting hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars a year? What is the justification? I'd like to show the American people.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: Our compensation is consistent with competitive positions at other companies-
Rep. Katie Porter: Mr. Bradway, reclaiming my time. “The other guy gets paid too much too” isn't a justification. I'd like to hear what you do to deserve $124 million in salary–you and your top five executives–over a three year period?
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: Well, more than 90%- Speaker: Gentlelady’s time has expired. The gentleman may respond to her question.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: More than 90% of my compensation is based on performance measures that include how our shares perform relative to the market, and our compensation program is aligned with that of our owners, our share owners. So, a large part of my compensation reflects the fact that we've been creating value for our share owners by advancing innovative medicines like those that we have on the marketplace today.
Rep. Katie Porter: I wish you would focus on creating value for sick patients, Mr. Bradway, not just your shareholders. I yield back.

Pain
Tim Snyder: The bit of book that you're talking about, I'm starting from my own problems with pain, basically. By a problem with pain, I don't mean that I have a lot of physical pain. That's true. But, what I meant is my inability to talk about it.

In the story of my illness, a lot of things go wrong and a lot of them weren’t the fault of individual doctors or nurses. I think generally, they were the fault of a system which makes it impossible for doctors and nurses to work, and maybe we'll go into some of those details and some of that structure. But some of the problem was that repeatedly, I was unable to tell people that I hurt a lot.

Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom

I want to talk about these two images, and what they might mean to you:

AOC

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of the U.S. House of Representatives, experienced sexist microagression from one of her colleagues (described in the article below). She was originally going to blow it off, because, like all women, she's experienced this so often that it hardly seems worth the effort to deal with it. However, when the man who attacked her decided to do a half-assed non-apology on the floor of the House, she decided to address it. This video captures her entire speech. 

Because her name is really long, everyone abbreviates it to AOC, and this is how she's most often referred to on social media.

 

Following the Rules

Rules and Rule Breaking
We're going to look at how nations and individuals think about rules both in moments of crisis and in everyday interactions. Cultural attitudes about rule following and rule breaking shape our lives in all kinds of ways, from the tidiness of our homes to our political preferences to our approach to stopping the spread of a pandemic.

Rules for:
Crossing the street
Dress codes
Littering/chewing gum
Wearing Shoes in Banks/Stores/Public places
Being on time for a meeting (In Brazil, when they want people to show up at the actual listed time, they say it's on 'British Time'.)
Cleaning up the stadium after a sports match

Two Types of people?
VEDANTAM: We are so familiar with these differences between groups that we have movies and television shows that are built around these themes. These differences also show up in our domestic lives and in workplaces.

GELFAND: You can think about how strict or permissive we are from many different perspectives - from national perspective, from organizations, even our own households. In the book, I talk about how we all have our own preference for the kind of Muppet we want to be. Some people are order Muppets.
...
They really like rules. They manage their impulses. And they really like a lot of order and structure. And then on the flip side, some people are chaos Muppets.
...
They tend to not really notice rules. They are more risk taking and impulsive. And they're more tolerant of ambiguity.

It causes a lot of conflict between people. Think about parents who are trying to raise kids, and they have different ideas in terms of how strict they should be or finances. Or even how you load the dishwasher, I found in my household, can get you a little flak. So I think it's important to really look at this as a aspect of culture that affects us all the time, from our nations to our households.