Natural Disasters are (Essentially) Human-made

Many years ago I taught courses on stress at Northwestern University.  It covered the nature, causes and experience of stress: from biological and psychological effects, to war trauma and natural disasters.  I remember that one of my students was a veteran, and in reference to what we were reading, he acknowledged that fighting felt exhilarating to him, at least at times.  The stress of the battlefields wasn't categorically unpleasant, was it.

As a professor, I wanted to make sure that students adopted the fundamentals and grasped the principles of whatever we were studying.  But in addition, I wanted to challenge their conventional wisdom and to offer alternative perspectives, if only to provoke their thinking, deepen their insight, and expand their horizons.

So besides the counter-intuitive experience of war, I also suggested that severe natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, were essentially human-made.

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Imagine a time many millennia ago, before the advent of humankind - the origin of homo sapiens dates back 200,000 years - the kind of damage that any severe natural phenomenon heaved was probably minimal.  For one thing, human population was nowhere near 7 billion people.  For another thing, that far back was before the advent of cities, roadways and structures.  A massive storm, earthquake or eruption must've caused severe damage to animal populations and altered landscapes.

To my point in our courses, however, I bet that sparse, scattered human populations back then missed quite a lot of these natural disasters.  But as our population grew, and civilizations rose up, and sophistication heightened, we built our lives on the premise that the ground we stood on were flat and still.  That premise was perfectly fine the vast majority of time, but when that very ground roiled in one way or another, then disaster struck, injury and death occurred, and stress and trauma cropped up like so many cases for healthcare professionals. 

I am neither denying nor diminishing the role Mother Nature plays in these disasters.  But consider the tsunami that crashed ashore on Fukushima in northeast Japan in 2011.  If the destruction it caused on any city life in its path weren't tragic enough, the fact that a nuclear facility was on that path raised the level of destruction, and the ensuing tragedy, some incalculable fold.  Mother Nature built neither the city nor the facility.

There is no fault or blame here.  Rather, my point, as it was for my students, is that there is a complex, intimate relationship between natural phenomena and humankind.  Our growth, migration, and construction all play an integral part of natural disasters.  Mother Nature will do whatever she pleases, whenever and wherever she pleases.  But again the lives we have built on her landscape, the beliefs we harbor, and the experiences we face are, I argue, the defining hallmarks of disaster and stress.

The Earth is (Essentially) Still

Over dinner one time, I asked my daughter how fast the was earth moving.  At that moment, it certainly didn't feel to us as if the earth moved at all.  Instead of Googling the answer, we decided to apply what she had learned in math to figure out the orbiting speed of the earth.

First, we drew on a common formula to determine the circumference of a circle: C = 2πr (two times pi times radius).  The earth doesn't actually orbit in a perfect circle around the sun, but for the sake of this illustration let's assume that orbit is perfect.  Because we know the distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 93 million miles, we can plug this figure (radius) into the formula, and we get an orbiting distance of 558,000,000 miles. 

Second, we know that it takes 365 days for the earth to revolve completely around the sun, which translates to 8760 hours.  Using another formula that my daughter knew: distance = speed x time, we came up with a whopping orbiting speed of 64,000 MPH.   

We are literally hurtling in space at such a phenomenal speed, everyone of us!

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By comparison, consider the following:

• A race car can travel 220 MPH
• A commercial airplane travels at 500 MPH
• The speed of sound is less than 800 MPH
• The turbojet Concorde flies at 1400 MPH
• An Apollo spacecraft travels at 25,000 MPH 

None of these come close to how fast we can move through space, simply by sitting at the dinner table.  By the way, Wikipedia notes that our orbiting speed is 67,000 MPH, even faster than what our rough calculation determined.

We got on this subject, I believe, because my daughter wondered why we had earthquakes, weather fronts, and wind, and I explained that in general it was because the earth was in constant motion.  There were also all sorts of pressure on and beneath the surface, and this energy contributed to natural phenomena and disasters. 

Yet, there is such stability and quiet to the earth's movement that none of us can feel a speed of 67,000 MPH.  More specifically, I think, the earth is hardwired in our mind and body as a fundamental frame of reference for motion.  It is as if we have habituated to that phenomenal speed, over generations and generations, because of that hardwiring.  I argue that what lends that unmistakable feeling of being still at the dinner table is habituation + reference.

Imagine hopping on any of the fast-moving vehicles above, and we immediately compare the ride to our frame of reference (speed zero, if you will), and we can easily feel the motion and speed.

The Earth is (Essentially) Flat

Before Pythagoras in 6th century BC, many people believed that the earth was flat.  It's such common knowledge now, two and a half millennia later, that we don't even think about it twice.  Pragmatically speaking, however, I argue that we often experience the earth as flat and that it is better for us to live and work as if it were flat.  Mathematically I can offer an argument that in essence the earth is flat to us.

Imagine flying off into in outer space, several hundreds of miles away from earth.  Imagine, then, flying back closer and closer, until we're back on terra firma.

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Notice how earth essentially flattens as we approach closer and as we land back on solid ground.  (Sure, there are curves, rolling surfaces, hills and mountains:  The earth is not a perfectly smooth sphere.  In fact, it's more of an oblate spheroid, extending out some from the equator.)

In our day-to-day lives, from how we construct our houses and buildings, to how we walk from place to place, we don't see these things and ourselves as situated on a big ball (i.e., something round).  Instead we see it all as if we were on cardboard or plywood (i.e., something flat).  If in fact we were to imagine being on that big ball, we would be concerned about toppling over or rolling off.

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Occasionally I ask my friends to define a line in terms of a circle.  Many are nowhere near as geeky as I am, so they're bemused at best and stumped at worst.  It's this:  A line is a circle with infinite radius.  Similarly a plane is a sphere with infinite radius.  This is part of my mathematical argument:  You see, our size as an individual vis-a-vis the earth is very tiny.  In other words, the earth, compared to each of us, is of such massive heft, so as to be essentially infinite in its radius and thus essentially a plane (i.e., flat) to us.  This size difference is what flattens the earth as we return from outer space back on solid ground.

The Brain and its Creativity

Leonardo, for one, spent a fair amount of time dissecting human cadavers because he wanted to know how the various bones related to one each other and how the muscles related to the bones. So he wanted to have a realistic understanding of the human anatomy because he was depicting real live people sitting, gesturing, walking, and he wanted to get this as absolutely correct as possible.

In order to understand how the body functions, we need to know something about the anatomy of the body, it's sort of obvious.The more we want to depict the mind, the more it helps to understand the mind, and one way to understand the mind is to understanding the brain. So it is conceivable that as we get deeper and deeper insights into the mind, artists will get ideas about how combinations of stimuli affect, for example, emotional states that will allow them to depict those emotional states better.

But in addition, we're beginning to get in very, very primitive terms, some insights into the nature of creativity. Hughling Jackson, the great neurologist in the 19th century, thought that the left hemisphere is involved in language. We know this is true. And the left hemisphere is primarily involved in logical processes, calculation, mathematics, rational thinking. The right hemisphere, he thought, is more involved with musicality, which is true. The sing-song in my language comes from the right hemisphere, the grammar and the articulation comes from my left hemisphere. Okay? So he thought that the right hemisphere is more involved in musicality in, you know, synthesis, putting things together and an aspect of creativity. And he felt that the two hemispheres inhibit one another. So if you have lesions of the left hemisphere, that removes the inhibitory constraint on the right hemisphere and frees up certain [e.g., creative] processes. And he found that certain kids that develop later in life, let's say, later in their teens, aphasia, a language difficulty; it freed up in them a musicality which they didn't have before.

People have returned to that more recently in the analysis of a dementia called Frontotemporal Dementia. Frontotemporal Dementia is a dementia somewhat similar to Alzheimer's disease, it actually begins earlier, that primarily affects the temporal lobe of the brain and the front lobe of the brain. If it's only expressed on the left side, people with Frontotemporal Dementia begin to show creativity that they've never shown before. So if you were painting before, you might start, if you develop Frontotemporal Dementia on the left side, to use colors that you've never used before to try forms that you've never used before. If you never painted before, you might take up painting for the first time. So this is really quite unusual.

There are also a group of people who have studied aspects of creativity. I can give you a problem that can be solved in one of two ways, systematically working your way through it or putting it together, take a guess, an Aha Phenomenon. And they found that when people do it in a sort of creative way, the Aha Phenomenon, there is a particular area in the right side of the brain that lights up. And they show this not only with imaging, but also with electrophysiological recording.

So this is really quite interesting. You have a number of sort of indirect, not the most compelling evidence in the world, the Aha Phenomenon is well-documented, but it's only a component of creativity. Number of suggestions, there are aspects of the right hemisphere that might be involved in creativity. But look, as we have been saying all along, we are at a very early stage in understanding higher mental processes, so it's amazing we know anything about creativity, but this is certainly -- we are heading into an era in which one can really get very, very good insights into it and the kinds of situations that lead to increased creativity... you know, is group think productive? Does it lead to great -- greater creativity or does it inhibit individual creativity? Lots of these questions are being explored, both from a social psychological and from a biological point of view.

Creativity thrives, I think, on breaking barriers and sidestepping conventions.  So to the extent we can engender greater flexibility, adaptability, and changeability in the brain - for example, through reading, music or meditation - then we position ourselves best for creative expressions, problem-solving, and life enrichment.  In From Split-Brain, to Meta-Brain, I suggest that at the very least we tap both hemispheres in whatever we do, think, or relate.  Creativity relies on the imaginative, artistic side as well as the drill-down, let's-get-done side.  In this way, we forge a cross-brain, which I posit is the precursor to meta-brain.

The Brain and its Neuroplasticity

In From Split-Brain, to Meta-Brain, I referenced the following talk by Michael Merzenich on the plasticity of the brain, that is, its ability to learn and develop, adapt and alter:

Explore the brain's amazing ability to change throughout a person's life. This phenomenon—called neuroplasticity—is the science behind brain fitness, and it has been called one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

PBS had recently aired this special, The Brain Fitness Program, which explains the brain's complexities in a way that both scientists and people with no scientific background can appreciate.

Enter, ABC News correspondent Dan Harris:

There’s no way a fidgety and skeptical news anchor would ever have started meditating were it not for the science. The science is really compelling. It shows that meditation can boost your immune system, lower your blood pressure, help you deal with problems ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to psoriasis. And the neuroscience is where it really gets sci-fi. There was a study out of Harvard that shows that short daily doses of meditation can literally grow the gray matter in key areas of your brain having to do with self-awareness and compassion and shrink the gray matter in the area associated with stress.
There was also a study out of Yale that looked at what’s called the default mode network of the brain. It’s a connected series of brain regions that are active during most of our waking hours when we’re doing that thing that human beings do all the time which is obsessing about ourselves, thinking about the past, thinking about the future, doing anything but being focused on what’s happening right now. Meditators not only turn off the default mode network of their brain while they’re meditating but even when they’re not meditating. In other words, meditators are setting a new default mode. And what’s that default mode? They’re focused on what’s happening right now.

In sports this is called being in the zone. It’s nothing mystical. It’s not magical. You’re not floating off into cosmic ooze. You are just being where you are – big cliché in self-help circles is being in the now. You can use that term if you want but because it’s accurate. It’s slightly annoying but it’s accurate. It’s more just being focused on what you’re doing. And the benefits of that are enormous. And this is why you’re seeing these unlikely meditators now, why you’re seeing the U.S. Marines adopting it, the U.S. Army, corporate executives from the head of Ford to the founders of Twitter. Athletes from Phil Jackson to many, many Olympians. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, school children. There’s this sort of elite subculture of high achievers who are adopting this because they know it can help you be more focused on what you’re doing and it can stop you from being yanked around by the voice in your head.

My powers of prognostication are not great. I bought a lot of stock in a company that made Palm Pilot back in 2000 and that didn’t go so well for me. But having said that I’m going to make a prediction. I think we’re looking at meditation as the next big public health revolution. In the 1940s if you told people that you went running they would say, who’s chasing you. Right now if you tell people you meditate – and I have a lot of experience with telling people this, they’re going to look at you like you’re a little weird most of the time. That’s going to change. Meditation is going to join the pantheon of no brainers like exercise, brushing your teeth and taking the meds that your doctor prescribes to you. These are all things that if you don’t do you feel guilty about. And that is where I think we’re heading with meditation because the science is so strongly suggestive that meditation can do really, really great things for your brain and for your body.

The common assumption that we have, and it may be subconscious, is that our happiness really depends on external factors – how was our childhood, have we won the lottery recently, did we marry well, did we marry at all. But, in fact, meditation suggests that happiness is actually a skill, something you can train just the way you can train your body in the gym. It’s a self-generated thing. And that’s a really radical notion. It doesn’t mean that external circumstances aren’t going to impact your happiness. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to be subject to the vagaries of an impermanent, entropic universe. It just means you are going to be able to navigate this with a little bit more ease.

I don't quite like how Harris puts a couple of his points - for example, You're not floating off into cosmic ooze - but on the whole I truly appreciate his promoting meditation and its very real affect on the brain.  Also, it's not unusual for someone who has had an epiphany to raise the banner on the source of that epiphany, as if it had never been raised before. In particular, on his prognostication that meditation will be the next big public health revolution, I'd say that is already well under way and that it began centuries ago among martial artists, Shaolin masters, and Zen Buddhists

Nevertheless, we need a media guy like him to talk about what is helpful to our lives, our work, and our relationships.  Whether it's thinking, it's doing, or it's happening, things can, and do, change the brain in very real, positive ways.  Not just meditation, in other words.  But to the extent that meditation is convenient, adaptable, and free of charge, then it is one of the best means we have at our disposal, especially at managing stress and pressure and eliminating worry and rumination.

The Brain and its Transcendence

In From Split-Brain, to Meta-Brain, I introduced a key aspect of Theory of Algorithms:

It’s what I call the ability of our brain to examine itself, essentially to function as a mirror for itself.

When I meditate, for example, I reflect on myself meditating, and ‘watch’ calmly as thoughts pass my mind and gradually slow and settle down.
 
It’s the ability to step back, and take a ‘helicopter’ perspective, so things can be considered more holistically and completely.  Beyond the divisions of the brain hemispheres, beyond the simplicity and dichotomy of more conventional view of things.
 
This is like lifting ourselves from walking on the forest floor, and looking at its entirety above the treetops.  

The Meta-Brain is also able to reflect deeply on things. To see what lies below the surface, to see things that are not so visible or discernible.

Enter, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku:

Isaac Asimov was my favorite science fiction writer and his favorite science fiction story talked about an era far in the future when our bodies would be in pods and we would mentally control beings, beings of pure energy that would go flying around the universe. And, of course, it was science fiction but here's the idea. Mind without body. Pure consciousness roaming across the universe faster than any rocket ship. It turns out that that's actually a physical possibility. First of all the Obama administration and the European Union are pushing the Brain Project to delineate all the pathways of the human brain. This means that one day we might have a CD ROM called Brain 2.0. That is every single neuron encoded on a memory disc, your personality, your memories, who you are, the essence of your soul would be incorporated in this disc as pure information. Even if you die your consciousness, in some sense, may live on.

Now you as an organic being will have died. That means that your neurons will turn to dust. But the configuration of neurons that made your thinking process possible can be put on a disc in which case, in some sense you become immortal. Not only immortal but this could be the most efficient way to explore the galaxy just like Isaac Asimov predicted in his short story. Let's say I take your -- not your genome but your connectome, put it on a laser beam -- in fact in the book I actually calculate how big a laser beam will be required to put your consciousness as pure photons -- shine it into the heavens. You're now shooting consciousness into outer space at the speed of light. Forget booster rockets. Forget asteroid collisions. Forget radiation dangers and weightlessness and lack of oxygen. Forget all that. You are riding on a laser beam at the speed of light and then at the end there's a relay station.

A relay station which takes the laser beam and then puts into a surrogate. That is all the neural networks encoded into laser beam can be manifested as a robot on the other side of the galaxy. So in other words, it's like staying at a hotel. If you're a businessman you go from hotel to hotel and relax. The same way you'd be on a laser beam going from relay station to relay station and when you go to the relay station you take the robot body of a super human. You become superman on the other end of the rainbow. So is this a physical possibility? Yes. When might we have it? Well let's be honest. It would take perhaps a hundred years or so before we have a complete understanding of the connectome that is all the neuropathways of the brain. Perhaps another century beyond that before we have relay stations on which we could then shoot our consciousness into outer space. Is it mathematically and physically possible and the answer is yes.

It's a breathtaking notion that, in some circles, is positively transcendent.  It is what Yogis, Buddhists, or other spiritualists imagine, that is, something beyond our corporal, organic selves.  Except Kaku is a scientist imagining pure consciousness, cosmic bodylessness, super humans, and speaking about turning science fiction into a possible reality.

What Kaku speaks to is, in my language, meta-brain physically-split off from the body.  If he is right, then humankind is two centuries away from such a reality.  But it is clear that we can deploy our brain outward, and not just imagine that future, but also conceptualize it and practicalize it.  Meta-brain is an ability to conceptualize pure consciousness and to reflect it back on that pure consciousness.  In other words, just as we can imagine an (outward) exploration of the vast cosmos, so too we can imagine an (inward) exploration of ourselves.  We become purely conscious of our pure consciousness.

Also, reference: The Golden Age of Neuroscience has Arrived and Interview with Ray Kurzweil on Singularity.

Why is this so important?

If we are to solve the more entrenched issues and the wide-ranging problems we face as humankind, it will take much more than we know right now and much more than we can do right now.

It's astounding to me, for example, that with the wealth of economic gurus, brain thrusts, and Nobel Prize Laureates on the planet, we would plunge into a complex, severe economic downturn.  The worst in a generation or two, they said.  The simple, perhaps simplistic answer is that their best is sorely lacking.

To solve the more entrenched issues and the wide-ranging problems we face as humankind, it will take something along the breathtaking lines of pure consciousness and meta-brain.

Key & Peele on Social Matters

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The Peabody Awards program, named for businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, recognizes distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, online media, producing organizations, and individuals.

Reflecting excellence in quality, rather than popularity or commercial success, the Peabody is awarded to about 25–35 winners annually from more than 1,000 entries.  Because submissions are accepted from a wide variety of sources and styles, deliberations seek "Excellence On Its Own Terms."

Key & Peele, along with their creative and production team, won the Peabody Award last year.  I've watched just 20 of their 150+ sketches on the Comedy Central channel, and I can say that this award is quite well-deserved. The following sketches illustrate their distinguished and meritorious public service, as they are positively courageous and comedic at tackling tough social issues:

 

Oh, I get it:  I'm not persecuted, I'm just a asshole.

Whew Key & Peele simply attack conventional notions and displays of what it means to be gay.

  

Hold up, you like "Twilight"?

Yeah, I like "Twilight"!

Key & Peele know how to tap a topical film and weave it into an age old problem - and prejudice - around gang banging.

  

Is it a ticket or is it a 2-for-1 coupon for my show? 

I'll take the ticket.

What if that seemingly corrupt cop, who pulls you over, were truly a magician, pulling your leg with drugs and flowers?  

  

It's like because I hate myself so much, I've got to point that hate outward... towards you!

So rarely do we get insight into the bully and his upbringing, that Key & Peele take it upon themselves to help us.

Key & Peele on Love Relations

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele

Key & Peele have superb insight into human nature, and they possess the talent to translate it into comedy.  Their sketches are drawn from their very birth and upbringing:

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are the duo behind the Comedy Central sketch comedy show Key & Peele. Each has a white mother and black father, and a lot of their comedy is about race: Perhaps because they're biracial, they're perfectly comfortable satirizing white people and African-Americans — as well as everybody else. The New Yorker's TV critic Emily Nussbaum as a "Golden Ticket to themes rarely explored on television."

Peele tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "I think the reason both of us became actors is because we did a fair amount of code switching growing up, and still do."

Reference: For Key And Peele, Biracial Roots Bestow Special Comedic 'Power'.

Here I gather sketches that speak to love relations à la this talent duo, and as in the preceding article consider the insights we offer about The Human Algorithm.

I cannot speak to how Black couples communicate with one another, but the tenuous bravado between these two men in the privacy of the basement, open field, and outer space is so freaking hilarious.  One running commentary on YouTube mirrors the hilarity perfectly, too:

lionel james
man tomorrow imma go to my girl, look her straight into her eyes and i will say "Biiittttaaaaacccccccchhhh...i love you?" gotta give brother some love man!

Levi Doyle
but for real you gonna say that tho?

lionel james
man...ugh, hell yeaa
imma go to her and imma tell her looks around to check whispers Biiiiittttttaaaaacccccchhhh* 

Ryan Kelley
+lionel james But you said it tho right? You said biiiiieatch

lionel james
oh hell yea man, i laid it out..i said looks around i said i said biiiiittttaaaaccccchh

Ryan Kelley
+lionel james I was talkin to my girl the other day and she says, "why dont we have a 4 burner stove?" and I looked at her and I says "we cant afford that" and then listen to this she says "well you gotta get back to work then and buy me that stove tomorrow" and I just said "there is no way you are getting that stove" then I said looks around tree trunk "biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaatchhhhhhhhhhhhh"

lionel james
She did not, but didchu say bitch though ?

In clinical psychology, there is a terribly noxious defensive mechanism called projective identification.  Some people with certain personality disorders have an ability to project their issues onto someone close to them, then psychologically manipulate them to act on these issues.  That's Meeghan, in relation to her boyfriend.  Key & Peele do them with such brilliant acting.

The first part is silly, plain and simple.  It's a commonplace pizza order, the nerdy caller to boot.  But it all turns creepy.  That Carlos falls for Clare, simply from the phone call, is emblematic, I think, of the complexity and the pitfall of online attraction.  Some people get attracted to each other, even desperately so, without seeing, hearing or knowing much of anything about each other.

Sometimes our personality and our position constrain the messages we truly want to get across to our spouse.  So it helps to have translators, who can decipher those messages not just for the spouse, but also for his or her translator.  It's one cumbersome dialogue between the President and the First Lady here, but Key & Peele and their fellow actors pull it off brilliantly.  Kudos!

Key & Peele on Race Relations

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele

I first heard about Key & Peele last year, when Fast Company ranked the 18th among 100 of the most creative people in business for 2013:

“The audience loves to figure things out,” says Key, who has extensive professional acting experience and a unique physicality honed by aping silent masters such as Chaplin and Keaton. “They love it when a performer leaves a trail of bread crumbs for them, and they get to participate in the comedy.”

I am writing a book on innovation, and worked my way steadily through this Fast Company list as part of my research.  But I didn't  look into their act, until I saw the following video my Google+ timeline:

I nearly fell out of my seat laughing.  At nearly 56 million views, I imagine quite a few others found this classroom sketch so hilarious, too. The duo have over 150 videos on the Comedy Central channel on YouTube, and I've watched several of them now.  Not all of them grabbed me the way this first video did, but their work impressed me as very intelligent and insightful.  I love it when any piece of art, and their work is definitely art, makes me think, taps my curiosity, calls on me to look at it again and again.

In this regard, this week I gather a few sketches centered around a theme, such as race relations in this article, for I believe they illuminate things about us as people.  They speak to the multifaceted nature of what I call The Human Algorithm.

There is comedy in the cultural divide between the Black substitute teacher and his White students in the above sketch.  Key & Peele poke fun at how names are so culturally derived.  The substitute teacher is in charge, so his pronunciation is de facto the correct one.

A dangerous winter road phenomenon - Black Ice - triggers an amusing but tense standoff between two White anchors and a Black weatherman and reporter.  There is, literally and figuratively, dark comedy in the very stitching of this sketch.

I've heard stereotypes about the sexual endowment and prowess of Black men, and these two White women play them up in this sketch.  In character, Key & Peele overhear them, and it's human nature to relish the positive in one breath then scoff at the negative in the second breath.  Of course the comedic twist is that some people talk the talk, but don't necessarily intend to walk the walk.

 

These last two sketches are as funny and deft as they are powerful and disturbing, such a fine line to tow, but Key & Peele are clearly not afraid to do so.  It is part of our humanity that we've relegated one segment of us into buffoons on the big screen and cattle on the blocks.  But more than that, in the last sketch, is the underlying, more profound need to be wanted, never mind that it's about slavery.

Reflections on Success

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This is one of my favorite images.  Performers of all sorts - from actors and dancers, to musicians and comedians - may have perfected their craft for the screen and stage so well that they make it all look so easy.  The best of athletes are the same: At the peak, their play is a thing of beauty.

Consider the sylph that is Polina Semionova:

No doubt, Semionova has toiled countless hours perfecting her ballet.  Moreover, the filmmakers must've spent quite a lot of time staging, directing, scoring and editing this video, that is as much of an artistic accomplishment as is Semionova's ballet.  So while the end product may look like a smooth line, what really goes on behind the scenes is a tangled thread.

While success may sometime come easily, in general the more challenging and complex the endeavor, the more hard-wrought success will be.  Of course we ought to reflect on, clarify and define what success really means to us, to begin with.  Then, achieving it may be a process of stops and starts, of detours and dead ends, of retracing our steps and doubling back.  But to the extent that that endeavor is important to us, it makes sense to keep at it and work at it.  The endpoint may also be segmented into check points, if you will, so we have a gauge on how we are progressing and we can celebrate milestones as mini-successes.    

Regardless, the reality behind any successful endeavor may be akin to what the people of Zion in The Matrix saw:  The real world is a dark, devastated landscape.  But it all becomes the orderly, programmed world of The Matrix itself on the one hand, and on the other hand it under girds these very people to strategize and mobile for an ultimately successful revolution.  

Reflections on Authenticity

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Oscar Wilde was masterful observer of human nature and had a wit par excellence.  But I'd like to add that we are all inevitably authentic.  We cannot help but be ourselves, whether we like it or not.  I may try, from now to the rest of  my life, to be Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein.  Not be like, but actually be, Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein.  Ultimately I will come to realize that I am still Ron Villejo.  In this case, any exhortation to be real, be ourselves, be authentic is silly and redundant at best and naive and meaningless at worst.  To quote Agent Smith in `The Matrix, it is inevitable that we are who we are and absolutely not anyone else.

The thing is, who we are - for example, our personality - is not a simplistic, narrow or unified matter.  There are many different aspects to who we are, and any given situation, encounter or interaction may bring a particular aspect to the front.  Consider how we are at home vs at work; or with our spouses vs our friends; at church, synagogue or mosque vs at the ballpark or in front of the TV.  Someone who sees us only in one setting may be entirely surprised, even baffled, at how we are in another setting.  This constellation of 'selves,' if you will, ranges from ones we like more to ones we like less.  

Moreover, in the face of stress or anxiety, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or perhaps in the midst of illness, we may say things and do things that we are embarrassed about, and regret terribly, afterwards.  Some of us may blurt out that wasn't me or that was the alcohol talking.  But external context or internal condition, however we behave and whatever we say are inviolably our own.  

Counselors often encourage and advise candidates to be themselves, when crafting their CV and interviewing for a job.  If they stumble or stammer and if they over- or under-sell themselves, they may come back and bemoan I just wasn't myself.  "Myself" in their mind is articulate, confident and capable.  Nervous and unsure aren't "myself."  But obviously there is no one else but they themselves who applied and interviewed.  So if the former is in fact what we prefer to present in such a situation, and of course it makes sense to genuinely and confidently present that in order to secure a job, then we have to work at it, learn and develop, and perhaps visualize and practice beforehand.  

Finally, how about an actor portraying a character?

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What I love  about Johnny Depp is he is so versatile, so talented, and often so funny.  He brings his acting prowess to bear, and fashions characters that are quite memorable for scores of moviegoers.  Art as autobiographical is part of  my Art Manifesto, more specifically, but it speaks to the very points I make about authenticity.  The fact that Depp can pull off a compelling Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka or Captain Jack, I argue, speaks more to who he is than what these characters are.  

Suppose Keanu Reeves, or Jude Law, or Leonardo DiCaprio were to have played in these movies, instead.  We'd see very different characters getting played out on the big screen.  Why?  Because the Edward we would see is more the stylization that Keanu, Jude or Leonardo brings.  Movies are an ultimate fantasy.  The best of the lot persuade so well that the characters are in fact true-to-life people and that the plot is a plausible experience in our life.  But that fantasy is not drawn from thin air, rather they're grounded on the actors who allow us to engage in it.  

So my thought exercise aside, the characters above are in their true essence Johnny Depp, and no one else but Johnny Depp.

Reflections on Possibility

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This is a clever play on words, and I see it now and then on my Timelines.  Anything is possible sometimes slips into conversation.

I've reflected on this awhile, and come up with these 'thought' examples:  Say, I were to quit everything I was doing, and devote myself completely to basketball.  More specifically, I'd focus on dunking the ball like Michael Jordan.  No matter how much coaching I get from the best in the game, and no matter how much I train and practice, I will never be able to dunk like Michael Jordan.  I am 5-feet, 5-inches tall, a bit heavier set than I'd like to admit, healthy and fit but nowhere near the athleticism of His Airness.  Even the vast majority of professionals cannot dunk like Michael Jordan, and they have way more basketball prowess and potential than I do.

Also, I am smart and knowledgeable in my own right.  But even with the smartest minds tutoring me, say, 24/7, I will never be an Albert Einstein.  He is a rare genius that scores of the most intelligent simply cannot hold a candle to.  Certainly I can learn by acquiring more knowledge and developing greater thinking skills, so I suppose that would be a benefit to getting smart tutoring.  Similarly, put me in a rigorous basketball camp, and my knowledge and skills will definitely increase.  Regardless, I will never be an Albert Einstein or Michael Jordan.

The fact is, not everything is possible.  There are probably many more things in life, and in the world around us, that are impossible.  Left to our own human device, we cannot fly the heavens like birds, or swim like fish without surfacing for air.  In a related, these animals cannot do the sort of critical, reflective thinking that we can do or communicate in such varied, sophisticated languages.

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Yet, as a motivational tool, it's awesome to believe that impossible is nothing.  If these words get you jazzed up, and you're able to do better with whatever you're trying to accomplish, then of course more power to you.  Have at it.  The truth of the matter notwithstanding, The Human Algorithm acknowledges that logic, objectivity and rationality are simply part-and-parcel of who we are, and who we are also comprises of intuition, subjectivity and imagination.  To believe that anything is possible is a healthy illusion, even an adaptive myth, if you realize it's not true and you make it serve your purpose.

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When I worked for ENOC Group in Dubai, I conceived and crafted a process of assessing leadership potential.  This is a difficult effort, and it simply isn't a perfect science, but all things considered I succeeded at gauging others' headroom for rising up the corporate ladder.  That's how I defined it, essentially:  Our capacity to learn and develop, and assume greater, more complex leadership responsibilities in the future.  Say, you take an ordinary car, and drive it as fast as possible.  It has an upper limit, beyond which it cannot run any faster.  It's easy enough, in other words, to determine its potential or capacity.  However, it simply isn't so easy to do the same with people.  What is our upper limit, as far as our leadership growth, advancement and impact are concerned?

Outside of our imperfect tools for measuring our potential, perhaps the best way to determine our upper limit is simply to do it.  If something is important enough to us, we will give it a try, and try again, even if at first we don't succeed.  But actually getting it done, despite others' claim that it's impossible for us to do it, is not only proof of our greater capacity but also satisfaction to an utmost.  Through learning and development, experience and reflection, effort and endeavor, belief and tenacity, we can do much more over time than we can right now.

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In my Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein examples, I know what is in fact impossible for me to do.  I may lay the same claim, in relation to any other person I run into on the street, but then I simply wouldn't be so sure of what I'm saying.  Who knows what he or she can actually do?  Perhaps he or she knows much better than I or anyone else.

So my point, at the end of the day, is it makes sense to believe that nothing is impossible as a way to motivate ourselves and to navigate uncertainty.

Humanitarian Story of Sir Nicholas Winton

The internet is a wondrous world, which I love to explore, just as much as I do the cities I've visited across the world.  One time I stumbled on the story of Nicholas Winton.  We cannot always tell ahead of time who will do the extraordinary thing he did, but for hundreds of Czechoslovakian children, he was precisely the guardian angel they needed at the height of Nazi power.  His story helps me formulate The Human Algorithm, and more specifically figure out how to best encourage people to do good.

Nicholas Winton was en route to Switzerland for a skiing holiday in late 1938; a friend asked him to come to Prague, instead...

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht - "Night of the Broken Glass," the bloody Nazi attack on Jews - reached Prague in November 1938...

Everybody in Prague said, 'Look, there is no organization in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go.' And I think there is nothing that can't be done if it is fundamentally reasonable.

Reference: Nicholas Winton, The Power of Good.

Nicholas Winton and children

The situation was heartbreaking... Mothers tried desperately to get money to buy food for... their children.

From Czechoslovakia to Britain, it was The Long Day's Journey Into Night, for Sir Nicholas' 669 children. 



Nicholas Winton and 'children'

Sir Nicholas recently celebrated his 105th birthday, surrounded by some of the children he saved and their children.

Ruth Hálová is 88 and has flown over for the party from South Bohemia in the Czech Republic. Others have come from as far as New Zealand and the USA. Hálová was one of the children who came over on one of the Kindertransport journeys and she stayed with a British family throughout the war while her mother was in the concentration camp at Terezín, Czechoslovakia.

“I first met Nicky when he came to visit Yad Vashem in Jerusalem," Hálová told the Guardian. "I was there just visiting family and they phoned me at 10 o’clock at night and said: 'Nicholas Winton is here!' It was just amazing to meet him and to see him again today. It is never too long or too far to come and see Nicky.”

Reference: Sir Nicholas Winton: 105th birthday party for man who saved 669 children from the Nazis.