Cracks

After (in her words) "crossing the line" and offending a respected colleague and Facebook friend, I have resolved, for civility's sake, to stop posting jabs at Trump.

After the president's lazy and inept response to Covid-19, I think my posts are spooking even the most unremitting Republicans among my followers.

Given I've been publishing―with impunity―"never Trump" sarcasms for over three years, my Republican colleague's reaction comes suddenly.

I'm spotting visible cracks in Republicans' denial.

About time.

Republicans' denial to date has been a colossal wall against reality.

It has resembled less your garden-variety credulity than a desperate avoidance of inconvenient truths―a brush-off to the problems of greed, inequity, hate, ignorance, disease and global warming.

But the wall's about to come tumbling down.

The Secret to a Longer Life

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. They're always looking ahead to something new and exciting.

― Norman Rockwell

New research published in BMJ shows that patrons of the arts live longer.

Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe, both behavioral scientists in the UK, tracked 6,700 seniors (average age 66) for 14 years. 

They found that seniors who visit art museums, galleries and exhibitions, or attend plays, concerts or operas at least once a year have a 14% lower risk of dying than seniors who don't; and that seniors who engage with the arts more frequently―every few months or more―have a 31% lower risk of dying.

Their findings don't depend on race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, health, education, mobility or other activities, such as exercise, club membership, hobbies and church-going.

The researchers concluded that the arts might have a "protective association" with longevity.

"This association might be partly explained by differences in cognition, mental health, and physical activity among those who do and do not engage in the arts, but remains even when the model is adjusted for these factors (italics mine)."

Simply put, the arts protect you from dying.

Painting by Bob James

Manual Therapy

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. 

— Epictetus

Nothing separates the cowardly and strong like a good pandemic.

In a pinch like today's pinch, we all want to be pillars of strength—to embody Ernest Hemingway's famous formula, "courage is grace under pressure." 

But it takes a strong foundation.

While you're home—if you're home—you can work on your foundation by reading a manual by the first century Stoic Epictetus.

It's aptly titled Manual.

Manual is a short book that's had a long life among resilient people.

And deservedly so. 

Its author was a mensch.

The son of a slave, Epictetus understood suffering. His sadistic master once purposely broke his leg, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. When he became a freedman in his late teens, he taught philosophy on street corners in Rome, but was banished for his troubles.

Undaunted, Epictetus moved to Greece, where he founded a school that would eventually attract students from all corners of the empire. 

One of those students took shorthand notes during Epictetus' lectures—notes that became Manual.

Epictetus welcomed adversity as training for moments like ours, when courage and resilience are tested. His philosophy gave students the wisdom to "keep calm and carry on" throughout plagues, wars, fires and earthquakes. 

It also taught them to remember we're all interconnected.

It's no coincidence that when the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Xiaomi shipped face masks to Italy last week, all the crates were stamped with a Stoic saying:

We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.

Shad Bake

Hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.

— Erik Larson

It was baked in from the beginning: Trump's hubris could only cause the president to bungle his first "crisis."

History teems with popinjays like him.

One was the Confederate George Pickett, a man many contemporaries described as an "arrogant child."

During the Battle of Five Forks (April 1, 1865), Pickett—yes, the same general who led the futile charge at Gettysburg—was so confident he could repel a Federal attack, he accepted a fellow commander's invitation to attend a shad bake behind the lines, leaving his troops without their leader.

Shad were a fish local to Virginia's rivers, and shad bakes a tasty rite of spring for Virginia boys like Pickett.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Pickett went off to the picnic without telling anyone he was leaving, where he could be found, or who should command in his absence.

A Federal attack indeed came, and Pickett's leaderless troops were overwhelmed.

His rout resulted in the surrender of the whole Confederate army at Appomattox eight days later.

NOTE: Remember to wash your hands!

Motivated Reasoning

Prejudice is a great time saver.
You can form opinions without having to get the facts. 

— E. B. White 

Beliefs we’d label “stupid” don’t necessarily result from stupidity.

More often than not they’re the products of a phenomenon research psychologists call “motivated reasoning.”

While authentic reasoning recruits and weighs evidence wisely and independently, motivated reasoning is slave to a goal (usually a selfish goal) and ignores and distorts evidence willy-nilly.

Through the process you end up producing a patently biased belief.

It’s not that we’re blind to evidence, believing whatever the hell we want to believe (we want, in fact, to think we are rational creatures); but we’re content to make do with scraps of evidence, which we patch together to create a convenient and comfortable interpretation of reality.

We're lazy in that way.

Research psychologists who have studied motivated reasoning have identified and named a variety of unconscious mechanisms underlying it.

The Big 3 mechanisms are:

• Biased information search—you seek and find only evidence that promotes your goal;

• Biased assimilation—you give credence only to evidence that promotes your goal; and

• Identity-protective cognition—you discredit evidence that causes you anxiety because it challenges your self-worth or contradicts the beliefs of your peer-group.

These three unconscious mechanisms explain why otherwise mindful people cherish biased beliefs—the kind of “uninformed” beliefs that propel them to smoke cigarettes; treat cancer with magnets or homeopathy; deny their kids the measles vaccine; donate to TV ministries; perpetuate vast-conspiracy theories; fear evil clowns—or vote one into high office.

But research psychologists have also found there’s a benevolent form of motivated reasoning: “accuracy-driven reasoning.”

When accuracy is made the goal of reasoning, we tend to expend more brain power on the gathering, sifting and weighing of evidence before forming any belief.

Unfortunately, we don’t reason in this manner spontaneously: we need to be prodded.

One of the most effective prods, researchers have shown, is to be told in advance of gathering, sifting and weighing evidence that you will have to justify your belief in front of a public audience.

Just imagine every Sandy Hook, Holocaust and climate-change denier having to face fifty people and justifying what they believe.

Good luck with that!