Decade

Goodly is 10 years old.

What began as a meager stab at search engine optimization a decade ago has become a vocation—you might say, a compulsion—of mine.

With nearly 400 thousand readers, Goodly no longer serves as a device for driving website traffic, but as a way of shouting, Hey, I'm still here.

I recently launched Blog, a new venture that's going to consume my time if it's to succeed—as, I hope, it will.

Meanwhile, God willing, Goodly will continue, pandemic or no, recession or no, civil war or no, global warming or no. 

I'm still here.

The Pleasure of Hating

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference and disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

— William Hazlitt

The genteel among us can't help but see vigilantes as living symbols of Hate. But we don't always call them for what they are: sadists.

Americans didn't invent Hate; it's bred in our bones.

Wracked by civil wars, the Ancient Greeks understood Hate to represent Love's equally passionate opposite—and a source of tremendous pleasure to men who nurse it within.

But it took another 2,500 years for anyone in the West to realize how Hate is baked into our species.

Sigmund Freud—borrowing a theory from his disciple Sabina Spielrein—called Love the "self-preservative instinct" and Hate the drive that compels us to "lead organic life back into the inanimate state." 

In other words, Hate manifests our species' self-destructive "death instinct."

When I see vigilantes, I think of Freud, grappling as he was with the horrors of World War I. And I see vigilantes' conspicuous Hate—their vivid displays of anger and aggression—as open expressions of a narcissistic neurosis; as the "dark side of love" on parade for all to watch.

Their conspicuous kind of Hate—Hate, American Style—reveals that Americans crave discord, division, destruction, and death.

It shows Americans love to hate.

Can a second civil war be far away?

Rich People

Rich people in cars never look at people on the street. Poor ones always do.

― Lucia Berlin

 

The rich can't empathize, according to a new study appearing in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Researchers at New York University and the University of California, Irvine asked subjects from various economic classes to examine photos of other people and describe the others' emotional states. The poor scored much higher than the rich in the test.

The researchers concluded that, while poor folks can read others' emotions accurately, the rich lack empathy. 

"Lower-class individuals—owing to their greater levels of cultural interdependence—may appraise other human beings as more relevant to their goals and well-being than do higher-class individuals,” the researchers wrote. 

In other words, the rich have little use for the poor—so objectify them—while the poor folks are "people who need people."

Another new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the rich often deny class privilege "by increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work." 

The rich "cover privilege in a veneer of meritocracy,” the researchers wrote, because "evidence of privilege threatens recipients’ self-regard by calling into question whether they deserve their successes."

Gasbagging

The fewer the words, the truer the words.

— Robert Brault

Logorrhea, the gasbag's debility, eventually becomes our affliction as well.

That's because, through his torrent of words, the gasbag seeks to divert us from the inconvenient truth.

We often hear, in regard to politicians, talk about gaslighting; we hear much less about gasbagging.

Gasbagging—bloviating to distract and cover up—has become the weapon of choice for many politicos, especially ones on the right. Personally speaking, I can't stomach the tactic. I associate it with bullies and con men.

George Orwell warned against gasbagging in his essay Politics and the English Language. 

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," Orwell said. 

When confronted by an inconvenient truth, the insincere gasbag—then deny they're "playing politics" when that's precisely what they're doing.

"In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics,’" Orwell says. "All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."

"The fewer the words, the better the prayer," Martin Luther said. I like that formula.

So, let us pray: 

Lord, make them SHUT UP.

Amen.

When's the Last Time You Got Laid?

"Off," I mean. Laid off.

I cringe each time a connection on LinkedIn opens his or her post, "After X years, I'm leaving my position at..."

As someone who was once laid off, I know how deeply anxious you feel. What's going to happen to me?

Much of the advice given to the laid-off, though well meaning, is shallow. It comes from Hallmark cards and self-published self-help books. 

Here's mine, take it or leave it. It comes from experience.

• Don't surrender to depression and fear. That's easy to do, I know, but don't do it.
  
  
• Don't self-medicate. 
  
  
• Don't spend money you don't have.
  
  
• Don't take advice from idiots (they're legion).
  
  
• Don't rely on a dusty old resume. Study state-of-the-art resumes and get outside help with yours, if you need it. 
  
  
• Don't spend hours applying for jobs on line. Work your network. And build on it as you do. 
  
  
• Don't jump at low-level sales opportunities you're offered (those businesses merely want to exploit you).
  
  
• Don't posture. Your usual baloney isn't welcome in a pandemic.
  
  
• Don't volunteer, unless your heart is in it and your efforts are valued (rare).
  
  
• Don't waste time. Spend four hours of every business day networking and four hours exercising. In the early mornings and evenings, read and participate in online workshops. Take the late evenings and weekends off.
  
  
• Don't surrender to "monkey mind." Try mindfulness mediation. Be patient with it.
  
  
• Don't bank on the "geographic cure." Moving to Austin or Atlanta or Anchorage won't land you a new job.    
  
  
• Don't fantasize a new life. If you think it's time for a self "reinvention," realize it will take years, not weeks, to pay off.

What's your advice to the laid-off?

They need sage advice.