Content Warning: Possible Pettiness/Snark Zone Ahead
A local yoga studio occasionally does profiles on certain students and teachers, either posting them online or in emails. Last week I received an email with a profile on one such student, who is also a certified yoga teacher (and who helps out around the studio with décor, etc.)
The profile began with a brief description of the student’s (“S”) background, and then listed her answers to three questions the studio had posed to her:
Q1:
What was your favorite part of summer?
S’s answer:
Buying a home in Costa Rica!….
Q2:
Do you have one important thing you’d love to do to by the end of 2024?
S’s answer:
I’ve been practicing non-attachment by minimizing a LOT of my material things, which has been very challenging…..
Moiself didn’t even make it to the question 3, I was laughing so hard at the incongruity of answers 2 and 1.
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Department Of Yet Another Great Hidden Brain Podcast
Which would be the latest, introduced thusly on the HB website:
“Every morning, you wake up and face the world. What does it look like to you? Do you see a paradise of endless opportunities, where people are friendly and helpful? Or a world filled with injustice, where people cannot be trusted? In the final installment of this year’s ITAL You 2.0 series, we talk with psychologist Jamil Zaki about how we become disillusioned and distrustful of the world, and how to balance realism with hope.”
( Hidden Brain podcast, You 2.0: Fighting Despair )
Free thinker/humanist/religion-free person moiself has long practiced taking a skeptical approach to any claims people make about the world, or declarations about what is the “proper” or “true” worldview. I have described moiself [1] as a “cynical optimist.” But after listening to the wise, thoughtful explanation of the guest, Stanford psychology professor and researcher Jamil Zaki, I think I’m more accurately described as…or will strive to be…a hopeful skeptic.
HB host Shankar Vidantam:
“…you talk about a concept called hopeful skepticism.
What is hopeful skepticism?”
Jamil Zaki:
“I think it’s first important to separate cynicism from skepticism, because these two are often confused with one another. As we’ve been discussing, cynicism is the theory that others are greedy, selfish, and dishonest. Skepticism is really quite different – it’s a desire to have evidence to support our beliefs, and to not simply accept our assumptions about the world.
The ideal of hopeful skepticism is twofold: one is being open to evidence the way that scientists are, but two, it’s understanding that our default is relatively negative, and often too negative. We often miss the goodness in others even when it’s there. So, hopeful skepticism is an openness to the world that is complemented by the idea that, ‘Hey, people are probably better than I think, and if I pay attention, pleasant surprises may be everywhere.’ “
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Department Of Yes, I Am Dutifully Employed By The
Policing-Artificial-Intelligence-Adverb-Usage Squad ®
Because I follow Australian singer/composer/polymath Tim Minchin on Facebook, I received a post about his new book, You Don’t Have to Have a Dream: And Other Life Lessons. I had already decided to pre-order the book, but because this is the way of our world, along with the post there was the following take from Meta-AI, Facebook’s dreadful, new (to moiself ) analysis/summary of the comments on the post (my emphases). [2]
“META AI: what people are saying:
Fans congratulate Tim Minchin on his success, eagerly awaiting signed copies and upcoming shows. Many have already read the book, while others anxiously await its release on Audible and in Canada. Enthusiasm and support abound.”
Gee, META AI, you left out, “… And hijinxs ensue.” [3]
Seriously, ladies and germs, far be it from me to take issue with a summary/interpretation of comments I haven’t even read, but…you know I will. Is this AI’s phrasing, or did people really write that they are anxiously awaiting the book’s release? Wouldn’t, “eagerly awaiting” be a more apt description for fans looking forward to a book release, or any upcoming event?
I associate being eager about something with positive emotions, as in, with wanting to do something, or very much wanting to have something (as in, longing, wishing, hoping and/or hopeful, desirous of, keen, enthusiastic…). However, being anxious about something ( in moiself’s eyes ) is not a pleasant experience. Let’s see what the Oxford dictionary says:
anx·ious /ˈaNG(k)SHəs/ adjective
1. experiencing worry, unease, or nervousness, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
“she was extremely anxious about her exams”
2. wanting something very much, typically with a feeling of unease.
“the company was anxious to avoid any trouble”
I love it when I can cite something British so support moiself.
If there are Tim Minchin fans who are truly anxious about his book’s release, is it because they think he mentions them unfavorably in it? If so, perhaps they shouldn’t read it. If they are anxious about it for any other reason…hmmmmm. If you are truly anxious about the upcoming work of an entertainer, perhaps what you should anxiously await is an appointment for therapy, or just find a hobby, get outside more, take a walk, whatever… Just sayin.’
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Department Of What Is Wrong With (Some) People?
As in the Some People involved in the Varsity Blues scandal. The scandal was so nicknamed by the press as per the 2019 federal investigation, nicknamed “Operation Varsity Blues,” which led to charges brought against over 50 parents, coaches, exam administrators – and the head of a bogus university entrance coaching foundation who masterminded the scheme, which involved wealthy parents paying to have their children’s college entrance-exam scores rigged and securing athletic-recruit status, for elite and prestigious universities and college, via providing fraudulent records and bribery to university employees.
Confession: I didn’t follow the story at the time it broke, but recently I found moiself fascinated by it…in that way one can be fascinated by looking at something which is also rather repulsive, such as the partially gutted carcass of a dead sea mammal that has been washed up on the shore and stranded there after a high tide, and although you are somewhat repelled by the sight you are also strangely attracted to it as you slowly approach it and stare, your mind performing some half-assed necropsy as to what could’ve caused the injuries – shark attack? Boat propeller? [4]
Dateline: last Saturday morning; 6 AM; having finished my morning games; scrolling the LA Times headlines…which is a bad habit [5] moiself has mostly successfully overcome, but for some reason I find the stories on the LA Times app different from those on my other news apps, and particularly compelling in terms of their feature articles and follow up stories that do not upset me in the way that other news venues tend to do…
Once again, I digress.
The LAT had several follow-up articles on the Varsity Blues scandal, which contained links to earlier stories the newspaper had done on the wealthy and famous parents who were either convicted or pled guilty to charges of fraud, including an article on the actor Felicity Huffman’s involvement:
“Felicity Huffman says college admissions scandal
was ‘only option’ to help her daughter.”
Reading this particular story I found myself plagued by unanswerable questions regarding Huffman – I am addressing the questions to her because she was featured in (as in, had agreed to be interviewed for) one of the articles. But these questions are for all of the wealthy, influential and celebrity parents who participated in that college admissions scam:
WTF is wrong with you?!?!?!
As in, I was gobsmacked by Huffman’s obtuse, is-it-more-horrible-or-ludicrous?, statement/confession/excuse, that participating in the college admission scandal was the “only option” to help her daughter.
I understand that many parents, especially parents in the upper societal strata of power and fame, can get their designer undies in a knot re securing their child’s admission to “the best” (read: elite and prestigious) colleges…but have such people always been so self-entitled, deluded, and classist? Didn’t at least some of them come from middle-class or even lower-class backgrounds?
Moiself recalls that several of the famous people involved in the Varsity blues scandal had previously been involved in progressive political causes and/or supporting charities that help needy or “marginalized” people. I wanted to ask these celebrities, did you ever consider what are the options for those people for whom you lobby and attend protest marches – did you consider their reaction when you dared to prounounce that cheating to secure your daughter’s admission to an elite school was the only option for her? What about the millions of people across the country – as in , 95.7% of us – who somehow manage to live happy, successful, ethical lives despite having NOT gone to elite colleges? What about the millions of people across the country who go to state-supported institutions, trade schools, community colleges, or find their way without their parents, cheating, and bribing on their behalf in life without going to college at all?
Cheating and bribery was the only option to secure your child’s future? What an ass-flapping, slap in the face to anyone without the resources of wealth and fame to stack the deck for their child, [6] and to anyone with the modicum of decency it would take to realize that even if they were to procure their child’s admission to a snob school an elite institution, the ethical ramifications of having done so would affectively erase any advantages they wanted to secure for their child.
“Felicity Huffman knows she took extreme and illegal measures to ensure her daughter’s academic success. But the actor says that she ‘felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it.’ “
(excerpt from above article)
What kind of drugs, other than those of power and prestige, would a person have to be ingesting to attempt to justify, to themselves or others (or to their sentencing judge), that they thought they would be a *bad parent* if they didn’t try to cheat to secure advantages for their child?
I understand that the masterminds of the scandal ( Rick Singer and the other “educational consultants” hired by the celebrity and wealthy clients) used psychological pressure and manipulation to convince their clients that bribing university was ‘the only way” to secure their children’s admission to prestigious universities. But what about those parents’ – any parents’ – responsibility to be an example to their children, to be a fucking decent human being, and not fall for such elitist bullshit?
” ‘It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,’ (Huffman) told ABC7’s Marc Brown in an interview that aired Thursday. ‘So it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.’ ”
(excerpt from above article)
Really? Do you hear yourself when you speak?
Yep, here sits moiself and other like-minded peons, judging those celebrities for breaking the laws that never occurred to us to break, because, somehow, we were able to give our poor little waifs “a chance at a future” without bribing college admission officials and falsifying our children’s SAT scores and fabricating our children’s prowess in sports they never participated in.
So many questions had moiself, while reading those articles…and perhaps the most important question should have been asked of moiself: Why am I reading this? Why am I reading this when – like those parents involved in the scandal – I should know better? I know that reading those articles will ultimately provide no answers, and will cause me to start my day in a state of, WTF is wrong with those people?!?!?!?!?!?! twitterpation. [7]
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [8]
* * *
May you one day find the answer to what is wrong with some people?;
May your hopeful skepticism allow for pleasant surprises everywhere;
May you be eagerly (but not anxiously) waiting these upcoming blog posts;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] To those who have asked. Plus, to strangers on public transit.
[2] Meta-AI provides the so-you-don’t-have-to-read-through-them summary/analysis of post’ comments…not that you ever read through the comments anyway, or cared what other people think….
[3] Did you get the clever self-reference, to my blog signoff – didja, didja, huh, huh?
[4] the specificity of this example is for a reason: I walk on the beach, a lot.
[5] bad for me, that is, in terms of setting my mood, insanity, and anxiety levels for the rest of the day.
[6] Or for those who had the wealth, fame, and privilege, but would never dream of cheating.
[7] And another footnote will not help.
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
