We've all known the bright kid who came home from the library with a big stack of books and sat in his room reading all day and thought he knew everything about everything. I used to be that kid, but I grew out of it. Some people never do.

Almost everything we know about the world, we learn from other people. It follows that our ability to understand the world depends on our ability to understand people.
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Meaningful giving requires knowledge.
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Performative virtue: disconnection of perceived "virtue" from any tangible results in the real world.
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The ability to benefit another party depends on a clear and accurate knowledge of what their needs are, and of what kind of help is wanted, or even if it is wanted at all. Acquiring this knowledge depends on your closeness to the other party. This applies both in market economics and in the practice of compassion.

Truly giving to another person means there's a relationship. There is a feedback loop that tells you when your care has been beneficial, or misguided, or unwanted, or harmful. This relationship, this intimate knowledge, only arises out of person-to-person interactions. It cannot be replaced by any institution.

Physical needs: food, shelter, clothing.

Spiritual needs: dignity, identity, meaning.

facebook and youtube and twitter are ACTING like they've got something to hide. That's the thing. That's what they don't get. You may or may not have had an opinion about HCQ and C19, you may or may not think Stella Immanuel is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But when the tech platforms suddenly come marching along in jackboots and disappearing articles and screaming about MISINFORMATION!!!! - they you've got to think something looks suspicious. They are showing with their own actions that there's something there.
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A lot of young people and wanna-be young people came to Portland from small towns out of state, and bought into the hipster myth. Their conservative old towns and churches and families weren't cool enough for them. They deserved better. So they set about the task of making over themselves - and the city - into something ever more exciting, exotic, glamorous, and dangerous. And we've seen the result.
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My observations about debating. (1) All of us have a filter in our brain, like the spam filter in your email inbox. What looks like junk, gets filtered out. If they are programmed to filter out your message, all the facts and logic in the world will be of no avail. Their thinking will not change until they update their spam filters.

(2) Visibility is the key thing. The left used its influence to exaggerate its own numbers, and to keep conservatives believing they were few and isolated. When this illusion collapses, the left's power to shame disintegrates.

(3) At the end of the day, people go by experience. When day-to-day experience conflicts with the accepted narrative strongly enough and consistently enough, the narrative will have to go. People can only watch riots and Bible burnings for so long. At this point, a coherent, articulate alternate narrative will help them make sense of their world, and will be welcomed.

(4) Putting all of these factors together, what's going to win the day is for all of us to keep speaking out, courageously and clearly, and putting the lie to the leftist establishment's castle of illusion.
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"Stay home, stay safe." Because if we could come out of hiding, we might learn how many more of us there are. And then their spell of fear would lose its power.
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If I convince myself that most people are ignorant bigots, then I get to feel "special" just by not being a bigot.

If I believe the other guy is a nazi, then I only have to be 1 percent better than a nazi to be the good guy.
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You put a whole population of law-abiding citizens under indefinite house arrest, sooner or later incarceration is gonna lose its value as a deterrent.

Authoritarians love "states of emergency" because then all normal constraints and expectations are waived. Day-to-day technical and managerial competence is no longer scrutinized because "it's an emergency!" Any kind of action, no matter how ill-advised, can be justified because it's "doing something".

And then comes the need to "restore order" ...

Sometimes if you push harder, you can surprise yourself. A couple of weeks ago I did that. There were two weeknight events that I wanted to go to, both of them in Portland (about an hour from Hillsboro by city bus) in a single week, and I wasn't sure if I'd have the energy. But I went to both, and was glad I did. The first event was the Peter Hook concert Tuesday night. The following Thursday it was the WalkAway event with Dinesh D'Souza and Andy Ngo - as well as WalkAway founder Brandon Straka, and radio host Lars Larson.

I only stayed for the first half and had to miss Dinesh, but it was good to see Andy. I'd been following him on social media (and met him once or twice in person) since the whole business around him getting fired from the Portland State newspaper. But it was a great event and I was glad I went - it was sold out with 500 seats, and no trouble to speak of from the other side. (They had about 20 of their folks across the street, wearing black masks, yelling curses, and chanting unintelligible slogans.)

Anyway, I've felt energized ever since then. I made it through the week fine, and realized I had more energy than I thought. I realized that a lot of what I thought was being tired was just me telling myself that I should expect to feel tired. Once I changed that mindset, I found I could accomplish a lot more.

So I've attained the magical age of 55 years. Hey, it's both a Fibonacci number and a triangular number!

Looking back, the hardest thing to think about is all the connections with people that I haven't kept up as well as I should have. What gives me hope and encouragement is finding a deeper, stronger sense of purpose as I grow older, as the distractions fall away into the background.

Going forward, I mean to focus on the things that matter most.

There's a tradition that every child has three parents: the mother, the father, and the Creator.

There is a very profound and healing truth in this. Especially for those of us who were born into difficult or dysfunctional families, or whose circumstances of birth might seem less than ideal.

Maybe your mother and father weren't well matched. You can drive yourself crazy thinking things like, "They should never have been together," and then where would that leave you? That way lies madness.

Remembering the Power behind the universe and behind the often irrational and desperate acts of men and women can help us remember our own place in the plan. Then we can begin to take responsibility for our own lives and for those dependent on us, and perhaps find peace.

I don't know if this helps anybody else, but it has helped me.

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There's a tallish, professional-looking man in his 50s who lives on the 4th floor and sometimes we pass in the alley (he goes out for a smoke) or in the elevator. I ran into him twice this morning, once on the way back from the laundry room and again a short while later as I went to pick up a few snacks from the grocery store downstairs. I believe I overheard the grocer address him as Jim as he walked in while I was leaving.

Yesterday evening my intercom phone beeped from the lobby - first time I've had a ring since I moved in - and I picked it up, curious to see who would be petitioning me for admittance to the building. A misdirected pizza maybe? (Or, considering the season, Chinese food?) The voice on the other end was a cheerful female voice who said she wanted to visit someone on the third floor - I think she gave the apartment number as 312 - and wanted someone to let her in; apparently 312 wasn't answering. This all sounded fine, but I thought it best to go down and get a visual on the person, rather than letting them in by the buzzer, sight unseen.

She was an attractive young blonde woman, probably no more than 30. By the time I greeted her at the door she had discovered her mistake: the unit she wanted was on the fourth floor, not the third. So I rode up with her and made chit-chat with her as far as my stop and wished her a good evening, and maybe a pleasant holiday, I don't recall.

I saw her again this morning as we passed each other in front of the building; I was coming out of the grocery that Jim had just entered. Her face was contorted and wet with tears. "Hey," I said with cautious sympathy, "how you doing?"

"I've had better days," she said between muffled sobs.

What can you do? There wasn't much I felt I could do (I didn't want to pry), so I just said, "I'm sorry. I hope the new year is better for you."

"Thank you," she said, and went on her way.

So, what happened? Had she had an overnight encounter with Jim that ended in tears? Or was her story something else, and nothing to do with Jim? If I were the kind of writer who does these things, I suppose I would try to imagine a whole story behind her and Jim. But I'm not, so I won't try.


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The bar at the Admiral is not straight but a double convex arc, like a very shallow, rounded W from the patrons' side. This means that you can see your barmates a little bit, without staring them in the face awkwardly.

I sat at the end closer to the door. Adjacent to me there was a man around my age with wavy, shoulder-length hair and a slight Irish accent. He made reference to his Irish heritage at one point, although at another moment he said something about his English side being the reason he's not typically very demonstrative. The woman with him - long brown hair, average looks, a little heavy but not fat, from what I could see - was his companion but not a date from what I could gather. He was very grateful to her for some reason - he told the bartender that she had helped him with "weeks of old mail, bills, and old CDs". I wondered why he would need help - was it an estate matter? But he mentioned just having spoken to his Mum on the phone. He turned to face his lady friend when speaking to her, and the bartender Angela when addressing her. Once he playfully put up his dukes and offered to fight his lady friend - "Hey, I've seen Charlie Bronson movies!" She protested that she was wearing glasses. "Oh you are? Well I never hit a person with glasses."

It wasn't until later - when he left the bar for some reason, and returned after a few minutes - that I understood. He came in tapping his way with a red-tipped white cane, and his friend called his name (I've forgotten it) to help him find her.

So, the friendly, easygoing Irishman had just lost his sight. From overhearing bits of his conversation, I heard him mention a couple of women he knew who had been blinded in shotgun accidents; presumably they had met through some rehabilitation group. One of the women, he said, had been so badly disfigured that she had to wear a mask when going out in public - "I don't know what she looks like, of course - I met her after."

Actually, I am not disappointed in anybody this past year. (Not even myself, inexplicably.)

It has been a good year, and one of looking forward and building for the future. I'm writing this as an open post, so details of those near and/or dear will be sketchy, but suffice it to say that I feel like my life is moving in a positive direction.

It'd better be, because I hit the half-century mark in just over a month.

I haven't done anything, AT ALL, to mark my last few birthdays, but I am going to change that this year. Would like to invite a few people over - just those I'm closest to, and that's a small, select group - for a low-key evening. I feel like that would be a good stepping-stone for moving forward on the next phase.

Anyway, happy Festivus.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him.
- Proverbs 26:4

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
- Dale Carnegie

http://xkcd.com/1081/

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Here's an open question for anybody anywhere in the work world.

So, we know that sometimes independent thinking is an asset. It's a good thing, and it is celebrated with slogans like Apple's "Think Different" motto. I'm talking about the people who think outside the box, who don't necessarily conform to preconceived ideas about how things "should" be done. They are unconventional thinkers and sometimes get into trouble, but they have brilliant insights because they see things no one else can see and they say things no one else dares to say. I'll call them Mavericks.

And then there's another group. These are people who hold up meetings or classroom work with pointless questions (typically of a what-if nature) seemingly designed to show the questioner's superior intelligence. They are the ones who throw up objections to any planned action because they've thought of something that could go wrong. They sometimes get in trouble, or never advance very far because they annoy people; but often they manage to stay a step ahead of the law and game the system by dazzling higher-ups with their spurious brilliance. I'll call them the Malcontents. They are a diverse group but they all have one thing in common: EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM BELIEVES THEY'RE A 'MAVERICK'.

So, here's the question: How do you tell the two groups apart? I mean, not just a hunch or intuition, but some objective measure that you can pin down and discuss with other people. And how do you - as a subordinate, peer, supervisor, or manager, deal with this problem?