Ebay is a pretty incredible website. I just rediscovered Ebay two months ago because of another obsession named pickleball. I wanted a new pickleball paddle and someone at the park suggested I try Ebay. I did and it was an incredible experience. I got a great paddle at an amazing price and then I took a trip and found it! A comic book I had gained in childhood but lost as an adult.
I ordered the comic book. I took the comic book out of its sleeve and as soon as I opened it I was treated with a smell and a journey back to my childhood. The smell transported me to a time when me and Spider man faced villains. That smell of the paper and ink brought me joy and nostalgia.
Scientists are still working out how smell works and why it is lost but one thing we absolutely know about smell is that it has an ability to bring someone back and is one of the strongest triggers for memories. Smell often brings with it some of our strongest emotions. Take some time today to think about moments and the smells from those moements it will be a real treat.
The new year is quickly approaching, I am typing this on December the 15th, only 16 days until the new year. With the new year brings my resolutions. I have so much I want to accomplish that I have to pare down my list. I will have a refined list this year and I will get it done. This is my hope for me and you.
How though will we do it? We will grind! We will wake up and grind every day. There is no secret to success, other than trying failing and trying again. My only wish for you and myself for next year is that you grind. I will not wish for it to be easy because it will not be easy. I will not wish for success because we will fail more than succeed. I will not wish for you to be comfortable because comfort does not help us grow. I will not wish for you to be satiated because hunger moves us better than anything. I will wish for us to never quit grinding though.
Don’t let anyone stop you next year including you!! happy holidays and Happy New Year!!
This post is being typed on Dec 1 2023. On December 1 1959 12 countries signed the Antarctic Treaty. The treaty states that Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. The treaty has now been signed by 56 countries.
Watching the news now can be kind of depressing. There seems to always be some type of war going on and peace seems more elusive than ever but the Antarctic treaty should provide the world with hope. If 56 nations can see eye to eye on the need to protect and keep peace at this part of the world then why not the rest?
The Treaty also states that the reason for the peace is that science needs to be allowed to happen. A shared goal seems to be the key for peace.
I was watching an interview with someone in a country that was actively at war with another country. The person being interviewed was asked how they felt about the invasion and the war and (I am paraphrasing) the subject basically stated that they were less concerned with who was in charge of their country and more concerned with the power being on and the grocery store being open. Most citizens want the same basic things and that is the shared goal. The men and women who start and promote war however are an anomaly and are pursing goals that are not really shared.
War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.
Now even though it feels like there is always a war going on, right now the world is experiencing a rather peaceful time right now. There are more democratic governments now, more alliances and less armed forces. It may not seem like it but the world is moving towards more and more peace and it seems that this happens when democracy is the rule. With democracy there is less and less of a chance for the men and women who start and sustain war to be put into leadership roles. The whole of humanity is far better than the few, that being said we as a species want to try hard to avoid the tyranny of the majority and promote democracy with equality for every person on earth. You and I may not understand different people or their lifestyles but everyone should be treated by everyone else equally and respectfully and most importantly compassionately.
No one wins a war. It is true, there are degrees of loss, but no one wins
There is no room in equality, respect and compassion for war. War is a failure and it seems that this ideology is steadily taken hold and the moral arc of the universe is bending towards a better world.
Through 2006 and 2013 I became obsessed with a tv show called Dexter. The show told the story of a blood spatter analysis at the Miami police department who moonlighted as a serial killer. I know it was a wild premise and a wild tv show, great acting and writing had me come back every week. In one episode a group of bad guys are looking at Dexters ID and one bad guys mentions that Dexter is a blood splatter analysis expert. The man in charge corrects the henchman and tells him it is spatter not splatter.
The difference between spatter and splatter is a matter of degree. To spatter means to scatter small particles of a substance. To splatter means to scatter large particles of a substance. See? Just an matter of degrees separates the two words, but degrees matter.
It is attention to detail that may have been one of the reasons that the man explaining what they call Deters profession made this man a bad guy boss and not a mere henchman. It can be easy to make situations simple however we miss so much when we do this. Life is complicated nuanced and there is often beauty found in small degrees. Let’s not sell ourselves or others short today by skipping over the nuances or using the wrong words to describe the profession of parttime serial killers.
(and it is not lost on me that this post dealing with the importance of semantics, particulars and details is in fact quite succinct).
I am a big fan of new years resolutions and very soon those of us in the United States and all the countries that use the Gregorian calendar will get to experience New years!! Party Time! Pop the champagne, sing the songs and kiss your special someone.
Are you making any new years resolutions? Why are your resolutions for 2024? Why did you choose these resolutions? Why aren’t you making any resolutions? What more do you want from life? What would you like to see happen differently in 2024? I ask myself all these questions and more when I am crafting my resolutions list. I love facing the new year armed with hope and a checklist of things I want to see done by me.
I hope that you will feel empowered with the new year coming and hopeful about the new year. I also wish you and your family a great holiday season and a prosperous safe and happy 2024.
I enjoy reading however, I find that reading often takes a back seat to life. I had a beautiful system that gave me some great quiet time for reading in the gym of all places. I would spend 30 minutes a day on the elliptical machine and plow through my monthly obsession (book I was reading). Now I am spending thirty minutes a day on a row machine so the ergonomics are such that I am unable to read. I have been trying to carve out some other time to read because, I really enjoy reading. I will let you know how that goes. One of the last books I read on the elliptical was, Some we love, Some we Hate and Some we Eat, by Hal Herzog. The book was study dealing with the complicated relationships between species specifically Homo sapiens and all other animals.
Hal Herzog is a professor of psychology and an expert on the psychology of human-animal relations. The book outlines how people interact with animals and gives some scientific insight into animals. After reading this book I quit eating animal based meat.
After seeing the evidence for sentient life in the animals that humans slaughter and eat I could not in good conscience eat any more animal based meat. Many of the animals that are slaughtered and consumed experience pleasure, pain and joy. The animals also have robust social structures and family units. The evidence about animals compels me to believe that at the very least they deserve the right to live or not be slaughtered.
So the ethics compelled me to abandon eating animal based meats. I do a lot of the cooking for the family and now I had to find plant based alternatives to animal based meats and that was not as difficult or expensive as I had anticipated it would be. Making the change to a vegetarian lifestyle has been pretty painless actually and I have not felt as lethargic after big meals. I was often lethargic and almost sick when I ate animal based meats to the point of satiation.
“Give it a month”. I can still hear my grandma telling me that it takes a month to create a habit and I should not quit doing something for at least one month. Scientists and researchers do not seem to agree with grandma. Habits form within 21 to 254 days to become a habit. The sweet spot seemed to be 66 days. The study seems interesting and at the end of it what seemed to mater a lot was mindset.
We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
Here in the United States and throughout much of Europe we are entering the Holiday season. We will experience thanksgiving, followed by xmas and conclude with New Years. I love making New Years resolutions. It is so fun to see the new year and decide who I want to be and how I plan to get there. I feel young and fresh and hopeful. New Year resolutions are great. You are resolving to be a better you!
This 2024 I plan on approaching resolutions as new habits. I want to create new good habits that will make me a better person. I am not sure what those habits will and should be just yet but I have the holiday season to figure that out. I will keep you posted and I wish you luck on finding good new habits for yourself in 2024.
What is your favorite animal? My answer without thought when I read this was, my dog. I was tempted to just type my dog and be done with this post however, I got to thinking, and now I am not sure about my answer.
Oh Don’t get me wrong my dog is my second best friend, my first is Shanna. I told my middle child this about a month ago and he nodded his head and said that made sense. There is a great book I read earlier this year titled, “Some we Love, Some We hate, and Some we Eat”, written by Hal Herzog. Hal is an expert on the psychology of human-animal relations and teaches at the university. I loved this book it’s a great read however, the book made me become a vegetarian. I also love that Hal studies and teaches this subject. Its important but, (there is always a but) aren’t humans animals? The answer is yes humans are animals.
Humans argue that the superior intellect of the human distinguishes humans from animals but I would argue that humans are not really much more intelligent than any other animal out there. Dolphins, Elephants, Ravens, pigs and chimpanzees all give humans a run for their money when it comes to intelligence.
The fact that humans have approached other animals as superior skews the scales and I think has affected the way humans have lived on the earth. Instead of being stewards of the earth and part of the animal kingdom the human animal has killed more humans than any other animal on the planet except for the mosquito. If humans were a more humble and compassionate animal I wonder how much different would the world be?
Anyways my favorite animal on earth is Shanna then my dog storm.
It was a few weeks ago and I was doom scrolling through Tik Tok. Watching funny videos, woodworking videos, bread making videos (homemade bread is incredible by the way) and I stumbled on a creator that I follows live stream. The creator was holding a debate. The debate had two arguments dealing with two separate topics. One argument I totally agreed with the creator on and could see no way to change my mind from the followers that engaged with the creator. The second argument really bothered me and not because i agreed or disagreed with the creator it was the way the argument was crafted. The argument really rubbed me the wrong way and I just couldn’y put my finger on why I didn’t like the argument.
I was bugged not only by the argument but also by the fact that I couldn’t name what was happing with this persons argument. Finally it hit me! The argument was a bad faith argument, precisely an appeal to ignorance bad faith argument. This is what I think it was what do you think? The argument was that; God is imaginary because you cannot prove the existence of God. See this is textbook appeal to ignorance. Since you cannot prove that god exists than the opposite must be true. This is the type of zero sum thinking that truly bugs me to no end.
It is zero sum thinking that seems to be doing and has done major damage throughout the course of humans history. There is no doubt in my mind that the partisan attitude in the United States government has come from zero sum thinking. The racial animosity and divisions also come from a zero sum mindset as well. The zero sum theory is bad for society and the world and it is high time that humanity embrace the non zero sum thinking. Together we can and will all win.
My wife and I were dating for a little of two years. My wife was working in Manhattan and I visited her at the end of her work trip and stayed for a weekend. We scored Wicked Tickets and watched the show. We had a blast watching Wicked. One of my favorite parts of the play was a scene where one woman promised the other woman that she would make that woman popular, as a show of her friendship towards the unpopular woman.
There is a new book by Mitch Prinstein titled Popular. The book outlines the issues we face in society because our bodies have not evolved beyond worrying about status and popularity. More aptly put we need to evolve beyond worrying about convention popularity and status and be more concerned about likeability and with compassion.
Often what makes us gain status and become more popular is not good for the modern world we live in. What the world needs now is love sweet love (I could not resist myself). Honestly though we need to reprogram society and change what is popular and gains status.
“The world is a show and the show is a performance of the wealthy, the beautiful and the fortunate. The invulnerable, the matchless and the exclusive live a life like dazzling fish in a scintillating seascape behind glass. Everybody may admire them, but nobody can touch them. ( “Keeping up with the Joneses” )”
Erik Pevernagie
Most billionaires are psychopaths and have taken much much much more from society then they have contributed. Even the most philanthropic billionaires have only given away 20% of their wealth so far. Most Billionaires in the United States hover between 1% and 5% of their wealth in their philanthropic endeavors. However society has been programed to make these folks popular and important when they should not be. In a fair and just society billionaires should not exist. Billionaires are proof that our society is broken and the popularity of billionaires does not point towards the development of a better society in the near future.
Take time today to reward and seek the things that should matter and make those popular. what matters most is compassion love, human connection and relationships.
The Corrigan Encore 