Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 342

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Don Quixote," by Miguel de Cervantes.

In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it.

So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul.

So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in the style of those his books had taught him, imitating their language as well as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervour that it was enough to melt his brains if he had any. Nearly all day he travelled without anything remarkable happening to him, at which he was in despair, for he was anxious to encounter someone at once upon whom to try the might of his strong arm.

 

Meanwhile Don Quixote worked upon a farm labourer, a neighbour of his, an honest man (if indeed that title can be given to him who is poor), but with very little wit in his pate. In a word, he so talked him over, and with such persuasions and promises, that the poor clown made up his mind to sally forth with him and serve him as esquire. Don Quixote, among other things, told him he ought to be ready to go with him gladly, because any moment an adventure might occur that might win an island in the twinkling of an eye and leave him governor of it. On these and the like promises Sancho Panza (for so the labourer was called) left wife and children, and engaged himself as esquire to his neighbour.

At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that there are on that plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, “Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

"Those thou seest there,”answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,”said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,”replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”

When the author of this great history comes to relate what is set down in this chapter he says he would have preferred to pass it over in silence, fearing it would not be believed, because here Don Quixote’s madness reaches the confines of the greatest that can be conceived, and even goes a couple of bowshots beyond the greatest.

Opposites Attract

Behind every good show is well-conceived character development. I recently watched "Money Heist" on Netflix and absolutely adored it, in no small part because the main characters drew me into their vulnerabilities, aspirations, and interactions. 

Of course I resonated with "the Professor," whose cunning, thinking through all the possibilities in advance, and pulling off an audacious plan with perfect execution are things I could celebrate and aspire to. But, I found myself also enjoying the "Denver" character too, who could not be more diametrically opposed to the Professor: compulsive, entertainer, irrational.

Perhaps every person has an alter ego aspect of them. The demure person harboring a wild side, a constant tinkerer having a lazy aspect about themselves, and so on. Or, perhaps we are comfortable with our traits AND respect the heck out of the opposite of those traits.

I hope that's the case with me. It's not a coincidence that, as an INTJ in the Myers-Briggs, I've always had my polar opposite represented in close relationships in my life. ESFP's were some of my closest friends in high school and college, and I currently am co-president with an ESFP.

Whether for social or business purposes, opposites who respect their opposites can be profoundly good. As on "Money Heist," diversity of strengths and perspectives adds spice to relationships. And in business, having complementary strengths helps cover all the bases and avoid blind spots.

It is only natural to seek out and naturally enjoy people like ourselves. I am no different, enjoying immensely the company of fellow INTJ's in my personal and work lives. Yet life is best when you find others who are your polar opposite. What a wonderful partnership, community, and shared life can result.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 341

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet," by Bjorn Lomborg.

I HAVE BEEN part of the global discussion on climate change policy for two decades, since writing The Skeptical Environmentalist. Throughout all this time, I have argued that climate change is a real problem. Contrary to what you hear, the basic climate findings have remained remarkably consistent over the last twenty years. Scientists agree that global warming is mostly caused by humans, and there has been little change in the impacts they project for temperature and sea level rise.

The political reaction to the reality of climate change has always been flawed—this, too, I have been pointing out for decades. There are, I have argued and continue to argue, smarter ways than our present-day approach to tackle global warming. But the conversation around me has changed dramatically in recent years. The rhetoric on climate change has become ever more extreme and less moored to the actual science. Over the past twenty years, climate scientists have painstakingly increased knowledge about climate change, and we have more—and more reliable—data than ever before. But at the same time, the rhetoric that comes from commentators and the media has become increasingly irrational. 

The science shows us that fears of a climate apocalypse are unfounded. Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world. It is a manageable problem. Yet, we now live in a world where almost half the population believes climate change will extinguish humanity. This has profoundly altered the political reality. It makes us double down on poor climate policies. It makes us increasingly ignore all other challenges, from pandemics and food shortages to political strife and conflicts, or subsume them under the banner of climate change. 

This singular obsession with climate change means that we are now going from wasting billions of dollars on ineffective policies to wasting trillions. At the same time, we’re ignoring ever more of the world’s more urgent and much more tractable challenges. And we’re scaring kids and adults witless, which is not just factually wrong but morally reprehensible. 

If we don’t say stop, the current, false climate alarm, despite its good intentions, is likely to leave the world much worse off than it could be. That is why I’m writing this book now. We need to dial back on the panic, look at the science, face the economics, and address the issue rationally. How do we fix climate change, and how do we prioritize it amid the many other problems afflicting the world?

We can draw lessons from the time we transitioned our global economy from one source of light to another. From the 1700s through the mid-1800s, whale oil provided light to the United States and much of the Western world. The US dominated the slaughter of whales, a barbaric practice by today’s standards. At its peak, whaling employed seventy thousand people and was the fifth-largest industry in the United States. Producing millions of gallons of whale oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, offering a brighter and cleaner-burning option to cheaper, less safe alternatives such as lard oil and camphene. It was hard to imagine that people would ever agree to live without whale oil, because that would have meant going backward toward a sootier, dimmer past.

In those days, of course, there was no environmental movement to speak of. But one wonders if the whalers, finding each year that they needed to go farther from Nantucket Island to kill whales, ever asked themselves: “What will happen when the whales run out?” The Western world was reliant on slaughtering whales for quality lighting, yet we never did hunt whales to extinction. Why? We found alternative technologies. First, kerosene from petroleum replaced whale oil as a source of lighting. And we didn’t run out of kerosene, either: electricity supplanted it because it was a superior way to light our planet. 

Exhortations to stop using whale oil, to turn down the lights, or go back to old, heavily polluting practices were not what saved the whales. New technology did.

RIGHT NOW, FOSSIL FUELS are cheap. The global economy relies on them, and there are currently no alternative energy sources fully able to compete. We should be focusing much more on finding and creating those alternatives. Solar and wind power, so far, are not the answer. Even with huge political support and trillions of dollars in subsidies, solar and wind energy provide just over one percent of our global energy needs. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2040 and even after another $4 trillion has been spent on additional subsidies, solar and wind power will deliver only less than 5 percent of global energy. They are expensive and inefficient compared to fossil fuels. The cheapness of fossil fuels explains why they meet about 80 percent of our energy needs today, and why they will still be providing 74 percent in 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, even if every promise made by world leaders in the Paris Agreement is delivered.

Reducing our carbon dioxide emissions significantly from fossil fuels will require innovation. The good news is that we have managed to innovate in this area already, almost without trying to. One of the best examples of this in recent times is the evolution of fracking in the United States. Fracking has reduced the price of oil and gas. As we saw in chapter 10, it has lowered the price of heating, allowing poorer people especially to heat their homes better, saving about eleven thousand lives each year. It has also dramatically increased the wealth of the United States—a 2019 study shows that it has increased US GDP by one percent over what it would otherwise have been in 2015, adding $180 billion to the US economy each year.

It has also had real, negative impacts on the environment, especially through air pollution, water pollution, and habitat fragmentation. The biggest study, published in 2019, estimates the total environmental cost of US fracking at $23 billion per year, with air pollution making up three-quarters of that cost. While overall, fracking very likely delivers an overwhelming benefit to the United States, the political conversation for and against it can be seen as a discussion on the distribution of these benefits and costs.

Here, though, we can think about fracking as an example of innovation to cut carbon dioxide emissions. The technology of fracking has been around since at least 1947, but it took public resources to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in innovation support from the US Department of Energy and perhaps $10 billion in production tax credits for private entrepreneurs to find ways to innovate procedures to frack gas profitably. The fracking innovation was not intended as climate policy, but simply as a way to make the United States more energy independent and richer. But it also turned out to have a huge climate change benefit, because gas became cheaper than coal. Crucially, gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal. Making gas cheaper than coal has shifted a large part of US electricity production from coal to gas. This is the main reason why the United States has seen the largest reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of any nation over the past decade.

Remember that approximately one-fourth of aid today is diverted to climate aid projects. Indeed, the amount spent on climate aid today could fund all these interventions in contraception, tuberculosis, malaria, immunization, and nutrition—with money to spare. The money spent on climate aid is money we cannot spend twice. Many people deeply committed to addressing climate change also believe in expanding women’s access to contraception, in reducing poverty, and in eliminating disease in the poorest parts of the world. But too often, they forget that there are trade-offs.

Comprehensive studies show that for rich countries, lower growth means higher risks of protests and political breakdown. This is not surprising. If you live in a burgeoning economy, you know that you and your children will be much better off in the coming years and hence you are more forgiving of the present. If growth is almost absent, the world turns to a zero-sum experience. Better conditions for others likely mean worse conditions for you, resulting in a loss of social cohesion and trust in a worthwhile future.

Politicians who focus on ever-stronger climate policies will not only be likely to spend current resources poorly but also deliver lower and potentially zero growth for the coming decades. This would delight the few job-secure academics who from comfortable ivory towers advocate degrowth for climate, but it would lead to tragic outcomes of stagnation, strife, and discord for ordinary people.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 340

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "1Q84," by Haruki Murakami.

“And also,” the driver said, facing the mirror, “please remember: things are not what they seem.” 

Things are not what they seem, Aomame repeated mentally. “What do you mean by that?” she asked with knitted brows. 

The driver chose his words carefully: “It’s just that you’re about to do something out of the ordinary. Am I right? People do not ordinarily climb down the emergency stairs of the Metropolitan Expressway in the middle of the day—especially women.” 

“I suppose you’re right.” 

“Right. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. I’ve had that experience myself. But don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality."

You couldn’t begin to imagine who I am, where I’m going, or what I’m about to do, Aomame said to her audience without moving her lips. All of you are trapped here. You can’t go anywhere, forward or back. But I’m not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead.

Like it or not, I’m here now, in the year 1Q84. The 1984 that I knew no longer exists. It’s 1Q84 now. The air has changed, the scene has changed. I have to adapt to this world-with-a-question-mark as soon as I can. Like an animal released into a new forest. In order to protect myself and survive, I have to learn the rules of this place and adapt myself to them.

The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

Taking the loaded gun, Aomame found it noticeably heavier than before. Now it had the unmistakable feel of death. This was a precision tool designed to kill people. She could feel her armpits sweating.

It might be better not to wish for such a thing, though. It might be better never to see her again. I might be disappointed if I actually met her, Tengo thought. Maybe she had turned into some boring, tired-looking office worker. Maybe she had become a frustrated mother shrieking at her kids. Maybe the two of them would have nothing in common to talk about. Yes, that was a very real possibility. Then Tengo would lose something precious that he had cherished all these years. It would be gone forever. But no, Tengo felt almost certain it wouldn’t be like that. In that ten-year-old girl’s resolute eyes and strong-willed profile he had discovered a decisiveness that time could not have worn down.

“Good-bye,” she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self that had lived here.

With these hands I took a man’s life, and almost simultaneously, a new life began inside me. Was this part of the transaction?

Believing in what she needed to believe, she relaxed, leaning back against Tengo’s large body. She pressed her ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, and gave herself up to his arms. Just like a pea in a pod.

Fixed Cost, Variable Cost

I actually took two years of accounting in high school (and won national competitions through Future Business Leaders of America), and then accounting was one of my concentrations (along with management) in college. But it's been a very long time since I've studied or practiced it. Still, all the years later, the notion of fixed costs and variable costs is seared into my brain.

What do these arcane terms mean? As the words suggest, one (fixed costs) represents something whose cost is the same regardless of how much or little of an activity you engage in, whereas the other (variable costs) goes up and down as you do more or less of something.

In a business context, rent might be a fixed cost: no matter how many widgets you make and sell, you have to pay the same amount to your landlord. Whereas a variable cost might be some input in the widget that you make: say if your business is cupcakes, variable costs would be things like flour and sugar and wrappers.

I think about this principle of fixed costs and variable costs as it relates to transportation and in turn its implications for cities, human flourishing, and global sustainability. In much of this grand country of ours, driving is the predominant form of moving around. Getting to school or work, picking up a gallon of milk, and going out and having fun all involve getting into a car and driving somewhere. Indeed, in many parts of the country, it is impossible to do any of those or really go anywhere without car access. Conversely, those of us who live in cities have many options for getting around, and in fact oftentimes driving is vastly inferior to walking, biking, or taking transit.

But what does this have to do with fixed costs and variable costs? Well, for those of us who are car owners, driving is a high fixed cost and low variable cost activity. Even with record high gas prices, most of the expense of owning and using a car is fixed, namely buying it in the first place and insuring it. Using it more means going to the pump more often, and likely means a little more wear and tear and therefore higher maintenance costs. But, by and large, you've sunk a lot into owning a car irrespective of how much you drive it. Each additional trip doesn't feel like it costs that much, so most people jump in and turn the key without doing much calculation.

Similarly, for most people, transit is a no fixed cost and some variable cost activity. Every time I have to ride transit I have to pay for it, so riding it twice as often costs twice as much. Hence, on the margins, each trip requires thinking about if you want to pay for that trip. And sometimes, when compared to jumping in the car, the car wins.

Some of us live in parts of the country and have travel patterns where we buy a pass. That turns transit into a some fixed cost and zero variable cost activity: I pay something at the beginning of the month, and then every additional trip costs me nothing. Not surprisingly, people with passes use them a lot, because why not? 

None of this has to be set in stone, but because it's what characterizes the status quo, it can make things hard to change in ways that may be better for society as a whole. Driving is costly to society, not just the gas guzzling but land use patterns and congestion and accidents. It is also something that costs very little to most people on the margins to do slightly more of. Conversely, transit is good for society from an environmental, societal, and economic standpoint. But people are deterred from going to no trips to  one trip because that one trip costs money.

What it we inverted this? What if you "consumed" driving by paying for it per trip? And what if riding transit was, on the margins, free? There are models for both in some cities, the former being car share programs and the latter being programs like Key Advantage here in Philadelphia where the local transit agency sells deeply discounted passes to employers who promise to buy them for every single one of their employees.

Maybe high gas prices make drivers think twice about turning the key, but paying as you go for your car would be a far more effective deterrent. And, reducing the cost of hopping on transit to zero would likely compel some folks to try it, and they may be pleasantly surprised at the benefits.

Even if we continue to move towards fewer combustion engine cars, driving is bad for the environment, land use, and society. From the lens of fixed costs and variable costs, maybe there's a way to get people to reconcile what they impose on others from each additional trip, such that they'll be more mindful of driving  and consider other ways of getting around. And maybe that's what it takes to reorganize transportation infrastructure in our cities and regions and throughout the country.

A New Hobby

 

When I became a principal at my firm nine years ago, I recall sitting down with my kids (just Aaron and Jada at the time) and letting them know that I might be working long hours so would probably have to sacrifice quantity of time with them, but would try to make up for it with quality time. It's been bumpy since then, but I have tried really hard to make that time, even as I give it my all in the business.

Lots of people have to contend with juggling a job and parenting. And for lots of people, the job is more than 9 to 5, not just practically but emotionally. Which makes finding pursuits that are outside of your responsibilities to office and home so important for one's well-being. Easy to acknowledge, hard to execute.

Indeed, my compromise for the first few years of being a principal was maxing out on non-profit board roles. These were helpful for my day job in terms of networks and know-how, but also scratched some important itches for me personally, namely time spent with people I adore and on causes important to me. There truly is something replenishing about giving, in this regard.

In 2018, I resigned all my boards to join the school board here in Philadelphia. This was less connected to my day job. In fact, when things did intersect, I would have to recuse myself, so rather than helping my work I had to work all the more to make up for the time volunteered and lost opportunities. But it was such an amazing public service role, with so many amazing staff members and fellow board members, that I served with joy, even if the role was heavy and demanding and not always fun. 

In the summer of 2020, I was promoted to president, and announced that I would be stepping down from school board, fulfilling a promise to myself to serve for a season and then step aside. I finally did step down in early 2021, glad to have served but glad to no longer have such a huge volunteer service role on my plate. I now realize just how much that time of service cost me in time spent in the firm and with my kids, as I have since then been glad for more space for both of these important things in my life.

Ah, but the need for something outside of work and home continues. Looking back, I can see that I quickly pivoted from my time after school board into efforts to realize my aspirations as a real estate mogul, albeit on a very small scale. In quick succession, I snatched up buying opportunities in Washington DC, Ocean City NJ, and Miami Beach FL, all places I adore spending time and so can daydream about, and all properties that have strong prospects for revenue potential while not in personal use. It's been a bit much at times juggling all of these locations (not to mention our first rental property, on the Delaware River waterfront, as well as our current house which has more than its share of aches and pains). But it also energizes me to play the role of aspiring mogul, and it feels good to be building something that I can enjoy later (and pass down to the kids much later).

Miami Beach, closed in May, may very well be my final real estate purchase. And, with the completion of renovations in Ocean City and the commencement of peak season there, I resume the role of passive owner of these places, keeping tabs on operations and finances, and looking ahead to brief moments of personal use, but otherwise not taking up a whole bunch of my time.

And so it is on to another set of pursuits to keep me sane while I balance work responsibilities and home roles. It appears that this season of my life is a little more introspective and self-serving, but hopefully in an acceptable and healthy manner. First is going to therapy, which I spoke about last month. And second is taking up the game of golf, both as a new hobby to learn and love, as well as an outlet to connect with others at my station in life.

To be specific, earlier this year I reached out to a few men about my age, all of whom run businesses and who I hold in high regard (in addition to just enjoying their company). I asked them if they were interested in learning golf with me, and in the process spending time to encourage and sharpen and commiserate as fellow business owners and civic leaders. Through group lessons and practice sessions, we'll be hacking our way to becoming passable duffers, and reveling in the quality time this platform provides for camaraderie and insights. 

Time will tell if I go way down the rabbit hole like many people I know, who schedule vacations around golf and hit the links with increasing frequency as they near and then head into retirement. For now, it is the latest in a long line of activities that help me stay healthy amid the grind of being a working parent with a hard job. We have to make time for these kinds of pursuits, and I feel good about doing that with golf.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 339

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "You Are Enough: Revealing the Soul to Discover Your Power, Potential, and Possibility," by Panache Desai.

Samadhi is counterintuitive to your operating system, because it is not a matter of striving, grasping, or achieving. It isn’t bestowed upon you based on the books you’ve read, the courses you’ve taken, or the influence of the spiritual path you’ve chosen to pursue. You don’t need to renounce the physical world, live in an ashram, or meditate three times a day. You can have a beautiful family, enjoy a glass of wine, watch your favorite TV show, relax in a cozy home, and appreciate all the other gifts of this world. 

To reach samadhi, all you truly need is yourself.

Your essential self is vast. It is pure consciousness, universal awareness, and it is the foundation of all expression, creativity, and expansion in this world. It is “you” in your most unadulterated form. You entered this world with this essential innocence and purity, but life’s events have distanced and covered over the core foundation of your being. You have forgotten the essential you. When you forget, you do something very curious. You experience your mind thinking, your feelings arising, and your body functioning, and you conclude that those aspects of your experience are the totality of who you are. You say, “I’m fat,” “I’m depressed,” “I’m poor, broken, and hopeless,” “I’m angry,” or “I’m stupid,” as if you are the thought, feeling, situation, or body part. But these are misidentifications, ones that cause unnecessary pain and perpetuate limitations. You have been conditioned to overly identify with your mind and body, and this conditioning has imprisoned your being.

The late and blessed Wayne Dyer once said, “When you squeeze an orange, you’ll always get orange juice to come out. What comes out is what’s inside.” This means that if you have denser energies like bitterness, anger, or frustration lying dormant in your vibrational system, then situations will occur in your outer reality—perhaps a criticism, betrayal, or delay—in order to allow those energies to be brought to the surface, felt, and released. 

Someone can only make you angry or sad if you already have the vibrations of anger and sadness within you. When you oppose someone, it is an energy within yourself that you are opposing. When your “buttons get pushed,” it is because the buttons are there in the first place.

The average person has between eight and twelve subpersonalities hiding inside, ready to jump out to protect the created self. These subpersonalities might take certain archetypal shapes such as the rebel, the tyrant, the mother, the innocent, the white knight, the saboteur, or the guardian, just to name a few. The reason that “spiritual” people have so much difficulty dealing with these parts of themselves is because they have been trained to believe they are unacceptable. Who wants to admit that they are on occasion powerless over their mind and body? It is only through complete, loving, heart-centered acceptance and inclusion that you can integrate the pain that created the subpersonality. When the pain is gone, the subpersonality collapses upon itself.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 338

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Do Good At Work: How Simple Acts of Social Purpose Drive Success and Wellbeing," by Bea Boccalandro.

I baked a quiche for a dinner party once. Its flavor was allegedly mushroom cheddar, but it tasted more like flavorless gelatin. I tried to highlight the crisp green salad during dinner conversation, but a side dish couldn't redeem the meal. Many of us make this same mistake with work. If our jobs aren't fulfilling, we resort to the popular practice of work-life balance. We try to counter work's blandness with golf, movies, or volunteering during the waking hours that work does not occupy. These are worthy things to do, but they are the side dishes that can't make up for a bland main course. Typically, evening and weekend activities can't pull us out of work-caused doldrums.



If your job doesn't improve the world, improve your job.

Expanding work towards social purpose doesn't add work to our lives. It adds life to our work.

I can find a way to live cheaply. I can't find a way to keep doing something pointless.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 337

 

 

Here's an excerpt from a book I recently read, "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

And I’ll marry Grushenka in a minute if I want to. For if you’ve money, Alexey Fyodorovich, you have only to want a thing and you can have it.