Dive into the archives.
- Knowledge and Denial
This afternoon, after recommending a book to a friend, I found myself thinking about knowledge and denial. I had given her the book, Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed because I was finding its contextualization of an earlier financial crisis strangely comforting. And, although she preferred a strategy of remaining hazily unaware of specifics as [...]
- Assault on Trust
Remember the adage, “the customer is always right?” Well, it articulates a psychological truism called the “Law of Effect”. Simply put, the meaning of an action is in what it does. Our adage reflects on one meaningful dimension of a transaction, motivated ,of course, by the desire for a smooth business deal from the perspective [...]
- Stunned By the Dow
Watching the market drop precipitously, again, I wonder at my friends’ silence. Exhaustion? Too much time since the last drop, too much hope spent (“my broker is a genius….see here, we’re up again!”) one time too many. Stunned? Incapable of considering the implications: too too too too to wrap the mind around. As I write, [...]
- Outflanking the Recession Avalanche: Fighting Depression
Like most of us, I’ve become a newspaper junkie: whether paper or on-line, luxuriating in the onrush of information as markets fluctuate and both corporations and nation-states tremble in the shadow of Moody’s. It’s a pleasure akin to visiting the dental hygienist: the discrete pain of acceptable bloodletting. But then, I have to be in [...]
- Annals of Denial: Follow Your Bliss
Two moments, several hours apart, gave me plenty to think about. The first happened, as three neighbors, all returning from walking our dogs in the park , paused on a street corner, to wait for the traffic light to change. We were chatting about friends and colleagues who’d recently become unemployed. A well-dressed, middle-aged man, [...]
- “Daisy Daisy”: A Reflection Upon Adult Learning
Reflecting on a recent shift between stress and resolution, I can discern the effects of adult learning. I’ve rarely recognized an example so brightly, so distinctly. At its center was my I-phone, upon which I’d become increasingly reliant. Already a generation out of date, it suddenly indicated that I could only access my “favorites”. How [...]
- My Single Tip For Success
The great benefit for a self-help essayist in this era of recession is the value of the singular. How many times I have marveled at the multiplicity of tips offered (often in blocks of 7: at the limits of our human capacity for “chunking”, or holding ideas consistently in our heads) for emotional coping and [...]
