Seeking Wisdom

For the Fall 15’s season this year we handed out MRugby dog tags to everyone who was on the top 23 side that week. If you came off the Top 23, including injuries, you had to hand off your dog tag to whoever took your spot. I’ve never really been a big jewelry guy before (read: I never wore accessories of any kind) but I took to the dog tag. I think it was because it was an honor of sorts. It made me feel special to put it on because it was a reminder that I had earned something. Furthermore, it was a reminder of what I owed to the club. Through this reminder of obligation it was also a physical manifestation of my identity as a rugger at U of M. Through my experience of wearing the dog tag, the care I would take to keep track of it, and the distress I felt without it I realized there was something important going on here. Through tattoos, jewelry, and jerseys cultures throughout time have made their identities visible. I think the importance of it isn’t in the sharing though. Thi...

The inspiration for this post is twofold: my mom getting on my case about how much I cuss, and that making me recall a pretty convincing argument my high school English teacher Ms. Schneider made about why people don't swear in Congress, parts of which I've shamelessly lifted and pasted here. ------------------------------------------------------- I’ll preface this argument by acknowledging that I am no Puritan by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve recently tried to cut back on my swearing using the old rubber band method but I broke the thing after one day. So this writing is probably more so to convince myself to persevere in that effort as it is to persuade anyone else of anything. I’ll use two examples throughout to illustrate the points I’ll try to make. The first is the most popular swear in every language which translates to “fornicate” in its literal meaning, while the second means something closer to “fecal.” Now if you’ve figured out what words I’m referri...

This morning I listened to Art of Charm podcast #685 about the positive effects of encouraging pro-social emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and the correct kind of pride. Compassion will make it easier for us to perform unselfish acts because we’ll actually wish to do them. Gratitude grants us greater life satisfaction holding actual quality of life equal. And pride, not hubris, will instill the kind of confidence in our abilities that will make us more willing to share and take risks. This will in turn make people want to collaborate with us more readily. I’m trying to summarize the podcast as briefly as possible because it’s not really the point I want to get to. The point I’m trying to get to is that the new wisdom we generate every year through social experiments and psychological studies is not new at all! The new research, the new self-help books, the new “life-hacks” that come out perennially aren’t unique, aren’t original, aren’t new . And this isn’t a phenom...