Another one for today. Can’t get much better than this! xo
Kudos to agency 72andSunny and creative director Glenn Cole for this inspirational piece of advertising.
Amazing what a power a positive note can have on one’s day. When’s the last time you made a stranger feel this way?
1. Keep a schedule
2. Eat light in the evening
3. Have things you WANT to do during the day
4. Plan your day
5. Drink water before bed and upon waking
6. Exercise
7. Have some private time in the morning
(via Robot Wisdom).
The English professor at Wake Forest University wants to be clear that he is not “romanticizing” clinical depression and that he believes it is a serious condition that should be treated.
But he worries that today’s cornucopia of antidepressants – used to treat even what he calls “mild to moderate sadness” – might make “sweet sorrow” a thing of the past.
“And if that happens, I wonder, what will the future hold? Will our culture become less vital? Will it become less creative?” he asks.
[…]
We can picture this in the primitive world. While the healthy bodies of the tribe were out mindlessly hacking beasts or other humans, the melancholy soul remained behind brooding in a cave or under a tree. There he imagined new structures, oval and amber, or fresh verbal rhythms, sacred summonings, or songs superior to even those of the birds. Envisioning these things, and more, this melancholy malingerer became just as useful for his culture as did the hunters and the gatherers for theirs. He pushed his world ahead. He moved it forward. He dwelled always in the insecure realm of the avant-garde.
This primitive visionary was the first of many such avant-garde melancholics. Of course not all innovators are melancholy, and not all melancholy souls are innovative. However, the scientifically proved relationship between genius and depression, between gloom and greatness suggests that the majority of our cultural innovators, ranging from the ancient dreamer in the bush to the more recent Dadaist in the city, have grounded their originality in the melancholy mood. We can of course by now understand why.
Counter arguments: Hedonistic Imperative.
I’m just reading over some design sites trying to fill in my afternoon here and came across this interesting piece on the wonderful A Brief Message:
Your most intuitive, meaningful, and devastatingly clever design is worthless – unless it’s shallow enough to appeal in the first five seconds.
Most of the time, that’s all you’ll get before they walk, click, or turn away.
Every day, millions go window shopping. Flip through magazines or channels. Walk bookstore aisles, quickly judging each book… by its cover.
Ask us what we’re looking for, however, and most of us won’t know. Though we can’t articulate what we want, it’s clear that we all know it when we see it. Design helps us see it.
With more email, more channels, and more data, we’re left with less time. And more and more, we’re forced to make decisions in a split second, often based on less information than before.
Though we may think of design as a process that runs deep, often it works at very superficial levels.
It’s here that design plays an increasingly important role: communicating a concept, feeling, or attitude in a moment. It condenses the larger body of information that we’re no longer willing (or able) to attend to, and conveys it instantly. It’s what good design has always done, and it’s more important than ever.
This makes me wonder about the state of selling things as quickly as possible. Not just products/services, but people, too. The douchebag New Jersey kids with spray-on tans, the ditzy bar hussies who spend too much time thinking about their hair, people in general with no practical experience with their own subjective opinions.
It has to do with this post I recently made on the difference between how Americans the French can tell when they’re full. One group grows up being told to eat everything on their plate, and feels dissatisfied till they do. The other, they eat and drink only until they’re comfortable and sense they’re comfortable capacity has been met.
After observing the whole national movement which garnered around the Internet vs Scientology, I have to wonder: how do we inspire a Fight Club-like knowledge of subjective value and worth?
At the heart of the occult arts is the Art of knowing the limitless that exists within each one of us. And even that doesn’t do the concept justice, as we’re all One and we can shape and experience things in a multitude of levels, every living moment we’re gifted with on this plane.
So how might the Few go about designing interactions that are both attractive at face value, but also inspire a deeper interaction. Not an easy question, I know. But I want to know if any readers’ personal experiences testing those around them have produced results we can share here.
One experiment I came up with my friend was to detail three adjectives about your closest friends, the Why that you like them, Why they are your friends. Seems a pattern emerges after you go through enough friends, and the adjectives used seem to reflect things about ourselves. This reflects the old ideas that we can only know ourselves through those around us.
It also raises some interesting questions ? la Prometheus Rising. What happens when you have a dear friend that is a skinhead and another that is a Bible-thumping Christian, as I do. Dropping labels from this we find a few characteristics of each person that define why I like them as people and hold them dear. Then there are a bevy of other characteristics they have that might not be to my liking, but I overlook them in favour of the way my preferred characteristics make me feel in their presence.
I might not like the skinhead’s disposition towards violence, but I admire his intellect. The Christian’s unquestioning faith in something they’ve been led to believe in drives me up the wall, but also intrigues me – but overall, I am elated by the sexual chemistry between us that is only amplified by these other differences.
What does this say about them? Not a lot, aside from that the skinhead is intelligent (as many typically seem to be), and that the Christian is sexually flustered and willing to take flirtation to a level of art that permiscuous women aren’t capable of (due to the relative ease of putting the penis in the va-jay-jay).
On the other hand, what does this say about me? Might be a poor example of my character, but it would seem you could accurately say I enjoy both intelligence in thought (even aggressive philosophies that might characterise the skinhead stereotype) and that I get off on flirting. Why are different, these are subjective things that I’ve come to learn about myself. Over the years, it’s been no secret that I’m fond of the controversial philosophies of the likes of Julius Evola (Italian fascist occultist) and that while I admire the layers upon layers of subtle sexual innuendo that flirting can bring about, the actual act can be a bit of a let-down and I am not an overly sexual person by nature. (I feed off the energy of sex, not the act itself. In that, I don’t actually require the physical stimulation.)
Popularity among social circles is also something that’s always piqued my interest, as has fashion, status, leadership, charisma, introverts, violence, and a host of other shit.
In contrast, I’ve inquired with a number of persons I know to list off adjectives about the friends they keep. Not all, but many are stumped and leave me with answers such as ‘They’ve just always been my friends,’ or vague miscellanies like ‘She’s just such a good person.’ I’m not saying that there aren’t good reasons to befriend these individuals, but there seems to be a lack of narrative to both identify and contemplate the Why. This brings me back to a lack of awareness of the self.
Which makes me wonder what activities might bring about this awareness?
While I am fond of people thinking in their own terms, I also believe words act as stepping stones to provide ground for new ideas to be explored and traversed. As is put forth in the Gospel of Philip:
Truth made names in the world,
and without them we can’t think.
Truth is one and is many,
teaching one thing through the many.
I am thinking promoting honest storytelling and dialogue amongst people is gonna be one of the first steps to developing subjective awareness. Perhaps difficult in America, the Land of Hollywood and TV, where stories are told for you, rather than by you. And us Canadians are no better, don’t think I’m not shaking my head at myself here.
I know I got more to think on, but I just wanted to get this out as I ponder away for the coming weeks. Little tidbits of random thought…
Photo by enggulberg
The best “catches” in dating land may be the worst choices in the long-run, new research shows.
Popular people who monitor themselves carefully in social situations and thereby appear to be the most socially appropriate are often highly sought after as romantic partners, a study finds, but these people show less satisfaction and commitment in relationships than socially-awkward people.
[…]
Fortunately, Roloff said, self-monitoring is normally distributed, so most people end up with a partner who falls somewhere in the middle. A person who moderately self-monitors may have great social skills and the ability to be unguarded with their partner when necessary.
(via Robot Wisdom).
Mark Devon, the author:
I began thinking about emotions while studying evolutionary theory at Harvard University.
Learning that adaptations do not evolve unless they help survival, I reasoned that each emotion must have a purpose that helped survival. If I could identify an emotion’s trigger, I could also identify its purpose.
Applying that thought to each emotion, I wrote The Origin of Emotions. [Available as a free PDF download. Or you can purchase a hardcopy for ease of reading.]
The following are excerpts from the book:
‘Maternal love stops when a child is 33 months old. Mothers maximize their reproduction by focusing on the next child when the current child can feed itself. By 33 months, children can feed themselves if food is available. They can walk and their first set of teeth have completed eruption.’
‘Men only love a woman for 42 months, which covers 9 months of gestation and 33 months of post-natal care. Both sexes maximize reproduction by starting a new reproductive cycle with a new partner when a child can feed itself.’
‘Revenge encourages victims of rule breaking to always retaliate, whether it helps them or not. The more victims retaliate, the fewer rule breakers there are. The fewer rule breakers there are, the more efficient a group is.’
‘Pride is triggered by higher rank, not high rank. Rookies feel pride, but veteran all-stars do not. Recent nursing graduates feel pride, but doctors nearing retirement do not.’
‘Humiliation is triggered by lower rank, not low rank. The only criminals who feel humiliation are first-time offenders. Every CEO feels humiliation when they retire.’
‘You feel affection when you see or hear features that separate humans from other primates, such as the sight of white eyes or the sound of talking.’
‘When you maximize your happiness, you do what is best for the species.’
New blog on happiness:
I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT–a memoir about the year I spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study I could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will gather these rules for living and report on what works and what doesn’t. On this daily blog, I recount some of my adventures and insights as I grapple with the challenge of being happier.
Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a book last year called Never Saw It Coming. In it, she argues that we are individually, institutionally, and societally hellbent on wishful thinking. The Secret tells us to visualize best-case scenarios and banish negative ones from our minds. Never Saw It Coming says that’s what we’ve been doing all along-and we get blindsided by even the most foreseeable disasters because of it.
In her research, Cerulo found that when most of us look out at the world and plan for our future, we fuzz out our vision of any failure, fluke, disease, or disaster on the horizon. Instead, we focus on an ideal future, we burnish our best memories, and, well, we watch a lot of your show. Meanwhile, we’re inarticulate about worst-case scenarios. Just thinking about them makes us nervous and uncomfortable.
Abstract:
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.
(via Robot Wisdom)
Russian scientists from the city of Novosibirsk, Siberia, made a sensational report at the international conference devoted to new methods of treatment and rehabilitation in narcology. The report was called “Methods of painful impact to treat addictive behavior.”
Siberian scientists believe that addiction to alcohol and narcotics, as well as depression, suicidal thoughts and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. The absence of the will to live is caused with decreasing production of endorphins – the substance, which is known as the hormone of happiness. If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the ‘production of happiness’ and eventually remove depressive feelings.
(Thanks Danny Chaoflux).
William S. Burroughs:
Danger is a biological necessity for humans, just like sleep and dreams. If you face death, for that time you are immortal. For the Western middle classes, danger is a rarity and erupts only with a sudden, random shock. And yet we are in danger at all times, since our death exists. Is there a technique for confronting death without immediate physical danger? (quoted from Hashisheen: The End of Law)
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