Evaluation Form Quotes

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

Yet, the work was not complete. Next, citing Bond’s veranda and our subsequent construction of it as an example, Sanjit elaborated on the thought which he had previously teased, but not fully explained: that when a reader reads, the reader constructs a setting and world and is able to view themselves through this world. However, he also added that when we read, we are not only able to see our constructed world, but to evaluate our constructed world. This is how, Sanjit would argue, we influence and better ourselves, even if unintentionally; for by pausing and analyzing our constructions we may be able to identify our assumptions about people, places, or things. And it is in this way that books may be an expressed form of art, not just for the writer, but also for the reader.

Never assume that you have attained truth. Don't make any claim to knowledge. Form no conclusion or evaluation concerning truth. The minute you do, your downfall is assured. Whenever you imagine you know something, you cease being open to the living exploration. You have closed a door and cut off the oxygen to the breathing truth.

We teach brilliance bias to children from an early age. A recent US study found that when girls start primary school at the age of five, they are as likely as five-year-old boys to think women could be 'really really smart'. But by the time they turn six, something changes. They start doubting their gender. So much so, in fact, that they start limiting themselves: if a game is presented to them as intended for 'children who are really, really smart', five-year-old girls are as likely to want to play it as boys - but six-year-old girls are suddenly uninterested. Schools are teaching little girls that brilliance doesn't belong to them. No wonder that by the time they're filling out university evaluation forms, students are primed to see their female teachers as less qualified.

We humans seem to be extremely good at generating ideas, theories, and explanations that have the ring of plausibility. We may be relatively deficient, however, in evaluating and testing our ideas once they are formed

There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups.

You must realize that no matter how intently you count your breaths you will still perceive what is in your line of vision, since your eyes are open, and you will hear the normal sounds about you, as your ears are not plugged. And since your brain likewise is not asleep, various thought forms will dart about your mind. Now, they will not hamper or diminish the effectiveness of zazen unless, evaluating them as "good", you cling to them or, deciding they are "bad", you try to check or eliminate them.

The screams echoing through Janet's class were hard to bear. She was attempting a lecture on the Treaty of Paris while Mrs. Pachenko walked between the rows of desks insisting upon calm, raising a finger to her lips and whispering to individual students to please sit all the way down in their desks. In the back of the of the room, several kids were cheering as one of them, a young man whose shirt bore a flaming skull, stood hunched atop his desk like a motocross biker, sliding it forward in small hops. Students appear enthusiastic and are communicating well together, I wrote on the evaluation form.

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.

It is so irresponsible for people in the ‘I want to change the course of my society’ community to not do the damn research into figuring out the latest science of how people change their minds, and under what conditions people change their minds, and what exactly in their minds is being changed. The belief systems people hold are absolutely, in no way, shape, or form the result of any objective evaluation of information. The prejudices are inherited, they’re socially inflicted, they’re propagandized in school, in church, in communities, in families. They are reinforced by endless bouts of patriotic media and all of this nonsense. People are an emotional Gordian knot kaleidoscopic clusterfrack of prior prejudices stuffed into their heads and held aloft by the spears of social approval and ostracism.

Indeed, there is something in the very form of reading—the shape of the action itself—that tends toward virtue. The attentiveness necessary for deep reading (the kind of reading we practice in reading literary works as opposed to skimming news stories or reading instructions) requires patience. The skills of interpretation and evaluation require prudence. Even the simple decision to set aside time to read in a world rife with so many other choices competing for our attention requires a kind of temperance.

By studying as many crimes as we could, and through talking to the experts—the perpetrators themselves—we have learned to interpret those clues in much the same way a doctor evaluates various symptoms to diagnose a particular disease or condition. And just as a doctor can begin forming a diagnosis after recognizing several aspects of a disease presentation he or she has seen before, we can make various conclusions when we see patterns start to emerge.

Jiddu Krishnamurti: “To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

Prototyping at work is giving form to an idea, allowing us to learn from it, evaluate it against others, and improve upon it.

we form many incorrect beliefs because we have natural tendencies to evaluate evidence in a biased and faulty manner.

Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. (J. Krishnamurti)

The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley’s mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over space—has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction—has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn’t understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists—not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire—unlike pleasure—is a source of suffering, pain and hatred.

When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language, built on the primary language truly used by the central nervous system. Thus the outward forms of our mathematics are not absolutely relevant from the point of view of evaluating what the mathematical or logical language truly used by the central nervous system is. However, the above remarks about reliability and logical and arithmetical depth prove that whatever the system is, it cannot fail to differ considerably from what we consciously and explicitly consider as mathematics.

In art, as in biology, there is a phenomenon that can be described as mutation, in which appearances radically change at a tempo much more rapid than that at which they normally proceed. As in the case of biology, we have no means to determine the process by which this radical change occurs. Yet we do know that it is a reaction to a form of congestion. It is a desperate change due to the arrival at a point where the corollaries to a situation are exhausted, when the stimulus to additional growth is sluggish and a rapid rejuvenation is needed so that art, through disuse, does not atrophy in much the same way as an unused human organ. Here art must attain a new start if it is to survive. Then, assiduously, it renews its traditions by marriage with alien traditions, by the reexamination of its own processes, and by those means reestablishes contact again with its own roots. It is in this way that new plastic worlds are born. For art, like a race, cannot inbreed very long without losing its incentives to continue; it needs the rejuvenation of new experiences and new blood. These mutations, it must be clear, however, do not constitute a change in properties, or mean that art has discarded its past. On the contrary, mutation involves a more conscious evaluation of art’s inheritance and the redirection of that inheritance into channels where it can be continued with greater force.

To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

The initial small step is simple: Rather than making a sweeping determination to tackle the Great Books (all of them), decide to begin on one of the reading lists in Part II. As you read each book, you’ll follow the pattern of the trivium. First you’ll try to understand the book’s basic structure and argument; next, you’ll evaluate the book’s assertions; finally, you’ll form an opinion about the book’s ideas. You’ll have to exercise these three skills of reading—understanding, analysis, and evaluation—differently for each kind of book.

Professional writers have long described the way that the act of writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas. By putting half-formed thoughts on the page, we externalize them and are able to evaluate them much more objectively. This is why writers often find that it’s only when they start writing that they figure out what they want to say.

Devaluation of the Earth, hostility towards the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are all from the psychological point of view the expression of a weak patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from the fascinating and overwhelming domain of the Earthly. For we know that the archetypal projection of the Masculine experiences, not without justice, the Earth as the unconscious-making, instinct-entangling, and therefore dangerous Feminine. At the same time the projection of the masculine anima is mingled with the living image of the Earth archetype in the unconscious of man; and the more one-sidedly masculine man's conscious mind is the more primitive, unreliable, and therefore dangerous his anima will be. However, the Earth archetype, in compensation to the divinity of the archetype of Heaven and the Father, that determined the consciousness of medieval man, is fused together with the archaic image of the Mother Goddess. Yet in its struggle against this Mother Goddess, the conscious mind, in its historical development, has had great difficulty in asserting itself so as to reach its – patriarchal - independence. The insecurity of this conscious mind-and we have profound experience of how insecure the position of the conscious mind still is in modern man-is always bound up with fear of the unconscious, and no well-meaning theory "against fear" will be able to rid the world of this deeply rooted anxiety, which at different times has been projected on different objects. Whether this anxiety expresses itself in a religious form as the medieval fear of demons or witches, or politically as the modern fear of war with the State beyond the Iron Curtain, in every case we are dealing with a projection, though at the same time the anxiety is justified. In reality, our small ego-consciousness is justifiably afraid of the superior power of the collective forces, both without and within. In the history of the development of the conscious mind, for reasons which we cannot pursue here, the archetype of the Masculine Heaven is connected positively with the conscious mind, and the collective powers that threaten and devour the conscious mind both from without and within, are regarded as Feminine. A negative evaluation of the Earth archetype is therefore necessary and inevitable for a masculine, patriarchal conscious mind that is still weak. But this validity only applies in relation to a specific type of conscious mind; it alters as the integration of the human personality advances, and the conscious mind is strengthened and extended. A one-sided conscious mind, such as prevailed in the medieval patriarchal order, is certainly radical, even fanatical, but in a psychological sense it is by no means strong. As a result of the one-sidedness of the conscious mind, the human personality becomes involved in an equally one-sided opposition to its own unconscious, so that actually a split occurs. Even if, for example, the Masculine principle identifies itself with the world of Heaven, and projects the evil world of Earth outwards on the alien Feminine principle, both worlds are still parts of the personality, and the repressing masculine spiritual world of Heaven and of the values of the conscious mind is continually undermined and threatened by the repressed but constantly attacking opposite side. That is why the religious fanaticism of the representatives of the patriarchal World of Heaven reached its climax in the Inquisition and the witch trials, at the very moment when the influence of the archetype of Heaven, which had ruled the Middle Ages and the previous period, began to wane, and the opposite image of the Feminine Earth archetype began to emerge.

People have this belief that what we believe is the effect of the facts that we’re exposed to, and therefore, if we expose people to different and newer facts, they will change their beliefs. This is not true. […] The contents of people’s minds, the belief systems that they hold, are in no way, shape or form a result of any objective evaluation of information. The prejudices are inherited. They are socially inflicted. They are propagandized in school, in church, in communities, in families. They are reinforced by endless bouts of patriotic media and other sorts of nonsense. People are just an emotional Gordian knot, kaleidoscopic clusterfrack of prior prejudices [which have been] stuffed into their heads and held aloft by the spears of social approval or ostracism. Everybody is prejudiced, almost, and everybody maintains those prejudices for fear of social attack, ostracism, or disapproval. Because people haven’t been reasoned into their beliefs, they can’t be reasoned out of their beliefs, [and] when people have existing prejudices, showing them facts that run counter to those prejudices does not dislodge them. In fact, statistically, it is more likely to make those prejudices stronger.

Alienation from society bestows one with the advantage of maintaining a detached perspective upon the human race. Jidu Krishnamurti said, ‘The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

The average person wastes his life. He has a great deal of energy but he wastes it. The life of an average person seems at the end utterly meaningless…without significance. When he looks back…what has he done? MIND The mind creates routine for its own safety and convenience. Tradition becomes our security. But when the mind is secure it is in decay. We all want to be famous people…and the moment we want to be something…we are no longer free. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential…the what is. It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything new…and in that there’s joy. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others is real education. SOCIETY It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals…whereas culture has invented a single mold to which we must conform. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern. He repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. What happens to your heart and your mind when you are merely imitative, naturally they wither, do they not? The great enemy of mankind is superstition and belief which is the same thing. When you separate yourself by belief tradition by nationally it breeds violence. Despots are only the spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power which is in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared there will be confusion and classes…hate and wars. A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country to any religion to any political party. He is concerned with the understanding of mankind. FEAR You have religion. Yet the constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. You can only be afraid of what you think you know. One is never afraid of the unknown…one is afraid of the known coming to an end. A man who is not afraid is not aggressive. A man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free and peaceful mind. You want to be loved because you do not love…but the moment you really love, it is finished. You are no longer inquiring whether someone loves you or not. MEDITATION The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. In meditation you will discover the whisperings of your own prejudices…your own noises…the monkey mind. You have to be your own teacher…truth is a pathless land. The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are…where you are going…what the end is. Down deep we all understand that it is truth that liberates…not your effort to be free. The idea of ourselves…our real selves…is your escape from the fact of what you really are. Here we are talking of something entirely different….not of self improvement…but the cessation of self. ADVICE Take a break with the past and see what happens. Release attachment to outcomes…inside you will feel good no matter what. Eventually you will find that you don’t mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom…it is timeless spiritual truth. If you can really understand the problem the answer will come out of it. The answer is not separate from the problem. Suffer and understand…for all of that is part of life. Understanding and detachment…this is the secret. DEATH There is hope in people…not in societies not in systems but only in you and me. The man who lives without conflict…who lives with beauty and love…is not frightened by death…because to love is to die.

The existence of a different value system among these persons is evinced by the communality of behavior which occurs when illiterates interact among themselves. Not only do they change from unexpressive and confused individuals, as they frequently appear in larger society, to expressive and understanding persons within their own group, but moreover they express themselves in institutional terms. Among themselves they have a universe of response. They form and recognize symbols of prestige and disgrace; evaluate relevant situations in terms of their own norms and in their own idiom: and in their interrelations with one another, the mask of accommodative adjustment drops.

Evaluation of enemy strength is not an absolute, but a matter of piecing together scraps of reconnaissance and intelligence to form a picture, if possible a picture to fit preconceived theories or to suit the demands of a particular strategy. What a staff makes out of the available evidence depends upon the degree of optimism or pessimism prevailing among them, on what they want to believe or fear to believe, and sometimes upon the sensitivity or intuition of an individual.

One thing that distinguishes human beings from other animals is that we are evaluative creatures. We can take a critical stance toward our own activities, and aspire to direct ourselves toward objects and projects that we judge to be more worthy than others that may be more immediately gratifying. Animals are guided by appetites that are fixed, and so are we, but we can also form a second-order desire, “a desire for a desire,” when we entertain some picture of the sort of person we would like to be—a person who is better not because she has more self-control, but because she is moved by worthier desires. Acquiring the tastes of a serious person is what we call education. Does it have a future? The advent of engineered, hyperpalatable mental stimuli compels us to ask the question.

To be a truly radical disciple does require a relentless evaluation of life’s priorities and concerns, together with an ongoing, rigorous critique of our culture, to ensure we are not adopting values that subvert the very life and message we are called to live out.

Whatever they may think and say about their 'egoism', the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them;- as a consequence they all of them dwell in a fog of impersonal, semi-personal opinions, and arbitrary, as it were poetical evaluations, the one for ever in the head of someone else, and the head of this someone else again in the heads of others: a strange world of phantasms

Logic might be imagined to exist independent of writing—syllogisms can be spoken as well as written—but it did not. Speech is too fleeting to allow for analysis. Logic descended from the written word, in Greece as well as India and China, where it developed independently. Logic turns the act of abstraction into a tool for determining what is true and what is false: truth can be discovered in words alone, apart from concrete experience. Logic takes its form in chains: sequences whose members connect one to another. Conclusions follow from premises. These require a degree of constancy. They have no power unless people can examine and evaluate them. In contrast, an oral narrative proceeds by accretion, the words passing by in a line of parade past the viewing stand, briefly present and then gone, interacting with one another via memory and association.

Recognising such dimensions implicit to the reading experience can distract from the immediacy of our response; it can substitute literary archaeology for novelistic reality. That is one pole. But the other extreme is equally limiting. By failing to realise the issues involved in communicating with fictional modes that are different to our own, in effect we do not read in the fullest sense. Between intellectual pedantry and cultivated ignorance I would pose a third approach to reading—that of the informed imagination. After occupying this position true evaluation can begin.

Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves.” “I’m afraid he’s right.” “My husband, I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs.” “Deety, your parents did okay.

The issue of respect is also useful in guiding parents’ interpretation of given behavior. First, they should decide whether an undesirable act represents a direct challenge to their authority . . . to their leadership position as the father or mother. The form of disciplinary action they take should depend on the result of that evaluation.

The sixth principle rounds out the roster of our innate aptitudes: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-socialize the information we think about. We learned earlier in this book that the continual patter we carry on in our heads is in fact a kind of internalized conversation. Likewise, many of the written forms we encounter at school and at work—from exams and evaluations, to profiles and case studies, to essays and proposals—are really social exchanges (questions, stories, arguments) put on paper and addressed to some imagined listener or interlocutor. As we’ve seen, there are significant advantages to turning such interactions at a remove back into actual social encounters.

This in turn has led to the awful idea—and booming business—of reputation management, where firms are hired to help shape a more likable, relatable You. Devoted to gaming the system, this new practice is a form of deception, an attempt to erase (strangely) both subjectivity and objectivity, to evaluate through mass intuition, for a very high price.

It is relatively easy to take up examples of “originality” from the past and analyze them from today’s perspective. Almost always, the things that should have disappeared—for lack of originality—have already done so, leaving us to confidently evaluate what remains. As countless instances show, however, it is far more difficult to properly assess, in real time, new forms of expression in our immediate environment. That is because they often contain elements seen as unpleasant, unnatural, nonsensical, or sometimes even antisocial. Or else just plain stupid. Whatever the case, those around us tend to react with surprise and, at the same time, shock. People instinctively dislike those things they can’t understand,

Danger in modesty ― To adapt ourselves too early to the tasks, societies, everyday life and everyday work, in which chance has placed us, at a time when neither our strength nor our goal has yet entered our consciousness with the force of law; the all-too-early certainty of consciousness, comfortableness, sociability thus achieved, this premature resignation that insinuates itself into our feelings as a release from inner and outer unrest, pampers and holds one back in the most dangerous fashion. To learn to feel respect after the fashion of 'those like us,' as if we ourselves had no measure in us and no right to determine values; the effort to evaluate as others do, against the inner voice of our taste, which is also a form of conscience, becomes a terrible, subtle constraint: if there is not finally an explosion, with a sudden bursting asunder of all the bonds of love and morality, then such a spirit becomes withered, petty, effeminate, and factual. The opposite is bad enough, but better nonetheless: to suffer from one’s environment, from its praise as well as from its blame, wounded by it and festering inwardly without betraying the fact; to defend oneself with involuntary mistrust against its love, to learn silence, perhaps concealing it behind speech, to create for oneself nooks and undiscoverable solitudes for moments of relief, of tears, of sublime consolation ― until one is finally strong enough to say, 'what do I have to do with you?' and go one’s own way.

Celebrity, in the final analysis, is a worldly form of power and evaluation of human worth. It is not a spiritually neutral tool that can be picked up and put down, even for godly projects. The moment celebrity is adopted and adapted for otherwise noble purposes - sharing the good news and inviting others into rich kingdom life - it changes the project. And it changes us.

At a first reading of some great work, they are ‘knocked flat’. Criticise it? No, by God, but read it again. The judgement ‘This must be a great work’ may be long delayed. But in later life we can hardly help evaluating as we go along; it has become a habit. We thus fail of that inner silence, that emptying out of ourselves, by which we ought to make room for the total reception of the work. The failure is greatly aggravated if, while we read, we know that we are under some obligation to express a judgement; as when we read a book in order to review it, or a friend’s MS. in order to advise him. Then the pencil gets to work on the margin and phrases of censure or approval begin forming themselves in our mind. All this activity impedes reception.

We know from the work of television critics and from the responses of our friends and from our own that there is little pride in the quality of television programs and less in the habit of extensive viewing. The television viewer’s implication in technology typically takes the form of complicity as defined in Chapter 15. We feel uneasiness about our passivity and guilt and sorrow at the loss of our traditions or alternatives.68 There is a realization that we are letting great things and practices drift into oblivion and that television fails to respond to our best aspirations and fails to engage the fullness of our powers. These impressions generally agree with more systematic findings that show that television is “not rated particularly highly as a general way of spending time, and in fact was evaluated below average compared to other free-time activities.”69

What is the proper relationship between dodgy self-absorption and a quest for perceptive understanding of our own journey? Why do we need to determine who we are? Why do I spend hours attempting to evaluate past performance, reconcile exhibited flaws in my personal character, and atone for reprehensible prior behavior? Why cannot a person be satisfied with just being? People tend to spend more time living inside their head than they do confronting reality. Is a person’s constant internal narrative dialogue a form of catharsis? Is a narrative the most apropos method to comprehend what living entails? Do we seek to tell our own stories in order to interpret and organize the reality of the world that surrounds us? Alternatively, is storytelling simply the easiest way for us to apprehend the tenuous notion of the self? Does storytelling enable us to recognize the translucent thread that connects us to the past?

In psychology, they call the holistic view you form about another person your global evaluation. As you can see, your global evaluation about the height or beauty of another person greatly affects your other estimations, but many other global evaluations can produce the halo effect. When it comes to your favorite bands, directors, brands, or companies, you often lie to yourself about their shortcomings. For example, if you really, truly love a particular musician or band, you will forgive their poorer works much more readily than will a less-devoted fan. You may find yourself defending their latest album, explaining the nuances to the uninitiated, wondering why they can’t appreciate it. Or maybe you absolutely love a particular director or author, and believe her to be a genius who can do no wrong. When critics slam her latest movie or book, how do you react? Like most fanatics, you probably see the dissenters as naysayers and nitpickers drunk on their own haterade. The halo effect nullifies your objectivity.

The dark, uncontrolled, primordial part of a person informs them that they are alive. Living free entails accepting a slew of wildness. All wild animals act by instinct. Human instinct and intuitive thought allow us to gain insights and new beliefs, which human rationalization confirms. Logic and intuition work well together, if both sources of mental visualization are drawn from when most apropos. Planning carefully should never replace the spirit for improvisation. Acting recklessly is no substitute for measured evaluation. Nonetheless, a dash of craziness makes most people more endearing than the calculating banker whose ledger driven life causes them to see life in terms of money pouches. Letting go of all conceptions of what is, and dreaming what could be, is a form of delusion. Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality does not mean that a person should disdain imaginative acts. I need to recognize when it is time to stop woolgathering and come back down to reality and work in the pebbly bedrock of the here and now.

Trust your feelings!”—But feelings are nothing final or original; behind feelings there stand judgments and evaluations which we inherit in the form of . . . inclinations, aversions. . . . The inspiration born of a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and often of a false judgment!—and in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings—means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience. —Friedrich Nietzsche

Feelings and their origination in judgments.― 'Trust your feelings!' But feelings are nothing final or original; behind feelings there stand judgments and evaluations which we inherit in the form of feelings (inclinations, aversions). The inspiration born of a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment and often of a false judgment! and in any event not a child of your own! To trust one's feelings means to give more obedience to one's grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to the gods which are in us: our reason and our experience.

Accountability-focused evaluators report independently to decision makers charged with making sure that resources are spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. In contrast, for vision-and-values-driven social innovators the highest form of accountability is internal. Are we walking the talk? Are we being true to our vision? Are we dealing with reality? Are we connecting the dots between here-and-now reality and our vision? And how do we know? What are we observing that’s different, that’s emerging? These become internalized questions, asked ferociously, continuously, because they want to know.

Minds are great when it comes to inventing new devices, constructing business plans, or organizing daily schedules. But, by themselves, minds are far less useful in learning to be present, learning to love, or discovering how best to carry the complexities of a personal history. Verbal knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge there is. We must learn to use our analytical and evaluative skills when doing so promotes workability and to use other forms of knowledge when they best serve our interests. In effect, the ultimate goal of ACT is to teach clients to make such distinctions in the service of promoting a more workable life.

Literature before the Renaissance had frequently offered ideal patterns for living which were dominated by the ethos of the church, but after the Reformation the search for individual expression and meaning took over. Institutions were questioned and re-evaluated, often while being praised at the same time. But where there had been conventional modes of expression, reflecting ideal modes of behaviour - religious, heroic, or social - Renaissance writing explored the geography of the human soul, redefining its relationship with authority, history, science, and the future. This involved experimentation with form and genre, and an enormous variety of linguistic and literary innovations in a short period of time. Reason, rather than religion, was the driving force in this search for rules to govern human behaviour in the Renaissance world. The power and mystique of religion had been overthrown in one bold stroke: where the marvellous no longer holds sway, real life has to provide explanations. Man, and the use he makes of his powers, capabilities, and free will, is thus the subject matter of Renaissance literature, from the early sonnets modelled on Petrarch to the English epic which closes the period, Paradise Lost, published after the Restoration, when the Renaissance had long finished. The Reformation gave cultural, philosophical, and ideological impetus to English Renaissance writing. The writers in the century following the Reformation had to explore and redefine all the concerns of humanity. In a world where old assumptions were no longer valid, where scientific discoveries questioned age-old hypotheses, and where man rather than God was the central interest, it was the writers who reflected and attempted to respond to the disintegration of former certainties. For it is when the universe is out of control that it is at its most frightening - and its most stimulating. There would never again be such an atmosphere of creative tension in the country. What was created was a language, a literature, and a national and international identity.

I wonder if all these bad things will change when I’m a high schooler…” “At the very least, they most certainly won’t change if you intend to remain the way you are.” Way to go, Yukinoshita-san! Not going easy on the young'un just after you finished apologizing to her! “But it’s enough if the people around you change,” I remarked. “There’s no need to force yourself to hang out with others.” “But things are hard on Rumi­-chan right now and if we don’t do something about it…” Yuigahama looked at Rumi with eyes full of concern. In response, Rumi winced slightly. “Hard, you say… I don’t like that. It makes me sound pathetic. It makes me feel inferior for being left out.” “Oh,” said Yuigahama. “I don’t like it, you know. But there’s nothing you can do about it.” “Why?” Yukinoshita questioned her. Rumi seemed to have some trouble speaking, but she still managed to form the right words. “I… got abandoned. I can’t get along with them anymore. Even if I did, I don’t know when it’ll start again. If the same thing were to happen, I guess I’m better off this way. I just­” She swallowed. “­don’t wanna be pathetic…” Oh. I get it. This girl was fed up. Of herself and of her surroundings. If you change yourself, your world will change, they say, but that’s a load of crap. When people already have an impression of you, it’s not easy to change your pre­existing relationships by adding something to the mix. When people evaluate each other, it’s not an addition or subtraction formula. They only perceive you through their preconceived notions. The truth is that people don’t see you as who you truly are. They only see what they want to see, the reality that they yearn for. If some disgusting guy on the low end of the caste works his arse off on something, the higher ones just snicker and say, “What’s he trying so hard for?” and that would be the end of it. If you stand out for the wrong reasons, you would just be fodder for criticism. That wouldn’t be the case in a perfect world, but for better or worse, that’s how things work with middle schoolers. Riajuu are sought for their actions as riajuu, loners are obligated to be loners, and otaku are forced to act like otaku. When the elites show their understanding of those beneath them, they are acknowledged for their open-mindedness and the depth of their benevolence, but the reverse is not tolerated. Those are the fetid rules of the Kingdom of Children. It truly is a sad state of affairs. "You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself". The hell was up with that? Adapting and conforming to a cruel and indifferent world you know you’ve already lost to – ultimately, that’s what a slave does. Wrapping it up in pretty words and deceiving even yourself is the highest form of falsehood.

In this book, we will naturally be dealing primarily with the manifestations of the third level of immunity. I gather material on the biography of Homo immunologicus, guided by the assumption that this is where to find the stuff from which the forms of anthropotechnics are made. By this I mean the methods of mental and physical practising by which humans from the most diverse cultures have attempted to optimize their cosmic and immunological status in the face of vague risks of living and acute certainties of death. Only when these procedures have been grasped in a broad tableau of human 'work on oneself' can we evaluate the newest experiments in genetic engineering, to which, in the current debate, many have reduced the term 'anthropotechnics', reintroduced in 1997.

It moves a child from depending upon adults and unlocks the desire to venture forth, discover, or make sense of their experiences. Play is where the spirit that underlies growth is revealed and vitality is expressed. In short, play is the act of self-creation. The type of play young children need is characterized by freedom, enjoyment, and a leap into settings to explore. They need bounded spaces in which to freely move, with perimeters formed by the adults who care for them. Play is a spontaneous act that arises from a particular state of mind—you can’t teach or command a child to play. There are three essential characteristics to play: it is (1) not work, (2) not for real, and (3) expressive and exploratory. This definition can be used to evaluate what activities truly foster ideal conditions for play.

In the longer term, by bringing together enough data and enough computing power, the data giants could hack the deepest secrets of life, and then use this knowledge not just to make choices for us or manipulate us but also to reengineer organic life and create inorganic life-forms. Selling advertisements may be necessary to sustain the giants in the short term, but tech companies often evaluate apps, products, and other companies according to the data they harvest rather than according to the money they generate. A popular app may lack a business model and may even lose money in the short term, but as long as it sucks data, it could be worth billions.4 Even if you don’t know how to cash in on the data today, it is worth having it because it might hold the key to controlling and shaping life in the future. I don’t know for certain that the data giants explicitly think about this in such terms, but their actions indicate that they value the accumulation of data in terms beyond those of mere dollars and cents. Ordinary humans will find it very difficult to resist this process. At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset—their personal data—in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. It’s a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets. If, later on, ordinary people decide to try to block the flow of data, they might find it increasingly difficult, especially as they might come to rely on the network for all their decisions, and even for their healthcare and physical survival.

He watched the whispered message pass from man to man. He could not distinguish any proper nouns—the jumble of unfamiliar accents made that impossible—but it was evident that the matter under discussion was one that concerned every man in the room. He forced his mind to evaluate the situation carefully and rationally. Inattention had led him to err in judgment once already that evening; he would not err again. Some kind of heist was in the offing, he guessed, or maybe they were forming an alliance against another man. Mr. Carver, perhaps. They numbered twelve, which put Moody in mind of a jury…but the presence of the Chinese men and the Maori native made that impossible. Had he interrupted a secret council of a kind? But what kind of council could possibly comprise such a diverse range of race, income, and estate?

It is for this reason that Jung may be right in assuming that energy is a universal concept applicable to psychic functioning as well as the physical universe. Jung then describes how energy has two attributes, intensity and extensity. Extensity of energy is not transferable from one structure to another without changing the structure; intensity of energy is. By extensity, Jung is referring to the quality of the energy. In other words, he is pointing out that there is "something" that travels from one place to another when an energy transformation occurs. For example, a ball that is hit straight up carries with it energy continually undergoing transformation. It has kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. The quantity of kinetic energy is continually transferring into potential energy as the ball rises. Thus at the top of its trajectory, the ball is momentarily at rest, i.e., with no kinetic energy, but with full potential energy. The evaluation of its quantities of energy is intensive but the qualities of kinetic and potential are extensive. The ball cannot transfer its kinetic quality into potential quality without changing its form by breaking up, for example, into parts. Similarly there is a psychic extensive factor that is not transferable. Jung's concept of extensity and intensity are forerunners of David Bohm's concept of implicate and explicate order, about which I shall have more to say later. They are also forerunners of the conceptual division of the world into objects and actions of objects: subjects and verbs. They comprise a complementarity, a dual way of dealing with experience. They are hints of the division between mind and matter, physical and psychical, words and images.

Settling an Argument Mark 9:33–37 After Jesus and his disciples traveled to Capernaum, he asked them what they had been arguing about on the way. At first, the men were silent, too embarrassed and ashamed to answer his question. Finally, the disciples admitted that they had argued about which one of them was the greatest. Rank and position were important to the Jews, and in light of the messianic kingdom they expected Jesus to set up, they probably dreamed about status and honor. Jesus gave them a new perspective on greatness and leadership in the form of a paradox. To be important in God’s eyes, he explained, a person must voluntarily become a servant to other people. The goal is not to be first, but rather to take the last place. The highest positions in God’s kingdom go to those who are willing to be lowly enough to serve the needs of others. To illustrate this concept of service, Jesus put his arms around a little child, considered an insignificant person in that culture. He said that when anyone welcomed or showed kindness to a little child in his name, it was the same as doing it for Jesus himself. There’s nothing wrong with ambition or pursuit of excellence as long as they don’t become a source of pride. When we try to achieve greatness by chasing after positions of power, physical strength, popularity, or worldly success, we’re going in the wrong direction. God evaluates us on the basis of humility and service. If we look for opportunities to serve others and put their needs ahead of our own, if we never consider ourselves above doing tasks that seem menial, if we build others up instead of ourselves—that’s when we’re on the track to greatness in God’s eyes. And we just might discover that last place is the best place to be after all.

But what does the role of the anima as guide to the inner world mean in practical terms? This positive function occurs when a man takes seriously the feelings, moods, expectations, and fantasies sent by his anima and when he fixes them in some form—for example, in writing, painting, sculpture, musical composition, or dancing. When he works at this patiently and slowly, other more deeply unconscious material wells up from the depths and connects with the earlier material. After a fantasy has been fixed in some specific form, it must be examined both intellectually and ethically, with an evaluating feeling reaction. And it is essential to regard it as being absolutely real; there must be no lurking doubt that this is “only a fantasy.” If this is practiced with devotion over a long period, the process of individuation gradually becomes the single reality and can unfold in its true form.

As adults, we create myths about ourselves and about our lives. We often use the myth to organize reality into a type of order. Anything that might contradict the myth seems to bring disorder that can feel disorienting. The myth forms a bias and matrix against which the person’s life experiences are evaluated. The sense of myth is often in sharp contrast to the macrostructural patterns that dominate our lives. The myths are often about the details of the events that happened, including who did what to whom. The pattern shows that the details are not causal but only orchestrative. If we describe the details, we see the uniqueness of the events that have taken place, and the story can seem like a one time deal. But if we describe the form and sequence of events, the critical moments, etc., we see how un-unique the story actually is. We can see that, yet again, the same damn thing has happened.

If one follows one’s nature and not one’s education one becomes a child again and begins to play with things; the bread becomes a mountain to bore tunnels into, and the bed a cave, a garden, a snow field. Something of this child-likeness, this genius for play, is exhibited by the second type of reader. This reader treasures neither the substance nor the form of a book as its single most important value. He knows, in the way children know, that every object can have ten or a hundred meanings for the mind. He can, for example, watch a poet or philosopher struggling to persuade himself and this reader of his interpretation and evaluation of things, and he can smile because he sees in the apparent choice and freedom of the poet simply compulsion and passivity. This reader is already so far advanced that he knows what professors of literature and literary critics are mostly completely ignorant of: the there is no such thing as a free choice of material or form.

But what separates human consciousness from the consciousness of animals? Humans are alone in the animal kingdom in understanding the concept of tomorrow. Unlike animals, we constantly ask ourselves “What if?” weeks, months, and even years into the future, so I believe that Level III consciousness creates a model of its place in the world and then simulates it into the future, by making rough predictions. We can summarize this as follows: Human consciousness is a specific form of consciousness that creates a model of the world and then simulates it in time, by evaluating the past to simulate the future. This requires mediating and evaluating many feedback loops in order to make a decision to achieve a goal. By the time we reach Level III consciousness, there are so many feedback loops that we need a CEO to sift through them in order to simulate the future and make a final decision. Accordingly, our brains differ from those of other animals, especially in the expanded prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead, which allows us to “see” into the future. Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, has written, “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an ‘anticipation machine,’ and ‘making the future’ is the most important thing it does.” Using brain scans, we can even propose a candidate for the precise area of the brain where simulation of the future takes place. Neurologist Michael Gazzaniga notes that “area 10 (the internal granular layer IV), in the lateral prefrontal cortex, is almost twice as large in humans as in apes. Area 10 is involved with memory and planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, initiating appropriate behavior, and inhibiting inappropriate behavior, learning rules, and picking out relevant information from what is perceived through the senses.” (For this book, we will refer to this area, in which decision making is concentrated, as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, although there is some overlap with other areas of the brain.)

If we do not objectify, and feel instinctively and permanently that words are not the things spoken about, then we could not speak abouth such meaningless subjects as the 'beginning' or the 'end' of time. But, if we are semantically disturbed and objectify, then, of course, since objects have a beginning and an end, so also would 'time' have a 'beggining' and an 'end'. In such pathological fancies the universe must have a 'beginning in time' and so must have been made., and all of our old anthropomorphic and objectified mythologies follow, including the older theories of entropy in physics. But, if 'time' is only a human form of representation and not an object, the universe has no 'beginning in time' and no 'end in time'; in other words, the universe is 'time'-less. The moment we realize, feel permanently, and utilize these realizations and feelings that words are not things, then only do we acquire the semantic freedom to use different forms of representation. We can fit better their structure to the facts at hand, become better adjusted to these facts which are not words, and so evaluate properly m.o (multi-ordinal) realities, which evaluation is important for sanity.

In 1997 an IBM computer called Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and unlike its predecessors, it did not just evaluate trillions of moves by brute force but was fitted with strategies that intelligently responded to patterns in the game. [Y]ou might still object that chess is an artificial world with discrete moves and a clear winner, perfectly suited to the rule-crunching of a computer. People, on the other hand, live in a messy world offering unlimited moves and nebulous goals. Surely this requires human creativity and intuition — which is why everyone knows that computers will never compose a symphony, write a story, or paint a picture. But everyone may be wrong. Recent artificial intelligence systems have written credible short stories, composed convincing Mozart-like symphonies, drawn appealing pictures of people and landscapes, and conceived clever ideas for advertisements. None of this is to say that the brain works like a digital computer, that artificial intelligence will ever duplicate the human mind, or that computers are conscious in the sense of having first-person subjective experience. But it does suggest that reasoning, intelligence, imagination, and creativity are forms of information processing, a well-understood physical process. Cognitive science, with the help of the computational theory of mind, has exorcised at least one ghost from the machine.

It was certainly true that I had “no sense of humour” in that I found nothing funny. I didn’t know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific way that humans evolved to do. Nor did I know the specific emotion of relief that is bound to it. But it would be wrong, I think, to say that I was incapable of using humour as a tool. As I understood it, humour was a social reflex. The ancestors of humans had been ape-animals living in small groups in Africa. Groups that worked together were more likely to survive and have offspring, so certain reflexes and perceptions naturally emerged to signal between members of the group. Yawning evolved to signal wake-rest cycles. Absence of facial hair and the dilation of blood vessels in the face evolved to signal embarrassment, anger, shame and fear. And laughter evolved to signal an absence of danger. If a human is out with a friend and they are approached by a dangerous-looking stranger, having that stranger revealed as benign might trigger laughter. I saw humour as the same reflex turned inward, serving to undo the effects of stress on the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, it also seemed to me that humour had extended, like many things, beyond its initial evolutionary context. It must have been very quickly adopted by human ancestor social systems. If a large human picks on a small human there’s a kind of tension that emerges where the tribe wonders if a broader violence will emerge. If a bystander watches and laughs they are non-verbally signaling to the bully that there’s no need for concern, much like what had occurred minutes before with my comments about Myrodyn, albeit in a somewhat different context. But humour didn’t stop there. Just as a human might feel amusement at things which seem bad but then actually aren’t, they might feel amusement at something which merely has the possibility of being bad, but doesn’t necessarily go through the intermediate step of being consciously evaluated as such: a sudden realization. Sudden realizations that don’t incur any regret were, in my opinion, the most alien form of humour, even if I could understand how they linked back to the evolutionary mechanism. A part of me suspected that this kind of surprise-based or absurdity-based humour had been refined by sexual selection as a signal of intelligence. If your prospective mate is able to offer you regular benign surprises it would (if you were human) not only feel good, but show that they were at least in some sense smarter or wittier than you, making them a good choice for a mate. The role of surprise and non-verbal signalling explained, by my thinking, why explaining humour was so hard for humans. If one explained a joke it usually ceased to be a surprise, and in situations where the laughter served as an all-clear-no-danger signal, explaining that verbally would crush the impulse to do it non-verbally.

So many people now call themselves 'students of the University of life' as if experience theorized with lack of knowledge led to any wisdom or even less, such as the capacity to think and process information outside personal validation models. It's very easy to explain what you see. It's what humanity has done throughout history. However, real education ends in the last book you finished. And you can evaluate yourself by the amount of books you were able to read, understand and appreciate. Anything below that can only lead one to be certified in stupidity. And that's what the 'students of life' really are; fragile egos trying to justify their stupidity with arrogance, crystalizing their state of ignorance in time with pride. Because, even though humanity has confused itself with its own mechanics, the transitory fact remains, that knowledge, in any shape or form, comes from books. And more than 99% of all the books ever produced in human history are now, thanks to internet, available for free, in the public domain, and wherever a computer and electricity are present. This truth also extensively contributes to the fact, that humans are now, for the first time ever, deliberately choosing to remain ignorant. And that's what the "students of life" are; proud manifestos of ignorance. They don't know that, if you read enough to be smart, you're too smart to explain what you read, and too busy to share it. So what can we then say about the ones who obsess over their physical appearance whenever they have time for something. The premise is self-explanatory: The only real student is the 'student of self'.

Second, most of the officers in this study did not have experience as tactical officers, and the teams they formed had very limited practice time together. It is possible that, with practice and experience, the effects of a threat on the performance of the dumps observed here can be overcome. This is the essence of the habituation findings in the orienting response literature (Sokolov et al., 2002). A SWAT team that regularly practices may be able to overcome the natural tendency to orient on a threat and cover their respective areas, producing exposure times that are consistent with those produced by the slice (many SWAT officers that we have spoken to insist that this is the case); however, we would like to point out that this means conducting training specifically to overcome a natural instinct, and this process is likely to take considerable effort and time. In the case of patrol officers, who are likely to be the first on the scene during an active shooter event, the officers are unlikely to receive the amount of training that is needed to overcome these natural instincts. With these caveats in mind, we think it is clear that the slice is a better style of entry to teach to patrol officers during active shooter training. The structure of the slice does not attempt to overcome the officer’s natural tendencies. It allows these tactically less-experienced officers to deal with the problem in smaller pieces and provides the officers with more time to think through the situation. For these reasons, the specific entries tested in the other studies presented in this book are conducted using a slice style.

Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.

Given this new theory of mental illness, we can now apply it to various forms of mental disorders, summarizing the previous discussion in this new light. We saw earlier that the obsessive behavior of people suffering from OCD might arise when the checks and balances between several feedback loops are thrown out of balance: one registering something as amiss, another carrying out corrective action, and another one signaling that the matter has been taken care of. The failure of the checks and balances within this loop can cause the brain to be locked into a vicious cycle, so the mind never believes that the problem has been resolved. The voices heard by schizophrenics might arise when several feedback loops are no longer balancing one another. One feedback loop generates spurious voices in the temporal cortex (i.e., the brain is talking to itself). Auditory and visual hallucinations are often checked by the anterior cingulate cortex, so a normal person can differentiate between real and fictitious voices. But if this region of the brain is not working properly, the brain is flooded with disembodied voices that it believes are real. This can cause schizophrenic behavior. Similarly, the manic-depressive swings of someone with bipolar disorder might be traced to an imbalance between the left and right hemispheres. The necessary interplay between optimistic and pessimistic assessments is thrown off balance, and the person oscillates wildly between these two diverging moods. Paranoia may also be viewed in this light. It results from an imbalance between the amygdala (which registers fear and exaggerates threats) and the prefrontal cortex, which evaluates these threats and puts them into perspective. We should also stress that evolution has given us these feedback loops for a reason: to protect us. They keep us clean, healthy, and socially connected. The problem occurs when the dynamic between opposing feedback loops is disrupted.

Rather, I found through this experience that there is significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying. When you stand under a waterfall, the only audible sound is the roar of water. As the cascade pummels your body, the sensation of pain soon disappears and numbness spreads. Then a sensation of heat warms you from the inside out, and you enter a meditative trance. Although I had never tried this form of meditation before, the sensation it generated seemed extremely familiar. It closely resembled what I experience when I am tidying. While not exactly a meditative state, there are times when I am cleaning that I can quietly commune with myself. The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions. For this reason, it is essential to create a quiet space in which to evaluate the things in your life. Ideally, you should not even be listening to music. Sometimes I hear of methods that recommend tidying in time to a catchy song, but personally, I don’t encourage this. I feel that noise makes it harder to hear the internal dialogue between the owner and his or her belongings. Listening to the TV is, of course, out of the question. If you need some background noise to relax, choose environmental or ambient music with no lyrics or well-defined melodies. If you want to add momentum to your tidying work, tap the power of the atmosphere in your room rather than relying on music. The best time to start is early morning. The fresh morning air keeps your mind clear and your power of discernment sharp. For this reason, most of my lessons commence in the morning. The earliest lesson I ever conducted began at six thirty, and we were able to clean at twice the usual speed. The clear, refreshed feeling gained after standing under a waterfall can be addictive. Similarly, when you finish putting your space in order, you will be overcome with the urge to do it again. And, unlike waterfall meditation, you don’t have to travel long distances over hard terrain to get there. You can enjoy the same effect in your own home. That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

In this sense, therefore, inasmuch as we have access to neither the beautiful nor the ugly, and are incapable of judging, we are condemned to indifference. Beyond this indifference, however, another kind of fascination emerges, a fascination which replaces aesthetic pleasure. For, once liberated from their respective constraints, the beautiful and the ugly, in a sense, multiply: they become more beautiful than beautiful, more ugly than ugly. Thus painting currently cultivates, if not ugliness exactly - which remains an aesthetic value - then the uglier-than-ugly (the 'bad', the 'worse', kitsch), an ugliness raised to the second power because it is liberated from any relationship with its opposite. Once freed from the 'true' Mondrian, we are at liberty to 'out-Mondrian Mondrian'; freed from the true naifs, we can paint in a way that is 'more naif than naif', and so on. And once freed from reality, we can produce the 'realer than real' - hyperrealism. It was in fact with hyperrealism and pop art that everything began, that everyday life was raised to the ironic power of photographic realism. Today this escalation has caught up every form of art, every style; and all, without discrimination, have entered the transaesthetic world of simulation. There is a parallel to this escalation in the art market itself. Here too, because an end has been put to any deference to the law of value, to the logic of commodities, everything has become 'more expensive than expensive' - expensive, as it were, squared. Prices are exorbitant - the bidding has gone through the roof. Just as the abandonment of all aesthetic ground rules provokes a kind of brush fire of aesthetic values, so the loss of all reference to the laws of exchange means that the market hurtles into unrestrained speculation. The frenzy, the folly, the sheer excess are the same. The promotional ignition of art is directly linked to the impossibility of all aesthetic evaluation. In the absence of value judgements, value goes up in flames. And it goes up in a sort of ecstasy. There are two art markets today. One is still regulated by a hierarchy of values, even if these are already of a speculative kind. The other resembles nothing so much as floating and uncontrollable capital in the financial market: it is pure speculation, movement for movement's sake, with no apparent purpose other than to defy the law of value. This second art market has much in common with poker or potlatch - it is a kind of space opera in the hyperspace of value. Should we be scandalized? No. There is nothing immoral here. Just as present-day art is beyond beautiful and ugly, the market, for its part, is beyond good and evil.

No matter what philosophical standpoint people may adopt nowadays, from every point of view the falsity of the world in which we think we live is the most certain and firmest thing which our eyes are still capable of apprehending: - for that we find reason after reason, which would like to entice us into conjectures about a fraudulent principle in the "essence of things." But anyone who makes our very thinking, that is, "the spirit," responsible for the falsity of the world - an honourable solution which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei [pleader for god] uses -: whoever takes this world, together with space, time, form, and movement as a false inference, such a person would at least have good ground finally to learn to be distrustful of all thinking itself. Wouldn’t it be the case that thinking has played the greatest of all tricks on us up to this point? And what guarantee would there be that thinking would not continue to do what it has always done? In all seriousness: the innocence of thinkers has something touching, something inspiring reverence, which permits them even today still to present themselves before consciousness with the request that it give them honest answers: for example, to the question whether it is "real," and why it really keeps itself so absolutely separate from the outer world, and similar sorts of questions. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a moral naivete which brings honour to us philosophers - but we should not be "merely moral" men! Setting aside morality, this belief is a stupidity, which brings us little honour! It may be the case that in bourgeois life the constant willingness to suspect is considered a sign of a "bad character" and thus belongs among those things thought unwise. Here among us, beyond the bourgeois world and its affirmations and denials - what is there to stop us from being unwise and saying the philosopher has an absolute right to a "bad character," as the being who up to this point on earth has always been fooled the best - today he has the duty to be suspicious, to glance around maliciously from every depth of suspicion. Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and way of expressing myself. For a long time ago I myself learned to think very differently about and make different evaluations of deceiving and being deceived, and I keep ready at least a couple of digs in the ribs for the blind anger with which philosophers themselves resist being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance. That claim is even the most poorly demonstrated assumption there is in the world. People should at least concede this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of appearances and assessments from perspectives. And if people, with the virtuous enthusiasm and foolishness of some philosophers, wanted to do away entirely with the "apparent world," assuming, of course, you could do that, well then at least nothing would remain any more of your "truth" either! In fact, what compels us generally to the assumption that there is an essential opposition between "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to assume degrees of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and tones for the way things appear - different valeurs [values], to use the language of painters? Why could the world about which we have some concern - not be a fiction? And if someone then asks "But doesn’t an author belong to a fiction?" could he not be fully answered with Why? Doesn’t this "belong to" perhaps belong to the fiction? Is it then forbidden to be a little ironic about the subject as well as about the predicate and the object? Is the philosopher not permitted to rise above a faith in grammar? All due respect to governesses, but might it not be time for philosophy to renounce faith in governesses?-

[D]espite what our intuition tells us, changes in the world’s population are not generally neutral. They are either a good thing or a bad thing. But it is uncertain even what form a correct theory of the value of population would take. In the area of population, we are radically uncertain. We do not know what value to set on changes in the world’s population. If the population shrinks as a result of climate change, we do not know how to evaluate that change. Yet we have reason to think that changes in population may be one of the most morally significant effects of climate change. The small chance of catastrophe may be a major component in the expected value of harm caused by climate change, and the loss of population may be a major component of the badness of catastrophe. How should we cope with this new, radical sort of uncertainty? Uncertainty was the subject of chapter 7. That chapter came up with a definitive answer: we should apply expected value theory. Is that not the right answer now? Sadly it is not, because our new sort of uncertainty is particularly intractable. In most cases of uncertainty about value, expected value theory simply cannot be applied. When an event leads to uncertain results, expected value theory requires us first to assign a value to each of the possible results it may lead to. Then it requires us to calculate the weighted average value of the results, weighted by their probabilities. This gives us the event’s expected value, which we should use in our decision-making. Now we are uncertain about how to value the results of an event, rather than about what the results will be. To keep things simple, let us set aside the ordinary sort of uncertainty by assuming that we know for sure what the results of the event will be. For instance, suppose we know that a catastrophe will have the effect of halving the world’s population. Our problem is that various different moral theories of value evaluate this effect differently. How might we try to apply expected value theory to this catastrophe? We can start by evaluating the effect according to each of the different theories of value separately; there is no difficulty in principle there. We next need to assign probabilities to each of the theories; no doubt that will be difficult, but let us assume we can do it somehow. We then encounter the fundamental difficulty. Each different theory will value the change in population according to its own units of value, and those units may be incomparable with one another. Consequently, we cannot form a weighted average of them. For example, one theory of value is total utilitarianism. This theory values the collapse of population as the loss of the total well-being that will result from it. Its unit of value is well-being. Another theory is average utilitarianism. It values the collapse of population as the change of average well-being that will result from it. Its unit of value is well-being per person. We cannot take a sensible average of some amount of well-being and some amount of well-being per person. It would be like trying to take an average of a distance, whose unit is kilometers, and a speed, whose unit is kilometers per hour. Most theories of value will be incomparable in this way. Expected value theory is therefore rarely able to help with uncertainty about value. So we face a particularly intractable problem of uncertainty, which prevents us from working out what we should do. Yet we have to act; climate change will not wait while we sort ourselves out. What should we do, then, seeing as we do not know what we should do? This too is a question for moral philosophy. Even the question is paradoxical: it is asking for an answer while at the same time acknowledging that no one knows the answer. How to pose the question correctly but unparadoxically is itself a problem for moral philosophy.

When we’re late to the party, we’re stuck reacting to, rather than leading, our prospects. Their initial opinions may be already formed. They’ve probably begun to define their evaluation process. Instead of being perceived as a value creator or problem solver, we’re now selling uphill, and already being viewed only as a potential supplier or vendor (I hate that word).

MY INVOLVEMENT IN CREATIVE WORK PURSUITS, IN PARTICULAR, SCULPTURE, IS A STATE OF MIND. IT IS A CONSCIOUSNESS, AN ACUTE AWARENESS OF MY EXISTENCE, MADE UP OF LIMITLESS VARIABLES AND POSSIBILITIES. IT IS A LIFE PROCESS WHERE “GIVENS” ARE CHALLENGED, NATURE RE-EVALUATED AND LIFE RE-CREATED. AS A SCULPTOR, I SEE MYSELF AS THE MOST INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL IN MY ENVIRONMENT, ABLE TO COMMENT ABOUT ANY PHENOMENA THROUGH WHAT I DEPICT, THROUGH ALLEGORY, METAPHOR, MATERIAL, FORM AND SHAPE. I DO NOT NEED TO BE PARTY TO ANYONE OR ANYTHING, NOR TO CONVENTIONAL STRUCTURES OR INSTITUTIONS. I STRIVE IN MY SCULPTURES “TO BE”, REALIZING THE “AIM” OF BEING MYSELF, MY LONGINGS, ANXIETIES, JOYS AND DOUBTS, AWAY FROM CONDITIONS, LEARNED RESPONSES, HABITS OR ADDICTIONS. I CHOOSE NOT SO MUCH TO REFLECT LIFE’S EXPERIENCES AS ATTEMPT TO RE-STATE THEM THROUGH A KEENER EXPRESSION OF MY SENSIBILITIES AND PERSONAL CREATION.

Remember and Share - The Hook Model helps the product designer generate an initial prototype for a habit-forming technology. It also helps uncover potential weaknesses in an existing product’s habit-forming potential. - Once a product is built, Habit Testing helps uncover product devotees, discover which product elements are habit forming (if any), and why those aspects of your product change user behavior. Habit Testing includes three steps: identify, codify, and modify. - First, dig into the data to identify how people are behaving and using the product. - Next, codify these findings in search of habitual users. To generate new hypotheses, study the actions and paths taken by devoted users. - Lastly, modify the product to influence more users to follow the same path as your habitual users, and then evaluate results and continue to modify as needed. - Keen observation of one's own behavior can lead to new insights and habit-forming product opportunities. - Identifying areas where a new technology makes cycling through the Hook Model faster, more frequent or more rewarding provides fertile ground for developing new habit-forming products. - Nascent behaviors — new behaviors that few people see or do, and yet ultimately fulfill a mass-market need — can inform future breakthrough habit-forming opportunities. - New interfaces lead to transformative behavior change and business opportunities.   *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the “Do This Now” section in chapter five to complete the following exercises: - Perform Habit Testing, as described in this chapter, to identify the steps users take toward long-term engagement. - Be aware of your behaviors and emotions for the next week as you use everyday products. Ask yourself: - What triggered me to use these products? Was I prompted externally or through internal means? - Am I using these products as intended? - How might these products improve their on-boarding funnels, re-engage users through additional external triggers, or encourage users to invest in their services? - Speak with three people outside your social circle to discover which apps occupy the first screen on their mobile devices. Ask them to use these apps as they normally would and see if you uncover any unnecessary or nascent behaviors. - Brainstorm five new interfaces that could introduce opportunities or threats to your business.

Human consciousness is a specific form of consciousness that creates a model of the world and then simulates it in time, by evaluating the past to simulate the future. This requires mediating and evaluating many feedback loops in order to make a decision to achieve a goal.

It advances Democracy”: As it was throughout the Cold War, the response here should be “Democracy for whom?” “Democracy” has never been a univocal concept; and as a word, it has surely by now been degraded by so many reactionary projects, such as U.S. imperialism itself and the various middle class comprador movements that have furthered its purposes through coups and color revolutions. It is not the nominal political form aspired to, but the social goods that are being sought, that should weigh our evaluations of those who use such rhetoric.

Fourth, I paid attention to every detail I could while working on my cases. I found that one of the most ironic facets of the law is that the correct answer to a problem often rests on small legal nuances and factual details. The presence or absence of a particular fact can frequently make or break the case. The senior attorney I worked for, Brad, was extremely adept at assimilating large amounts of information quickly, paying close attention to details, and using his mastery of them to weave brilliant defenses. His ability to identify the most critical of details while constructing solid defenses always impressed me, and I tried to emulate that particular skill. Fifth, I was conscientious about creating good first impressions. As I later learned, lawyers who work with new summer and permanent associates virtually always form quick conclusions about them, and give “hallway evaluations” to other lawyers in the firm. I often heard about or participated in these hallway evaluations, and know that even one negative impression can have a devastating impact. In general, young attorneys who get a reputation for sloppy work – earned or unearned – have a very steep climb up the law firm ladder. Sixth, I was vigilant about meeting deadlines, every time. This meant I had to carefully plan ahead, since partners, colleagues, clients, courts, and other parties often rely on assignments and legal services to be performed by a certain time. With the workload I had, and the interruptions I faced, of course this wasn’t always possible, and in those situations I found the best route wasn’t just to tough it out, but rather let the supervising attorney know as early as possible if I couldn’t meet a deadline. I learned this lesson the hard way. My first assignment as a summer associate was to research whether we could squeeze one of our clients into an exception to a well-settled legal doctrine. The senior attorney who gave me the assignment asked me to research the issue and then get back to him by Friday afternoon. I just didn’t feel comfortable with my research when Friday afternoon came around, and decided to buy some additional time by letting him contact me. He didn’t try to reach me Friday afternoon, so I took advantage of that and submitted the assignment on Monday. The incident later came back to haunt me, though, because in his evaluation of my work for my midsummer review, he mentioned that I didn’t report to him by the established deadline.

WHY HABITS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS If our programmed behaviors are so influential in guiding our everyday actions, surely harnessing the same power of habits can be a boon for industry. Indeed, for those able to shape them in an effective way, habits can be very good for the bottom line. Habit-forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. The aim is to influence customers to use your product on their own, again and again, without relying on overt calls to action such as ads or promotions. Once a habit is formed, the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events such as wanting to kill time while waiting in line. However, the framework and practices explored in this book are not “one size fits all” and do not apply to every business or industry. Entrepreneurs should evaluate how user habits impact their particular business model and goals. While the viability of some products depends on habit-formation to thrive, that is not always the case. For example, companies selling infrequently bought or used products or services do not require habitual users—at least, not in the sense of everyday engagement. Life insurance companies, for instance, leverage salespeople, advertising, and word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations to prompt consumers to buy policies. Once the policy is bought, there is nothing more the customer needs to do. In this book I refer to products in the context of businesses that require ongoing, unprompted user engagement and therefore need to build user habits. I exclude companies that compel customers to take action through

Remember, you are not making this examen in preparation for Confession but instead as a form of devotion and, possibly, as a new daily practice. You may thus find it helpful to focus on one particular weakness–say, impatience–and then evaluate your day in terms of when and under what circumstances you succumbed. When you pray for reconciliation, don't forget to also make a resolve to stop caving in to this particular temptation. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world. (Jn 16:33)

Harlan Ellison: My feeling about contemporary horror writing is that it suffers from the same malaise that is suffocating most art forms in our time: widespread and deep-seated illiteracy on the part of the body politic and a lack of historical memory. People apply for editorial positions at fantasy magazines and book publishers, and when asked for their credentials as evaluators of the genre, they declare themselves well-versed, call themselves “big fans” of the field, and then they list having watched The X-Files as a qualification.

However, even though I find much of this anti-essentialist-inspired analysis compelling, I nonetheless hope to illuminate two problems that arise when this form of criticism is uncritically wielded in the context of Indigenous peoples’ struggles for recognition and self-determination. First, using recent feminist and deliberative democratic critiques of Indigenous recognition politics as a backdrop, I demonstrate how normative appropriations of social constructivism can undercut the liberatory aspirations of anti-essentialist criticism by failing to adequately address the complexity of interlocking social relations that serve to exasperate the types of exclusionary cultural practices that critics of essentialism find so disconcerting. Second, and perhaps more problematically, I show that when constructivist views of culture are posited as a universal feature of social life and then used as a means to evaluate the legitimacy of Indigenous claims for cultural recognition against the uncontested authority of the colonial state, it can serve to sanction the very forms of domination and inequality that anti-essentialist criticism ought to mitigate.

In a section titled “Performance Factors,” Clint had been asked to indicate areas in which I’d exhibited significant strengths, as well as any areas needing development. There were only two areas in which he felt I needed development—organization (probably because he’d ridden in my car) and working more closely with third parties—but he had indicated six major strengths. The first three were creativity, achievement of objectives, and quality of work. No surprises there. The next three strengths—adaptability, communication, and autonomy—seemed a bit ironic. I scrolled down and saw my overall score: Very Good. By definition, this score meant that I had “exceeded objectives in several areas and required only occasional supervision.” I didn’t appreciate the real irony of Clint’s assessment until I looked at my stakeholder map and considered how I might have scored had Kristen conducted a similar evaluation at home. What score would I have received for adaptability? The review form defined this as “being open to change with new circumstances.” Going with the flow. We had just begun to work on my openness to change at home, and I was still learning how to adjust to this new mind-set. Meanwhile, at work, I presented myself as nothing if not adaptable. “Sure, I’ll take a new position on the marketing team.” “Of course I can stay until midnight tonight. Whatever it takes.” “Certainly, Clint, I’ll travel to customers every week. Anything else?” At home, Kristen asked me to help fold laundry and my head almost exploded. I guessed that I would receive Needs Development for that one. How about autonomy and initiative? Clint seemed to think that I was bursting with it, but Kristen would have offered a different opinion. “Initiative? Please. How is me having to remind you to turn off the television and play with the kids initiative? I’ll put you down for a Needs Development,” I imagined her saying. Achievement of objectives would have gotten me a high mark with Kristen, until I scrolled down farther and read the definition, which included the phrase “gets things done efficiently and in a timely manner.” I thought of the Christmas decorations drooping from our eaves. I thought of the countless times Kristen and I had been late for an engagement and she’d found me standing in my boxers in front of the mirror making faces.

What have you done with your day?” Nee asked, her fan spread in the attitude I recognized from our fan lesson as Harmonic Discourse. “We had a bout with the group at the garrison, had a squint at some horses brought from up-mountain. Danric answered mail, and I went over to town with Calder to look at the plans for paving the streets.” This was Tlanth business. I said, “Did you talk to the elders? They want part of their taxes to go to that.” Bran nodded. “It’s a fair plan,” he said; and I sat back, relieved. Nee put her chin in her hand. “‘Answered mail,’ Vidanric? Is he referring to that formidable bag your equerries brought in this morning?” “We’re finishing the last of the dispersal and reassignment of Galdran’s army,” Shevraeth said. “Dispersal?” I repeated, thinking immediately of my plans for evaluating his forming government. Surely it would raise no suspicions to ask about it, since he had introduced the subject. “You’ve dismantled that gigantic army?” “A huge standing army with little to do is both--” “‘--a financial burden and a threat,’” I said. “I recognize the quote--and I agree,” I added hastily, seeing consternation on Bran’s face. “I just…wondered what was happening to them,” I finished rather lamely. To my surprise, Shevraeth said, “I shall be happy to discuss it with you. My decision did not meet with universal approval--there were advocates for extremes at either end--and some of my nearest associates grow tired of the whole affair.” Here he saluted Bran with his wineglass, and Bran grinned unrepentantly. “It’s boring,” my brother retorted. “And I can’t even begin to keep it all in my head. Tlanth’s affairs I see as my duty. Dealing with the affairs of the kingdom I regard as a narrow escape.

works and give advice as needed, making procedure adjustments. Coaching is a form of on-the-job training. Promote meritocracy. Ensure the establishment and continuous improvement of a performance evaluation system (standardize the process). Promote an honest, constructive evaluation of your team, providing it with regular feedback (at least once a year). Dismiss when necessary. Dismiss 5 percent to 10 percent of the team members that have received

When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language, built on the primary language truly used by the central nervous system. Thus the outward forms of our mathematics are not absolutely relevant from the point of view of evaluating what the mathematical or logical language truly used by the central nervous system is. However, the above remarks about reliability and logical and arithmetical depth prove that whatever the system is, it cannot fail to differ considerably from what we consciously and explicitly consider as mathematics

Inexorably accurate translation from Latin provides a training in observation, analysis, judgment, evaluation, and a sense of linguistic form, clarity, and beauty which is excellent training in the shaping of one’s own English expression,” asserted Frederic Wheelock.

Francine’s face. “We don’t really use the word ‘teaching’,” she said, using her fingers to form quotation marks. “We train NGO leaders to better manage their organizations.” “Right,” I said, although still not certain how “teaching” was different from “training”. Maybe I wasn’t so smart, after all. “We facilitate staff to be better project managers, financial managers, better people managers.” Francine leaned into the desk to emphasize the word “facilitate”. “And we facilitate organizations to develop long-term strategies, to create sound work plans, and to evaluate their programs. Among other things, of course. So our role is that of a facilitator, not a teacher, as such.” I’d never heard the word “facilitate” used so many times in the same breath. Back then, I had no idea how many times I, myself, would breathlessly use that word during my work in Africa.

We can no longer simply trust our feelings since these are nothing original or final; behind feelings stand judgements and evaluations inherited in the form of feelings (inclinations and aversions) . . . Only our own reason and experience can replace the inherited obedience of ancestors and stand as a test of authenticity.

It was clear how he had become the leader of a sort of gang back home: not by asserting his leadership but by being so relentless in his production, evaluation, and exploitation of ideas that his friends had been left with no choice but to form up in his wake.

1. Put the knowledge required to operate the technology in the world. Don’t require that all the knowledge must be in the head. Allow for efficient operation when people have learned all the requirements, when they are experts who can perform without the knowledge in the world, but make it possible for non-experts to use the knowledge in the world. This will also help experts who need to perform a rare, infrequently performed operation or return to the technology after a prolonged absence. 2. Use the power of natural and artificial constraints: physical, logical, semantic, and cultural. Exploit the power of forcing functions and natural mappings. 3. Bridge the two gulfs, the Gulf of Execution and the Gulf of Evaluation. Make things visible, both for execution and evaluation. On the execution side, provide feedforward information: make the options readily available. On the evaluation side, provide feedback: make the results of each action apparent. Make it possible to determine the system’s status readily, easily, accurately, and in a form consistent with the person’s goals, plans, and expectations.

seasons means no growing season and no harvesting season. Plants’ growth might not be synchronized with the planet, the weather, or other plants – even those of the same species. They might all grow and ripen in their own time. That would, of course, make fertilization extremely difficult. It’s likely that the plants have evolved some other mechanism for fertilization. They might also have evolved their own form of synchronization, perhaps using pheromones, so that all the plants of the same species grow and ripen at the same time.

1. Recognize the Power of Your Beliefs “Our thoughts determine our lives,” as the Serbian monk Thaddeus of Vitovnica said. Both positively and negatively, your beliefs have tremendous impact on your experience of life. Recognizing that fact is the first stage in experiencing your best year ever. 2. Confront Your Limiting Beliefs We all have limiting beliefs about the world, others, and ourselves. Four indicators you’re trapped in a limiting belief are whether your opinion is formed by: ​‣ ​Black-and-white thinking ​‣ ​Personalizing ​‣ ​Catastrophizing ​‣ ​Universalizing It’s also important to identify the source of your limiting beliefs, whether it’s past experience, the news media, social media, or negative relationships. 3. Upgrade Your Beliefs Get a notebook or a pad of paper and draw a line down the middle of the page so you have two columns. Now use this six-step process to swap your limiting beliefs for liberating truths. ​‣ ​Recognize your limiting belief. Upgrading your thinking starts with awareness, so take a minute to reflect on what beliefs are holding you back. ​‣ ​Record the belief. In the left-hand column, jot down the belief. Writing it down helps you externalize it. ​‣ ​Review the belief. Evaluate how the belief is serving you. Is it empowering? Is it helping you reach your goals? ​‣ ​Reject/reframe the belief. Sometimes you can simply contradict a limiting belief. Other times, you might need to build a case against it or look at your obstacles from a better angle. ​‣ ​Revise the belief. In the right-hand column write down a new liberating truth that corresponds to the old limiting belief. ​‣ ​Reorient yourself to the new belief. Commit to living as if it’s true.

Another question to ask as you evaluate the story is, does it have a hook? In its simplest form, the hook is what got you interested in the subject in the first place. It’s that bit of information that reveals the essence of the story and its characters, encapsulating the drama that’s about to unfold. Sound and Fury, for example, is the story of a little girl who wants a cochlear implant. The hook is not that she wants this operation, nor that the implant is a major feat of medical technology. The hook is that the little girl’s parents, contrary to what many in the audience might expect, aren’t sure they want her to have the operation. It’s the part of the story that makes people want to know more. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, does not hook audiences with the horror of a mass suicide/murder that took place in 1978, even though the film opens with text on screen announcing the event. Instead, the film’s hook is that it promises viewers an insider’s look at what it means to join a community, only to be drawn inexorably into a terrifying, downward spiral. As discussed especially in Chapter 7, the hook is often the last piece of the film to come together, as the themes, characters, and story come more clearly into focus and are distilled into the promise you make to the viewers: This is what this movie is; this is why it’s worth your time; this is why this story needs to be told and demands your attention.

Rather than imposing a functional form, particularly when that form is unknown ex ante, they would allow algorithms to figure out variable dependencies from the data. And rather than making strong assumptions on the data, the algorithms would conduct experiments that evaluate the mathematical properties of out-of-sample predictions. This relaxation in terms of functional form and data assumptions, combined with the use of powerful computers, opened the door to analyzing complex data sets, including highly nonlinear, hierarchical, and noncontinuous interaction effects.

For Frege, an account of what it is for a purely logical power to be in act suffices to allow us to achieve a proper philosophical appreciation of what “content,” “object,” “thought,” “judgment,” and “truth,” as such, are. These notions come to be fully in place through an elucidation of that power, considered apart from our capacity to arrive at kinds of knowledge that are not purely logical in content. Our capacity for empirical judgment, when it comes into view, will come into view as a comparatively complex joint exercise of a variety of faculties, in which the logically fundamental notions that figure in its explication (“content,” “object,” thought,” “judgment,” “truth”) are still supposed to retain the specific sense originally conferred upon them in our explication of the purely logical case, while allowing for their extension to logically impure cases of thought and proposition. A certain picture of the role of reflection on the purely logical case, inthe order of explication of kinds of knowledge, is at work here—a picture that has been enormously influential on the subsequent development of analytic philosophy. On this picture, only if we are armed with a prior account of the case of purely logical thought, supplementing it as we go along, can we come to understand what empirically contentful theoretical thought (or practical thought) is. On this picture, the spatiotemporal bearing and the self-consciousness of the thinking subject do not belong to the form of thought (and hence their treatment does not belong, as Kant held, to a suitably capacious conception of philosophical logic); rather, all such further details among various species of thought are to be subsequently specified, if at all, through the introduction of further indices figuring within the content of thought. (Thoughts are simply conceived of as occurring at a time or at a person.) These consequences of the Fregean picture are not, on the whole, something for which post-Fregean analytic philosophers argue. Rather, it involves an entire philosophical picture that is simply tacitly, and largely unwittingly, assumed—a picture that is already under attack, albeit in very different ways, in both Kant and early Wittgenstein. According to this post-Fregean picture, we can furnish an account of the wider reaches of our capacity for finite theoretical cognition only by assuming the prior intelligibility of some self- standing account of how one of the ingredient capacities in empirical cognition—the capacity for logical thought—off its own bat is able to yield a delimitable sphere of truth-evaluable, object-related thoughts with judgable content, without its yet having entered into any form of co- operation with our other cognitive capacities.

In our language there is a word with enormous power to create shame and guilt. This violent word, which we commonly use to evaluate ourselves, is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that many of us would have trouble imagining how to live without it. It is the word should, as in “I should have known better” or “I shouldn’t have done that.” Most of the time when we use this word with ourselves, we resist learning, because should implies that there is no choice. Human beings, when hearing any kind of demand, tend to resist because it threatens our autonomy—our strong need for choice. We have this reaction to tyranny even when it’s internal tyranny in the form of a should.

Indeed, quite sweeping disparagements of the claims of ‘‘conceptual authority’’ have invaded the academic humanities in recent years, to generally deleterious effect (we shall examine a case in point in 2,v). Within this strain of self-styled post-modernist critique, most appeals to ‘‘conceptual content’’ are dismissed as rigorist shams, representing scarcely more than polite variants upon schoolyard bullying. Run-of-the-mill appeals to ‘‘conceptual authority’’ tacitly masquerade prejudiced predilection in the form of falsely constructed universals which, in turn, covertly shelter the most oppressive codes of Western society. But such sweeping doubts, if rigorously implemented, would render daily life patently unworkable, for we steer our way through the humblest affairs by making conceptual evaluations as we go. In what alternative vocabulary, for example, might we appraise our teenager’s failings with respect to his calculus homeworks? Forced to chose between exaggerated mistrust and blind acceptance of every passing claim of conceptual authority (even those issuing from transparent charlatans), we should plainly select gullibility as the wiser course, for the naïve explorer who trusts her somewhat inadequate map generally fares better than the doubter who accepts nothing. We will have told the story of concepts wrongly if it doesn’t turn out to be one where our usual forms of conceptual evaluation emerge as appropriate and well founded most of the time. Of a milder, but allied, nature are the presumptions of the school of Thomas Kuhn, which contends that scientists under the unavoidable spell of different paradigms often ‘‘talk past one another’’ through their failure to share common conceptual resources, in a manner that renders scientific argumentation more a matter of brute conversion than discourse. We shall discuss these views later as well. Although their various generating origins can prove quite complex, most popular academic movements that promote radical conceptual debunking of these types draw deeply upon inadequate philosophies of ‘‘concepts and attributes.’’ Such doctrines often sin against the cardinal rule of philosophy: first, do no harm, for such self-appointed critics of ‘‘ideological tyranny’’ rarely prove paragons of intellectual toleration themselves.

Despite its pervasiveness both in Silicon Valley and in the wider culture of data scientists and technology developers, inevitabilism is rarely discussed or critically evaluated. Paradiso’s conception of a “digital omniscience” is taken for granted, with little discussion of politics, power, markets, or governments. As in most accounts of the apparatus, questions of individual autonomy, moral reasoning, social norms and values, privacy, decision rights, politics, and law take the form of afterthoughts and genuflections that can be solved with the correct protocols or addressed with still more technology solutions. If information will stream “directly into our eyes and ears” and “the boundaries of the individual will be very blurry,” then who can access that information? What if I don’t want my life streaming through your senses? Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?

Study Questions What is the legal definition of blindness? How does it differ from the IDEA definition? What does the Snellen chart assess? What does 20/200 mean? Describe how the eye functions. Define the terms myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. List five eye problems common to school-age children. Why is early detection of vision problems important? Describe the social and emotional characteristics of persons with visual impairments. What is functional vision, and how is it evaluated? Define the term learning media. Give three examples of different forms of learning media. In what two educational settings do the majority of students with a visual impairment receive a special education? What are some common educational accommodations that a student with a visual impairment may require? List five signs of possible vision problems in children. Identify three critical issues that must be addressed if an adolescent is to successfully transition to postsecondary education or enter the workforce. Besides cultural differences, what diversity issue must be addressed for parents who are also visually impaired? Identify five technology accommodations that can be provided in high school for a student who is legally blind. Discuss the shortage of orientation and mobility specialists and how a child’s educational plan is affected by a shortage of personnel.