“if there’s one thing i learned from fraternity life...”

today i met up with one of my favorite fraternity brothers. we talked about a lot, but one of the topics was about lessons learned from living together.

he said this, “if there’s one thing i learned from living in the [fraternity] house it was how to live and function with people who had fundamentally different world views than me. i might have major disagreements with them, but because we live in the same place, we still figured out how to work together.”

his statement reminds me of several conversations we’re having at work right now. one of them is the belief that people, in spite of their diffrences, can come together and collectively make the world a better place for all of us (we call this big democracy). the other is a question i’ve been holding about our work: “how close do two or more people need to be in order to be honest about their beliefs but still keep moving forward together? how much do i need to know someone else in order to genuinely respect them and, if we disagree, still keep working them towards some goal we do share?”

in the age of the internet and ever-polarizing politics, it’s easier than ever to seclude oneself from dissenting opinions. this can look like: defriending/unfollowing people who disagree with you, only following/friending people who agree with you, only consuming news media that, generally, agrees with your point of view, etc.

but that, honestly, just doesn’t seem like a legitimate pathway forward.

timelines of change: living everyday like it’s the last one... actually

my two defining factors completely structure my life (which, at the ground level, means my time). i know, from experience, how quickly death can come. i also know, that love (the action(s)) is the single most important thing in life.

because i know those two things, i really try to live like every day could be my last. i used to hear people spout that pithy line and roll my eyes… hard. but now, i feel like i actually live it. and it’s a lot less cheesy than i thought.

in my day to day, living like today could be my last day simply means that i always (always) need to have immediate-, medium-, and long-term ways that i’m creating or influencing change to make the world a more loving place. driving for change on several timelines at once means that if i died tomorrow, i would feel confident in saying that i was making a difference. since i see almost everything through a systems lens, the outcome of all this is just a structure that helps me make decisions.

but i think i have to save that for another post.

update (23 june 2016): finally wrote that other post. 

two defining factors – death and faith

as i get older, i have noticed that two significant “events” in my life have had a drastic impact on my way of being. the first is that i (clinically) died once. the second is my evolving relationship with christianity.

on death and dying

when i was 16, i was in a terrible car accident that resulted in me flatlining for 3-4 seconds on an operating table. i woke up feeling great (painkillers), but confused. over the few months of my recovery, i learned how lucky i was to have survived. coming to grips with fact that easily could have not been lucky has completely changed how i think about life. i would even go so far as to say that i’ve experienced an epigenetic change. i was already a pretty driven kid, but after that, my approach to life took on a whole new rigor. this is consistent with many other people who have near death experiences.

speaking of faith

i grew up in a christian household, mostly hated it when i was very young, fell in love with the faith and the Church when i was a little older, became disillusioned in my early adult years, and became distantly enchanted as a mid-twenties adult.

i have always believed strongly in the core values of christianity (love, mostly), but have consistently struggled with the hypocrisy evinced by mainstream american christians. this impacts how i live because i’m able to hold the core values while eschewing the institutions.

turns out, this ability is surprising (and incredibly attractive) to people. it gives me a lot of joy to love and it seems people around me appreciate it and respond well to being loved.

these two factors, having personally experienced death and holding onto christian values outside of the institution, i think make my worldview and approach pretty abnormal. i’m a fan, though.

asters and goldenrods: my design philosophy

just finished the episode of onbeing with robin wall kimmerer. one story in the episode resonated strongly with me.

when robin was a freshman, the way asters and goldenrods grew together fascinated her. when she asked her science teachers why they did this, they told her that this was not a question for science. they said if she wanted to answer this, she should study art.

as she proceeded as a scientist, she eventually DID find a biophysical reason for their cohabitation. the combination of the purple and gold together attract more pollinators than either plant would on its own. so the plants have evolved to support each other’s growth. kimmerer calls this “a matter of aesthetics and a matter of ecology.”

in many ways, this explains my design philosophy. good design (particularly good graphic design), is about finding solutions so elegant that they attract more than that same content would have otherwise. good design improves the functionality of everything involved.

i’m not there yet, but i strive towards this ideal in every design project i take on.

the danger of tabs as todo lists

i’ve noticed among my friends and colleagues (myself included) the growth of tabs as to do lists. i use tabs to hold articles to read, videos to watch, sometimes even Facebook statuses i’ve drafted but don’t want to publish just yet…

using tabs as a task management tool in some ways can be cool. it removes the need for another system. the “reminders” (open tabs) are usually in your face, so the likelihood of remembering to do the thing is high. there are probably other reasons it can be a good thing.

but there are two specific reasons i think it’s bad.

first, it’s typically bad for you computer. especially if you use a modern browser (like chrome) that’s a LOT of processing power you’re requiring of your computer. if you’re running 30 tabs your computer performance is going to suffer.

second, and more importantly, it’s work avoidance. it lets us to hide from the reality that we actually have to make decisions about our time and what we consume.

on one level, this is bad because the world we live in has shifted from limited to limitless content. every two days we create as much content as the entire world did up until 2003. IMO, this means we HAVE to be get better at live-action discernment or we’ll drown. or worse, some of us will drown while others learn to swim (there are signs of this already).

on another (related) level, this work avoidance is problematic because when we don’t discern, we miss out on important things. the democratization of means of production means that (for better or for worse) we’re going to have more content. i think, on net, this is positive, because people who should be able to make but were previously shut out because of limited access won’t be anymore. but, still, what if you miss the article about how your field of work is changing because you’re busy watching cat videos?

of course, none of this should be terribly alarming. people are actually pretty good about making these types of decisions on the fly. this is evidenced by the fact that most people do nothing with the vast number of tabs they leave open. we know when to stop and read/watch, when to skim, and when to just let it go. even if we’re not explicit about it.

that said, if we, collectively, don’t get more skilled (and explicit) about all of this, some people are definitely going to get left behind.

ps - thanks, @whobrien for the conversation that triggered me to finally write this post.