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You Can’t Skip Rookie Year
You know what sucks?! Being new at things. Having to flail and try hard and still have little or nothing to show for it. But that’s basically what it’s like to be new at things. Rookies are a specially-named-class in the world of sports and beyond because while they may have done similar things before […]
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Flow Traps Revisited
On a recent Friday night, I installed a video game on my computer: Civilization 5. I don’t play “hardcore” (that is: long, complex, time-consuming) video games much anymore. Really, barely ever. The last time I did before this was probably nearly three years ago. But there was a time when I played them regularly and really […]
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It’s Not Your Fault, But it is Your Responsibility
I mercifully never really struggled with was the idea that having invisible social privileges is “my fault,” but it’s a conversation that comes up a lot. A simplistic rebuff of the very idea of unearned social privilege existing is that I — as a straight, white, male, etc — are not at fault for the confluence […]
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Humans on Autopilot
Planes have had autopilot for a few decades now. Cars are just now starting to get it. Some people think we should skip the assisted-human-driving that’s creeping in now and remove humans from the car-piloting process entirely as soon as we can. And all of that is mostly irrelevant to my topic. What is relevant is that […]
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Waiting for Super(wo)man
It’s rather alluring, the belief that some outside force can swoop in from above and set everything right. Whether we call that entity God, or Super(wo)man, or “they,” we love to quickly and easily release our agency for the sake of not having to do any work. We imagine that at Judgement Day God will […]
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No One Has Ever Loved Anyone
I love potent little phrases (it’s why I run a quotation-browsing website), and I recently came across a great one. It seems that Mignon McLaughlin once quipped: No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved. It bowled me over. Because it immediately struck me as both true and useful. First, […]
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All Problems Come from Ignorant Non-alignment
I believe in two things: the value of love and the danger of ignorance. I believe, as I explained recently, that those two things are related pretty profoundly. I believe something else too: different people want different things. But I think wanting different things doesn’t have to be an obstacle to compromise and everyone feeling like their needs […]
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“We All Make Choices”
I’ve caught myself saying something more and more. Though most of the things we say are pretty dumb and banal — this is very much included — the increased frequency is notable and thus must have some meaning. So what, then, leads me to say “We all make choices…” so much? For one, the phrase […]
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What If Ignorance is Love’s Only Obstacle?
I’ve got a short enemies list. If I whittle it down as far as it can go, I think it contains one item: ignorance. But it wasn’t until today that it struck me directly that this relates very specifically to the one thing I could whittle my list of unimpeachably good things down to: love. […]
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The Two Currencies of Relationships
Every good relationship contains two things: intimacy and mutual service. I don’t just mean romantic relationships; whenever you find a relationship valuable, it is because you’re getting at least one of those two needs met by that relationship. When you find a relationship hard to sustain, or damaging, it’s because it fails to provide (or provides negative […]