a work in progress

panorama of Vancouver/English Bay in summer

Category: Uncategorized

“I feel your pain”

This is really interesting but I have a follow-on study I want someone to do, or at least redo this one and control for.

In our study, we induced a set of participants to temporarily feel varying levels of power by asking them to write a brief essay about a moment in their lives. Some wrote about a time when they felt powerful and in charge, while others wrote about a time when they felt powerless and subordinate to others. The selection process was random, so that each participant had an equal chance of being powerful or powerless.

The outcome of the original study showed that being in a position of power reduces empathy. But when I read their instruction, particularly the negative side “a time when they felt powerless” I immediately thought of a time when I was UTTERLY enraged and not at ALL empathetic. It was about midnight and our neighbour was having a party. Through some perverse architectural delusion, our bedroom is next to his living room. The music was SO LOUD, y’all. And I fumed and ranted and could! not! sleep! (probably due as much to my own fury as to the actual noise level). After attempting to phone him to ask him to turn the music down three times, I eventually got up, got dressed, knocked on his door (very aggressively) and laid into him.

I avoided talking to him for the next three years. Wouldn’t make eye contact. He’s a good friend now.

But here’s the thing. The thing that drives me MOST into a rage, and reduces my empathy intensely is feeling powerless. When I have options, choices (i.e. power) I’m good. I’m chill. I let things roll off my back and don’t escalate. When ‘trapped’, I’m the normally docile animal backed into the corner and fighting for my survival. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m powerless.”

So I’m curious about that study. Are there different types of power that aren’t accounted for? Maybe ‘power over others’ is different than ‘power over your own environment’. Maybe people with low self-esteem, history of depression, or other factors react the opposite way from these ‘leaders’. I’m actually most open and empathetic when I personally feel safe and in control.

I’m not even remotely trying to suggest that this study has reached an invalid conclusion – its methodology is sound, it makes a lot of sense, and explains a lot about the state of our society right now. But it doesn’t describe my own lived experience which makes me wonder where the difference lies and curious to figure it out.

First day of the rest of your life

I’m pretty happy with how today turned out. I actually followed the plan I had set for myself, so I’m on track, at least for a single day, and that’s not bad.

Today’s Things Done:

  • Eat breakfast (this is rare, but shall become a habit. Eggs scrambled with shallots, orange bell pepper, chilies and cheddar cheese)
  • Meditation (Chapter 2 of Pema Chödron’s “How to meditate”)
  • Exercise (1 hr on the stationary bike)
  • Book sleep research appointment
  • Clean kitchen
  • Make dinner (Cook’s Illustrated Chicken Parmesan, verdict ‘enh’) thereby adding “Clean kitchen” to tomorrow’s plan
  • Clean bathroom
  • Set up Evernote on all the devices
  • 1 hr writing
  • Watch instructional video on WordPress Python development to support a BONUS activity:
  • signed up to volunteer as a TA/coach for Be Like Ada – a 1 day coding bootcamp for teenage girls.

It was a really amazing day, in that for once I wasn’t constantly freaking myself out thinking “there’s something more important I should be doing, there’s something else I should be doing”. Instead, I thought “I should clean the bathroom” and then I DID. Is this how normal people feel? They have an idea of something to do, then they just… do it? Without doubting their ability to do it, or shutting themselves down because there are a million other work things that need doing that trump their home/personal projects so they end up just reading news online all day?

Damn, people. This is MUCH better.

Bringing the wrath: Cook’s Illustrated

I received (by my request) a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated as an xmas present but was very quickly turned off by unexpected ‘premium content’ that had to be purchased separately and a constant upsell to higher tiers of membership (I checked at the time – the fact that there even WERE multiple tiers wasn’t visible until you subscribed and realized you weren’t getting everything). Apparently this was well known (although not to me) and the guy’s considered to be a bit of a jerk.

Once I realized that much of the online content I thought I was getting was not available to me, I was pissed off enough that I tended to ignore the magazines and they’ve just been piling up unread. I was going to offer to give them away, but I’m thinking I might try some of the things in them and review them online instead. I need ideas for writing and I get the feeling that this foodblogging thing might just take off some day. (Is there a tongue-in-cheek emoji? Surely there must be).

At any rate, apparently even reviewing their content may be an invitation for a ‘cease & desist’ letter, so I guess I’m really taking this quest to live life more dangerously seriously.

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