Ampersand Gazette #28
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“Ezra Klein You also have a very, very interesting section in the book [The Sabbath World] where you talk about the way different structures of time act upon our own morality and what we’re able to see. Can you tell me a bit about the good Samaritan experiment?
“Judith Shulevitz So in 1973, two social psychologists wanted to answer the question, what makes someone stop when passing by a stranger who is in obvious distress? They wanted to know which of three attributes would make them stop—innate personality, cultural conditioning or how they were raised, or something more situational.
“They concluded that it wasn’t a factor of personality. It wasn’t a factor of cultural conditioning. It wasn’t that they knew the good Samaritan story. It was the situation they found themselves in, how fast they felt they had to go. And they came to the conclusion that “ethics becomes a luxury as the speed of our daily life increases.” And “time quickening narrows the cognitive map.” Meaning that your ability to perceive things shuts down because you’re so focused on getting done what you have to get done by the deadline.”
from a transcript of The Ezra Klein Show
an Opinion Podcast in The New York Times
January 3, 2023
Many, many years ago, long before personal computers were part of everyday reality, my then-husband and I decided we wanted to move out of New York City and raise a family. In order to do that, we needed a plan for income so we created a dream of a bed & breakfast called An Elegant Simplicity. Recently, in a frenzy of closing energy leaks (more later), I came across our business plan. It made me smile.
What happened instead of the B&B is an entirely different story, but what I did with the name, which I loved, was adopt it as a motto. I decided I wanted things in my life to be elegantly simple, and simply elegant. No more. No less.
Enter the computer, the information age, and a velocity to life that was at that time undreamed of. Over all the years that have elapsed since that dream, I have repeatedly noted the increase in speed, and its second cousin once-removed, simplicity.
Humans like to reduce things to their simplest forms. In fact, we do this automatically because otherwise we would self-destruct. Witness the epidemic of dementia in our elderly population if you don’t believe me. What happened to them? Their motherboards melted because they couldn’t keep up with the speed.
That great mind Albert Einstein is repeatedly quoted on this: “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Generally speaking, good advice. Simple’s good, right?
Uh, yeah, and … no. Look at Einstein’s words. No, really. I mean, slow down, really slow down, and take in Einstein’s words. “As simple as possible,” is what he says. The students in the experiment had a deadline to meet. They narrowed everything down in service to the deadline, including helping a patently obvious person in need.
Their “simple” conclusion was: Time is of the essence; everything else is not.
Look at the next clause please: “but no simpler.” Is ignoring the suffering of a living creature more important than meeting a deadline? Is it?
This tendency to want to simplify things too much shows up in all kinds of ways in our social fabric. How about this? Gas stoves contribute to climate change. There have been two articles about that in The Times this week. Of course, gas stoves are a contributing factor to climate change, but a teeny, tiny one.
Or how about this? Evidence-based medicine in the West is all about what the doctors have figured out how to measure. Is human health only about what can be measured? Um … if you’re reading this, you have a body. We both know the answer to that is: No. It doesn’t account for human experience or choice.
Where is the ethical choice in the climate change scenario? Where in the healthcare one? Both examples are too simple, Beloved. They’ve gone past simple as possible. And the time to have an ethical response is tossed out with them like the proverbial baby and the bathwater.
Ms. Shulevitz’s book is about sabbath, a word that comes from ancient Hebrew with roots in the idea of rest. Rest is essential if we are to remain a people of integrity. People of integrity, Beloved, prize simplicity, yes we do, but an elegant simplicity, one that is simple, but no simpler because it includes a blessed existence for everyone, no exceptions.
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“Re “She Showed a Prophet’s Image, and Divided a College Campus”
“To the Editor:
“There are many disturbing aspects of this sad story, but what concerns me most is the apparent inability to acknowledge that more than one truth can exist simultaneously, even when they are not in complete alignment.
“In the rush to identify villains and heroes, we lose sight of the complicated possibility that a) the professor was justified and well intentioned and b) the student was nevertheless genuinely offended by the professor’s decision to show the image. Or that a) the professor gave opt-out options in advance but b) the student didn’t feel empowered to exercise them fully.
“If the university had begun with a presumption that all of these things were simultaneously true and had attempted to find a better conflict resolution process along the lines of restorative justice, both the student and the professor might have felt that they had benefited from the conflict.
Instead, we go back and forth between dichotomous positions of right and wrong, villain and victim, oppressor and oppressed, and we end up not with progress toward unity but rather with more deeply entrenched differences.
Michael Rigsby
New Haven, Conn.”
From a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
January 11, 2023
Here is yet another application of the need to be in the no simpler camp. One of the factual things about Planet Earth is that its entire existence is based upon polarity; it’s a metaphysical law called the Complementarity of Opposites. As you’ve heard me say before, that polarity has been stretched to its furthest extent these days, at least in the United States, and has resulted in paralyzing polarization.
Humans like things to be simple. We understand them faster that way. We make choices faster that way. We’re more efficient when things are simple. But, dear one, look at the list in this letter. Just look at it!
How’s this for too simple? Villains/Heroes; Back/Forth; Right/Wrong; Villain/Victim; Oppressor/Oppressed, oh, and let’s add Good/Evil in there whilst we’re at it, shall we?
Follow my logic. If we do indeed end up with more deeply entrenched differences, as Mr. Rigby says, then where’s its polarity?
Let’s try this one on: Differences/Similarities.
Now that’s as simple as possible, but no simpler, and we have a moment-by-moment choice about this, Beloved. Sure, g’head, focus all you want on the differences. They were there in the past. They’re there now. They will be there in the future.
Oh, but what might happen if you chose, instead, to focus on their magical opposite: similarities? Because there were similarities in the past; there are similarities now; and there will be similarities in the future.
It’s all a matter of focus, Beloved. You get to choose. And that is the Law and the Prophets on elegance and simplicity.
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“To the Editor:
“Poetry is dead? No way. I’m a trauma surgeon. I know what’s dead when I see it.
“A year or two ago, I stood with my team in the emergency room awaiting the arrival of a severely injured patient. Our chaplain was there, as usual, and we chatted about an essay that I’d read on the Poetry Foundation website about chaplaincy and poetry. She’d already heard about it from another hospital chaplain. Our nurse leader chimed in. “I love that site,” he said. “I get their poem of the day.”
“Then the injured person showed up. We stopped chatting and went to work, inspired by our unexpected connection in poetry, which is definitely not dead.
Elizabeth Dreesen
Chapel Hill, N.C.”
from a Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
January 16, 2023
I read this Letter to the Editor because my eye was caught by the url for the Poetry Foundation. It’s an app I’ve had on my phone for more than ten years.
The reason for that isn’t the poems themselves, not per se. The reason is because the way that app is structured is how I want to create one for my twenty-five years of Seeds. It inspires me that it even exists, and every time I see it, I say a prayer for an app template to be created in its image and likeness. [And if you know of one, email me pronto!]
Poetry, it seems to me, is all about image and likeness. I don’t seek poetry out in the world, but it seems to seek me. C. S. Lewis wrote a book entitled Surprised By Joy; you might say about me, surprised by poetry.
I’d written ten mystery novels of my series, The Mex Mysteries, before I realized that almost always a poem is the pivotal plot point toward the end of each book. I love poems and I come upon them in the most unusual places. It’s one of the things I love about poems.
Dylan Thomas wrote, “A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of the self and the world around the self.”
The same is true of a good book, a good painting, a good song lyric, a good dance step, really, a good … anything that reflects us back to ourselves. I also happen to know three poets, and knew another one quite well before she died. Poets see the world, take the world, express the world differently from almost any other kind of artist. I don’t know why, but I do know that I appreciate their take on it immeasurably.
It didn’t surprise me that a trauma surgeon, a chaplain, and a nurse [walk into a bar … sorry, had to] connected based on a poetry app. Maybe someday soon, they’ll do the same over my Seeds, and wouldn’t that be a poem unto itself!
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And in publishing news …
The podcast world took a break over the holidays, and it’ll be only a matter of time before I’m back on the search for podcasts wherein I can showcase the chakra work. It’s a message that humanity needs right now.
Until we all know that we have available to us every minute of every day a system within which we can make meta-change, life will continue to be lived from the outside-in which is the hardest way to do a human life. The chakras take you to an entirely different track: inside-out, where you can make quiet, graceful inner change, that changes every external you ever dreamed of changing faster than you ever imagined.
If you want some help getting started, I’m taking a few new clients this year. Reach out to me via the Contact form.
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I promised in the lead to this Gazette to tell you about my frenzy of closing energy leaks, so here we go. First, I know my own creative process, and usually, when I decide to go through and eliminate all sorts of things I’ve accumulated, it means a new book is a-borning. Actually, it’s three books!
Shrew This! for The Mex Mysteries; Jasmine Increscent for The Subversive Lovelies; and Impending Decision for The Boots & Boas Romances after we publish Upending Tradition. Quite exciting.
This time, when I started to declutter around Thanksgiving, it was easy-peasy to do the clothes and the physical things, but then I had a realization that changed the whole process for me, and found the place I needed the most clean-up—because it was where I had the greatest number of energy leaks—was my computer! Between us, it totally shocked me. Try these on for size:
I got a little tsk whenever I had to delete those emails. Again.
Solution: Unsubscribe, once and for all.
I had way, way, way too much paper in my world. Again.
Solution: Digitize, once and for all.
I spent a lot of time hunting for documents. Again.
Solution: Organize, no, really organize my directories.
And that’s just three places where I found cyber-leaks!
I’m still doing a little bit of directory organizing every day because I can’t seem to focus long enough to do it all at once, but so? Eventually, like removing wallpaper, I’ll come to the last file. I expect I’ll heave a huge sigh of relief, and I hope and pray that I’ll keep digitizing as I go, so I won’t ever have to do this big a push again.
An empty email inbox at the end of the day feels absolutely …
Inaugural Chakra Cohort
Apprenticeships
Ongoing Workbook Groups
The image above is an abbreviated version of learning opportunities for you. Click on the word Teaching to go right there.
I’m happy to say iampersand.org is entirely revamped to reflect Chakra World. I am completely delighted by the always-stellar work of Suzanne Rhodes, the remarkable human who has been my web mistress for more than 20 years. [How did that happen?!] Please make the time for a visit. I think you’ll enjoy the new look.
It’s simple, and elegant, and elegant, and simple—two of my all-time favorite words. For the next couple of weeks, Beloved, check out your own world. Where does it need simplicity? Where does it need elegance? Where does it need both? Which is, of course, the best of Ampersand living. Until next time … be the simply elegant blessing, S.