This is My Forties

People talk a lot about suppressing anger ( including myself ) and how harmful it can be.  I think it's equally harmful to suppress joy , and that's not something we often hear about.  One of the issues I see is that as a society we have decided "negative" emotions have more value than "positive" ones.  Some say it's a product of our brain's ability to empathize with pain more easily than with happiness, but I think it could be the biological responding to our environmental cues.  Empathy is a social belief we teach as part of our culture to promote kindness and compassion.  Problem is, empathy can also be taught through guilt and shame ( muting pride and self-esteem  is holy), which solves one problem by creating another.  Let me give you some examples of expected harmful behaviors that will show you what I mean. A friend is going through a divorce and you purposely don't talk about your great marriage in their presence so as not to "rub...

More food for thought on the concepts of authority, expertise, knowledge, power, and responsibility.  How do we know if we are knowledgeable?  When should we not trust ourselves?  How do we identify our own biases and knowledge gaps?  How do we know who is an expert?  How do we determine when it's correct to challenge authority/knowledge/expertise? Discussion on expertise and knowledge gaps And this article about the "mirage of knowledge" that Tom Nichol's discusses in his book The Death of Expertise  More civil discourse: The Wake Up podcast another little explanation of The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I've been writing a book for over 5 years now.  When I first started writing I would only go in spurts of manic typing followed by months of nothing.  Looking back on what I had written was always interesting because I don't remember what I wrote, and I am generally surprised at the insight and elegance of what I typed out.  I find old writings of mine all the time, and some of them I still get so anxious about sharing, but I noticed that comes with a theme of prior personal judgment of self.  One self in particular.  I have no faith in my inner teacher.  I am not the most confident person when it comes to sharing new ideas or my perceptions of situations.  Oh I'm definitely a bold and thoughtful person, but I don't want to discuss my reasons for my choices.  When I do, afterwards I get anxious about how others felt about what I said or how I said it.  I will tell myself I don't have valuable insight, everyone already knows what I know, no on...