Roxana

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Between Two Wor(l)ds: Schadenfreude and Mudita

by

There are four possible ways in which we can combine our reactions when we observe another person’s happiness or unhappiness: we can feel pleasure at another’s unhappiness (schadenfreude), displeasure at another’s unhappiness (compassion), displeasure at another’s happiness (envy), or pleasure at their happiness (mudita). Schadenfreude is a word borrowed from German, composed by Schaden (“damage/harm”) and Freude (“joy”). Thus, schadenfreude means tingling or even waves of pleasure noticing another’s misfortunes. The critical difference between schadenfreude and sadism is that sadism gives pleasure by inflicting pain. In contrast, …

Read more

Nurturing Curiosity in Children through Dopamine Sprinkles

by

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. I recall the words of my former head of school, already 70 years old, gathering her pupils in her library and saying, “You must cultivate curiosity, for only through curiosity can you learn, not only what there is in books, but what lies around you in the world of things and people.”  Eleanor Roosevelt Defends Curiosity | …

Read more

Seeing the World through the Japanese Concept of Wabi-Sabi

by

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept through which the world is accepted as beautifully imperfect with humble and subtle flaws as it naturally grows and decays. Etymologically, the noun wabi is better understood through its adjective form wabishii (wretched, dreadful). In time, a negative connotation of wabi transformed through the influence of Zen philosophy, with its core concepts of accepting and contemplating imperfection and impermanence, into the quiet simplicity of rustic beauty, for things created by nature or people.  Wabi is beauty coming from subtle imperfections.  The noun sabi is …

Read more

How to Maintain Our Creative Powers by Having Multiple Projects

by

The MacArthur Fellows Program is a prize awarded annually to 20 – 30 citizens or residents of the United States, from any field based on their demonstrated talent, dedication and potential, and not necessarily on their past achievements. The complete list of recipients is here. If you glance through it, you will notice the winners’ occupations are remarkably diverse: spider silk biologists, farmers, atmospheric chemists, painters, sculptors, tropical foresters, rare book preservationists, computer scientists, doctors, historians, etc. As the current prize for the MacArthur Fellows is $625,000 paid …

Read more

Brandon Sanderson’s Framework to Achieve Hard Things 

by

In 2020, Brandon Sanderson, an epic fantasy and science fiction writer, delivered an excellent keynote called The Common Lie Writers Tell You. This session was a map of achieving difficult things disguised as writing advice.  The first thing that jumps from this video is the lie we usually hear “you can do anything if you just set your mind to it”. In Sanderson’s words: Some things are simply impossible, and even for the things that are possible, luck plays a bigger role in accomplishments …

Read more

When Incentives Fail. A Story about Rats, Cobras, Nails, and Atrocities. 

by

Part 1: When Incentives Fail. A Story about Rats, Cobras, Nails, and Atrocities.  Part 2: Avoiding Perverse Incentives  More than a century ago, the French colonialists decided to modernize the French Indochina, especially its capital, Hanoi. Large areas of Hanoi were cleared to accommodate French-style districts with boulevards, bridges, palaces, villas and gardens. This major infrastructure project was supposed to transform Hanoi from a cramped and narrow city into a symbol of France’s “civilising” mission in Indochina.  A sign of cleanliness and civilization was …

Read more

When Rejected Ideas Are a Gold Mine

by

In her autobiography Walk through Walls, the performance artist Marina Abramović describes how she teaches her students the process of ideation: For the first three months, I place each student at a table with a thousand pieces of white paper and a trash can underneath. Every day they have to sit at the table for several hours and write ideas. They put the ideas they like on the right side of the table; the ones they don’t like, they put in the trash. But we don’t throw …

Read more

How to Reduce Biased Thinking

by

The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on its owner the comforting delusion that he or she does not have any.  Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson – Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)   Every day an overflow of thoughts dashes through our minds as we must adapt as efficiently and quickly as possible to everchanging environments. We can’t process all streams of information around us at once, so we turn to mental shortcuts …

Read more