Unreconciled rabbit holes

RH podcast with Timothy Egan

Back in April I listened to this podcast with Ryan Holliday and Timothy Egan – it lead me to a few rabbit holes and one I found was this dissertation found at Eastern Tennessee State University.

https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5263&context=etd&fbclid=IwAR1kGd7-1PUa8OSlO6CGGlVQ3wiH85Y9qoLhcxwOpbWve7tmXiLXoktTcdA

Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics – Personally I find it ironic that it took the pandemic and associated conditions for a dissertation like this to be exposed in an institution of higher education in the state of Tennessee. Ironic that Tn and Ky are the hotbeds for the notorious Ku Klux Klan, topics that Timothy Egan explores in his new book – A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

Noise – Filtering for quality

There is so much noise generated to grab my attention – this comes from multiple sources. I have discovered that working from the outside in often (iterative growth pursuits) leads to unreasonable expectations and future resentments. I choose to focus my intrinsic efforts and strive to work from the inside out. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I keep acting, recalibrating, aspiring, failing, and intersecting with successes along the way. I’m grateful for how life is iterative. The challenge is effectively filtering the noise. The ultimate prize this noise seeks is varying levels of my attention. In turn I have to be mindful of what I let come out of me after I have chosen to engage, acknowledge or completely disregard. Notice I DID NOT say ignore. I find ignoring is a poor coping skill because eventually that thing I am ignoring will eventually grab my attention at an intensity it was never designed for, rendering me in a position of higher levels of stress.

There are three things you must always ask yourself before you say anything.

Does it need to be said?
Does it need to be said now?
Does it need to be said by me?

— Craig Ferguson

This topic really captured my attention. Spoiler alert and not a TL:DR – you can’t on this topic, if you are only interested in the bullet points, please re-calibrate that notion or move aside, this train of evolution will not stop.

Pause.

First. Stress is stress is stress. While the body can’t compartmentalize stress, I can control how I react to it. So I create space to think, review, recalibrate and act. This post is for me. 

So, why is this important among all the noise. I find it interesting that the link from ETSU occurred during covid. If you read through the dissertation and begin chasing the sources, you will be taken on an adventure in history that is worth the wandering. I didn’t know that in 1888 Frederick Wines published the Report on the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States. The publication of this work was important to the founding of the DSM and its classifications that were used in eugenic practices.

As I heard Tim Egan speaking with Ryan Holiday on the subjects that lead me to this find, I was like, wow, this got published. I knew the KKK was founded in the greater Tennessee and Kentucky areas, and that there were many folks that joined. But the stories and the illustrations and the facts. Wow. The facts! It reminded me of my current conundrum – the older I get the more aware of how little I know is glaringly insurmountable.

I observe a conundrum occuring in the current telling of the American historical tales. It is a deep divide that should not be a divide. There is a generation that is having to reconcile with facts. It seems many misconstrue the realities, facts, of things and events that occurred. These events did indeed occur but often history is written from the perceptions of the conquerors not the conquered.

What Is History?
Most people believe that history is a "collection of facts about the past." This is reinforced through the use of textbooks used in teaching history. They are written as though they are collections of information. In fact, history is NOT a "collection of facts about the past." History consists of making arguments about what happened in the past on the basis of what people recorded (in written documents, cultural artifacts, or oral traditions) at the time. Historians often disagree over what "the facts" are as well as over how they should be interpreted. The problem is complicated for major events that produce "winners" and "losers," since we are more likely to have sources written by the "winners," designed to show why they were heroic in their victories.
--source

Growth mindset – Rabbit hole or best advice ever

“Never change!”

— Worst advice ever!

When I intersected with this podcast from Tim Egan and Ryan holliday – it really made me reflect a bit on things. Look. I have always for the most part been enamoured with the processes associated with growth. I got off centered when I first became a travelling professional in 2010. I lost sight of a lot after moving away from my family in 2008, being able to join them again in 2009 and ultimately return back to Northern Utah in 2010. With travel I became enamoured with the status quo and the leveling or affinity models. I gained privilege in those systems and man it went to my head. however, i was more focused on outside in than the inside out approach and my wife brought this to my attention. I had become a DOUCHEBAG.

So, recognizing there is a problem is one of the most critical stages of correction. I was lost in seeking the epic things to me, and to be frank, nobody but me cared. But I sure thought differently. A ha. So this is about the time that my wife and son joined my in France in July of 2013. My post on Transformation Tuesday captures the awakening.

Inside out

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

— Charles Bukowski

So, inward I turned. I happened across Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The affinities by Ryan Holiday turned me into the interesting memoirs, or personal journaling of the Last of the Five Good Emperors – and no, he wasn’t choked out by Claudius as portrayed in the movie Gladiator. I am grateful that one of the 2 founders over at Crushing Iron – Mike, reached out to me and said I think you might like our podcast – some 700 casts later – I still like them. Crossing titles from Craig McDonald, Ryan Holiday, thoughts from Eddie Pinero, content creators like Jessie J Pedigo.

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if
he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

— Sir Francis Bacon

There is an air in the world today that is just interesting. Whether in life, or triathlon or at work, folks keep seeking prescriptive and often authoritarian or even orthodoxical approaches and routes to solutions. This is often constrained by a focused absolute – there is no other way. I recently came across this tiktok by Ryan Holiday and it just resonated:

Formlessness is one of my favorite strengths. In my Neurodiversity of Dyslexia, I oft times have to choose formlessness because I need the space to creatively identify or discover a novel solution. Meaning, there is not always a prescriptive or distinct solution, rather there is a trajectory to identify first. Then over time with experiment and refinements, I can tune in and focus on a generalized approach that i can apply until it no longer is applicable.

“Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better.”

~~Maya Angelou

Iterative groth is a persistent rarely ending process

What is most fulfilling and frustrating about turning inward is the almost endless opportunity for improvement. I learned along the way that I needed to have my feet and my head in the same place. Meaning not too far into the future or stuck in the past. This is both a burden and a blessing. The difficulty in this abundance is knowing which ones are of value, which ones are needed now and which ones should be prioritized compared to other opportunities. And so it goes, you dive in picking a few at a time, sometimes just one, based on the stress induced and get to work. I have four words on my office workout wall:

• Desire
• Discipline
• Determination
• Dedication

They serve as reminders regardless of if I am working directly on me – mindset or physically, while I am training for triathlon or other physical endeavors/journeys and while at work. These words serve to ground me when life’s frustrations or my aspirations become failures far quicker than they become successes. They remind me of my efforts in the various roles I have as a human – spouse-life partner, father, friend and so many more. These words urge me to actions instead of perfection – you may know its other spelling — paralysis. It’s not perfect but it’s highly entertaining. It’s exhausting, but it’s often worth the efforts.

“Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.””

“Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.””

~~Ryan Holiday

I have become uncomfortably comfortable with ‘I don’t know’. I am ok with that. I also know that when I say I don’t know I have an opportunity to improve, or not. And that is up to me. one last heavy thought. This one has been difficult to bear. Not because I can’t face it, but because it is a bit formless while so many others scream so loud that I’m a Fool!

And so it goes. I just remember this quote from Richard Feynman to keep me grounded, and humble and willing to take actions that I can, no matter how small or menial.

Which rabbit will I follow today?