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It is never personal, you're not the protagonist

It's so easy to become offended. It actually comes pretty natural. Someone says something.  You feel it's directed at you Strong reaction follows No need to react, it's got nothing to do with you as a person Imagine some remarks about academic work versus manual one, a bit dismissive about the latter. You don't have a degree and never wanted one. You know very well it takes years of experience and training to do what you're doing. Talent is involved too, as some people do have "two left hands".  You still feel you should add something to the conversation, but not sure if it is going to be well-received. No need to enlighten the other party right now Most people think in terms of opposites. If it's not this, it's that and it can't be anything else. Certainty of one's convictions is also a form of self-reassurance that everything is stable in one's world. Other points of view cannot be allowed because they are disruptive. Cognitive disrup

Ambition drives us all

Good old reliable friend, the dictionary, is going to co-author this blog post. I would have posted its photo as well, but I was not too sure if it did not involve some copyright law infringement. Only half-joking. "Ambition drives us all' sounds very much like one of those insufferable sweeping statements, forgotten as soon as read or heard. I am not aiming for posterity here, just to make a point. A word's origin reveals its meaning better than long philosophical notes. Words, much more than people, are taken for granted because of their longer life span. Ambition is just an example. It comes from a Latin word, ambire, which means to go around. Going around is not a particularly interesting pastime, and that's being polite. It is frankly quite boring, a feature compounded by its obvious aimlessness. That's why no one goes around for any long period of time. Hidden or covert, there is an aim for being present one moment here and a bit later there.  In ancient Rome

Zoon Politikon is not political

 Did you know which are the top blogging topics?  I did not, until I looked them up, using the predictable search engines available to Internet tribes. The results were quite interesting. "How to.." and "Self-development" take the lion's share of the blogosphere, which is itself expanding at dizzying speed. Is everyone after some form of competence and also keen of becoming a better version of oneself? It seems so, but why? The ancients have the answer, nothing surprising here. Aristotle's view of man as "Zoon Politikon", for instance. Often quoted and rarely used correctly,  these two words do not refer to man as a 'political animal",  such as someone who is totally enamoured of politics as understood in today's parlance. Zoon is a living creature and "politikon" comes from polis, which means city, the complex social structure where people live and do things together.  Man is a social creature, who needs to be part of a grou

Fridge magnet as fortune-teller

Bought more than a decade ago, a fridge magnet became a source of comfort. That and chocolate. Free advice: no expectations is the cheapest way to avoid suffering. That and instant coffee.

The bearable side of social distancing

The carefree and the cautious, the well-behaved and the morons, they all walk up and down the same pavements (sidewalks if you prefer). Whoever wrote a book on how people behave when they approach a stranger, needs to add a new chapter. It could be called the Virus Effect. Before the pandemics, there used to be a kind of social ballet, especially on narrow lanes. One step to the right, maybe a bit of backtracking, eyes averting direct connection. At times, so many of us have been fooled by the fellow passer-by's moves (neurons mirroring someone else's neurons , as they do). We would move in the same direction, ending up in an amused half-collision. Nowadays that benign bumping into each other is not on at all.  Social distancing, or physical distancing rather, has altered pedestrian behaviour. People scan the approaching human traffic and assess pretty fast if they need to stop, step to the side and wait. A lot depends on how rushed or distracted the other party seems to be. Wa

Black and White

Lockdown reflections 1.2 It's not easy to spell the adjective "manichaean". The word that has ended up meaning "black and white thinking" has its origin 17 centuries ago.  At the time, it was not that simplistic. I think it is definitely worth looking into Manichaeism, the religion founded in the 3rd century AD by a Persian prophet and the idea of a battle between light and darkness. Modern use of "manichaean" is pretty much divorced from the ancient belief system. Rarely employed in writing, it has the undertone of a rebuke. These days, it is not exactly a compliment. Could it be that we are so in love with nuances? There's always a "but..." dangling from the end tail of a sentence. To be more precise, there used to be a "but", before all nuanced conversations went out of the window. Or were rather locked down. Duality in its strictest, most dogmatic form is reigning supreme. It's an either/or situation,  no mid

The new normal is the old normal

Lockdown reflections 1.1. It started with the frequency of phone calls and messages. Everyone was worried. Interest in other people's welfare took on an unexpected turn. "Are you alright"?  became a magic phrase. The speed of sharing immunity tips increased. There was a definite fervour around any bit of new information. Some became suspicious that others may know something and hide it. The spurt of activity on various channels was matched by what happened in the media and to a more significant degree on the internet. The two spheres, the personal and the public one, were in synch up to a point only. Then some sort of fatigue started gnawing away at individual hyper-communication. Phone calls became less frequent. Text messages turned into forwarding funny videos and memes, mostly. Family members and friends, let alone acquaintances, settled back into their usual routine. The new normal, under lockdown, reverted to the old normal, and it's a comforti