IrishOboe

My attempt to imbed a video:

Video Link

In this TED talk by behavior economist Daniel Kahneman there is a fair bit of psychological talk that I’m not sure I get, but his discussion of the difference in happiness of our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” gave me some insight into what to expect from childbirth.  An example of how these two selves see happiness differently, he tells a story of a man who listened to 20 minutes of glorious music only to have a horrible sound come at the very end, which he claims ruined the whole experience.  Of course it had no influence on the 20 minutes of enjoying his experiencing self had had, but all he was left with was his memory, so his remembering self could only look on the experience as a bad one.  The fact that the end experience influences greatly the view of the whole experience given by the remembering self lead me to the conclusion that I cannot use any descriptions given by mothers to prepare myself for what childbirth will be like as I actually experience it.  I fully intend to forget all the pain and remember the most beautiful moment in the world when my tiny baby is placed in my arms, and maybe living that future memory in my head during labor will decrease the discomfort (a lovely word often used to describe labor pains) for my experiencing self, but it’s unclear how much this knowledge can change the happiness of the two selves.

As for earning money, at the end of the video Kahneman shares a statistic that shows that the less one earns per year the more unhappy the experiencing self is.  The catch is that once income reaches $60,000 (for an American) the line is flat: there is no increase in experiential happiness.  It’s all in the head: the happiness of the remembering self still continues to increases with increasing income.  So I say get your satisfaction with your life from other sources and you’ve saved yourself years of work at the office.  Use the extra time to make a load of memorable experiences and the happiness of the remembering self (the one we mostly live out of and base or view of ourselves and our lives on) will be better than a millionaire! 
 

Here lies, extinguished in his prime,

a victim of modernity:

but yesterday he hadn't time---

and now he has eternity.

 

-Piet Hein, poet and
scientist (1905-1996)

I know I should be getting ready for my folks - they come in 12 hours - wahoo!!  I saw this statement praised, but it scares me.  It doesn't sound like Biblical wisdom either.  I'm for creative imagination and brilliance, but it needs to be tempered by wisdom.  It does not equal wisdom.  Can you think of any leaders who were creative and brilliant and did a lot of damage?  I think that's important for a presedential candidate to understand.

 "[C]reative imagination . . . coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom."

My beloved nerdy family subscribes to A Word of the Day.  One would hope that would make me more articulate, but the part of the daily mailing that I enjoy the most is the quote.  I save ones I like and today I thought I'd share it with the world.  It expresses a sentement that I've had since at least high school.

The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much. -Germain
G. Glien

I think I feel this way because I'm always talking and always have something to say and always think it's important, so I'll interrupted, talk on end, not really listen then when I finally shut up, feel the fool.

Here's to learning to shut my mouth and open my ears.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s more of the same: concerts, lessons, discovery, joy, and not a shred of time to straighten my head out before bed.  Who can complain?  Maybe my parents since I don’t have their trip planned out yet . . .

 (More)

I overheard a comment the other day that made me shudder.  Without further comment, I leave you this food for thought.

 

“I had a vivid, crazy dream the other night.  I was walking along a very narrow path by a sharp, deep drop and I was so afraid I was going to die.  It looked so real.  Where do we get those images for our dreams?  It must be TV!”

Can you say "toy boat" quickly three times? I can't, so I included it in my list of tongue twisters my students could pick from for my Tongue Twister class. Well, one after the other said it flawlessly to my absolute shock. They had a great time watching me fail miserably at trying it. If that wasn't interesting enough, I shared this with friends at my English Free Zone and one boy (born and raised in Japan) could of course say it with no trouble. However, the boy who was born in Brazil (to Japanese parents) had the same trouble I did even though his Japanese is so good his friends didn't believe him when he said he was from Brazil. If I was getting my PhD I think I would pick this as my research topic. What makes a tongue twister hard? It's fascinating to think about. This shows that it can't simply be a matter of whether or not your tongue can get into that position or not. It appears that the lack of tongue flexibility helps the Japanese with that one. Fascinating.

I’ve been reading John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of the American Education and it has me thinking deeply again about freedom. In contemplating issues of freedom I came across a few articles of Philip Yancy (Christianity Today) that pointed to how God views freedom. It gave me this thought:

If God, the ultimate authority, does not demand our obedience but lets us choose to disobey, how can I, a human in a temporary teaching position, demand the obedience of my students?

It’s a shocking question to the circle of teachers I know. Getting the kids to do what you say is what it is all about. Gatto is right. Schooling is about teaching obedience, not intellectual thought. There’s just enough accidental education to keep the wool over our eyes. By “our” I mean most students, teachers, administrators, and parents.

By the way, I still love my life here. I enjoy my job, the school, and most of all the students. They still have an amazing amount of life despite the fact that Japan is even better than America at demanding obedience from the masses.

I hope this doesn’t get me fired!