{"id":567,"date":"2022-10-07T18:20:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T18:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pothamsetty.co\/?p=567"},"modified":"2022-10-07T18:20:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T18:20:28","slug":"20-dont-just-do-better-be-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pothamsetty.co\/?p=567","title":{"rendered":"20. Don’t just do better\u2014 be better"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I find it amazing that Angela Davis<\/a> is still alive and still an activist. She made professor and the FBI’s most wanted list at 26, so I have something to work towards in the next year or so. In a recent video, Davis urges us to think about the artistic components of activism as more than just entertainment. Back in her controversial heyday, the Grateful Dead <\/em>and Maya Angelou both performed to support her cause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art holds and conveys knowledge that transcends what’s communicable through speech. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Einstein. In “The Common Element in Artistic and Scientific Experience,” he wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Where the world ceases to be a stage for personal hopes, aspirations, and desires, and we stand before it as free creatures, full of admirations, questions, and contemplation, we enter the realm of art and science. If we describe what we see and experience in the language of logic, we do science; if we convey connections through forms that are inaccessible to the rational mind, but intuitively recognizable as making sense, we do art”<\/p>Albert Einstein. “The Common Element in Artistic and Scientific Experience.” The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein<\/em>, vol. 7. The Berlin Years: Writings. <\/em>p. 207<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The irrational mind is a powerful thing. It’s largely responsible for who we are, what we do, and what we value. The rational mind can barely keep up. It’s therefore important to access and process as much as we can over our irrational selves if we want to gain some of our free will back from unconscious mental processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davis and Einstein speak more about art on a societal, political, and overall larger scale. Ezra Klein interviewed C. Thi Nguyen<\/a> in a podcast discussing, among other things, the double-edged sword of quantitative, aggregated measurements: we have a way to hold ourselves accountable\u2014but how do we know if we’re holding ourselves to the right standard? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an institutional level, these measures often eclipse nuance and qualitative knowledge. However, it would be intensive to change the way that governments, businesses, and other large-scale organizations make decisions. People are working on it, but progress will be made slowly, if at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As data tracking becomes more accessible, we begin to use these mechanisms on the individual level, too. Habit tracking, biometrics, and other tools are becoming more popular ways of measuring progress and success. But we should apply this same critical framework about the way we track our progress. If we’re not careful, we can prioritize the easy-to-track metrics\u2014like step count and grades\u2014over what we really <\/em>want to achieve: health and intellectual growth. Is there a solution where we can <\/em>hold ourselves accountable while capturing what’s really important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Through reflection and creation, we can capture what can’t be measured, collated, and cataloged. Just like Davis and Einstein said, engaging with other modes of knowing <\/em>about ourselves and other modes of packaging and transmitting that knowledge, will let us capture what the data can’t. Reflection and creation can help us understand what we value, how we’re changing, and more of that irrational part of our brain that doesn’t come out when we speak, write, or data-track. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Got a lotta Murakami<\/a> in the hallway (the Broad<\/a>, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This Week’s Top 3<\/h4>\n\n\n\n