Note of the Living Deb

So a friend told me that people who thoroughly live their values like I discussed in my last post tend to have mental issues. Like the guy who volunteered to donate a kidney but was rejected because he had already donated his other kidney.

Okay, I should probably make a whole other post about how I don't have common sense so I have to use brute intelligence to figure things out.

And for this issue, I've realized that I am willing to do the following two-pronged approach to aligning my actions with my values:

1) Keep my values in mind - Stay on the lookout for ideas on how to more closely align my actions with my values. Going to church weekly is a great example of how some people do this--you get reminded every week about very different things than what ads are keeping in the forefront of your mind.

I mostly have my social media keeping me updated with new ideas.

2) Try new things - As I get more ideas, I will actually try some of them.

And living your values isn't just about you, it's also about the system. Systems can make some things very easy and some things very hard. So, it's easy for me to recycle because my city has provided a can to everyone living in a house (which includes me) and they come by and pick it up every other week. My city also allows us to choose to get our energy from wind (of course I still get it from the grid, but my money supports wind energy), so that's easy.

On the other hand, it's hard for me to avoid single-use plastic and to know what's going on behind the scenes for most of the goods and services I buy (a big exception being ingredients lists and nutrition information).

So I should also try to keep up to date on system changes.

And I should remember that of course I will be better at doing the easier things than the hard things, and that's okay.

2017

Last year I had four resolutions:

1) Spanish - I resolved to finish reading my online Spanish text before it expired and I did. I also hoped to do additional activities but was not willing to commit to specific ones at that time. Score: I finished the DuoLingo Spanish lessons and did half the Spanish lessons at Language Transfer.

2) Blood donations - I resolved to make regular donations, and I actually did this all year long. I've even put it in my calendar as a recurring event, figuring I can adjust them if necessary.

3) Activism - I resolved to sign petitions and try to do other things. I did sign petitions. I also participated in the March for Science and called my representatives a few times. So I'm going to call this a success as well. But it has not worked to make me a better activist.

4) International media - I experienced loads of books and movies from other countries.

2018

I plan to keep donating blood regularly, signing petitions, and consuming international media, but don't feel the need to make resolutions on these.

1) Exercise - I want to exercise at least 30 minutes per day (besides walking) at least five days a week (unless I'm sick).

2) And then I have several other ideas that might be good, but I'm not willing to make a resolution about any them. So let's just say that I resolve to do one additional cool thing. And here are some possibilities I already have thought of:

a) Write a real program in Python (beyond assignments)

b) Go through the rest of my beginner and intermediate Spanish resources:
* Puntos de Partido and an accompanying workbook - sort of like a sister to my other Spanish
* A couple of Practice Makes Perfect workbooks
* finish the Language Transfer course
* Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish
* I think I have a grammar guide
* I think I have some story books

c) Declutter a lot. My sister is doing a project to declutter 2018 things in 2018. That's a lot of things. She's putting a chart on her refrigerator and adding a gold star for each item she gets rid of. Did I mention that's a lot of things? Admittedly, you can use your own judgment in deciding whether a stack of magazines counts as one stack or multiple magazines. (Admittedly, if you count each page, 2018 things isn't quite so many.)

d) Figure out a way to do something fight discrimination somehow. I am convinced that even if all racism disappeared, certain people would still be at a disadvantage due to things that have happened in the past such as redlining, crappy racist-caused job history and trauma, networking mainly only with other people who have been disadvantaged in the past, etc. So just not being discriminatory isn't enough.

I don't know how to do this. But I have been learning that there are plenty of ways that I inadvertently support discrimination. You know, I don't do it myself; I have people for that. My worst one is probably looking for low prices, which can support discriminatory labor practices.

I have read to look for places where you have power such as in hiring decisions and making sure to use your power for good, but I don't think I have much of this kind of power which makes sense because I deliberately don't seek out that kind of power.

However, it is becoming very clear that I have more privilege than most people. Besides the obvious advantages of being born healthy to loving parents in the US, my physical and mental health problems are nothing at all compared to what I have been hearing about and reading about for so many people. Are there ways I can use my privilege to help other people? Apparently I refuse to use my brain to invent awesome stuff like I should have all these years.

Here's another idea: I have read that it's hard to get lifeguards and swim instructors in my part of town. So kids in my neighborhood have fewer lessons and less swim time available to them, and they are less likely to learn to swim and later more likely to drown. I could try for one of these jobs. (This is exactly the kind of job I can get--where they need to hire a bunch of people at once.) Though it might be the case that this was a surprising problem for only one summer after which they raised the salaries significantly and started doing way better and better-timed marketing in the high schools to find interested people in time to get them trained.

I can't forget that Monopoly study where one player started with twice as much money as the other person, got twice as much money when they passed "GO," and got to use two dice to move around the board twice as quickly, and after only 15 minutes were already attributing their success to their own brains and hard work. When I first saw it, I thought that if I were the advantaged one, I would immediately give half my excess to the other person every time. But in real life, there's more than one other person to share with so I can't use the same strategy.

And in real life I am way too selfish to want to give up the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed just to make lots of people's lives infinitely better. (So much easier and more fun to give away half my Monopoly money!) I could at least copy those rich people discussed at the end of the Ted Talk above who pledge to give away half their wealth (before or after their death): I could make a charity the beneficiary of my IRA (though it's less than half my wealth). It does remind me of Thomas Jefferson, though, freeing his slaves in his will (at no sacrifice to himself at all), but then he had so many debts that his slaves had to sold to cover those debts and didn't even get to go free then.

Anyway, I'm going to try to keep my eye open for ways to share my privilege or otherwise use my power for good to help those who are discriminated against or otherwise underprivileged or just in need of help, ideally in ways that are fun for me.

Exercise update

It's been a while since I wrote, so this will be long.

12/21, Thursday - I felt energetic again, so I planned to do my pilates video but could not due to technical difficulties. So I jogged instead. I managed the whole three miles again and did it in my lower time again: 41 minutes. Yay!

12/22 - I went to the Silver Sneakers class. I was running late, so I jogged part of the way there. I still arrived late (right! I don't jog twice as fast as I walk anymore). I felt weaker and less energetic than usual and blamed my very long break. Then I remember that I had arrived sweaty and somewhat used up, plus it was warm and humid in the room. By the second half of the class I was back to normal. Woo!

12/23 - can't remember, didn't write it. Probably nothing?

12/24 - was busy, nothing

12/25 - noticed sore throat the evening before, was feverish, also visited friends for Christmas--no exercise

12/26 - felt much better, did pilates video. Felt only a little sub-par during most of it, except for the push-ups at the end where I just gave into gravity.

12/27 - triceps ache for some reason. No exercise except a short jog to the mailbox (less that 1 mile round trip).

12/28 - nothing

12/29 - nothing--slept over 12 hours

12/30 through 1/2 - Nothing. It sure looks like exercising too soon after getting sick the second time did me in. I had no energy until New Year's Eve and am still taking it easy.

It's resolution time!

Last year

I didn't have much in the way of a resolution last year. But I did, indeed, follow along in Spanish IV with my ex-classmates who took it in the spring. This was good because there was no way I could have learned as much as I did during my class in the summer. Unfortunately, I just did the grammar and vocabulary and very little of the extras. Also, my classmates were not very active with the e-mails, so motivation wasn't enhanced much by that.

This year

This year, I am willing to make a few specific resolutions.

Spanish

My online Spanish text expires this year. [Insert rant about negatives of electronic "ownership" here.] So I resolve to read through all of it before that time. I hope to do additional activities as well but am not willing to commit to specific ones at this time.

Blood

I resolve to donate blood on a regular basis. For the first time in my life I was able to donate exactly eight weeks after a previous donation a couple of weeks ago. I had hoped that after menopause, my hematocrit levels would be fine, but no. However, after my doctor told me I had an iron deficiency and should take supplements, yes! My hematocrit was not even borderline.

Petitions

I'm also going to continue to sign petitions, even though it's draining. And I am going to keep my eyes open for other ways to help protect fairness and the environment that I don't mind doing and that could actually be effective. I don't see myself as an activist, but I don't want to just sit idly doing nothing.

International media

I'm also going to continue experiencing media from other countries. More on that in my next entry.

I have the terrible habit of buying based almost exclusively on price and taste or looks. For some purchases, I will also research durability before making a decision.

However, now that I am bringing home a little more income, I want to stop encouraging certain kinds of cost-reducing corporate behavior. So I want companies to tell me when they are charging more because they can't bring themselves to do some of these horrible things that all the other companies are doing.

Unfortunately, companies communicate very little of this for some reason. And when they do, well, it's good for the bottom line to be able to imply that you're avoiding bad behavior without actually having to pay the costs associated with that. Thus, we have claims of "all-natural," which means nothing, and "fat-free" for things like hard candy which would never have fat in it.

So what I have to do is look up legal definitions of terms of interest to me and look up certifying organizations to see what their certifications mean. And I have to do this repeatedly because it is in the best interest of the bottom line to water down the terms over time.

Here are some descriptions I like to see on products I buy:

* USDA organic certification - many standards; I do wish they could give animals antibiotics when they are sick, though

* Fair Trade Certified - many things including fair prices/wages to producers, sustainable growing methods, no GMOs, no hazardous chemicals, no child labor

* Rainforest Alliance Certified (for agriculture) and Forest Stewardship Council certified (for timber) - sustainable methods protecting workers, wildlife, and the environment (lower worker pay than Fair Trade)

* Marine Stewardship Council Certified - sustainable fishing, not dredging up everything

* Wheatsville Coop - not everything there is humane and sustainable, but they try

* Natural Grocers - they don't sell antibacterial soaps, non-organic produce, or anything with GMOs, with hydrogenated oils, or given bovine growth hormones, among other things

* Trader Joe's private labels - no partially hydrogenated oils or GMOs among other things

* pasture-raised - better than free-range which, in turn, is better than cage-free (for poultry) which, in turn is better than no label on commercially sold eggs and poultry

(And of course buying used is good for the environment as well.)

While looking up those links, I also found these cool-looking certifications:

* Whole Trade Guaranteed - decent pay and working conditions, and no hydrogenated fats, among other things

* Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center's "Bird Friendly" certification - sustainable farming methods (organic and shade-grown coffee)

* American Grass-fed Association certification - certifies that ruminant animals are feed only grass and hay (as they would normally eat), and pasture raised using sustainable methods among other things.

How about you? Do you look for minimal humanitarian, environmental, or other similar traits for which you are willing to pay more in any products?

Psychology experiment: Two subjects play a game of Monopoly for 15 minutes. One starts off with twice as much money, gets twice as much money whenever passing go, and gets to use two dice instead of one. What happens?

Here's a TED Talk about that in the Consumer Commentary blog. The TED Talk is 16.5 minutes--you know these are all good. I recommend checking it out or at least reading the summary in the blog.

This made me cry. They try to make a happy ending. I'm not really falling for it.

No one talked about the rich player saying that a rigged game was no fun and trying to make it more fair.

In only a 15-minute game, people seemingly forgot all about how the game was obviously rigged and started attributing their success to their hard work and wise decisions. And in real life, it's much less obvious how much the game is rigged in your favor. And so it's much easier to understand the people who do well talking about their hard work and wise decisions.

**

As you may know, there's a famous psychology study where subjects are put into a room with a machine they are told can shock people, and that each time another subject in the next room (whom they can't see but they can hear) gives a wrong answer (or no answer), they are to administer a shock, starting with the lowest level shock and moving up one step at a time. Although the top shocks were clearly labeled as dangerous, a huge percentage of people administered shocks all the way up the scale in spite of evidence that the other person was hurt or even passed out and in spite of there being no danger to them if they quit (unlike, say, in Nazi Germany). Of course, they expressed concern, but a guy in a white coat at an ivy league university saying, "Please continue with the experiment" was enough to reassure them that it must be alright.

Psychologists are no longer allowed to do experiments like that because they are too traumatizing. On the other hand, none of those subjects will ever do anything like that again.

Those of us who were not in the experiment can all tell ourselves that we wouldn't have been one of the people who went all the way, and we might be right. And having learned about the experiment, we are less likely to do something like that in the future.

**

Surely the same is true for this Monopoly experiment. We can be one of the people who thinks we wouldn't have gotten all cocky and special after blasting someone in an obviously rigged game. And maybe we will be less likely to be like that in the future.