“Amazon Prime is an economy distorting lie” by Matt Stoller. Really good explanation of how Prime actually raises prices across the internet - and why it’s a key part of the DC Attorney General’s antitrust case against Amazon.
This article on the yin-yang role of gorse in the ecological concept of succession reminded me of this video showing that process in action. Essentially, leave the land the hell alone and it will “manage” itself into a complex, wonderful ecosystem. “Land management” as it is currently practiced in state DNRs and US National Forests is management toward the end of profit maximization. (In case you didn’t know, in the United States logging is permitted in national forests. In order to be fully protected, an area has to be declared a national park. This seems to me to be some deceptive nomenclature.)
It’s a new year - and that means well-intentioned people making resolutions and other well-intentioned people insisting that we’re all good enough as we are. Both are right.
It seems clear to me that most of us could use some improvement and such improvement requires intentionality and planning. The beginning of a new year is as good a time as any to do that.
It also seems clear to me that some of our ideas about self-improvement are driven by corporations intent on exploiting our insecurities for their own profit, a.k.a. marketing.
This tension between self-improvement and self-acceptance is one that has bedeviled me often. I won’t say I have any answers but I do have some experience.
I suggest two words to keep in mind:
Grace
Be gracious with yourself. Something needs improvement? That’s fine! Approach the issue knowing that you are not your enemy. Get out of the conflict frame of mind.
For example, I’ve let my running and meditating practice fall apart over the last couple of months. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. I shrug my shoulders and make plans to gently correct it.
Running: Work back into the practice by running a mile a day 3-5 times per week. Increase that from a mile as I feel like it. I’m in no hurry. I’m not going to die of a heart attack if I’m not running a 5k next month. One mile is better than zero miles.
Meditating: Work back into the practice by meditating 20 minutes at a time. I was meditating for longer periods of time and there’s a voice in my head that wants me to believe that 20 minutes (or even 10 or 15 minutes on really distracted days) isn’t good enough. But I will be gracious with myself. Ten minutes is better than zero minutes.
Whim
I was reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction this evening when it occurred to me that Alan Jacobs’ discussion of Reading at Whim might apply here also.
The Eat Your Greens school of reading (see Adler/Van Doren in How to Read a Book) would have us read the right books in the right way and - most importantly - have the right opinions about them. Jacobs offers a different approach: Read at Whim.
Eventually, however, he comes upon a problem similar to the self-improvement/self-acceptance conundrum. Not all books are equally valuable (some are more like junk food) - yet he still maintains that the Eat Your Greens school misunderstands the point of reading.
This is where he distinguishes between whim - “thoughtless, directionless preference that almost invariably leads to boredom or frustration or both” - and Whim - “based in self-knowledge.”
Capital-W Whim includes a playfulness grounded in a person’s knowledge of their own interests, capabilities, etc. It is not based on what others believe you should do, much less on what will enrich people wholly unrelated to you.
Grace applied to self-improvement means you will be kind to yourself, refusing to see yourself as your enemy. Whim applied to self-improvement means you will approach it with a certain playfulness, always with reference to what leads to your own flourishing.
Together this means that self-improvement is best approached through love and patience. The same approach you would take with a beloved friend.
Great article on the current legal fight over recognizing the legal personhood of Happy, an elephant in the Bronx Zoo. Also includes some really interesting history.
Today’s record store purchases
I love books and lists - and book lists most of all. This post by Mario Villalobos brought two books in particular to my attention: How to Write One Song and How to Resist Amazon and Why. I’m listening to the former on audiobook (via Audible - so much for resisting Amazon) and reading the latter as an ebook through my local library. As I opened up How to Resist Amazon, I noticed that the publisher Microcosm is based in Portland, OR 
which my family and I visited in June 2021. One of the best vacations we’ve ever taken. Absolutely fell in love with the parts of the state we were able to visit.
Microcosm, it turns out, publishes/distributes a lot of zines, which I’ve taken an interest in lately. So naturally I bought the zine version of the aforementioned How to Resist Amazon plus their zine superpack.
Sometimes the internet doesn’t suck.
Useful distinctions from Erich Fromm’s book On Disobedience
📚 What I Read in 2021 📚
While I read fewer books in 2021 than in prior years, those books had a large impact on me. The main themes were silence, technology, and Zen Buddhism. (I wrote about my exploration of silence and solitude in this post.) My favorite books of the year were Less is More, Opening the Hand of Thought, The Wild God of the World, and Breaking Bread with the Dead. China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe Dark Matter by Blake Crouch How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen Meyer The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein The Provisioner by Rhyd Wildermuth Ned Ludd and Queen Mab by Peter Linebaugh The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter Hermits by Peter France The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos Markides Solitude by Anthony Storr Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama Privacy is Power by Carissa Veliz Refining Your Life by Dogen and Uchiyama The Wild God of the World by Robinson Jeffers Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs
From Erich Fromm, On Disobedience (nearly every line of this book so far is worth quoting):
In order to disobey, one must have the courage to be alone, to err and to sin. But courage is not enough. The capacity for courage depends on a person’s state of development. Only if a person has emerged from mother’s lap and father’s commands, only if he has emerged as a fully developed individual and thus has acquired the capacity to think and feel for himself, only then can he have the courage to say “no” to power, to disobey.
A person can become free through acts of disobedience by learning to say no to power. But not only is the capacity for disobedience the condition for freedom; freedom is also the condition for disobedience. If I am afraid of freedom, I cannot dare to say “no,” I cannot have the courage to be disobedient. Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth.