Tag: Anthropology

Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.

The Death of the American Dream

Thoughts on Arthur Miller’s classic Americana drama “Death of a Salesman.”

I keep a stack of classic American literature near my desk. It’s my way to pay tribute to those who walked these United States before me. It’s also a means to expose myself to different genres and writing styles.

“Death of a Salesman” is written as a script for a theater play by infamous playwright Arthur Asher Miller. It centers around a middle-aged traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who is mentally disintegrating over his failed attempts to achieve the American Dream. The play’s structure is fluid and shifts abruptly between past, present, and ongoing or concluded stages of his life. I understand this to be used as a stylistic technique to demonstrate the mental breakdown of the main protagonist, Willy Loman, as the play unfolds. While this style is potent to make a point, it struck me as disruptive to my reading flow. Scripts require the reader to factor in the playwright’s scene interpretations, which adds a layer of complexity that I didn’t particularly enjoy.

The play is divided into two acts. Neither act has a headline, so bear with me as I label them:

Act 1: Willy’s Dreams Fade Away
Act 2: Willy’s Descent Into Delusion

Willy appears to suffer from burnout after a failed business trip. When he seeks to alleviate his pain by scaling back on work-related travel, he fails to convince his boss and gets himself laid off. This fuels his deteriorating mental state, which clings to the illusions of material success and his lack thereof. His overwhelming nostalgia makes him compare his children’s failures with his own, creating a deeply strained relationship with his sons that eventually culminates in confrontation and disappointment. It ends, of course, in tragedy.

This was a challenging read. Piecing together the puzzle that is Willy Loman’s mind is no easy feat, but, I think, it’s an analogy of the challenges we face in our own lives. The play reminded me of the actor Jim Carry’s father, who took a job he didn’t like to support a life he didn’t enjoy only to be let go at the age of 51. Arthur Miller described, in quite a similar fashion, this tragedy of our society that most of us live sad lives of quiet desperation to emulate, integrate, and do as we are told. It’s a cautionary tale and a bleak reminder of the stoic truth that death isn’t in the future but we die a little bit every day. Is it really worthwhile to spend your life living other people’s dreams? Death of a Salesman, like it or not, is an impetus to shift your thinking towards finding and pursuing your values and prioritize meaning over comfort.

Memento Mori

Meditations is an afternoon conversation with a ruler of the Roman Empire: intimate, ethical, and full of wisdom. 

Timeless is another adjective to describe this translated compendium of the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius. Gregory Hays, associate professor of classics at the University of Virginia, translated the delivered writings of Aurelius in the most concise, clear manner available without diluting its original tone. Hays recommends that the reader familiarizes themself not only with Stoicism but also with the underlying role of philosophy in ancient life. While Meditations isn’t really a meditation per se, I found myself in agreement with Hays. Aurelius created his works throughout the course of his life. It’s nearly perfectly detached from historical events. And it overwhelmingly omits names and locations of Aurelius’ present time. Grasping the full context almost mandates an ancient philosophy deep dive as a prerequisite to reading Meditations. 

From the beginning, it becomes clear that Aurelius’ main theme revolves around: (1) the present moment and (2) death. These two main themes reoccur more often than others which gives Meditations a melancholy with urgency. It is almost as if Aurelius saw human suffering, experienced pain for himself, and took to the paper to find the means to cope with it. Hays writes in his introduction on the book of Marcus:  

“If you desire to master pain
Unroll this book and read with care,
And in it find abundantly
A knowledge of the things that are,
Those that have been, and those to come.
And know as well that joy and grief
Are nothing more than empty smoke.”

Philosophy is art. Perhaps you can classify it as an art of life. This makes it futile to investigate patterns or factual statements. For it is up to the reader to interpret and extrapolate meaning. Meditations does that like no other book I’ve read recently. Its concise, to-the-point paragraphs offer a situation, an interpretation, and a solution. For example

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

—Book 2.11

These two sentences convey a powerful urgency hard to emulate with inspirational, motivational, or modern hustle-porn content. Yet it was written 200 decades ago. It makes me want to drop writing this post and return to the important things in my life. But Aurelius doesn’t stop at mere urgency. He connects it with the interpretation of time and that we, as humans, are often overly obsessed with what was or what will be despite having zero power over either. In his words: 

“Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small–small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.” 

—Book 3.10

As we live our lives in our corners, I often observe the indescribable urge to compare with others of similar lifestyles, circumstances, and heritage. It’s a natural urge and nothing worthy to suppress, but the act of comparing is the thief of joy. Aurelius learned this throughout his life and condensed it into:

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”

—Book 5.16

It’s a call to set your mind free from comparison or worry about what others may think. It directly ties back into his two main themes: the present moment and death. Lastly, I found this short list of remembrance to be powerful and worthy to mention here, so I can come back and reread it when I need to have clarity in life: 

“Remember:
Matter. How tiny your share of it.
Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.
Fate. How small a role you play in it.”

—Book 5.24

How To Built Community To Influence Elections

Read this book to improve your civic engagement and create a more meaningful neighborhood.

Eitan Hersh is an associate professor of political science at Tufts University. In his latest book “Politics Is For Power – How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change” he decries the virtue signaling that is political hobbyism on social media and makes a case for grassroots politics. 

Political hobbyism can be identified as short-lived, current affair commentary on social media that results in no real-world change. It delivers a feeling of participation. We all have done it to some extent. Yet, Hersh finds, especially the political left fails to recognize that real political change is driven by a few selected local leaders who listen to the needs of a community. Consistent in-person community outreach builds a stronger community that is rather aligned than divided on overarching, public policy programs. 

“Political hobbyism is to public affairs what watching SportsCenter is to playing football.”

Source: College-Educated Voters Are Ruining American Politics by Eitan Hersh

Among the many well-told stories in this book, Hersh offers a prominent example of Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. For a brief moment in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections Schultz entertained an independent bid for the highest position in this country. Remember, Starbucks was built over decades of carefully choosing product ingredients, the ambiance of its stores, and hiring local leaders to represent its brand. It was a slow expansion from Seattle to the greater Pacific Northwest and year by year to more States across the United States. But when it came to his own campaign bid, Schultz seemingly forgot his patient business acumen but threw endless money at cable news and talk shows to make his case in less than eighteen months. Obviously, from the outside and in hindsight, this approach reeks of failure when it took years to build the Starbucks brand nationwide. Why would he seriously believe to reach the same market plurality in the political domain in just eighteen months? Because politics were only a hobby to Howard Schultz. 

“Politics Is For Power” is appropriate for community leaders, new and seasoned neighbors, social justice warriors and keyboard cowboys, and anybody really interested in improving civic engagement in their community. Personally, I loved the idea of using political donations instead of buying political ads to rather spend it on support for local community organizers who engage in face-to-face conversations with the local community and actually listen. Crafting impactful, social and economic policies is an arduous process that can only succeed if all voices of society have been heard. Furthermore, Hersh created captivating storylines condensed and spread across each chapter, which really brings home his point about taking action requires getting out the door, talking to your neighbors, and listen. 

Lastly, if you’re still reading, I feel it’s necessary to call out editorial ingenuity when it is due: this book has 217 pages, 22 chapters, and encompasses 5 parts. Each page is formatted for the reader’s pleasure. Chapters are comprehensive yet not longer than a commute to work would be. And its parts really provide a structure around the argument that highlights the thoughtful content of the book. Kudos, Simon & Schuster!

How To Bring People Together And Create Meaningful Memories

Everything you ever wanted to know about gathering strangers, colleagues, friends, or family under a variety of circumstances so they will connect and cherish the event.

Priya Parker is an expert in conflict resolution. Throughout her career, her work often required facilitating high-stakes meetings between different political leaders around the world. This helped her to collect first-hand experience about how we connect with one another and what makes a gathering meaningful. In essence that is what The Art Of Gathering – How We Meet And Why It Matters is all about. It’s a root cause analysis that identifies the levers to make an event become a lasting memory. Her premise is centered around the fallacy of the “chill host”. A chill host is overly concerned about the logistics of an event instead of caring about the people and their experiences. It’s the type of “hands-off” host who sits back on the night of the gathering. Parker argues the event starts at the moment of the first conception and it ends (sometimes) long after people have left the premises. A host needs to identify beforehand the “why” they’re really gathering. What meaning is to be conveyed by bringing a certain group of people together? Who to invite? Who to cut? And where would be the optimal environment to accommodate individuals’ preferences? A host needs to be disciplined, proactive and leveraging pop-up rules. 

An illustration of the former is about her first experience with the female period. When she was eleven years old, she got her first period – at a friend’s house. Insecure about it, she didn’t tell anybody, but went back home and told her mom eventually. Eleven is an age where beliefs and judgments correlate with people’s reactions. Her mom’s reaction to learning about her daughter’s first period was one of celebration. She danced, hooted, and hollered with joy. Inadvertently or intentionally, her mom taught her daughter that being a woman, the unique features that make a woman female, was something to be celebrated, cherished, and embraced. Her mom even threw her a period party. How about that! 

Whereas an example for the latter is what Parker coined “The Château Principle”. Thereunder the host needs to realize that the choice of venue is among the most powerful levers over the guests’ behavior. Her example revolves around the infamous failure of merger negotiations between the French cellphone provider Alcatel and the American telecommunications equipment provider Lucent. (Read this analysis for more details) Initially, both parties prepared the merger diligently in good faith and geared up to create a “marriage of equals”. To finalize the deal, both parties were supposed to meet in a nondescript airport hotel in New Jersey. However, when an Alcatel executive fell ill, they requested the meeting to be held in France in the Château Des Mesnuls, a renaissance style castle. While it’s speculation to find out the real reasons for the failure of the merger, a few Lucent executives recounting the negotiations observed how the château brought out the Frenchness of the French. Alcatel employees became comfortable asserting their dominance on home turf which reflected a certain arrogance and hubris that tipped the negotiations to fall apart. Location, location, location is real-estate wisdom that also applies to gatherings. 

Parker wrote The Art Of Gathering across 281 pages segmented into 8 chapters. It is a quick and easy read yet I found some paragraphs could have been edited more succinctly. Her voice can come across as overbearing or patronizing, but I view this as part of re-learning a part of my life that I neglected for far too long. Notably understanding gatherings as social contracts with certain responsibilities is incredibly helpful. In addition to offering practical tips on how to discover, structure, and select event details I was surprised by how easy it seems to translate her findings to cyberspace, e.g metaverse gatherings in virtual reality or group events and chats on Facebook. Anyone quite interested in the subject of crowd psychology will be able to fill in knowledge gaps and view certain aspects of their social gatherings through a new, fresh lens. 

Book recommendations ebb and flow. Some find me by chance. Others are the product of premeditated research. The Art Of Gathering was recommended to me by my dear friend Nichole. The story of how we met goes beyond the scope of this blog, but I will document this: it was under the most random, endearing, and meaningful circumstances crammed into one weekend somewhere around Seattle. Flying boxed wine bags, neon lights, and deep, mind-absorbing conversations included.   

In case you are not into reading an entire book on the single topic of bringing people together then I would recommend watching this video. Parker says “how we gather is how we live”. How do you live your life? 

Find A Behavioral Solution To Your Product Design Problem

Our actions are (very much) predictable and can be influenced.

Humans are complicated. Humans are different. Humans are irrational, unpredictable, and emotional. In DECODING the WHY – How Behavioral Science is Driving the Next Generation of Product Design author Nate Andorsky embraces all these idiosyncrasies by answering these underlying questions: what makes us do what we do and how can product designers learn from these behavioral patterns to build better products. 

Andorsky takes the reader on a story-driven adventure into behavioral science. Decoding the Why lives in a constant tension between the evolution of product design and human behavior. It describes psychological concepts and how they influence product designs. It provides practical guidance on how to meet the consumer’s cognitive state before intent is formed and how to use behavioral science to nudge the consumer towards action. For example in the part about ‘Meeting Our Future Selves’ Andorsky reviews Matthew McConaughey’s iconic Oscar acceptance speech after winning the Oscar for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club.

“When I was 15 years old I had a very important person in my life come to me and say, ‘Who’s your hero?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I gotta think about that, give me a couple of weeks.’

This Person comes back two weeks later and says, ‘Who’s your hero?’ I replied, ‘You know what, I thought about it and it’s me in ten years.’

So I turn twenty-five. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, ‘So are you a hero?’ I replied, ‘No, no, no, not even close.’ ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Cause my hero is me at thirty-five,’ I said.

See, every day, every week, every month, every year of my life, my hero is always ten years away. I’m never going to meet my hero, I am never going to obtain that, and that’s totally fine because it gives me somebody to keep on chasing.”

If humans were rational we’d all pursue the rational thing to maximize our time and energy. However, we are not rational. All too often we give in to the instant gratification that lies in the moment by putting off the thing that helps us tomorrow. This concept is also known as Hyperbolic Discounting. Andorsky walks the reader through the obstacles that keep us from meeting our future selves by reviewing methods such as reward systems, gamification models, commitment devices, and goal setting, all of which, are used to inform product design. 

If I ever write a book, I will likely attempt to create a similar structure and flow. Andorsky did an excellent job by breaking down the content into easily digestible parts. Each part tells a captivating story concluding in an engaging question for the reader. While the subject matter could have easily been told with jargon and psychology terminology, the author consistently uses clear and non-academic language to explain a variety of behavioral and psychological concepts and theories. Altogether this makes for an accessible page-turner offering a wide range of practical applications. 

Taking a birds-eye view on Decoding the Why, I feel, I could come to two conclusions that could not be further apart: (1) Andorsky answers the eternal question of what makes us do what we do and how product designers can learn from these behavioral patterns to build better products or (2) Andorsky provides ammunition to weaponize psychology in order to calibrate intrusive technology that can be used to manipulate and exploit human behavior. Whatever your position is on the question of using behavioral science to influence user behavior, this book is a gateway to explore psychological concepts, and it is an important read for changemakers. It can be used for good, or, it can be used to inform better public policy. I’d rank Decoding the Why as a must-read for product designers, product managers, and anyone working to improve user experiences in technology.