Things I Think, Things I Know

"In ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature, Smith found 

repeated references to enemies as subhuman creatures. But it's not as simple 

as a comparison. "When people dehumanize others, they actually conceive 

of them as subhuman creatures," says Smith. Only then can the process "liberate 

aggression and exclude the target of aggression from the moral community.""

- Less Than Human, by David Livingstone Smith

This has indeed been recorded over and over in history, and it is more than just association. I don't think it is possible to justify or rationalize certain actions - experimentation without consent or true information, forcibly separating children from parents, mass murder - unless the subjects of those actions are excluded from the moral community. There is no shortcut around that exclusion. Not that there needs to be. Othering followed by exclusion is terrifyingly easy for the human brain.

Granted, it's not sufficient, even if it is necessary. There also needs to be some reason to harm those excluded beings. Self-defense? Destruction of evil? Greater good? For an animal rights activist who includes other animals in the moral community, separating an unwanted male calf from a dairy cow or the mass slaughter of hens is understandably unacceptable. Yet even those who eat meat are disturbed by such images. They would never condone killing a bird, even humanely, for no reason. It is accepted as a necessary evil for the greater good of creating chicken as a food, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Likewise, those opposed to recent actions of the current US administration generally include undocumented immigrants (often explicitly) in the moral community. Those in favor of these actions must not only at least implicitly exclude them, but also have some reason for the violence.

That might be thinking of them as evil, as rapists or killers or criminals.
It might be done in self-defense, such as perceived protection of jobs or family or culture.
It could be ostensibly for the greater good, as in Tuskegee or Natzweiler or Harbin.

But it has to be something, and something more serious than taste or craving. No matter how much some humans may exclude other humans from the moral community, they are not quite so excluded as animals grown for food (as opposed to kittens or giraffes). Unfortunately, humans are today much easier targets of fear and anger than other animals, and these two are some of the strongest motivators for action that exist.

So, what to do? How to reaffirm someone's membership in the moral community? The simplest way is to just say so, as people do on Facebook or blogs, in speeches and discussions, in emails to representatives. The most forceful way is to demonstrate suffering, especially by image or video. The hardest path, but perhaps the greatest, is to engineer meaningful interactions.

As terrifyingly easy as it is for us to other and exclude beings, it is also incredibly hard for us to do so when we know their story. Even if we can only know their mind and emotions and experience incompletely, that imperfect understanding can still sometimes be enough. Not always, of course, and the closer the relationship the better.

I do not know how to create this hardest path. I doubt there is one best way, when we other and exclude beings along a myriad of dimensions - age, gender, race, species, nation, language, income, incarceration...

I know interacting with generous listening helps, being curious and non-judgmental.
I know a cosmic perspective helps, seeing the earth and humanity from the viewpoint of space.
I know ferociously reading fiction helps, opening ourselves to other worlds and lives.
I know self-aware mindfulness helps, examining our own thoughts and assumptions.
I know sharing others' joy and sorrow helps, becoming emotional on their behalf.

So, I don't know much, but these things I know. Please, help me know more.

Of a Girl and her Grandmother

I was lucky enough on my second flight back to Nashville to sit next to a curious girl, perhaps 8 years old, and her grandmother. It seemed like it might be the girl's first time flying, and the way she looked around the plane and out the window was both cute and inspiring. After years of flights to and from home, I'd lost much of the joy and wonder of flying. Yet as she stared out the window at clouds, I also stared at the fluffy oceans and mountains. As she watched glowing cities that sprawled underneath us that night, I sat mesmerized by the grids of lights, the veins of roads, the ant-like crawl of cars.

I listened with renewed interest to the safety video, pondering the reasons behind placement of emergency exits and lights. And this: "Always put your own mask on first before helping others." What a sentence! How often I forget to take care of myself before helping others. How often I put on a mask (not to mention a physical one for droplet precautions) before talking with patients, and wonder whether I ought to distance myself so.

Plus, the girl and her grandmother were just wonderful to sit next to: exchanges of food and inside jokes, questions and answers about the wide world, hand-on-shoulder cheek-to-cheek gazing out the window. And then there was the problem-solving.

I typically try to be a actively helpful passenger. On my first flight, for example, I noticed my seatmate talking with a woman across the aisle and asked if they'd like to sit together. (Yes, of course.) As the girl and her grandmother boarded next to me, I offered to place overhead a bag they were having trouble fitting under the seat. (Thank you, but no, it's full of snacks we'll need.) I then watched as the grandmother worked it as far as possible under the seat in front of her, leaving no leg space. Fortunately, the girl graciously allowed her to share the window seat's leg space, and all was well.

Besides being absolutely adorable, it reminded me of something Sterling K. Brown had quoted from Lao Tzu at Stanford's commencement the prior day: "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." He used it in the context of battling perfectionism and enjoying the process of work. But on this flight, it spoke to the value of the journey itself. Maybe if they had agreed to let me move the bag, they'd have missed out on this bonding experience.

So for the rest of the flight, I just waited and did nothing.

When the grandmother dropped a napkin and groped around in the dark for it, I could have turned on my overhead light or my phone's flashlight. But I did nothing. The girl bent down to search, and her wide eyes and nimble hands soon found it.

When the grandmother was scrolling through city after city to add Nashville to the clock app, sometimes swiping too low and bringing up a notifications screen, I could have helped her use the search function. But I did nothing. The girl giggled and closed the unwanted screen each time it popped up, and they eventually reached Nashville together.

When we had landed and the grandmother struggled to fit everything back in the bag, I could have helped add weight to let her zip it. But I did nothing. The girl picked out a few nearly-finished snack boxes and finished them. The rest fit, and the bag closed.

There were more such instances. In each, I did nothing and watched them figure it out together. I watched their journey unfold without rushing them to their final destination. I might have watched experience turn into traveling skills and cherished memories. Perhaps, my help would not have been helpful after all. Always put your own mask on first before helping others...and give them time to maybe help themselves. The journey might be worth more than the destination.

These are a few of my favorite things...

After an especially special and super-packed month-long break, this was my first week back from CA, back to school! These are a few of my favorite things this week, things that inspired me, moved me, surprised me, or just made me feel joy and love.

Monday:
- Collapsing on top of my giant panda after a red-eye flight and my first day of neuroradiology
- The enthusiasm and joy of my friend, while trading stories of the past month

Tuesday:
- A neuroradiologist who, rather than leaving after their lunch hour work, stayed to teach us for almost two hours
- Discovering, while walking back to the reading room at 8:30pm to retrieve my forgotten laptop, that there were now beautiful fireflies dancing all along the path from my apartment to school

Wednesday: 
- Cooking a garlicky pea & mushroom curry (based on this awesome cooking blog)
- Catching up with my mentor after much travel on both our parts

Thursday: 
- Giving feedback and getting meta-feedback on my feedback
- My best friend's perseverance in the face of illness, frustration, and potatoes

Friday:
- Birds chirping a symphony in the trees outside
- A jovial and helpful CT tech who remembered me from last year and was just as happy to have us students around

Review of Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
[Note: I give 5 stars to a book if and only if I both love it and it really changes the way I think or feel - about my life, the world, the universe...]

tl;dr - Read this book. You will be moved, inspired, enlightened, transformed, or some combination thereof. And perhaps more.

It feels hard for me to write a review for this collection of short stories, because I feel like I could write a review for every one individually. (I’m sure the title short story has had hundreds of reviews written about it alone, as the first fictional work to win all 3 major SciFi awards: Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy.)

So I looked back at my review of Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, and I’ll start there, with the broad similarities. Both books are collections of incredibly mind-expanding and thought-provoking stories. Both are fundamentally speculative, asking “What if…? If only… If this goes on…”, as Neil Gaiman puts these fundamental questions. Both reminded me of my life and brought new meaning to it.

Both are breath-taking in scope. This book ranges from the architecture-based thinking of a microscopic species to the human creation of a trans-Pacific railway to journeys of many light-years. It immerses the reader in romantic and filial love, tells tales of courageous and mythical heroes, sings odes to books and cognition. It made me laugh; it made me cry. It made me think; it made me wonder. It made me stop in my tracks; it made me turn figurative page after page (I listened to the audiobook, which I highly recommend).

One significant difference is that the latter half of the stories are more firmly grounded in Ken Liu’s Asian and American experience. While I enjoyed every story in the book, these held a uniquely poignant and historical power.

Stories that I particularly loved:
The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species, State Change, The Paper Menagerie, An Advanced Readers Picture Book of Comparative Cognition, The Waves

Spring

 

Birds chirp in the trees overhead,
Congregating on one, then the next.
Trading stories of hunger and fear,
Envy and rage, love and joy.
I lay in the waving grass below
And lose myself in their chattering music.

White magnolias and cherry trees,
Like bright clouds on the ground,
Lift my eyes up through their branches
Into the gray-blue skies above.
Petals float past me weightless,
Magically freed by the slightest breeze.

How little I give you!

A pot on a plate on our table

To sit in with your soil.

A minute of time every week

To pour you water to drink,

And a few minutes more

To admire and think.

Blinds left up to let indirect light

Stream through the window from dawn until night.

And suddenly, a bud! A bloom!

However little you consume,

By some alchemy you transmute

Golden sun
Into golden petals

To crown your leafy head.

What rewards you offer

For what little you are fed!

Aged 99

Age is just a number, they said.

99 years of life, just a number.

99 years till a timely death,

For some definition of timely.

I took a walk some years ago

Through hills and woods and snow

And found a cabin sitting still

On a path long untraveled

1 door, 4 doorways,

1 table, 3 plates,

1 bedroom, 2 beds,

1 fireplace, just numbers.

A 50-50 chance I make it

To another year, another number.

A 4-month median survival.

But I’m not a number, they said.

 I took a walk some years ago

Through the trees into a meadow,

And I found a piece of glass

Shining in the grass, in the sun.

6 sides, an irregular hexagon,

Its past forgotten, its future unknown

To me, but even to itself.

Perhaps especially to itself.

6 more months to another number,

Those months to be forever unknown.

Because time is up, and my clockwork heart

Rang out its final tone.