How to Be Appreciated by Your Co-workers - The Muse

How to Be Appreciated by Your Co-workers - The MuseHow to Be Appreciated by Your Co-workersHow many times have you thought how great it would be if your co-worker congratulated you on your latest project, or said Happy Birthday, or asked how you were feeling when you were having a terrible day? And how often has that thought actually turned into an action?Its nice to be appreciated and connect with the people you work with. The thing is, no ones a mind reader. However, Im sure we can all agree youd love to hear these lines more often.1. Great JobYouve just submitted a proposal that took 10 long days (and nights) to complete, and youre silently fist-pumping, yet no one seems to notice your excitement. Or, the only congratulations you get on that new initiative is a formal schmelzglas from your boss that merely says Good work.Sure, its nice to get a shout-out from the person above you, but nothing makes you feel truly accomplished than the recognition of your colleagues. Even if they w erent a part of it and have zero idea what any of it means, just a small part of you wishes they would at least lend you a high five- or, even better, ask you more about it.2. How Can I Help?Youre practically sweating through your shirt and your desk is a mess. Doesnt anyone see your struggling to get through the day? Doesnt Turner from accounting have anything better to do than shoot paper balls into the nearest trash can?Youre not incompetent (and you certainly dont want anyone to think you are), but an offer of a helping hand would make your day a whole lot better- even if you ultimately turn it down.3. Thanks for the HelpNot only did you do all your work, but you managed to assist Tracy in tackling that big client report. You didnt mind, because you like Tracy and knew how important it was to her. But, a simple thank you wouldnt hurt, especially because no one else stepped up to the plate when she was in need (and that report did mean you had to stay past 7 PM).4. Are You OK?You re sleep-deprived, youre going through a personal issue, your boss just gave you a negative review on the last project you completed. You may not want to talk about it- or, on the contrary, you really, really need to vent- but regardless, youd be so grateful if someone beat you to the punch and asked how you were. 5. Do You Want to Grab Coffee/Drinks/Lunch?Even though youre an introvert, or tend to leave the office early to be with your family, youd actually really love to get to know the people you see from 9 AM to 6 PM every day (beyond what they eat at their desk for lunch every day). You may not have all night, but youd be thrilled to throw a time on your calendar for a quick coffee or post-work cocktail. Honestly, you could use the break.Did I strike a notenzeichen on any of these? If so, the best advice I have for you is to lead by example. Want to get help? Give it. Want your peers to appreciate you more? Notice when others are doing awesome things and shout them out. Its tha t simple- and it makes all the difference in creating a work environment thats supportive for all, including you.

3 Things to Do When You Get a New Boss at Work - The Muse

3 Things to Do When You Get a New Boss at Work - The Muse3 Things to Do When You Get a New Boss at WorkGetting a new boss can be nerve-wracking. For better or worse, youve figured out how to work with current manager. You know how long it takes him or her to reply to an email, the best approach for pitching new ideas, and how he or she defines UrgentBut theres no denying that working for someone new is an opportunity. Even if youre one of the lucky few who loves your boss, a new person will push you to grow. At the very least, building that rapport all over again is a valuable skill.And if your felt like your old manager was holding you back? Then, this just might be the break you needed. Of course, wanting things to get off on the right foot isnt enough to make it so. The people who make the fruchtwein of this opportunity do the following three things 1. They Put Their Best Foot ForwardTypically, when you meet a new boss, its as an applicant or brand new hire, and youre focused on b eing your fruchtwein impressive self. And then, as time goes on, you get a bit more relaxed. When you started, you read every email draft five times. Now, you shoot off one-line responses from your phone. You used to be on time every day, but now you dont sweat the delay from a long line at Starbucks. Thats because once you established credibility with your old manager, you mayve learned she really didnt mind lax email etiquette or occasional tardiness. And while it can be confusing because you know your job inside and out at this point, you need to remember that youre back at square one in the impression game with your new boss. So, play by all the rules of professionalism to show you know what they are.Avoid Taking it Too FarOne thing that distinguishes smart people is they know how to dial up the professionalism- without overcompensating. In other words, you dont want to show up an hour early, in a suit, and write super formal emails for two weeks in a row and then go back to you r old ways.Thatll make it seem like you think following the rules is a switch you turned on to make a good impression (and then switched off again the moment you got comfortable). Bouncing between extremes will only confuse your new boss. So, step it up in a way thats compatible with how you plan to work moving forward. Aim to be a couple of minutes early, skip the too-casual-looks, and proof your emails. Those are changes thatll make you look good- and be possible to keep up for the long run.2. They Pitch Fresh IdeasWhen someone steps into a management role, theyre looking for ways to keep moving the team forward. So its an opportunity for you to share ideas you have for innovations or new ways you can contribute.So, schedule a meeting and prep for it by brainstorming any areas for improvement. Is there anything you think could be streamlined (or worth experimenting with)? Do you have an idea to advance a team aktion? If nothing jumps out at you, spend the meeting asking questions. Ask your boss about his priorities and what hed like to build out. Take notes and then go back and think on what he said. From there, send a follow-up email with ways to meet those goals.Avoid Taking it Too FarWhen youre talking about improvements, theres a temptation to dwell on whats not working. But smart people know that things talking down- whether its your former boss or how things were done previously- is never a good idea. It can make you look petty, or like you have baggage. Even if you feel its an objective fact that your old system sucks or you werent able to work up to your full potential, avoid venting. Stay forward-focused and positive.3. They Offer to HelpYour boss is new- to the company, to the department, or to being responsible for your teams work. And you remember what its like to be the most recent addition to a group You invariably have a lot of questions.So, use that as a jumping off point to connect with your supervisor. Offer to share institutional knowledge , or the secret to getting a finicky printer to work, or your past interactions with a key stakeholder. Make it clear that youre happy to answer any question as your manager gets up to speed.Avoid Taking it Too FarSmart people know the difference between being helpful- and sucking up. Dont start acting like the teachers pet or appoint yourself as the intermediary between your supervisor and your team.This behavior nearly always backfires, because it looks like you want your manager to play favorites. Itll make your colleagues resentful (and can annoy your boss, too).So, dont act like youre the only person on the team who can provide any assistance. Encourage your co-workers to help as well, and talk up their abilities, too.The final thing all smart people do in this situation is let go. Even if your systems stay mostly the same (and its par for the course for them to change), people are, by nature, different. Your new boss will communicate in his own way and set priorities as he see s fit.To keep moving forward in your own career, be flexible and open to new opportunities. This is a chance for you to grow and get ahead, too.

These are the 25 Fortune 500 companies that offer the most remote-friendly jobs

These are the 25 Fortune 500 companies that offer the most remote-friendly jobsThese are the 25 Fortune 500 companies that offer the most remote-friendly jobsWorking remotely is becoming the norm. There has been a115% percent increase in telecommutingbetween 2005-2015 and the percentage of workers doing all or at least some of their work remotely has increased from 19% in 2003 to 24% in 2015,according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even though working remotely is very common, it doesnt seemsynonymouswith Fortune 500 companies. After all, these are the companies that represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with $12 trillion in revenues, $890 1000 milliarden in profits, $19 trillion in market value, and employ 28.2 million people worldwide. However, FlexJobs took a look at the recently released list ofFortune 500 companiesandcross-referenced them with their100 Top Companies with Remote Jobslist to identify which Fortune500 companies are also remote-friendly.They found that these 25 of the companies are very supportive of employees working remotely (in certain positions.) A number of these companies have open positions on Ladders. Check them out below.25 Fortune 500 companies with remote jobsDellAmazonUnitedHealth GroupVerizonIBMLeidosHumanaAetnaKelly ServicesAmerican ExpressFirst DataOracleAnthem, Inc.ADPAppleMcKesson CorporationThermo Fisher ScientificCignaGeneral Electric GEHD SupplyWells FargoSymantecThe HartfordCVS HealthErie Insurance Group

Why Bands May Need Help Even When Theyre DIY

Why Bands May Need Help Even When Theyre DIYWhy Bands May Need Help Even When Theyre DIYThere are tons of myths about how the music industry operates, and when youre trying to break into the business, these misconceptions can send you down the wrong path in a big way. This is part five in a series looking at common music business myths so you can avoid falling prey to them. Be sure to check the bottom of the article for more information. Lets get one thing straight up front here - you can do a lot yourself in the music industry. This is not an argument that you need some big major label behind you pulling the shots or that you need to give up a lot of control over your music career to make it in the business. No way DIY ethos in the music industry often leads to the best of everything - the best music, the best labels, the best show - you name it. In fact, being able to do a lot of things yourself in your music career will pay off for you in a big way. When You Need Help With D IY Music Heres the but - no matter how much you want to, you cant really do it all yourself. On a small scale, you can, but when you want your music career to grow, youre going to need some helping hands. Here are just a few reasons you might need help pulling off your music goals You May Not Know the Ropes If youre new to the music industry (or even if youre not), youre bound to enter uncharted territory at some point. As you might recall, another music industry myth is that you shouldnt admit you dont know something - and when youre trying to take your career in a new direction, its a good idea to find someone who can help you figure out how to make it happen. Help is good.You Dont Have Time No one has time to do everything. If you take on too much, everything is bound to suffer. When youre trying to build a music career, the work is seemingly endless. Delegation is a skill, and so is knowing where youre strong and where youre weak and bringing in people who make up for your we ak spots.This issue is especially important for musicians. When youre running the business side of the band single-handedly, youre distracted from the music itself. Although its not always practical or possible, having someone take on some of these tasks for you is ideal. You Dont Have the Connections You need to be careful about who you work within the industry, but if a legitimate manager comes along that has been at this a little longer and has the ability to open some doors for you - go for it.Outside Perspectives Help When youre running things yourself, its easy to get so wrapped in your small projects that you dont see the big picture. Having someone else around brings in a fresh perspective and can help point out potential problem areas you have overlooked. Another Perspective Heres another way to look at this notion. Taking a DIY approach doesnt absolve you from having to do all of the same work that the big companies do to promote an album, promote a show or any other music related task. The process is still the same, and since you have far less pull than a bigger company, if anything, you need to work harder. That is why DIY usually isnt so much do-it-yourself as it is do-it-with-a-small-group-of-likeminded-people. So, keep in mind, although you dont have to sacrifice your rights and your control of your music career, sharing some of the responsibility in a way that works for you can help you reach your goals faster.

The Consultant Resume Stories

The Consultant Resume Stories Definitions of Consultant Resume Every detail you have in your transformation consultant resume should make hiring managers trust your capacity to deliver if you have the job. Its also advisable to have the correct attitude for the job. The work of the consultant is to make sure that the provider introduces new and much better medium of work and supply a fresh and new perspective to the workers including logical reasoning, proficiency and communication abilities. Consider your transferable skills to determine whether a change in career path may be suitable for you. Who Else Wants to Learn About Consultant Resume? If you dont find the specific resolution you want to find, then go for a native or greater resolution. Now you have your recruiters, its time to create an actual impact by means of your summary. While showing off can be challenging to do, it is truly critical for standing outand continuing through the procedure to land a consulting int erview. The best resumes are a reflection of an individual, NOT merely a group of words on a sheet of paper. The Meaning of Consultant Resume If this Sales Consultant resume example was not sufficient for you, youre totally free to review several other samples and vorlages from our website. Its possible to also Simple Resume Template. 1 template is sufficient to print CV documents for all your interviews with numerous geschftslebenes. Our professional sample template resume that we present create it simple to make and use our well-curated templates to produce your own expert profile. The Tried and True Method for Consultant Resume in Step by Step Detail Theres additionally a Certified management Consultant certification thats offered to anybody who passes a collection of written and oral exams. Whilst industry jobs may give managers decision-making authority to effect actual bottomline improvement above their tenure, consultants arent always in a position to supply the very s aatkorn and typically deliver short-term projects. For lots of production businesses, consultants are required to stop production from stagnating and ausverkauf to go flat. The consultant may create diagrams of the corporations various processes in order to create solutions. Consultant Resume - Overview Consultants are an essential portion of a little small business owners game program. Make certain you find a consultant that aligns with your business so that youre both on the exact same page. Consultants provide an original perspective and will make recommendations in places where the business needs improvement. Discover how to compose a skilled sales consultant resume. Resume plays an important function in determining your future prospects with a consulting company. Business consultants dont come on the cheap, therefore its the businesss job to do the research necessary and make sure theyre choosing the correct person for their demands. A sales resume should incorporate some sort of business educational background. For existing customers, sales consultants utilize many practices to cross-sell and up-sell a corporations products or solutions. Regardless of their initial training, they often take ongoing education courses to make sure that they are up to date with the state of the market and trends in selling. Retail sales consultants represent a providers products or services in order to acquire new clients and to secure present clients. Consultant Resume and Consultant Resume - The Perfect Combination An OEM sales manager has a total accountability for those sales condition of the OEM goods in its region of responsibility. Youre vital to the success of your customers business ventures. Sales position where my abilities and experience can effectively be utilized to raise sales revenue. Your resume should highlight your particular experience and center on the best prices and partnerships youve created. REFERENCES Available upon request Mid -Level Professional Resume After working in the area for at least three decades, a candidate is thought to be a mid-level professional. Coherent verbal and written communication skills are necessary to perform correspondence and to offer understandable presentations. Think about the feedback you make it in the operation review practice. Anybody who claims to get in-depth knowledge is going to have slew of badges in their Trailhead account. A great consultant will sit down with the owner, and supply an efficient plan of action to be able to fix the difficulties. Consult with our financial consultant resume example for the sum of detail you must include in the job experience section of your resume. If youre lacking a good deal of qualified experience then it is even more critical you compose a flawless education section. If you need assistance writing your resume, itll be our pleasure to help you. Consultancy firms are operating on a worldwide basis and many consultants are in tegrated into consulting firms to boost client experience and earn personal understanding. Consultants are extremely results-oriented. They can obviously be expensive, and you need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits. Consultants like The Boston Consulting Group can provide you a creative spark whenever your own individuals have run out of ideas, permitting you to see what other businesses have done to bring in more customers. Management Analysts concentrate on CMSs internal operations with the purpose of improving organizational effectiveness. It is not sufficient to be competent in the several disciplines required of a Leasing Consultant. Finding a job as a Salesforce Consultant necessitates business knowledge, soft abilities, and most importantly, expansive Salesforce knowledge.

Graduate Students Make the Most of Career Services

Graduate Students Make the Most of Career Services Graduate school is an investment with a high return. It can pay off in careeradvancement, increased earnings, or even the opportunity to change careers entirely.However, to really attain these goals, students must take advantage of all the resources their schools have to offer especially the career services office. The professionals that work in career services are there to help students edit their resumes, practice for interviews, network with alumni, and connect with employers.However, these career services employees are often busy because they support students from all over the school. So, you may need a little help getting the most out of your schools career services office. Thats why Id like to offer a few tips to help you do just that1. Compile Your AccomplishmentsYouve been working hard over the past few years, and it may be difficult to remember all that youve accomplished. Review your trans cripts, internship evaluations, and course syllabi to identify notable presentations, research projects, or programs you participated in.Once you have a list of accomplishments and experiences, a career services professional can help you condense the list into a series of attention-grabbing bullet points for your resume. Thats the first step in crafting your professional identity.2. Update Your Resume and Cover LetterMany career services offices providesample materials on their websites, and you can use these samples as guides to help you update your resume and/or writea titelblatt letter. Add your most recent internship or job experiences to your resume, make sure your bullets are aligned, and ensure that all dates are correct. Career specialists can then spend more time critiquing the context of your materials instead of making minor formatting adjustments.If you have a specific position in mind, take a copy of the job description to your appointment so the career specialist can h elp youtarget yourresume toward that position.3. Practice Your Interviewing SkillsSchedule mock interviews and take them seriously. The more you practice the entire interview experience, the more natural it will feel. Wear professional attire to your appointment and ask the career specialist to record the interview. Youll receive feedback on both the content of your interview and your professional appearance. Reviewing the recording of the interviewwill help you determine your strengths and identify areas you can improve upon.4. Attend Career EventsTake advantage of career fairs, alumni panels, and other career-related events offered by the career services office. As a student, you have access to resources that professionalsin the job market dont. Attending these events will help you understand what employers are looking for, and youll get the mglichkeit to explore new fieldsand industries that you may have never considered before.5. Stay in TouchStay in touch after you graduate. Ma ny career services offices offer a certain number of career appointments to alumni. Look into whether or not your schools career services office extends this option,and take advantage of the services if it does.The office may also facilitate networking opportunities between alumni and students, so be sure to share your contact information and let the career specialists know youd like to participate in any networking opportunities that arise.Very few students whether undergrads or graduates take full advantage of their schools career services offices. Thats unfortunate, because theres really no resource quite like a career services department.Dont leave school without getting the most from your career services department. It could be the difference between a rocky start to your career and an exciting leap into a brand new world.

Here is a story about the way everything works

Here is a story about the way everything worksHere is a story about the way everything worksScene one I dont believe in God, I think to myself, comparing It to the sum of the ten digits I have finished colliding in my head. Numbers make sense to me. God doesnt make any sense. Im sitting in the washroom as I do this, trying to piece together the things going on in my life, many of which dont seem fair. I have seen a lot in a short period. I have lived through a lot in a short period. Im bedrngnis very old. In fact, Im young enough to be losing the kind of innocence that I dont even realize I have.Thought one Reading is an interactive activity. To get the fruchtwein out of something, parteicularly non-fiction, you have to go into the mind of the writer and try to replicate their thinking patterns in yur own mind. The words on the page themselves are secondary. Its the dance they create that matters - the context in which they are meant to be understood. It means that words cant be loo ked at as static they have to be dynamic. Reading the King James Bible, for example, makes no sense if you are going to read it like you would, say, Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species.Scene two Its spring, and the sun is mellow but bright, the wind light on the skin, the grass greener than yesterday. We are walking to class after ur first break, and my friends are laughing with me. Everything is as it should be, but I feel a pang of guilt. I saw the look on that kids face before we left, and I know that we alfruchtwein made him cry. We have been laughing at him for the past few days. But hes annoying, and sometimes Im nice to him, and he knows that I dont really mean it. What does it matter anyway?Thought two Writing is a generative activity. Words have their limitations in reflecting reality, but there are times when what comes out on the page is a mora complete representation of yur thinking patterns than the patterns you are consciously aware of. Much of what we consume or understand concerning ur actions in the world gets stored beneath the surface, but it leise influences how we go about life in meaningful ways. This is stuff that we dont know how to talk about because its not stuff that can be talked about. Writing momentarily changes that. When you are in that state of flow, you have access to corners of the mind that are otherwise shut.Scene three Its 1 PM. Im mildly bothered that I am awake because my day usually starts an hour or two later. But I guess I dont actually mind, because at this point in my life, I dont mind fruchtwein things. I get out of bed, walk to the fridge, and grab a bottle of Lucky Lager. Its what you drink as a student. Its what I - waking up feeling like I have a hole in my brain - drink as a student. I dont know that cocaine is physically doing that to me yet, but Im becoming mora and mora intimate with the feeling. A beer helps. A workout, too. Lectures dont. At night, the bar does.Thought three Earlier this year, John Nerst wrote 30 Fundamentals to talk about his personal beliefs and assumptions. I learned a lot because it gave me exactly the context needed to make sense of his other pieces. It also verbalized many things that I also understand about the world but had never thought to put into words. My writing is still young. In fact, Im still young. Both it and I are evolving, and Im not sure where its all leading. That said, there are now general premises behind what I write, and I think its good for readers to know what they are and also for me to give things a concrete form as a way to understand whats going on.Scene four There is a message on my phone. Its the first time I see her name after our post-breakup conversation. I remember it being friendly and secure. It was also sad. Did you hear that a mutual acquaintance passed away, the message reads. I did. And I feel like I should care, that I want to care - to show some kind of emotion. But it has already happened, and its not like my ca ring is going to change anything. Yeah is all I say. Its the last time we speak.Thought four Like Johns piece, this one started off in a list format, but I soon realized that I have way too many thoughts going in way too many directions and a list wouldnt adequately capture everything in the way I would want it to. This format, naturally, still doesnt capture everything, but it does fill in most of the gaps, and it does make it more interesting for me personally. Its also maybe more helpful to someone who is having similar thoughts but hasnt had the time to give form to them. In the sections ahead, I touch on everything from the big questions of reality and truth to the more immediate ones concerning purpose, meaning, and berzeugtheit von sich selbstity, all as I try to uncover the relationship between history, culture, the present moment, problems and solutions, and where we are going in the future. Different parts will interest different people, but I think if you take the time to read each section, it starts to fall into place in a way thats at least interesting.Scene five I wake up in the middle of the night and notice tears in my eyes. This is new - different. Im not sure what to think. I know that Im not depressed not anxious I dont even think Im lonely. But whats left? I cant put my finger on it. It feels like the whole Universe is silent - that its right here, everywhere, inside of me, outside of me, and that it has nothing to say to me, nothing to ask of me. I sit with it. I watch it. This silence has been growing for years I suddenly realize, and until now, I have just done a good job of either distracting myself or intellectualizing it away. I know that this cant be the truth. I decide its time for a change.Thought five This is not a theory, or an ideology, or anything of the sort. Its a story - from one personal, fallible point of view. Naturally, given that its a story and that it reaches across so many disciplines, I make compromises. Wherever I have used and referenced someone elses work in a way that doesnt make sense, the fault is most likely my own. Wherever you feel a hint of originality sparkling through, the inspiration is likely someone that I have either forgot to mention, or whose influence I didnt realize, or whose name I didnt reference for some other reason. Any effort like this is always going to fall short. Im fine with that. Lets see where it takes us.I. Reality and TruthI think, therefore I am, Rene Descartes famously wrote, uncovering the fertile ground for his philosophy. My own starting point? Something is.Before I go on, I will say this For most of my life, I have been a scientific materialist - as in, what most atheists implicitly are (Im still an atheist, too). Im willing to concede that it may still be likely, but the more I think about it, the less appealing it seems. Im making this clear before I dive in because some of the following might sound superstitious unless youre familiar with metaphys ical and ontological claims in philosophy.So What is this something? Different people call it different things, but its the only objective thing that exists Consciousness. While we can think of it as objective, it is only ever experienced as change, and it cant be pinned down in language without distorting it. That said, I roughly like Process philosophy, as per Alfred North Whitehead, and some Continental philosophy.(Im skipping a lot of steps here, going from suggesting that Something is to actually answering that question, but Im aiming more for clarity than a show of pure reasoning. I know that I cant do philosophical logic even the slightest bit of justice here, hence the curiosity is to make interesting connections rather than to build a complete framework.)Consciousness is mathematically infinite (or Absolute Infinity as defined by the mathematician Georg Cantor), and its also what we think of as the void. Around 13.799 billion years ago, a state which we call the singularity sparked this void, giving birth to the Universe, including space and time, energy and matter, and the laws of physics as we know them. As space began to expand after this event - called the Big Bang - atoms formed from elementary particles, stars and galaxies emerged, and at some point, planets - among them Earth - came to be. This is all basic physics and chemistry. As we fast forward to Earth, we see biological evolution begin to work its magic, giving us the diversity we observe in the biosphere.Ive created a nice distinction here between Consciousness and the Universe, but in actuality, they are tangled with one another two sides of the same coin. This is why, I suspect, that the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics diverge away from each other in strange ways. In Buddhism, the concepts of Form, Emptiness, and Non-Duality are used, which is essentially where I stand, but they are even harder to talk about.The main point is that I dont think Consciousness is a product of evolution. I think that Consciousness is primary. Evolution simply organizes physical matter in such a way as to create a body (what we call life) - with specific abilities, adapted to specific ecologies - that provides an opportunity for this elementary Consciousness to observe itself as a part of the Universe. As such, other animals are conscious, too, but in a different way because they have different bodies. Here Im on board with much of Riccardo Manzottis Spread Mind theory (as wild as it is).Although Consciousness is objective and non-dual - a kind of oneness - the fact that we all have different bodies through which this Consciousness manifests for us, we experience the world relatively. We all collect fragments of different spaces, smells, tastes, sounds, and sights, and over time, they all come together to create our individual, subjective self, something that highlights the separation between our body and everything else, which Ill talk more about in the next sectio n.As for science, it allows us to create knowledge, but this knowledge isnt about truth its about utility - about what works, with some degree of certainty, under particular conditions. (This is my epistemological position in general, applied to other avenues of knowledge, too.) Truth itself, or Consciousness, is infinite and cant be measured by science, but the utility science provides will slowly reach towards this truth. We will infinitely keep getting closer but never quite get there, as per the beginning of infinity hypothesis of David Deutsch. As far as the philosophy of science goes, I think Karl Poppers falsifiability and Thomas Kuhns paradigms can complement each other.Now, due to the fact that the truth is infinite and that no linguistic or mathematical framework can fully capture it, contradictions will always be inherent in our understanding of reality, as assumed by Gdels Incompleteness Theorem. Because we cant capture the whole truth when talking about it, there is no ultimate foundation that we can build a map of reality on, and thus everything is bound by context. In one context, one thing is right. In another, something else is. That said, some forms of scientific knowledge, especially in physics, are sturdy enough to be right in pretty much all contexts - meaning different truths have a different reach, and the reach of physics is currently the gold standard.There is a crucial point to be made here Just because truth is contextual (based on utility) and because subjectivity makes our individual and collective experience relative, it doesnt mean that one thing cant be truer than another thing when they come into conflict. We can think of each context as a smaller part of a whole, and each one has a particular truth that makes the most sense based on how well it fits with the situation. When two different contexts (parts) come into conflict, we have to merge them (into a whole) and then evaluate what is most true relative to this new context, and this can go on and go on towards infinity.At some point in the future, the scientific method will have to evolve if it is to effectively study utility beyond just the world of matter. We will need a better version of science to effectively study Consciousness itself. Buddhism has been doing this through meditation for millennia, and Continental philosophy has started to do this via language. I suspect they will both merge in an interesting way for us to take the next step, and I also suspect that more complex forms of art will play a role in understanding the objective in the future. As the poetJohn Keats said Beauty is truth, truth beauty.II. Personality and SelfIn the second part of the Genesis creation narrative, God supposedly created Adam, the first man, out of dust and then Eve, the first woman, as his companion, both to live in the mythical Garden of Eden. After their original sin, however, they were banished from this Garden, which catalyzed the creation of human civili zation on Earth as we know it today.Im sympathetic to the literary and moral value of this story, but I personally trust that evolution has greater explanatory power. Just as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (stating that the total entropy, or disorder, in the Universe will increase over time) is inherent to reality, so is evolution, which has been in motion since the Big Bang.On Earth, approximately 4 billion years ago, biological life emerged due to this process. What makes biological ordnungsprinzips different is that they use energy in such an efficient way as to create order, even though the Universe around them is decaying due to the Second Law. There are good arguments that evolution is a fight against this decay. Now, does evolution have a purpose or is it completely random? I personally lean towards randomness, where evolution creates variation and then selects traits based on how well they fit the environment, blindly going on. That said - and young me would have hated to even ponder this - I dont think its insane to consider that theres something else going on at a larger scale of emergence.Nonetheless, humans are just one species in a long line of progressionion. With time, living systems have gotten more complex as to adapt themselves for survival in different ecologies. The biodiversity that we see on Earth is a result of different evolutionary pressures forcing the selection of different traits in species. Humans have different bodies than, say, lions, because over millions and millions of years, our living situations and our demands have diverged, leading to different needs and uses.Each body, whether its that of a human or a lion, provides an opportunity for Consciousness to be experienced, but the actual experience, of course, varies based on the capabilities of the body. All humans have similar bodies, which is what makes us a species, and that also means that there is such a thing as human nature - deeply embedded behavioral patterns tha t manifest in reality pretty consistently - and it explains a lot of what has played out in history. Evolutionary psychology does have a place.Each person has a genome that is a mix of what their parents gave them. This means that all of us are born different in various, complex ways. When it comes to how we look, nobody would argue this fact. But for some reason, the idea that some people have bodies that are innately suited to make better logical connections or to play certain sports or insert a different biological advantage seems to cause grief. I think its important to note that nature isnt destiny, but its just as important to acknowledge that it does play a huge role in how we experience Consciousness.IQ tests and the Big Five personality traits arent by any means perfect, but they do adequately measure these differences between us. While Im not for extrapolating too much based on them, its important to acknowledge their role so that we can more honestly use some of their in formation to help play everyone to their specific strengths.Personality - which I will broadly use to term a body and its brains general disposition towards particular traits and desires - is real. The self, the voice in the brain that we all live with, - or what we think of as our identity - however, isnt. Personality does play a big role in shaping the direction in which the self develops (and the self, in turn, shapes some parts of the personality), but the self is a product of our random cultural conditioning, which I will talk more about in the next section.When we are born, our body has no self. There is no I there, and even other people arent yet distinguished as objects or persons. ur conscious experience is pure sensations, something neuroscientists call affect - a label I personally use for any state of consciousness experienced by a human (my understanding here comes from Lisa Feldman Barretts work on the theory of constructed emotions). Nonetheless, slowly, as we be gin to move around in the world, and as we begin to relate to language, we create conceptual models to draw different boundaries within this experience of affect.At first, these conceptual models are built using metaphors that are learned via how the body moves in the world (George Lakoffs work). Eventually, however, language helps solidify these metaphors into concrete thinking patterns, which are essentially habitual modes of reasoning that clarify how we relate our body to the outer world. These thinking patterns and the conceptual models they form in our mind eventually merge to create a sense of self that we use to interact with reality. This is what we commonly call our subjective experience, and its built on the memories we store about how this self relates to the broader world.At its core, the self is our meaning-making apparatus. Over time, it makes sense of our experience of affect - which includes emotions, movements, and thoughts - to add coherence to it, turning it in to a story. Our affect operates within the pleasure-pain axis, meaning that our body uses information from the outside world to create an experience that ranges between good and bad. In simplistic language, if you feel good, you have been rewarded for an action that is worth doing again if you feel bad, then its time to do something else or rethink your situation. This axis is far more diverse, granular, and complex than simply good and bad, but this is roughly how we learn.Over time, our cultural environment conditions this self in various unobvious ways that shape how we interact with reality, influencing our wants and our desires, our modes of reasoning and our general biases. Contemplative traditions like Buddhism aim to deconstruct the self by shifting what the mind pays attention to so that we can watch the desires of the biological personality underneath. Much suffering in the world is born from the fact people have constructed a self that is conflicted in various ways, espec ially as it relates to purpose and meaning, which Ill talk more about in a couple of sections.Some advanced meditators and other mystics claim to be able to reach a blissful state of pure Consciousness - which is often called enlightenment or awakening - where the illusion of the self completely vanishes, where they experience mystical oneness. This is likely a state similar to what we imagine newborns are in, except that the practitioners have tran scended the self and can use it to operate in harmony with the world, as opposed to being overwhelmed by the initial cluelessness of birth and life.There was a time when I was skeptical of such claims, but as Ive explored more across different cultures and traditions, this skepticism has faded. I still wont go as far as to suggest that these experience tell us anything certain about the nature of reality other than the fact that there is more to the mind than most people commonly think, but it would also be dishonest of me not to ackno wledge the extent of their influence on how I see things.There is an old Zen koan - a kind of dialogue or story used in the tradition to test a students progress or to provide guidance - that summarizes my own intellectual progression in this particular area. It illustrates the difference between the silence I heard when I lived to make sense of everything linguistically compared to the same space seen directly. It refers to an interaction been an old Japanese master and a university professor who has come to visit him to learn more about their way.As the master receives the man, he quietly begins to fill an empty cup with tea. He does this until the liquid reaches the brim but doesnt stop. He doesnt at all pay attention to the guest. He pours and pours and pours. Confused, the professor watches this for a while, until he can no longer restrain himself, blurting Its overfull. No more will go inLike this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations, the master says. How can I show you the way unless you first empty your cup?III. History and CultureThe cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that humans are the only animal that can imagine the future, and as such, imagine a world in which they are no longer alive. Because we are aware of our mortal body, we instead create a symbolic self (as discussed). This self is immaterial, and it has the potential to defy the destiny of death. What we call culture is the immortal battle-ground of all of our interconnected selves.Just like the biosphere emerged some 4 billion years ago and then evolved to become more complex, a collective conscious reality of human minds emerged as we began to create selves, culminating in a large network of connected nodes. This reality is a separate plane of existence - a social sphere that evolves and selects ideas just like evolution in the biosphere selects genes. In fact, its this collective consciousness that makes us so different from other animals in nature that a llows us to transcend the limitations of the human body to alter space and time in a way we otherwise wouldnt.No other animal can cooperate as flexibly and in as large of numbers as we can because they dont have this extra plane of existence. Its what gives us ideologies and religions, knowledge and myths, norms and morality, technologies and artefacts- all things that have pushed progress from a life of hunting and gathering to a civilized world in which we have spaceships and museums and corporations and the internet.History is the name we give to this cumulative movement of culture, and its driven by language, embodied in reality via oral traditions, books, and modern media devices. The successful ideas (or memes) in culture are the language games that have survived the onslaught the great destroyer time. The survival of a language game depends on three things utility, or how useful it is to our brains replicability, or how easy it is moved from one mind to another and most impo rtantly, objectification, or how tangible it is as a systematic physical structure (like a church) and how much is sacrificed to it through time and effort as a ritual (like a prayer).Old ideas are defended by existing systematic structures and rituals, even if they have lost their utility. New ideas have to win over minds far more persuasively (with either utility or replicability) before they can perpetuate themselves over time through structures and rituals. Just like the biosphere has continued to evolve and progress as life has gotten more and more complex, so history continues to evolve and progress as culture has gotten more and more complex. Today, as the social reality has moved to the internet, becoming even more interconnected, we are seeing even further cultural complexity in shorter periods.If we hypothetically imagine the first cultures, they would have been shaped by a collection of selves that collided with each other, mostly being driven by their bodily personalitie s. As new individuals began to be born into existing cultures, however, the pressure dynamic switched it was now cultures that predominantly conditioned the selves on top of the bodily personalities. Cultures began to perpetuate themselves in human minds by programming them as they grew up within their bounds. While personality is a product of a body, connecting us to the biosphere, the self is a product of culture, connecting to the collective social consciousness.This brings us to the main course I dont believe the existence of culture has improved average individual happiness. What we think of as happiness depends on the relationship between our subjective experience and the objective world. Roughly speaking, when our expectations are met by reality, we are happy. When they are not, we experience dissatisfaction. This is deeply embedded in our biological hardware, and it doesnt matter how much culture improves the external world. Happiness is relative to your relationship to thin gs, which is (mostly) an inside job. Sure, living in a world with lower child mortality and less total crime matters, but once you learn to expect that, your anchor readjusts. In fact, in many ways, given the diverse world we live in, with the constant choices and comparison, a world so different from the environment we evolved for, we are now perhaps more depressed and anxious than we have ever been, at least in the West.This isnt a new insight, but it generally leads the believer in one direction progress is evil, capitalism is soul-sucking, and we need to put a stop to it and focus inward and inward alone. This is a problem, too. It fails to realize that cultural progress isnt a choice we can deny. Its just what humans do. Ever since the social reality emerged all those thousands of years ago, there has been nothing we can do to stop it from evolving. We may temporarily be able to haltestelle it and limit it in one place, but over a long enough timeline, it will re-emerge and re- evolve, and trying to stagnate it is its own form of tyranny. The best we can do is recognize the problems and point this evolution in the right direction, hoping that one day it improves our average individual happiness, too, which is more than possible. Even if it doesnt, culture has now created the potential for what we call purpose and meaning, which are now more important to our health and well-being than simple happiness - something Ill talk about in the next section.To add to that, progress actually isnt evil. Its the driver of all things we think of as good and true. Contrary to our implicit assumptions, there is no objective law of nature that says you should be kind, love your neighbor, and value human rights. Like culture, morality is an aufstrebend phenomenon. Humans are a social animal, and that has given us a conscience. That said, this conscience isnt always fair. It might care that you cheated a loved one or a tribal member, but it doesnt innately care if you murder a stranger. And yet, most of our psyches today would care a lot if we murdered a stranger, even if we got away with it. What has changed?The answer is norms and standards. Due to progress, we have moved from a world of relative scarcity to relative abundance. This means that we have been able to bring more people into a collective community of shared resources over time, which has in turn expanded our circle of empathy. Our tribe has grown from a few hundred to the whole world. We, of course, still fight and argue within this world, but overall, its broadly understood that every human life has value. Now, being raised in a world where this is collectively understood, our minds get deeply conditioned to abide accordingly, whether we explicitly want to or not. The alternative is what you observe in a Dostoevsky character, even after they have committed the perfect crime a conscience tortured by isolation, guilt, and loneliness.If we consider our impact on Earth and on other sentient beings, humans are perhaps the most destructive animal to ever walk the planet. Thats hard to deny. But we are also the only animal to show the potential for a world of unbounded love and decreasing violence, both of which have their roots planted on the ground formed by progress and cultural evolution. We may be a blip in the Universe, and all of this speculation may be completely off-base, but this simple fact is of such obvious value that even if nothing means anything, the light of moral goodness we have ignited is worth spreading, even if only to see where it could lead us. We are a species approximately 200,000 years young. Thats compared to an average mammalian species that lives for 2 million years. In a relatively short period, we have come far. If we survive long enough, there is no telling how far we can still go, what good we can create, which corners of the galaxy we can explore.Today, the biggest problem we face is the juxtaposition of this hope, this light, that cultu ral progress shines in the world with the obvious dissatisfaction many of us collectively feel even as it continues to do its work. parte of the issue is that just as progress has solved many of our problems, it has also brought new ones with it, as it always does. We may be less violent, but modern tools have created greater existential risk. Technology may have set us free, but its also ruling our lives in unanticipated ways. Earth may be our playground, but the climate is now fighting back. All of these are true, but they are also things that further progress can potentially solve if we do the work.There is, however, a deeper, thornier issue that needs to be addressed, one that is partially responsible for our modern misery, and the solution to which could potentially even bring us together in such a way as to help us fight some of the problems that have been created by progress.Its often said that Western civilization is a footnote to the Greek philosopher Plato, the man who ind irectly inspired the birth of Christianity and consequently shaped the direction of modern civilization with his ideas. Well, I think we are now living in a new epoch, one where West and East have collided, one that will in hindsight be looked back on as a footnote to Friedrich Nietzsche. For the past few hundred years, culturally, we have been stumbling from one broken paradigm to another, but the most important question remains How do we live in a world without God?IV. Purpose and MeaningReligious and supernatural beliefs are human universals - that is, some form of them exist in every single culture that we have studied. The reason is that nature is incredibly complex, and not only do we not have enough knowledge yet to fully understand it, but even if we did, our brains wouldnt be capable of translating all of this knowledge into understanding.To condense complexity, we use heuristics, particularly stories. These are never literal truths, but they are both true and simple enoug h for practical purposes, like providing moral frameworks that we can use to build the backbone of civilization. Hence, God and religion arent about metaphysics they are about survival. Given that we are animals, survival comes before truth, and these beliefs are indeed logical from a utility perspective. Ironically many atheists who feel strongly about these beliefs have their own superstitions that they live by to survive, except that these are often more hidden. This isnt something we can help.The reason Nietzsche is so important is that he was more of a cultural philosopher than he was a metaphysician or logician concerned with a grand theory of everything. He realized that with the Age of Enlightenment, which helped drive science and elevate reason, we had slowly started to kill God, and with Him, the structure underlying modern civilization. This, he saw as the defining problem of the future, the solution to which he claimed to have found but never comprehensively wrote down i n a useful way.Nietzsche lived in the period known as modernism, which indeed rejected God, but replaced Him with other grand narratives inspired particularly by the Industrial Revolution, like the infallibility of progress - an ideology still influential today in leading thinkers. But skepticism about these narratives began to build up, and in the 20th-century, we started to see the dominance of post-modernism, which in many ways has its roots in Nietzsche but leads in the opposite direction. Post-modernism deconstructs everything from meaning to truth, leading exactly to the problem that Nietzsche was trying to avoid - nihilism. It says that there are no narratives and that knowledge and beauty and everything we value is all subjective.Now, these descriptions of both modernism and post-modernism are quite simplistic. The actual philosophies and the thinkers in both movements identified real problems and tried to provide real tools to deal with them. Anyone that claims alliance t o one while completely discounting the other likely hasnt done the work required to understand the core issues. That said, while these simplistic descriptions may not be directly representative of the leading thinkers in each school, in terms of the trickle-down cultural impact on the day-to-day lives of the people who have lived in these periods, they are broadly right. Modernism buried God and replaced Him with a different grand narrative post-modernism destroyed all narratives.For more than 2,000 years, with the fuel provided by the philosophy of Plato, in spite of His shortcomings, God gave us direction. The arguments that staunch atheists - like, say, Sam Harris whom I respect - make is that civilization and its norms have come far enough that we no longer need God to provide a moral framework - something I agree with, but it doesnt mean that we have replaced the purpose and the meaning functions that God once provided us with. On the other side, you have people like Jordan Peterson - whom I also respect - arguing that humans need to be told what to do by some objective force to keep them in check from their darker sides, which I also agree with in part. The problem? Nietzsche was right We are way too far past the stage where we can get everyone to believe in the old God.Today, we are stuck in a strange predicament With the blood of post-modernism flowing through us, we no longer explicitly believe in anything. But given that humans arent programmed to simply not believe in anything, the modernist narrative of progress is still what implicitly guides us. We may not call this progress God, but for all intents and purposes, it is currently our God, which its not suited to be. When progress becomes God, hedonism, materialism, and atomization become our source of meaning - all of which have a short shelf-life. This is what has created the tension between the good that progress continues to create and the collective misery we feel living in this supposed utopia. Now, the question Whats next?My thinking here has been influenced by David Chapman and his Meaningness framework. His solution, if I understand it correctly, is to push culture towards what he calls fluidity- something others are appropriately calling meta-modernism - which respects part of the certainty of modernism and its attempts to keep us pushing, while also valuing the inherent uncertainty made clear by post-modernism. In other words, there is purpose and there is meaning, but neither are fixed. They are not objective, or given by some God (or in the case of modernism, by progress), but theyre also not entirely subjective, or meaninglessly made up in our own minds, as per post-modernism. They emerge from the interaction between the subject - the self, the you - and the conception of an object.Human culture as an entity is the most advanced known expression of Consciousness, and we now live in a world where no single part of this culture - whether that be a particu lar ideology with a God at the helm or the modernist assumption that progress alone will carry the mantle - can do the whole job. The total entity, however, changes and evolves in a way that, on the whole, has the potential to create more and more goodness in reality as we know it. In my mind, fluidity sees culture itself as a living, breathing thing.This switch - from God being a creation of culture that then transcends itself to give us objective morality and, subsequently, purpose and meaning to culture essentially being its own life-force - means that when it comes to determining how we are to act in the world, the focus turns away from objects and subjects to interactions - to how things relate to each other. The power of the social reality is that its built on connections between different nodes, and the power of connections is that they can be shaped by agency - by how a particular self chooses to relate to something from moment to moment.In a fluid culture, we no longer have a defined purpose, but the simple fact that it evolves and spreads the moral brightness that illuminates our tiny speck of dust in a very large cosmos means that there is a purpose to our actions even if we cant predict where exactly we are being led. Each movement in this world, then, matters because it gives this culture a new form, which in turn shapes matter in a very tangible way. When you are kind to someone, this interaction changes how that person relates to the physical Universe, subsequently changing how our collective consciousness manifests, creating ripples in a great web with unbounded potential.If the self is indeed our meaning-making apparatus, then a healthy and non-conflicted self consistently acts in the right way, and by consistently acting in the right way, it develops more and more agency. In a world with a religious God, this kind of purpose and meaning comes from doing what that already-existing God tells you. In a fluid world, it comes from an evolving interaction, at each and every moment, where you are directly responsible for creating the kind of expression you want to see in the world.For this to make sense, let revisit our bodily personality and our conditioned self. The personality has innate traits and desires that it prefers relative to other bodies the self is conditioned to keep these traits and desires in check in certain circumstances due to norms and standards. (Example Your body may have a lot of physical energy to expand, but you know its not a good idea to expend it by hurting someone else.) But sometimes, the self gets conditioned so that it conflicts with the manifestation of our preferences as per our personality for no reason, which creates confusion when it comes to purpose. Our body wants one thing, but our self another. To clarify the purpose of our body, we have to unconditioned parts of the self and better align the two, which naturally happens over time with awareness or can be done through contemplative practices or even therapy.Once a bodys purpose stops beings clouded by the self, it can manifest in various ways and then recreate a more holistic being. This is why IQ and Big Five personality tests are valuable because they can show you your bodys disposition, which can help you better uncondition the self, in turn allowing you to zone in on a range of things that might better reflect your strengths than whatever you stumbled onto because of societal expectations.Once the purpose becomes a little more clear, we can create meaning, which emerges when an agent with a purpose acts in such a way as to fit a contextual environment. (This is inspired by some of Sarah Perrys essays and them pointing me in the direction of the design philosophy of the architect Christopher Alexander.) This means that meaning isnt something thats just there. Its something that you do - an action - in every moment, in a different way, depending on what your purpose is as it relates to the given environme nt that you happen to find yourself in. Put in a different way Meaning is what you get when you relate to culture, in a specific moment, within a defined context, to connect to it in a way that honors your bodily purpose.Times have now changed. Whether you call it fluidity or meta-modernism, today, culture itself is God. Except, its not an objective God with strict rules and expectations. Its a God that respects both what we know and what we dont know. It values progress but it doesnt overlook the fact that we have to also change how we collectively interact with it. Most of all, however, it allows the dance of nature to continue as it has for billions and billions of years one interaction after another, slowly evolving to create new levels of emergence. As uncivilized animals, simple happiness was enough for us. But with the birth of culture, what we need are purpose and meaning, both of which manifest when we nudge the collective consciousness along the way as we connect it to our own relative existence.V. The Very ObviousIn an old interview, the late novelist David Foster Wallace once said that, in a post-modern world, one where everything is moving so fast and we are all so connected and no one really believes anything anymore, the role of fiction is no longer to describe culture as it is.All cultures are now accessible to us. Its not like the 19th-century when the best way to understand Russian society was to read Tolstoy. Rather, in such a world, the role of fiction to is to highlight the really, really absurd things that we have now been conditioned to think of as normal the deification of a clock that tells you exactly what to do and when tacitly mistaking the entertainment obtained through a screen for the intimacy of human connection the normalization of manipulative advertising.A further result of this is that some of the most obvious and important truths of our existence have been layered beneath so much noise that they are even harder to talk abou t than they already were. Ill mention one right here Much of what I have just written could be wrong. I have a good reason to be uncertain about everything I say and certain only about the fact that I am a very small part of a very large existence, one that only requires me to act. And yet, because all the surface-level noise is so immediate to my attention all the time, conditioning my sense of self on a daily basis, I live believing that I am indeed mostly right in how I think and that this rightness should dictate how I interact with the world, and in turn, how the world should be.Here is another obvious thing All of this is really hard. Everybody is doing the best they can with what they have in any given moment. We can talk about agency all day, but you didnt choose the body you were born with, nor did you direct the laws of physics to determine which of the billions and billions of causes would come together at each and every moment in your life to nudge you in one direction r ather than another. Even if you are a high-agency person now, taking full responsibly for your life, making things happen mostly by the power of your own will, there was something out there, at some point, that inspired the realization of this agency, something that many other people didnt have the luxury to be exposed to.Now, here is perhaps the most obvious but difficult thing to talk about Whatever the purpose of life is, it has nothing to do with you. I have intentionally avoided going into morality so far, other than to state that it is emergent and that it evolves and that, with or without a religious God, it exists. But morality is about what we do (actions) and how we should do it (right and wrong conduct) when interacting with other sentient beings, which is the base that builds out the ideas of purpose and meaning, and it so obviously matters that reason can neither fully defend or refute it without getting in its own way. And thats because its bigger than us.Ill illustrat e this by first asking a question Leaving aside the odd exception, why is it that, say, a father who is extremely homophobic, genuinely believing that there is something logically and morally wrong with two people of the same sex deciding to be intimate with each other, is more likely to accept his gay son than he is a stranger? Maybe, over time, even reconsidering his position in a way that he otherwise wouldnt.A good response is that its his biological offspring, and he has a lot invested in ensuring that this offspring, carrying his own genetic material, survives. He has no such interest in a stranger. This is a rational and scientifically sound answer. But how about as a matter of day-to-day experience? Is it this logic that changes his mind? Of course not. Its a feeling of conscious love. And not love in the sense that Romeo is infatuated with Juliet and willing to die for it, nor the selfish love you feel towards things that will satisfy your desires, but love in its most self less, expansive, and throbbing form the kind of love that momentarily transcends the linguistic conditioning of the self the kind of love that makes life worth living, even when it brings pain.In fact, this pure experience not only transcends the self, but it also transcends your bodily personality. Have you ever wondered by so many brilliant Western philosophers throughout history have come to so many different conclusions? I suspect that they are all born with different brains that prefer different starting points in the infinite expanse of Consciousness, and such, they end up manufacturing different linguistic realities, even though, ultimately, they are grasping at the same thing. This has nothing to do with irreconcilable truths where one of them is absolutely right and the rest are wrong its a language problem. They are discussing truths in different realms, and they cant see that because they havent taken the time to look beyond words.When a father who abhors homosexuality lo oks at his gay son beyond a label produced by the subjective feelings of his own self, he is able to love, only then seeing the real sentient being standing in front of him. And then, because he is able to love, he accepts the truth of his linguistic reality, and they negotiate to find a better truth, maybe one that even changes the fathers mind on the topic. This kind of love comes less naturally to us when dealing with strangers, but what if we were to love other people and respect their experience in the same way so that we can create a truer and more honest collective experience? Isnt that a more moral way of interacting with people than following linguistic rules (deontology) or pretending that we already know whats good for everyone (consequentialism) or a self-centered, feel-good definition of what is charitable or benevolent (virtue ethics)?If we actually saw people - like really saw them - beyond our own conditioning and then simply acted to reconcile our truths, wouldnt that eventually self-correct, say, like evolution or a complex system does, to point culture towards a greater collective truth? Wouldnt that as a byproduct of itself be what creates the best reality for everyone?Several decades ago, the Eastern philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti began to roam. Before leaving his home in India, he dissolved a religious organization that had groomed him to be their leader since childhood. Realizing the limitations of dogmatic thinking and the importance of an individual taking responsibility for finding their own path, his travels took him around the globe, with the intent of just talking to people.On one particular day after a lecture, a man asked him point-blank if there was a God. He argued that if there wasnt one then life couldnt possibly have any moral meaning, in which case we would then have to invent one. In the process of inventing one, however, we would be separating people by belief and creed, leading to pain and division down the road.Krishn amurti listened and then told him that God, as linguistically conceived by tradition and memory, was not what he was looking for. But if he stripped his words away, he would be left with something that simply is change. The man pushed, and they went back and forth for a while.Finally, the man amusingly saidThen is love changeable? If everything is a movement of change, isnt love also part of that movement? And if love is changeable, then I can love one woman today and sleep with another tomorrow.Krishnamurti, first, gave him an abstract answer, then, simply ended withGod, or whatever name you give it, is when you are not. When you are, it is not. When you are not, love is. When you are, love is not.This article was originally published on DesignLuck.

ASME Receives Grant from Lenovo Foundation to Develop New STEM...

ASME Receives Grant from Lenovo Foundation to Develop New STEM... ASME Receives Grant from Lenovo Foundation to Develop New STEM... ASME Receives Grant from Lenovo Foundation to Develop New STEM Outreach ProgramASME recently received a $10,000 grant from the Lenovo Foundation to fund the development of a new program, See What You Can Be, which is intended to introduce high school girls of color to mechanical engineering and enable them to interact with female engineering students and practicing engineers. ASME was one of 16 finalists selected from a field of 90 applicants to receive a grant from the Lenovo Foundations new Love On program, which was established to fund project proposals that would provide underserved populations with access to technology and STEM education.See What You Can Be, which is being administered by ASMEs Engineering Education department, is envisioned as a daylong forum for up to 25 female high school students from underrepresented communities in the United S tates. Five female undergraduate engineering students will participate as mentors at each of the events. The program is scheduled to launch next month at ASME E-Fest North in East Lansing, Mich., with two additional events planned for Atlanta, Ga., and Washington, D.C., later this year.The See What You Can Be events will encompass three engineering-based activities that address the experiences of minority women in the field of mechanical engineering. The Lenovo grant will be used specifically to purchase eight virtual reality headsets for a hands-on activity in which the engineering mentors will introduce the students to the concept of virtual reality and explain the various applications for virtual reality in the engineering field. The mentors will also help the young women create a video blog documenting their experiences during the daylong program.Although the See What You Can Be forums will offer the students an introduction to engineering from women who are pursuing careers in the field, the programs overall objective is to show the students who participate that careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are a viable option for them. Our goal is not for every woman to go into engineering, but to provide women with exposure to engineering and let them decide their path free of societys pressure, stereotypes and biases, said Ashley Huderson, manager of ASME Engineering Education, who is implementing the program along with Aisha Lawrey, director of ASME Engineering Education, and Patti Jo Rosenthal, manager of K-12 programs for ASME.For more information on the See What You Can Be project, contact Ashley Huderson, ASME Engineering Education, at hudersonaasme.org.

Shrinking an Exhaust Resonator for New Automotive Design

Shrinking an Exhaust Resonator for New Automotive Design Shrinking an Exhaust Resonator for New Automotive Design Shrinking an Exhaust Resonator for New Automotive DesignA new technology from Faurecia, an automotive industry supplier, reduces the size of exhaust pipe resonators close to the vanishing point. It is another example of how innovation can bring new life to old line mechanical systems.Resonators are typically found on vehicles with long exhaust pipes. The pipe reinforces sound as it travels from the engine through the exhaust, producing annoying high-frequency sounds and harmonics.Resonators are essentially large tubes engineered to give sound waves room to expand, lose energy, and cancel out high-frequency waves. This eliminates the fruchtwein annoying sounds and lets automakers optimize mufflers to suppress lower frequency sounds.The problem is that vehicleseven large onesare running out of room under their bodies, said Andrew Pontius, Faurecias vice president of light-v ehicle product lines.Think of the proliferation of stuff we want on our vehicles, from safety systems and actuators to all our creature comforts, he said. Theyre all displacing each other, and at the same time the underbody is becoming more aerodynamic to improve mileage. This is driving the exhaust system into the underbody of vehicle.Top Story Six Lean Principles for an Industry 4.0 World So, Faurecia set out to find a better way to suppress resonance. One well-known approach involved drilling holes in the exhaust pipe to relieve pressure. Unfortunately, the hot gases rushing out of those holes would produce annoying noises and possibly damage brake and fuel systems.Yet that approach intrigued Hartmut Strob, the engineer who led the development of the new resonator.What we needed to do was to find a way to let the energy from the acoustic wave reisepass through an opening in the pipe without making any noise or letting out any gases. Strob said.He eventually hit on an idea an arra y of 1,200 microperforations 70 microns wide (equivalent to two sheets of tinfoil) and 2 mm long. Although tiny, they were large enough to dissipate the energy in an acoustic wave. Yet, when gas tried to escape through them, the friction it generated created a barrier that confined the gas within the exhaust pipe.More on Compact Innovations Tiny Gyroscope Aims to Improve Wearable, Nano TechnologyStrob began running simulations to optimize the size and shape of the array to balance noise reduction with exhaust gas retention. His team played with different geometries and patterns, and learned how to optimize the resonator for a range of frequencies. He ultimately ended up with an array of 1,200 microslits.Still, the resonator screen posed material issues. Conventional exhaust systems and mufflers are made of ferritic steel, which stand up well to water, salt, and exhaust gases. Yet they have no openings. The resonators 1,200 openings would be vulnerable to corrosion that could eventua lly block them.Strobs team switched to a high quality stainless steel, but it had twice the thermal expansion rate of the ferritic exhaust pipe. Their design ultimately sandwiched the stainless screen inside a ferritic frame that attached to the exhaust pipe. This enabled the screen to expand and contract within without pulling free from the pipe.It proved surprisingly easy to source the screen. The food industry has been using microperforated screens as filters for decades, and knows how to make them to order.Its a mechanical process, Strob said. We start with a coil of stainless steel 0.3 mm thick and 300 mm wide. A press with a tool that looks like a lot of rectangular knives drops down and cuts slits into the coil. This bends the coil, which gets stretched lengthwise to open the slit geometry and pressed down again flat.More on Manufacturing Improvement Markforgeds Greg Mark on 3D Metal Printing, Additive ManufacturingAlthough the factory must regrind the knife tool every two sh ifts, the process works great for volume production. That is important, since the resonator is now installed on the Chevrolet Silverado, the best-selling U.S. large pickup.We approached General Motors five years ago and that was the beginning, Pontius said. Now, it is on 600,000 trucks. GM didnt place a bet on low risk program, but on their crown jewel.Faurecia is also looking to shrink mufflers. It is the worlds largest producer of passive valves, which adjust the flow of exhaust gases from the engine. This attenuates noise enough to downsize mufflers by up to 30 percent. Its new active valves provide additional noise reduction while controlling exhaust back pressure to improve engine performance.The company is also developing active noise cancellation systems, which use Kevlar-based drivers to acoustically cancel noises emitted by exhaust systems.Read More Exclusive Stories from ASME.org Innovations in Biomaterials Create New Roles for Engineers The 7 Coolest Rescue Robots Tackle Almost Any DisasterYoung Engineer Takes Great Strides with Prosthetic Foot What we needed to do was to find a way to let the energy from the acoustic wave pass through an opening in the pipe without making any noise or letting out any gases. Hartmut Strob, Faurecia.