Regaining purpose

The New Year approaches, but this is a completely manmade event. Christmas has just passed, and it is manufactured as well.

But we all sense that something momentous happens this time of year, every year. It is in our blood, we feel the tides of the planet. The shortest day of the year has just occurred. The sun has just begun to once more make its northerly trek. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are entering the depths of winter. The coldest months are to come, even as the days grow longer and the shadows shorter.

We are disconnected from our agrarian past. But on the few remaining family farms, ancient duties are still completed. The root cellar is full of apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, onions, and winter squash. The shelves are stocked with canned tomatoes, green beans, corn, and peppers. Cabbage has been rendered into sauerkraut, excess apples into cider.

In the barn, cows low in contentment as they munch their hay, stored sunshine providing nutrition in these dark, short, cold days. The silo is full of aromatic chopped corn, more sustenance for these beasts which will provide milk and cream and butter and beef to the family.

The woodshed is stacked with cord after cord of split and dried hardwood. Burning in several woodstoves (fireplaces are too inefficient), the farmhouse is kept warm through the frigid winter nights and days.

All this munificence was accumulated with arduous work during the long days of summer and more. It may seem an embarrassment, but the store of food must last, not until spring, but until the first garden crops are harvested, perhaps six months hence.

Always working for the future, planning ahead, every season preparing for the next one and the next after that. We northerners had a keen sense of past, present, and future.

But it’s all different now. Cold? Just turn up the thermostat. Hungry? A quick trip to Domino’s or Stop and Shop. Bored? Easily addressed with Netflix or Facebook.

Our lives have become so easy in terms of raw survival. Not simple, but easy. The purposeful efforts of keeping oneself and one’s family fed and sheltered and warm have morphed into a general one of “get a job and keep it.” This has resulted in some significant angst, a lack of satisfaction, of purpose missed.

In this modern age, as our New Year approaches, what can we resolve to increase our happiness?

Here are some ideas, really quite basic.

1. Improve your health.

Eat a healthy diet at least half of which is fruits and vegetables. Consume whole wheat or multigrain breads and pastas. More fish and less beef. Eschew sugar. (That means avoid, not chew).

Run or walk vigorously. While 30 minutes a day is good, an hour or more may become habit forming.

Lift a few weights, increase your strength.

2. Socialize with friends

Research has proven that those with a wide circle of friends are not only happier, but live longer too. Join a club. Volunteer. Become a regular at a local coffee house or hot dog stand. There are many ways to make friends.

3. Expand your horizons.

Spend a weekend in your local large city (e.g., Boston, New York). Museums. Restaurants. Art galleries. Food for the body and the mind. Gain perspective, appreciate the variety and complexity of the human endeavor.

4. Adopt the AMP rule

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. Daniel Pink in his 2009 book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” theorized the factors that motivate us. Meant as a guide for managers intending to inspire their employees, it can also be your guide to inspiration in life.

Autonomy describes our desire to be independent, self-directed.

Mastery is the achievement of solid skills, know-how, confidence.

Purpose is the application of autonomy and mastery to something that matters, to accomplish something that has meaning.

Apply these factors to your life, choose your career and job with them in mind.

Think about the 19^th century New England farm family, working hard but happily to provide for themselves. They ticked all of the boxes above, it was a natural outcome of their world, and resulted in deep satisfaction.

We can do the same, but our evolved technologies separate us from the natural world and natural labors and require us to work at deriving fulfillment.

Foregoing are a few ideas on how to increase your satisfaction in the new year. Only you can decide if it’s worth it.

Fake news and skepticism

Fake news has been in the news of late. As if it were something new.

Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, yellow journalism. They have been with us through the ages. Whether for political or military advantage, religious supremacy, commercial gain, or just malicious gossip, distortion of the truth has a long, sad human history.

In those olden days, the creators and disseminators of widespread untruthful information tended to be state actors or large organizations simply because of the cost of such an endeavor. Gutenberg’s printing press lowered the cost barrier, but it remained relatively high.

More recently but pre-internet, we relied on the reporting and editorial prowess of respected news organizations to gather, proctor, authenticate, and disseminate our news. We knew to trust the news arms of CBS, NBC, and ABC. The New York Times was beyond reproach. For nearby news, our local newspapers provided the same service.

But these brick and mortar news organizations, with reporters and editors, correspondents and investigators, newsrooms and presses, cost money. A lot of money. These costs need be paid by advertising or subscriptions or both.

What is different now is the existence of the internet, social media, and the wild proliferation of smart phones. We can consume news twenty four hours a day, share it, comment on it, be thrilled or repelled by it, and all this for free. (Well, not counting the cost of our phone and wireless bill).

But it is a basic dictum that accurate information is at once valuable and expensive. Free information is not always false and expensive information is not always true, but the odds are very much in favor.

Today, with the wonder of the internet, anyone can publish “news” at his or her whim. And with a modicum of skill, can even create a Facebook page or website which appears to be an authentic replica of a trusted news source.

What is an earnest seeker of truth to do?

The first is to recognize that the major news organizations all have a presence on the internet and still provide that valuable service of authentication. They are not perfectly unbiased, but tend to cluster within center-left to center-right views.  The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are not likely to outright lie to you, but they will each have their own partisan tilt. A well-informed reader might read them both. (Subscriptions could be an expensive problem which a visit to your local library might solve).

Outside of well-known sources, our next best defense is a healthy sense of skepticism. Particularly alluring are stories which pander to our own biases. It is with these that we must be most skeptical. Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring in a pizzeria? Donald Trump was a member of the KKK? Really?

The more your personal vibes are pleasantly resonating with this kind of news, the more the need for skepticism. Don’t “like,” don’t share, don’t comment, until you’ve confirmed the report from a trusted, mainstream source.

And please realize that your favorite sites, the ones that always resonate with your belief system, are not likely to be unbiased. Breitbart and ThinkProgress are guaranteed to each have their own strong partisan slant. Depending on your politics, you will likely love one and hate the other. But neither are giving you a balanced view of the facts.

Here is another litmus test. If your news source doesn’t occasionally make you a bit uncomfortable, if it always panders to your worldview, then you are most likely not getting straight news.

Become a savvy internet user. Websites and Facebook pages can be made to look like an authentic news site, with page names or URLs which are not-quite-right. In this age of disintermediation, we must all become our own fact checkers. Be skeptical, don’t believe everything you see.

And finally, seek out viewpoints that make you a bit uncomfortable, and try to understand them. That is how we grow.

Now go forth and conquer!