Sunday, July 07, 2019

7 July 1971 and 7 July 1980: Tales of Two Taxing Stories

Toxic leaders and how to get over them once they’re gone The Mandarin, 2 July 2019. When does an organisation have a duty of care to take action to support its people affected by toxic leadership? "Turn your wounds into wisdom.” 





― Oprah Winfrey

Wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two.
-John Cheever


“This matters because culture is a battleground where some narratives win and others lose.” 


I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER ITS FIRST SEASON: Yesterday was “the 30-year anniversary of the premiere of ‘Seinfeld,’” Ann Althouse notes.
Vile people who climb the stairs of resume writers display no gift for poetry or aptitude to display kindness

 

The world is full of leaders telling you how to live your life. Sometimes the advice-givers fall ever-so-slightly short themselves. . .


Toxic leaders and how to get over them once they’re gone
The Mandarin, 2 July 2019. When does an organisation have a duty of care to take action to support its people affected by toxic leadership? 

 

Toxicity is often linked to the so-called “dark triad” of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

Perhaps what our world needs is more wisdom. Instead, we have foolishness (absence of wisdom); worse yet, we have the opposite of wisdom: toxicity. . .

We can not eradicate toxicity, nor ignore toxic personalities and the harm they cause. Toxicity will always exist. It will seduce, contaminate, and pollute. What we can do is teach wisdom, point out foolishness/toxicity to others wherever we see these traits and behaviors, and protect ourselves well (especially if we have been abused before). Education and awareness are key.

The universe runs on the principle that one who can exert the most evil on other creatures runs the show.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Narcissism is associated with grandiosity, sense of entitlement, and vanity. 
Machiavellianism has been linked with being cold, calculating, and deceptive.
Psychopathy is related to impulsivity, lack of conscience, thrill-seeking, andcriminal behaviors. 
These personality traits share much in common. People high in these traits have a tendency toward exploiting others, treating them unfairly and for selfish reasons. In short, they can cause great harm, physically or emotionally or both.
Toxic individuals have the potential to be very destructive. They can bring out the worst in others. This is not surprising since toxic personalities are typically bad-tempered, arrogant, domineering, and unethical. 
Though compared to others, toxic individuals might—and often do—have above-average common sense and high levels of analytical reasoning, they use these abilities for selfish aims. 
Of course, a toxic person is not always highly intelligent. When he is of lower intelligence, he often surrounds himself with intelligent and capable followers who, under his influence, will find ingenious ways to accomplish his harmful desires and realize his malignant intentions.
As leaders, toxic individuals are not concerned with the common good nor with those harmed by their actions. Of course, they have their preferred people (or groups), but their own selfish desires are of the greatest concern. All else is secondary. 
How do toxic leaders gain control of their followers? Not by uniting them but by pitting them against each other.

How The Internet Has Changed (Is Changing) Book Culture



“The personal touch sometimes takes some of the critical edge out of books conversation online. Like many outlets, Bustle is fazing out professional book reviews, and Electric Literature did away with its reviews a couple of years ago now. Instead, these websites are prioritizing personal essays from a diverse group of writers, and both of the aforementioned sites have a women-focused editorial strategy.” – Publishers Weekly

It started in mid-April, barely 3 and 1/2 months into the year. To hit expectant readers before Memorial Day with suggestions for beach reads, summer reads, roadtrip reads, and just plain read reads, publications started rounding up the best books released in 2019:


I love that almost everyone uses the same title — it’s economical and the “(So Far)” is a wink that, yes, it’s a more than a little absurd to be talking about the best books of the year in freaking April. Of course, I couldn’t resist using it too. 

But never mind the meta crap, what books are actually on these lists? Here are some that caught my eye or featured on one or more of these lists.

Normal People by Sally Rooney. This one is going to be on all the year-end lists, so it’s almost required reading at this point.

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon. “This contemporary story mirrors the ancient legend of Antiochus, whose love for the daughter of his dead wife was discovered by the adventurer Appolinus of Tyre. The tale appeared in many forms through the ages; Apollinus becoming the swashbuckling Pericles in Shakespeare’s eponymous play.”

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. “Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories — equal parts wholesome and uncanny; from the tantalizing witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel to the man-shaped confection who one day decides to run as fast as he can — beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.”

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. A retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of the women in the story. In the same vein as Circe and Emily Wilson’s The Odyssey, both of which I loved.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. I wrote about Cirado Perez’s bookback in February. “In her new book, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez argues that the data that scientists, economists, public policy makers, and healthcare providers rely on is skewed, unfairly and dangerously, towards men.”

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup.”

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. “Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes?”

The History of the Bible by John Barton. “In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as “Holy Scripture,” a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text.”

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang. “Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community’s own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life.”

You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian. A collection of stories from the author that broke the internet with Cat Person. Included in the collection is The Good Guy, also very much worth a read.

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl. Reichl’s memoir about her time at Gourmet magazine. “This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.”
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