Jess Wells

In 1986 you could do the bootleg thing – meet a guy in a café and slide an envelope of money to him, he slides you two round-trip tickets to China issued under someone else’s name. Granted, there were visas and passports but the swap at the café was just the first of many incidents that broke what was my own convention, defied my understanding of how it was done, and made it a trip that started out with hubris and wound up filled with wonder.

That was my first trip to China and now, in 2016, I am returning, though just for a quick touchdown in Chengdu after flying nonstop in the United Airlines “Dream Machine,” (though since I am traveling coach I am sure it will not be that dreamy.) And my ultimate destination is the occupied zone of Tibet, which ensures another unique view of life in China. These are things I remember from the initial trip 30 years ago, recounted in three blog posts...

This first post: A Trio of Maps and a Challenge
Part #2: Screaming Through a Hole in the Window
Part #3: Bobble Heads and Beijing Lessons

This was the time before Google Maps and Google Translate, even before the Internet and cell phones, when an intrepid traveler had a guidebook and maybe pulled the pages out after she’d been to a place,

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I've been collecting brilliant things from the New York Times and thinking I would post them one at a time but, as usual, have fallen behind and besides, I felt it was inappropriate to just post someone else’s words with none of my own. However, I’ve gotten past that and now realize that it’s still an important part of sharing. I also discover by saving these that they fall into several categories that reveal what really matters to me: one, wisdom about writing; two, conditions that create joy and health; three, politics. Enjoy!

“The Secret of Effective Motivation”, New York Times, Sunday, July 6, 2014
“There are two kinds of motives for engaging in any activity: internal and instrumental. If a scientist conducts research because she wants to discover important facts about the world, that’s an internal motive, since discovering facts is inherently related to the activity of research. If she conducts research because she wants to achieve scholarly renown, that’s an instrumental motive, since the relation between fame and research is not so inherent. Often, people have both internal and instrumental motives for doing what they do. What motives – internal or instrumental or both – is most conducive to success? You might suppose that a scientist motivated by a desire to discover facts and by a desire to achieve renown will do better work than a scientist motivated by just one of those desires. But…Instrumental motives are not always an asset and can actually be counterproductive to success.…  Read More 

This is one of the finest things I've read in quite a while, and anyone who writes, or is involved with technology in any way may find that this resonates.

“Among the Disrupted” by Leon Wieseltier in the New York Times Book Review, January 18, 2015 at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/books/review/among-the-disrupted.html

“Among the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty and an indecent one; they are expected to render the fruits of their labors for little or even for nothing, and all the miracles of electronic dissemination somehow do not suffice for compensation, either of the fiscal or the spiritual kind. Everyone talks frantically about media, a second -order subject if ever there was one, as content disappears into “content.” What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which ,words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows the force of expression diminishes : Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness cannot confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous.

Meanwhile the discussion of culture is being steadily absorbed into the discussion of business. There are “metrics” for phenomenon that cannot be metrically measured. Numerical values are assigned to things that cannot be captured by numbers. Economic concepts go rampaging through noneconomic realms: economists are our experts on happiness! Where wisdom once was, quantification will now be. Quantification is the most overwhelming influence upon the contemporary American understanding of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost unimaginable data- gathering capabilities of the new technology. The distinction between knowledge and information is a thing of the past, and there is no greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past. Beyond its impact upon culture, the new technology penetrates even deeper levels of identity and experience, to cognition and consciousness. Such transformations embolden certain high priests in the church of tech to espouse the doctrine of “trans-humanism” than to suggest, without any recollection of the bankruptcy of Utopia, without any consideration of the cost to human dignity, that our computational ability will carry us magnificently beyond our humanity and “allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains…”

And even as technologism, which is not the same as technology, asserts itself over more and more precincts of human life, so too does scientism, which is not the same as science. The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions of life must be explained in terms of material dimensions, and that nonscientific understandings must be translated into scientific understandings if they are to qualify as knowledge, is increasingly popular inside and outside the university, where the humanities are disparaged as soft and impractical and insufficiently new… The strongest defense of the humanities  Read More 

(first posted 12/11/12)
Love it when science (especially when delivered by the New York Times) delivers a reason behind a craving, in this case my empty-nester’s new craving to pick up my purse and keys, throw on a black coat, and get out into the San Francisco night, to see young people out on dates, to go where the crowd is, to wander Valencia St. with no destination, out for the thrill of the dark…

“It’s cruel but true: We’re inclined – psychologically and physiologically – to take positive experiences for granted. ..Because…we are biologically hard-wired to crave variety. Variety and novelty affect the brain in much the same way that drugs do – that is, they trigger activity that involves the neurotransmitter dopamine, as do pharmacological highs…Surprise is a potent force. When something novel occurs, we tend to pay attention, to appreciate the experience or circumstance, and to remember it. We are less likely to take our marriage for granted when it continues to deliver strong emotional reactions in us…Surprise is apparently more satisfying than stability.”
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The woman wept into her cell phone as she pushed her shopping cart recently in a big-box discount store. “It’s like a death,” she wailed. “I’m glad for them that they’re in college but it’s grief like they died.” I wanted to wend through the aisles of the store in pursuit and tell her “Yes!! It feels terrible, and then a little better.” Living in the Empty Nest brings a sharp and surprising pain. Every mother I know who is currently saying goodbye to an 18 year is stunned with how intense – and unexpected – the pain is. We were not prepared for this, not warned (as almost all else in parenting, I suppose). I wanted to tell the weeping woman in the store:

It’s a Death: The Empty Nest does bring up feelings of death. It’s the end of an era and there are a million reminders that it’s over: the refrigerator that is now nearly barren, the car stays clean, the DVR contains only educational material. It’s the end of being a hands-on mom.  Read More