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Posts by Paul Costello1

Avoid Cliches like the plague

May 2, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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What Is a Cliché and How to Avoid It in Writing | Grammarly Blog

By Michael Massing

Mr. Massing is the author of “Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind.”

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2023/04/26/108032_1_27Massing_wg_1080p.mp4

Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante, double down, jump-start, be behind the curve, swim against the tide, go south, go belly up, level the playing field, open the floodgates, think outside the box, push the edge of the envelope, pull out all the stops, take the foot off the pedal, pump the brakes, grease the wheel, circle the wagons, charge full steam ahead, pass with flying colors, move the goal posts, pour gasoline on, add fuel to the fire, fly under the radar, add insult to injury, grow by leaps and bounds, only time will tell, go to hell in a handbasket, put the genie back in the bottle, throw the baby out with the bathwater, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, have your cake and eat it too, a taste of one’s own medicine, stick to one’s guns, above one’s pay grade, punch above one’s weight, lick one’s wounds, pack a punch, roll with the punches, come apart at the seams, throw a wrench into, caught in the cross hairs, cross the Rubicon, tempt fate, go ballistic, on tenterhooks, hit the nail on the head, a nail in the coffin, joined at the hip, welcome with open arms, rub shoulders with, shoot oneself in the foot, dip one’s toes into, have a leg up, dance to the tune of, the next shoe to drop, in the DNA of, the gold standard, a gold mine, land mines,

a run for the money, money to burn, penny-wise and pound-foolish, lap of luxury, off the charts, over a barrel, late to the party, it takes two to tango, behind the eight ball, pride of place, final straw, full throttle, no holds barred, red flag, silver lining, on a silver platter, in the rearview mirror, bargain basement, silos, morph, meme, trope, mind meld, warp speed, inner demons, have skin in the game, game changer, change agent, strong suit, ground game, ground zero, inflection point, tipping point, playbook, page turner, singing from the same hymnal, singing a new tune, straight out of central casting, the devil’s in the details, take the bull by the horns, the canary in the coal mine, chickens coming home to roost, beat a dead horse, pony up, the straw that broke the camel’s back, open a can of worms, buy a pig in a poke, cash cow, rabbit hole, dog days, dog whistle, bells and whistles, tool kit, third rail, the tip of the iceberg, the light at the end of the tunnel, the arc of history, speak truth to power, break the glass ceiling, the writing’s on the wall, between a rock and a hard place, beyond the pale, take the wind out of the sails of, that ship has sailed, sinking ship, tidal wave, roller-coaster ride, gravy train, tanked, cratered, Rubik’s Cube, Rosetta Stone, Rolodex, poster child, problem child,

rock star, pundit, national treasure, charter member, heavy hitter, heavy lifting, political football, throw a Hail Mary, full-court press, hit a home run, play with house money, laser-focused, secret sauce, red meat, piece of cake, bread and butter, cherry-pick, low-hanging fruit, sticker shock, kick-start, kick into overdrive, kick the tires, kick the can down the road, where the rubber meets the road, an albatross around the neck, a feather in the cap, long in the tooth, armed to the teeth, cut one’s teeth, rib tickler, spine tingling, pull the wool over the eyes of, pull the plug on, pull the trigger, loosen the reins, sweep under the carpet, throw under the bus, throw for a loop, read the riot act, lead the pack, the short end of the stick, at the drop of a hat,

the jury is still out, hung out to dry, as if that weren’t enough, it would be an understatement to say, it would be no exaggeration to say, despite or perhaps because of, what goes around comes around, for all intents and purposes, make a long story short, the fact of the matter, to be sure, truth be told, a who’s who, famously, arguably, literally, zeitgeist, mantra, optics, granular, narrative, interrogate, paradigm, venue, robust, compelling, fever pitch, pitch perfect, picture perfect, perfect storm, take by storm, eye of the storm, back burner, petri dish, echo chamber, hot button, hard wire, go viral, bingeable, blockbuster, on steroids, testosterone-laced, metastasize, contextualize, preternaturally, outsize, gobsmacked, turbocharged, weaponized, apocalyptic, existential …

Montgomery Co. schools revise history curriculum in 4th, 5th grades

May 1, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Nicole Asbury

Montgomery County Public Schools’ new social studies framework will expose fourth- and fifth-graders to more American history — particularly Black history — at a younger age.

The new curriculum will incorporate anti-bias and anti-racist content and local history about Montgomery County, according to Tracy Oliver-Gary, the district’s social studies supervisor. It was presented to the county school board this week andreceived unanimous approval.

“The goal is that students should be able to see themselves in the curriculum,” Oliver-Gary said.

Montgomery County’s revisions to its history curriculum follow changes made by the state education board. The state board regularly reviews the curriculums it distributes to school districts, like its sex education framework. But Montgomery — Maryland’s largest school district, with roughly 159,000 students — is also changing its curriculum as a part of an anti-racist audit launched earlier this year.

Civics legislation snared in national debate over talking about race in education

Students in upper grades in the school system have pushed for some of the revisions, arguing that students with underrepresented identities don’t see themselves in lessons they learn in the classroom.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve always learned about White men,” Sia Badri, a rising senior at Wootton High School, told the board this week. “It always made me feel less than, like my life and my identity weren’t significant enough to be shown to my peers or the world.”

She also highlighted how much of the content she learned in the classroom about the civil rights movement has ignored the role Black women played.

“[Badri] raises an important issue of inclusiveness, which is an issue we are constantly striving to achieve,” Board President Brenda Wolff said. She added that she believed the board should look at its curriculums “in terms of inclusiveness in all areas.”

Nationally, education culture wars have led toparents, educators and school board members sparring over how schools teach history.

These are books school systems don’t want you to read, and why

Montgomery’s new fourth- and fifth-grade history framework was met with little dissent at the meeting this week. The school system is a part of a liberal and racially diverse county, and has traditionally sought to include more approaches to equity and inclusion in its school policies. Black alumnae from one of the school system’s high schools have also pushed for a curriculum revision that highlights the impact of racism.

Hana O’Looney, the student member of the board and a Japanese American student, pointed to her experience learning about internment camps in Advanced Placement U.S. History — a curriculum developed by the College Board. She said the most that internment camps were discussed were as a bullet point in a slide show, though an entire generation of Japanese Americans were affected.

“That’s a concern, and that has a real effect on how students view their own identity, and then move forward and progress in the world,” O’Looney said.

The school system has also made efforts to train educators who want to teach more about Black history. It has produced a voluntary four-part module for educators to improve their understanding of enslavement in the United States, Oliver-Gary said. Over the summer, the school system is partnering with Montgomery Heritage to create field trips to historically Black sites in the county.

“My goal is to have multiple opportunities for teachers to be able to develop their learning, because this is going to be a big lift,” Oliver-Gary said.

Education Department tries to tamp down controversy over U.S. history/civics grant program

Under the previous framework, students began learning about early American history in the fifth grade. When the new curriculum is implemented in the 2023-2024 school year, it will advance those lessons: Fourth-graders will begin learning about early American history, and fifth-graders will begin learning about the U.S. Constitution, ending the year learning about contemporary times.

Other elementarygrade levels will also see revisions, based on the state board’s changes. Second- and third-graders will see the changes in 2024-2025 school year; kindergartners and first-graders, the year after.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/30/montgomery-county-schools-history-curriculum/

Incidents of hate, bias, racism lead to Montgomery school action plan

May 1, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Nicole Asbury

The number of incidents of hate have increased exponentially in Montgomery County Public Schools, leading Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight to roll out several initiatives, from more teacher training to a community advisory group, to combat the problems.r

McKnight highlighted the action plan in front of a crowd of students, parents, teachers and county council members during a wide-ranging speech denouncing the hateful acts, drawing on her mother’s lessons of serving others and requesting help from the community.

The initiatives include training for all staff, beginning next year, on responding to incidents of hate and bias. There will also be better coordination from school staff in responding to incidents, along with equity experts to scrutinize the responses.The school system’s fourth- and fifth-grade curriculum is being revised to include more lessons on social justice, and students will learn more about equity issues during assemblies and other school events.

“We have inherited a system that was designed for White students who lived in Whiteneighborhoods and were taught by White teachers, only later to be open for all other students,” McKnight said, explaining theschool system’s transition from segregated schools to its current diverse enrollment. “History matters, and how we treat students for whom the system was not originally built.”

Montgomery County and its school system — which is Maryland’s largest — have reported a rise in hate-based incidents this school year, officials have said. Data from the Montgomery County Police Department showed that 157 incidents with a bias indicator were reported in 2022, and 29 of those incidents were at a school. That was a roughly 383 percent increase of incidents that targeted a school compared with 2021, when six incidents were reported. Fifty-two percent of the incidents in 2022 were antisemitic.

“We’re called together today because of the unfortunate reality that these sorts of actions have become more and more common,” McKnight said. She added that in this year alone, the county’s schools have reported one hateful incident each day on average, which is triple the rate reported the previous year.

In March, roughly two dozen incidents were reported that involved the county’s schools. The reports included sticky notes that were assembled in a swastika formation in the boys’ bathroom of an unidentified middle school and students directing racial slurs at other students. Northwood High School closed its outdoor facilities to the public last month after fliers containing antisemitic language were posted four times on its athletic fields.

Several of the county’s schools have been vandalized with antisemitic remarks and symbols, including several swastikas drawn on desks, in drawers and on tables at schools. An entrance sign at Walt Whitman High School’s entrance sign was defaced with the words, “Jews Not Welcome” in December, and staff at the school reported receiving antisemitic emails a day later.

Students have walked out of classes to protest the hateful acts and lobbiedfor the school system to teach more about the Holocaust and antisemitism.

Hannah Zuck, a junior at Magruder High School, said when the school system first addressed the Holocaust in the seventh grade, several of her peers made jokes and comments that were “misunderstandings sometimes directed at me as a Jewish person.” Many of the comments increased this school year, especially after Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, made several antisemitic comments that included praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis. Some of her peers implied that West “has a point,” she said.

Earlier this school year, her school reported antisemitic graffiti on a student’s desk. The principal sent a sharp email denouncing hate, Zuck said, but there weren’t any follow-upconversations with students after that.

“I don’t think most of the Magruder community had realized that there had been this shift within the Jewish students at schools in feeling … unsafe, maybe feeling unwelcome,” Zuck, 17, said. “I don’t think they realized it because there wasn’t that broad of a response.”

The county’s schools have also seen hateful incidents aimed at the LGBTQ community. In February, a middle school teacher found plans on a student’s schoollaptop for a “homophobic club.” School board members have reported receivinganti-LGBTQ rhetoric in emails since the system in January added books as a supplemental curriculum that includeLGBTQ characters.

McKnight stood by the district’s curriculum Thursday. Some have asked “Why does MCPS include texts by LGBTQ+ authors and with LGBTQ+ characters in our curriculum?” she asked. “Yet the question should be, ‘Why are we just now including these texts in our curriculum? Why has it taken so long?’”

McKnight — who is the school system’s first Black woman to serve as superintendent — has pledged to do more to combat antisemitic attitudes emerging among the county’s youths. In February, she announced that students who commit hateful acts will have them documented in their student file and theirparents will be brought in for mandatory follow-up conversations. The school system has also partnered with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Anti-Defamation League to improve its teachingabout antisemitism and its impact throughout history. Those more robust lessons will begin next school year.

McKnight also referenced the school system’s “anti-racist audit,” a report released last year, that found students of color have a less satisfactory experience with the school system compared with their White peers. She announced that a follow-up “anti-racist action plan” in response to the audit would be presented at a May 11 school board meeting.

Schools in the Whitman High cluster are partnering with the JCRC and Anti-Defamation League to train all school staff during the summer on addressing hateful incidents, said Guila Franklin Siegel, the JCRC’s associate director. Siegel recommended McKnight’s action plan — including staff training — be rolled out consistently across all of the county’s 210 schools.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/04/27/montgomery-schools-hate-antisemitism/

This element is critical to human flourishing — yet missing from the news

April 26, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Hope: The 3 Things needed to Grow and Thrive | Springs Christian Academy | Christian School | Pre-K | Elementary | High School | Winnipeg

By Amanda Ripley Contributing columnist

At a cocktail party in a crowded Washington living room some years ago, I met a magazine editor who was working on a high-profile new book. It would transport the reader into the future, he told me, describing in vivid, terrifying prose all the catastrophes that might happen because of climate change: unbreathable air, dying oceans, hunger, drowning.

Would it offer people any hope? I asked.

“It’s not my job to give people hope,” he said, sounding vaguely disgusted. I got the sense that hope was for the weak. And that by asking my question, I was weak, too.

A year later, his book ended up being a bestseller. So, I figured, maybe he was right. Maybe hope is not our job. But then, I couldn’t help but wonder, whose job was it?

Last summer, I wrote a piece in this newspaper admitting that I have been selectively avoiding contact with the news, even though I’m a journalist myself. Traditional news coverage, I had slowly come to realize, was missing half the story, distorting my view of reality. It frequently overlooked and underplayed storylines and dimensions that humans need to thrive in the modern world — with the three most notable elements being hope, agency and dignity.

Amanda Ripley: I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?

That column sparked an unexpected response. I heard from thousands of readers caught in the same struggle — wanting to be informed about the world but not bludgeoned into fatalism. Many of you reported that you had taken matters into your own hands. One man, after listening to devastating stories on the radio, does his own Google searches to find examples of people trying to solve the very same problems. Then he shares the links he has found with his friends and family on Facebook, basically doing a job reporters don’t want to do.

Others urged me to check out alternative sources they had found, including the Progress Network newsletter, which curates stories of human cooperation and ingenuity, and the 1440 daily briefing, which attempts to strip bias from the news. Still others said they have sought refuge in sports, hyperlocal news, Wordle and, for one reader, medieval history.

This year, with your help, I’d like to revisit each of the missing elements, starting with the most controversial of the three.

Follow Amanda Ripley’s opinionsFollow

The word hope sounds gauzy and fey, like rainbows and sunsets. It feels like a gateway drug to delusion and denial. “I don’t want your hope,” climate activist Greta Thunberg said at the World Economic Forum in 2019. “I want you to panic.”

But rainbows and sunsets are explicable phenomena, the scattering of sunlight in the distance, and it turns out that hope is, too. For more than 30 years, scientists have been researching hope and deconstructing its building blocks. And it’s surprisingly tangible. “It’s important to say what hope is not,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in her book “Hope in the Dark.” “It is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine.”

So what is it? Hope is more like a muscle than an emotion. It’s a cognitive skill, one that helps people reject the status quo and visualize a better way. If it were an equation, it would look something like: hope = goals + road map + willpower. “Hope is the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better,” according to Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman in their book, “Hope Rising.”

Decades of research have now proved that hope, defined this way, can be reliably measured and taught. Using 12 questions, called the Hope Scale — a version of which you can take yourself here — more than 2,000 studies have demonstrated that people with stronger hope skills perform better in school, sports and work. They manage illness, pain and injury better and score higher on assessments of happiness, purpose and self-esteem. Among victims of domestic violence, child abuse and other forms of trauma, hope appears to be one of the most effective antidotes yet studied.

Still, there is resistance to hope, even among those who know it best. For a long time, Hellman, a psychologist by training, did not think giving people hope was his job, either. At conferences, he would wave people off when they asked him how to build their capacity for hope. “I don’t do hope. I study it,” he’d tell them.

I recognize myself in this story. As a journalist, trying to look smart in story meetings, it always felt safer to remain skeptical. It was easier to pitch stories about buffoonery than about progress. It’s a strange trick of the mind, especially because it’s the news media’s relentless negativity that has led so many people to give up on institutions — or on journalism. Cynicism feels protective, even when it’s not.

Martin Baron: We want objective judges and doctors. Why not journalists too?

About a decade ago, Hellman decided to stop sitting on the sidelines — partly because of his own life story. All through high school, he had been homeless, always on the precipice of catastrophe. And specific people had helped him imagine another life and feel as if he was capable of getting there (remember: goals + road map + willpower). So he decided he had an obligation not just to study hope but to teach it.

So far, he and his colleagues at the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa have trained more than 22,000 government employees in Oklahoma, California and Washington to cultivate hope on purpose — not just among individuals but across entire systems, in welfare programs, school districts and prisons, among other places. They have found that it reduces burnout and improves outcomes for workers and those they serve. “It literally is strategic planning,” Hellman says. “Hope is the process. Well-being is the outcome.”

As it is, when journalists try to do hopeful stories, they often end up insulting our intelligence — with stories about small acts of kindness, often involving animals. There is no goal or road map.

But if this other, more muscular kind of hope is critical to human flourishing, then why can’t journalists make it part of their job? It would mean asking totally different questions, just as doggedly as ever: What are realistic goals, in the face of a wicked problem? What are some of the ways other communities have tried to get there? And how did they manage to press on, even when things didn’t go as planned?

What would it look like if careers were made (and prizes won) based on this kind of inquiry and storytelling? We might see fewer column inches just describing (over and over again) the alarming rise in depression among teens — and more stories such as this one by Anya Kamenetz, investigating a surprising remedy that has been shown to reduce psychological distress. When it comes to crime coverage, we might become as obsessed with declines as we are with spikes. Why are homicides down 31 percent in East St. Louis over the past four years, when they remain high in so many other places?

When it comes to climate change, there is hope, defined this way, at least, and there always was. Humans still have enormous control over what happens to our planet. In the past five years, we have cut expected warming almost in half. The world is on track to add as much renewable energy generation in the next five years as it did in the past 20, according to the International Energy Agency. There’s much more to be done, of course, but getting there requires rigorously reported stories that help us visualize a road map. Why not report out hope, the same way we report out dread?

I know it is difficult for some in my field to make this shift. The more hopeless news you consume, the harder it is to see hope in the wild — and no one consumes more news than journalists. But the research also shows that it is possible. “Hope is malleable,” says Matthew Gallagher, a clinical psychologist who studies hope at the University of Houston. “It’s not a static thing, like how tall you are. It can change.”

For journalists, hope is a defiant way of being in the world: ever on the lookout for what is but always alert to what might be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/30/amanda-ripley-hope-news/

The kids are not okay, and D.C. schools stand to lose crucial therapists

April 26, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Students and advocates have expressed concern while pleading with lawmakers to invest more, despite budget cuts, toward mental health services in schools

Perspective by Theresa Vargas
Metro columnist April 19, 2023 at 3:43 p.m. EDT

Last spring, Briana D’Accurzio was one of two mental health therapists at one D.C. school. This year, she is the only one. That’s not because fewer students at the school are experiencing anxiety and depression. That’s not because fewer students at the school are facing struggles at home or with their peers. And that’s not because fewer students at the school are harming themselves or contemplating suicide.

“The need is just as great as it was last year,” D’Accurzio told me on a recent morning.

The crisis in American girlhood

She explained that limited resources meant difficult decisions had to be made, and one of those decisions involved moving the other therapist to another D.C. school. That has left D’Accurzio alone to cover a school with nearly 1,600 students.

“If I was able to take all the referrals I get, I would have a caseload that is double, triple, quadruple what I have now,” she said. But she can’t take on every case, so she often has to refer students to clinicians outside of the school, and that process can mean scrambling and waiting, she said.

The kids are not okay. They are not okay in many places across the country, and they are not okay in the District. That should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to what students have been forced to face in recent years on top of normal childhood challenges: a pandemic that snatched from them loved ones and stability, gun violence that is taking from them classmates and a sense of safety, and an opioid epidemic that has left them contemplating carrying Narcan in hopes of keeping their peers from overdosing.

Children keep seeing grown-ups killed in the nation’s capital. They’re victims, too.

School-based therapists, educators and child advocates have seen up close how D.C. students are struggling, and they are worried. In recent weeks, I have spoken to some and listened to the testimony of others, and they have expressed a shared fear: that the city’s proposed budget could cause schools to lose crucial clinicians at a time when vacancies are already going unfilled.

“I can’t picture having less,” D’Accurzio said. “We need so much more, so thinking of having less is really scary.”

In recent weeks, advocates, educators and students have testified in front of city lawmakers, pleading with them to add $3.45 million to the proposed budget to sufficiently fund the community-based organizations that place mental health clinicians in schools across the city. The ask is small compared with the cost of failing those children, but it comes at a time when the city is looking to slash spending.

Schools brace for challenges as once-in-a-lifetime cash runs out

“In a year of tough choices, we urge you to continue to prioritize addressing the youth mental health crisis,” Judith Sandalow, the executive director of Children’s Law Center, said in testimony delivered at a budget hearing on Friday. “Unless there is sufficient funding to allow [community-based organizations] to continue to offer competitive pay, incentives and professional support to clinicians, the entire program is at risk.”

As proof of the need, Sandalow cited the findings of a 2021 DC Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Some of the data she noted: 28 percent of middle school students have seriously thought about killing themselves, about 12 percent of middle and high school students have taken prescription pain medicine without a doctor’s prescription, and more than 19 percent of middle school students and more than 25 percent of high school students reported that their mental health was “not good” most of the time or always.

Several students also testified on Friday, sharing their own experiences and calling on the city to add the funding to the proposed $19.7 billion budget.

One student described struggling to find a clinician in Southeast Washington. He said he goes to school every day but doesn’t have access to a therapist in the building. He said when he asked for places to get help outside of school, he was given locations nowhere near where he lives. “To me, this is unacceptable,” he said.

Another student spoke from inside a moving car. The high school sophomore said she had started cutting herself in middle school, and at 16 she still cuts herself and struggles to control her anger. She described meeting with clinicians over the years but never getting enough time to spend with any of them to open up. “Us youth are mentally struggling. Us youth are screaming for help,” she said. And there aren’t enough mental health professionals, she said, “to hear our cries.”

On a school day, a student sat inside D’Accurzio’s office. The 18-year-old didn’t want to share her name, but she wanted to talk about why it’s important for students to have access to therapists in schools.

Students face so much pressure to succeed and the world places so many problems in front of them that they need a space where they can talk to someone without judgment, the teenager said. She described getting that when she walks into D’Accurzio’s office. The teenager said she often advises friends and relatives to take care of their mental health needs.

“It shouldn’t be something you should be ashamed of,” she said. “It shouldn’t be something we put aside for later. It should be a number one priority.”

She’s right — the mental health needs of the city’s children deserve to be prioritized. D.C. lawmakers will have to make some difficult decisions before finalizing the budget, but providing enough funding to make sure schools don’t lose clinicians should be a no-brainer.

D’Accurzio works for Mary’s Center, a community organization that has placed clinicians in more than two dozen D.C. schools. On the hard days, D’Accurzio said, she thinks about the students who have stepped into her office with complex needs and have successfully graduated out of therapy. Some have told her, she said, “I didn’t see myself alive at this time.”

“If we didn’t have mental health professionals in the schools to attend to their needs, I worry what their future would look like,” she said. If schools lose clinicians, she added, that “would be detrimental to the entire community. It would be detrimental to the students we’re servicing. It would be detrimental to their families.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/19/schools-therapists-dc-budget/

How to defend against the rise of ChatGPT? Think like a poet.

April 26, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Jaswinder Bolina’s “English as Second Language and Other Poems” is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

And so we’ve come to the end of the world again, and this time, it will be death by a thousand chattering bots. But apocalypse aside, most striking to me about ChatGPT and other large-language-model artificial intelligence systems is what their chatter reveals about us — specifically, our language, education, work and the grimly redundant human condition.

I happen to be a poet and teacher of poetry, so language, education and the grim human condition take up most of my Outlook calendar. In thinking about AI, I’ve become preoccupied with — and weirdly heartened by — its utter banality.

AI bots aren’t so much artificially “intelligent” as they are opportunistically efficient at learning from the bland patterns in our language. Entire industries have been built around cliched and predictable writing and thinking, from adspeak to clickbait media to the formulaic pop songs, movies and television that suck up our free time. There is so much blasé filler for AI to mine, and every sentence, paragraph and document on ChatGPT’s kill list is another example of human expression so devoid of personality that the person is rendered superfluous.

As AI proliferates, this lack of originality in our daily language is what will render so many of our jobs irrelevant. But this is where I become optimistic. Because to me, it’s clear that one of our best defenses against the rise of the writing machines might be to learn how to think like a poet.

Sure, I’m biased, but consider what the making of a poem — that small (or large) artifact William Carlos Williams famously called a “machine made of words” — can teach us.P

Diametrically opposed to cliche, poets are trained to invent and reinvent language to arrive at fresh expressions of our angst, joy, anguish and wonder.

Tracy K. Smith: “The universe is expanding. Look: postcards / And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim, / Orphan socks and napkins dried into knots.”

Though poets do focus on our gnarly existential predicaments, the poet’s first job is to keep language from stagnating or, worse, from boring us to death.Advertisement

Ross Gay: “… and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart, / this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw.”

Sometimes manic, sometimes depressive, poetry might indulge in bouts of narcissism and embellishment, but most of all, it must be earnest, singular and unpredictable.

David Berman: “… and if the apocalypse turns out / to be a world-wide nervous breakdown, / if our five billion minds collapse at once, / well I’d call that a surprise ending / and this hill would still be beautiful, / a place I wouldn’t mind dying / alone or with you.”

In a word, it must be human.

Despite the laudable achievements of our science, technology and engineering, it’s funny how language, not mathematics, could be the hill humanity dies on.

So, here we stand even as our algorithms whiff on their AP English exams, as they crank out bad jokes, lousy fiction and crappy poems:

“I am but a vessel, / floating on the sea of time, / Drifting on the winds of change, / A soul in search of rhyme.”

This, ChatGPT3’s response when prompted to write a poem in the style of Jaswinder Bolina, goes on for eight unremarkable stanzas before culminating in its hackneyed conclusion:

“Let us embrace the journey, / And all its twists and turns, / For in the end, we shall find, / That every step we take, in life, we learn.”

While I appreciate its optimism, this jejune algorithm might be using the word “we” a little too loosely. This is because, even if it could convincingly mimic the highly selective diction and syntax in my or anyone else’s poetry, it has no access to our idiosyncratic interiority.

It can’t remember the faces of the people I’ve loved or pained, the names of those who have hurt or needed me. It never felt the humidity breezing in through a summer window, the taut urgency of awaiting a call from the oncologist, grill smoke in the bleachers, or the melody of my mother calling me down to roti.

Here is ChatGPT’s ultimate weakness laid bare. It knows nothing of life except what it learns from us, and to learn, it needs our language. But where that language model is small, unusual and unpatterned, the machines can’t ape us.

There is a lesson in this, especially if you’re worried about your or your kids’ employment prospects. I’m not going to suggest that you tear down the walls of your cubicle and join me in the local hipster cafe. But I am going to suggest that the workers of the world, like poets, become more attentive to sensations and ideas no disembodied algorithm can experience or invent.

This means expressing experience in words and sentences that are tactile, empathetic and original. It means learning to do some of this by taking classes in creative writing, music, theater, painting and dance; by studying and making literature and art, those allegedly pointless pursuits that our culture and our universities have increasingly neglected. It means applying the lessons learned in creative enterprise to other industries, to invent new and more humane ways of using technology to answer human concerns and solve human crises.

Now, when the ability to distinguish between rote and original thinking will matter more than ever, focusing on so-called STEM and other professional fields alone — the clarion call of career counselors and university administrators — will not be enough.

After all, AI is coming for our doctors, coders, engineers and lawyers, too. Even in these fields, the career paths that wind into the yellow wood of our AI-enhanced future will belong to those inventive enough to use technology in ways no algorithm can emulate or predict.

So, let the bots inherit our dead language, dull thinking and workplace drudgery. Let the rest belong to us. Whatever we make in that real and surreal future will have to be inimitable, human and true — which is to say, it will have to be something like a poem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/chatgpt-poetry-ai-language/

What Is Future-Mindedness?

April 19, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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What Is Future-Mindedness?

By Nate Barksdale

Future-mindedness, or prospection, is the ability to envision and think about the future.

It’s something that so many organisms do that it’s been described as a core organizing principle of animal and human behavior. Countless animals use prospection to adapt their behavior to their environments, allowing them to improve their chances of finding food or a mate, and to avoid danger. It’s also something humans seem to be especially good at: thinking about the future helps us make decisions, set and achieve goals, and cultivate cooperation and generosity.

How Does Prospection Work?

Thinking about the future is closely tied to memory. Knowledge of the past is a critical ingredient for predicting what might happen next. Studies show that people asked to envision specific future events occurring in a familiar setting like their home describe the events with more sensory details like sounds, smell or visuals then they do when prompted to imagine the same events happening in an unfamiliar place. In terms of brain function, prospection is thought to deeply involve the brain’s “default mode network,” which is active when people are not engaged in particular tasks. This suggests that prospection is a way of keeping our minds active and attentive during downtime by engaging in “mental time travel” to simulate and prepare for possible future scenarios.

How Is Envisioning the Future Helpful?

A fundamental use of prospection is in evaluating which actions to take or to avoid. Studies in rats and humans have examined the parts of the brain used in navigation, highlighting the close connection between remembering locations and simulating expected actions. Beyond simpler tasks like planning routes, multiple studies have shown that how we think about the future (and about our future selves) can influence all kinds of decisions. 

For instance, many of us underestimate the value of future benefits—it’s easy to feel the present opportunity cost of saving for retirement but harder to internalize the future benefits of increased savings. But by actively thinking about and identifying with our future selves, we can counteract that tendency and and properly evaluate tradeoffs. When we feel more connected to our future selves, we become more willing to delay gratification for a greater reward. 

Does Future-Mindedness Change as We Age?

While infants show very basic abilities to think about the future, children make a leap between ages three and five in their future-mindedness. One study found that at least one aspect of prospection — the ability to create detailed descriptions of past and future episodes — may peak around age 21 before declining. Failing to think about the future enough, or thinking about it in detrimental ways could contribute to and may even cause conditions including depression, addiction, anxiety, and ADHD. But a growing body of studies suggest that there are techniques that can help people practice and improve their prospection in order to encourage psychological growth and alleviate symptoms of certain disorders. 

The Future of Future-Mindedness

Many basic questions about the nature of prospection have yet to be fully worked out, including how different forms of future-mindedness (from mind-wandering to delay discounting) relate to each other and function at the neurological level. Researchers are also beginning to investigate factors that influence individual and group differences in prospection. For instance, people in Western countries tend to use more detail when simulating future events than do people from East Asian countries, and women tend to use more detail than men. Why might these discrepancies occur and what differences do they make in people’s lives? We also need to build out our understanding of what happens when prospection goes wrong — when mind-wandering becomes depressive rumination, or when people’s ability to think about the future wanes due to mental disorders or the simple fact of aging.

Still Curious?

Read more about how we can feel more connected to our future selves — and why we should want to.

The Greater Good Science Center has a detailed white paper on Future-Mindedness, commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation.

University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center has established Prospective Psychology to further the science of prospection.

https://www.templeton.org/news/what-is-future-mindedness

4 Books That Taught Me Much More Than My Expensive Degree

March 29, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Margaret Pan  On Medium

When affordable books have much more value than expensive courses

I don’t regret the time I spend in college but, in hindsight, the things I learned sitting in endless lectures and studying dozens of textbooks had little value for me after my graduation.

I quickly realized that the place to seek the knowledge I needed to progress in life and grow as a person wasn’t a classroom, but a library.

There’s a quote by Jim Rohn that goes,

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

I couldn’t agree more with these words. People tend to underestimate books, their power, and the knowledge they can offer you. Yet, most of the things I’ve learned worth knowing in life, I’ve learned from books.

Here are four spectacular books I can confidently say taught me much more than my expensive degree.

You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney

Photo credit: Goodreads

How smart do you think you are?

This probably doesn’t come as a big surprise, but humans aren’t the rational creatures we think we are.

Most of the time we don’t see the world as it really is. From the number of friends we have on Facebook to the smartphones we choose to purchase, we’re constantly deluding ourselves.

The culprits responsible for our errors in thinking? Cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies. Once we understand and learn to recognize them, the better and more logical our decision-making will be.

In this spectacular book, the author examines how our biases taint our perception of the world, by delving into a wide range of psychological research and breaking down 48 psychology concepts.

Why you should read this book:

What I loved about this book is that it pushes you to challenge your perception of the world and everything you thought you knew about the way your brain makes decisions.

Since it covers a wide range of concepts, most of the information in it is extremely valuable in the process of becoming more self-aware, and making more rational decisions at work, at home, in your relationships, and even in your daily interactions.

It’s also evident (and important) that the author did his research — everything he says is backed by data and studies — which gives the book credibility.

“THE MISCONCEPTION: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is. THE TRUTH: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that’s OK, it keeps you sane.”

“You can’t rage against the machine through rebellious consumption.”

“We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

Against Empathy by Paul Bloom

Photo credit: Goodreads

It seems that nowadays people are almost obsessed with empathy. But did you know that empathy can lead to inequality and immorality?

That our ability to sense other people’s emotions and feel for them might be prejudiced and selfish?

I didn’t know that using empathy as a moral guide could be bad for me until I read this book.

The author, who’s a psychologist, argues that empathy often clouds our judgment and leads us to make unfair decisions in every area of our lives.

Backing his arguments with scientific findings, he explores empathy’s limitations and shows us a better alternative: rational compassion.

Why you should read this book:

Empathy isn’t perfect nor is the solution we need to help others.

That’s the #1 lesson the book teaches you, which, IMO, is an extremely important one, considering people’s obsession with “improving their empathy”, and “learning new empathy techniques”.

By reading the book, you’ll understand the distinctions between selective empathy and rational compassion and you’ll learn how to use the latter in order to make better decisions, and genuinely contribute to making the world a better place.

“If God exists, maybe He can simultaneously feel the pain and pleasure of every sentient being. But for us mortals, empathy really is a spotlight. It’s a spotlight that has a narrow focus, one that shines most brightly on those we love and gets dim for those who are strange or different or frightening.”

“The idea I’ll explore is that the act of feeling what you think others are feeling — whatever one chooses to call this — is different from being compassionate, from being kind, and most of all, from being good. From a moral standpoint, we’re better off without it.”
― Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Firestarters by Raoul Davis Jr./Paul Eder/Kathy Palokoff

Photo credit: Goodreads

What is the difference between people who think about making things happen and those who actually make them happen?

That’s a question none of my college professors or dozens of textbooks could answer…but this book did.

Featuring stories about successful people from a variety of professions (CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc), each describing what helped them become achievers, it’s one of the few books that genuinely motivates you to actively pursue and realize your dreams.

Why you should read this book:

If you’re tired of reading the same boring and practically useless recommendations you see in the majority of self-help books, you’ll be surprised by the nuggets of wisdom displayed in this book.

The authors offer plenty of practical advice on how you can discover what you truly want out of life, and what steps you can take toward achieving it.

However, if we’re being honest, sometimes reading some piece of advice, no matter how useful, isn’t enough, right?

That’s why the authors have gone one step further, including self-assessment exercises, checklists, questions to spark your thinking, and other practical tools in the book — all of which will inspire and help you “ignite your own fires”.

“Introspection is a form of self-management. You reflect. You decide. You change. You allow yourself to grow.”

“People’s confidence in their abilities influences how they approach life. Their dreams are likely anchored to what they feel they can achieve.”

“If you want to make a difference, you must live like no one else and strive to achieve goals that others view as impossible to reach.”
― Raoul Davis Jr., Paul Eder, Kathy Palokoff, Firestarters

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Photo credit: Goodreads

This is one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books and is pretty close to my degree since geopolitics was examined and analyzed in 1/3 of my courses.

None of those courses examined geopolitics in such a rich, informative, and engaging way as this book though.

Geopolitics is the study of the influence of geography on political decisions and gives you an idea about the dynamics between global economic, social, and political forces.

You might not be particularly interested in history, politics, or geography, but you need to have a basic idea of the way leaders of nations think and act, especially now you’ve seen the impact of the Russia- Ukraine war on the whole world.

The book takes you on a journey through the world by using maps, facts, and his spectacular sense of humor, explains the complex relationship between them, and showcases how geography constrains their leaders.

Why you should read this book:

You know that feeling when you watch the news but have a hard time following what’s being analyzed because you have no idea of the events’ background?

Well, it’s about time you read this book.

Even if geopolitics isn’t your thing, the book is a must if you want to be better informed about the relationships between various nations around the world, and how much geography plays in a state’s destiny.

Upon finishing it, you’ll have a better understanding of global current affairs and much more knowledge than the average person has about politics, history, or geography.

“What is now the EU was set up so that France and Germany could hug each other so tightly in a loving embrace that neither would be able to get an arm free with which to punch the other.”

“Sometimes you will hear leaders say, “I’m the only person who can hold this nation together.” If that’s true then that leader has truly failed to build their nation.”

“Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

Thank you for reading! If you liked these book recommendations, consider subscribing to my monthly book newsletter! It’s free, and each month you’ll get book reviews, recommendations, and reading tips!

If you enjoy reading stories like these, consider signing up to become a Medium member and get unlimited access to my and other incredible writers’ stories on Medium. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small commission. Thanks!

https://baos.pub/4-books-that-taught-me-much-more-than-my-expensive-degree-c8ca0ca475b4

Hope and Grit: Companions on the Road to Change

March 22, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Hope and Grit: Companions on the Road to Change

Philosopher of education Sarah Stitzlein on the power of pragmatist hope.

By Annelise Jolley

This piece is from the Templeton Ideas archives. It was originally published in 2021.

In 2016, psychologist Angela Duckworth published the book Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance. Grit was an instant NYT bestseller. Even before the book’s publication, more than eight million people watched Duckworth’s 2013 TED Talk on the subject. Since then, a spate of articles and education initiatives have sprung up with the goal of helping Americans become “grittier.” Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance toward a single goal.

Duckworth posits that grit, rather than talent, is the secret to achievement. It is the defining trait that sets high achievers above the rest.

Maybe it’s not surprising that grit has caught on from the classroom to the workplace. American culture prizes tenacity and self-reliance, and our systems reward a stick-with-it, bootstraps approach. Grit, after all, gets results. 

Duckworth believes grit can be cultivated, which is good news for those with their sights set on a far-off goal. Psychologists and education philosophers have also found evidence that grit is teachable, leading schools such as KIPP public charters to incorporate grit into their education model. For philosopher of education Sarah Stitzlein, cultivating the character traits that produce good citizens is exactly what schools are for. But Stitzlein believes that there’s another virtue worth pursuing in the classroom and beyond, which she calls “pragmatist hope.”

A muscular kind of hope

Why “pragmatist”? Stitzlein uses this term to define a kind of hope that is concerned with what works. Pragmatist hopers don’t just cross their fingers and expect things to get better; they move toward a brighter future by acting, evaluating the success of their actions, and adjusting accordingly. This is a muscular hope, employing creative problem solving and imagination rather than simple optimism.

Instead of fixating solely on a long-term goal, people who hope pragmatically focus on concrete, immediate changes that inch them along in the right direction. It’s like a scientific hypothesis: we act on our hope, see if the action produces change, and then adjust our hopes as necessary. Consider the teacher whose students are falling behind on online assignments because they don’t have internet access at home. Rather than expecting the situation to improve (simple optimism) or expecting them to find their own solutions (grit), the teacher changes the homework format. His long-term hope that his students succeed academically is built brick by brick through immediate action.

Just like grit, hope can be cultivated—in the classroom and beyond. How? Through practice. We make a habit of enacting this scientific-hypothesis approach to hope. We work with classmates, colleagues, and family members to bring about positive change. When failure arrives, as it inevitably does, we learn from our mistakes and design a new hypothesis. Instead of throwing up our hands, we begin again.

A guide for practicing grit

This kind of hope can also serve as a guide for how—and when—to get gritty. For Stitzlein, an emphasis on grit alone is incomplete. By advocating for individual perseverance at all costs, a focus on grit can blind us to entrenched social problems. In other words, if we are gritty purely in advancing individualistic goals, we might miss the need for systemic change, or overlook the needs of those around us. In the classroom, for example, poorer students may not have the capacity to persevere toward a long-term goal when immediate needs consume their attention. This isn’t an indication of their lack of “grittiness;” rather, it’s a sign that something bigger needs to change. 

This is where pragmatist hope comes in. We need to engage in higher-level thinking to discern where it makes sense to apply grit, and when it might be counterproductive.

Pragmatist hope focuses on this higher-level set of concerns. While grit has the power to spur us onward and keep us working on the task at hand, we need hope as a map. 

When we practice pragmatist hope alongside passion and perseverance, this big-picture hope acts as a guide, showing us when and how to tap into tenacity. Once we discern the best path forward, we can employ grit to see the desired changes through.

Historical, collaborative, and collective

Pragmatist hope is historical, encouraging us to find a path forward by looking back. Those who hope pragmatically look to movements throughout history that have generated positive change, and evaluate their success. For example, activists who fight for racial equity can look to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and imagine ways to apply similar approaches today. 

Activist, philosopher, and public intellectual Cornel West is another advocate for pragmatist hope. He reminds us of its realistic, rather than idealistic, nature. In his book Hope on a Tightrope, West writes that “real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naïve projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work.”

This historical element of hope takes into account the complexity of progress. Pragmatist hope resists oversimplifying history and makes space for reality, both historic and present: its challenges, unexpected curve balls, and failures. Because this virtue is concerned with the common good, it emphasizes collaboration to achieve collective goals. This cooperation is also a pragmatic choice, because we go further when we work together. Social, political, and economic change is a collective effort of many. 

Hope and grit are similar in that they demand hard work and action. While grit promotes tenacity, pragmatist hope advocates flexibility—and both are essential companions on the long road of change. To move toward the better future of which West writes, we’ll need to practice hope and grit in tandem. We need grit to persevere through setbacks, and hope to see the larger picture. Whether in the classroom, workplace, or neighborhood, cultivating these virtues can move us closer to the collective flourishing of all.

Article Link here


Science of forgetting: Why we’re already losing our pandemic memories

March 20, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Richard SimaBRAIN MATTERS

Science of forgetting: Why we’re already losing our pandemic memories

How much do you remember about the past three years of pandemic life? How much have you already forgotten?

A lot has happened since the “Before Times.” Canceled proms, toilet paper shortages, nightly applause for health workers, new vaccines, waitlists for getting the first jab, and more.

Covid disrupted everyone’s lives, but it was truly life-changing for only a sizable subset of people: those who lost someone to covid, health-care workers, the immunocompromised or those who developed long covid, among others.

For the rest of us, over time, many details will probably fade because of the quirks and limitations of how much our brains can remember.

“Our memory is designed not to be computer-like,” said William Hirst, professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York. “It fades.”

Why we might forget a pandemic

Forgetting is inextricably intertwined with memory.

“A basic assumption that we can make is that everybody forgets everything all the time,” said Norman Brown, cognitive psychology professor researching autobiographical memory at the University of Alberta. “The default is forgetting.”

To understand why we may forget parts of pandemic life, it helps to understand how we hold on to memories in the first place. Your brain has at least three interrelated phases for memory: encoding, consolidation and retrieval of information.

When we encounter new information, our brains encode it with changes in neurons in the hippocampus, an important memory center, as well as other areas, such as the amygdala for emotional memories. These neurons embody a physical memory trace, known as an engram.Our memories are centered around our life stories and what affected us personally the most.

Much of this information is lost unless it is stored during memory consolidation, which often happens during sleep, making the memories more stable and long-term. The hippocampus essentially “replays” the memory,which is alsoredistributed to neurons in the cortex for longer-term storage. One theory is that the hippocampus stores an index of where these cortical memory neurons are for retrieval — like Google search.

Finally, during memory retrieval, thememory trace neurons in the hippocampus and cortex are reactivated.

Notably, memories are not fixed and permanent. The memory is subject to change each time we access and reconsolidate it.

What we remember tends to be distinctive, emotionally loaded and deemed worthy of processing and reflecting upon in our heads after the event happened. Our memories are centered on our life stories and what affected us personally the most.

Against this neural backdrop, the pandemic would seem unforgettable. It was a frightening, historic event, the likes of which most people have never encountered before.

Information overload and monotony interfere with memory

Butso much has happened, it was difficult for our brainsto encode the overload of information we had to sift through — masks, social distancing, superspreaders, more cases, more deaths, new waves and new variants such as omicron and delta, and who even remembers all the subvariants?

“This is a very fundamental memory phenomenon,” said Suparna Rajaram, psychology professor who researches the social transmission of memory at Stony Brook University. “Even for such salient emotional events and salient life-threatening events, that the more you have of it, the more you will have trouble capturing all of them.”New memories, which happen by simply living more life, interfere with memories of older events.

Even Rajaram, who is conducting pandemic-related memory research, said she and her colleagues have difficulty recalling some of the events they are asking their participants about.

New memories, which happen by simply living more life, interfere with memories ofolder events. New events are more salient and easier to remember because we are more likely to talk about them and “rehearse” them,by repeatedly remembering and reconsolidating them. Stress, something the pandemic produced in abundance, also interferes with the creation of new memories.

In addition to information overload, the pandemic was monotonous for many people stuck at home. “It was very much the same and the same thing over and over again,” said Dorthe Berntsen, professor of psychology specializing in autobiographical memory at Aarhus University.

When events are uniform, they are harder to recall. “The memory sort of puts it together as almost one event,” she said. “So therefore, I think we will have quite unclear memories from those specific years.”Press Enter to skip to end of carousel

Who wants to remember a pandemic?

Here’s another reason we forget: As a society, many people don’t want to hold onto their covid memories.

People tend to view the future more positively than the past, Rajaram said. This future-oriented positivity bias occurs because the future can be imagined in many ways compared to the past, which is fixed.

Emotionally evocative and dramatic events are more likely to be remembered, but even those memories fade and distort.Within a week of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hirst and a consortium of researchers around the United States asked over 3,000 people in the United States to relate their experiences and feelings around the event.

When the researchers followed up just a year later, about 40 percent of people did not accurately recall those memories. Yet they remained “supremely confident that they were absolutely right,” said Hirst, who studies social aspects of memory.

The least reliable aspect of our memory is remembering how we felt at the time.

“If you ask people to remember how they felt the first few days after 9/11, it’s more like what they feel right now than what they actually felt the first few days after 9/11,” Hirst said.

Remembering the past is something we do in the present, with all our current emotions, knowledge and attitudes. This reality may have direct implications for how we look back on covid and contend with the future.

Will covid be part of your life story?

Covid affected everyone but the mark it leaves on our lives and thus our memories will vary drastically.

Over 2,000 Americans still die each week as of the third anniversary of the pandemic lockdowns. At least 1.1 million people have died in the United States and 6.9 million worldwide. The loved ones left behind are less likely to forget the pandemic.

Among front-line health-care workers, many suffer from burnout or continue to deal with the trauma of bearing the brunt of the pandemic. At least 65 million people worldwide are dealing with the lingering, often debilitating effects of long covid.Covid affected everyone but the mark it leaves on our lives and thus our memories will vary drastically.

“I would say the pandemic, for many people, will be remembered as this kind of gray interlude,” Brown said. “And for some people, it will be a life-changing kind of event or period. And they’ll remember differently.”

Our autobiographical memory is structured by life transitions, and for many, the transition into the pandemic was gradual and the transition back to a semblance of normal more gradual still.

“In order to really kind of staple one’s autobiographical memories into history, history has to take your life and turn it on its head,” Brown said.

The risk of collectively forgetting another pandemic

How society decides to commemorate the pandemic will probably affect whether and how it lives in our society’s collective memory, and what future generations learn from our experiences.

While parents pass along their knowledge and family history to offspring, these communicative memories only last for two or three generations: we may know something about our grandmothers or even our great-grandmothers, but almost nothing further up our family tree.

Without cultural artifacts — books, movies, statues, museums — the same may happen for memories of the covid pandemic, consigned to the entropic dustbin of history. As of now, there are no official permanent memorials for the pandemic.

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million people — more than the military casualties of World Wars I and II combined. But it seemed to fade quickly from collective memory, which was only revived with the arrival of our current pandemic.

“Will the covid-19 pandemic have the same fate and memory?” Rajaram said. “I think to the extent that the past is a predictor of the future, the answer is yes.”

But our future history is not yet decided. Governments and institutions have the resources and intragenerational structure key to keeping collective memories alive.

“And the question is, do we feel the moral imperative not to let the story end with us?” Hirst said.

Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/13/brain-memory-pandemic-covid-forgetting/