Ampersand Gazette #73
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Don’t Fall Into the ‘Cynicism Trap’
Cynicism — the belief that people are generally selfish, greedy and dishonest — can make us feel safer and smarter. But there is evidence that a cynical worldview may also have a negative effect on our health, making us more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease, and burnout.
Cynicism, Dr. Jamil Zaki, director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, writes, is a lack of faith in people, while skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions.
I asked experts for a few ways to stave off cynicism.
Look for moments of ‘moral beauty.’ When you’re losing faith in people, take 15 minutes out of your day and pay attention to the moments of kindness all around you — what Dacher Keltner, the author of “Awe,” calls “moral beauty.”
Spread ‘positive gossip.’
Publicly pointing out good deeds not only lowers your own cynicism but also that of others, Dr. Zaki said, “because you’re sharing real information with them about real, positive things that people are doing.”
Yesterday, I went in search of more “moral beauty.” My favorite moment: A young father with a newborn in a carrier was gingerly walking through my town. I could tell by the way he glanced around that he was dying for people to comment on the baby.
At least half of us who passed him understood the assignment: We made a fuss. It cheered my cynical heart.
Excerpted from a Well Column by Jancee Dunn in The New York Times
“Don’t Fall Into the ‘Cynicism Trap’”
September 20, 2024
The original meaning of cynic came from a Greek school of philosophical thought founded by Antisthenes. The first thing that struck me about his name is that it begins with anti- which often means, against. Ms. Dunn says that cynicism can make us feel safer and smarter.
Huh, is what I said. I wonder how being against something … anything … is a prescription for feeling safer or smarter? I don’t get it. Further, what was Mr. Against against?
The Greek syllable -sthenos means power. Antisthenes was against power. But a particular kind of power, the kind that comes from the outside in.
Originally, the Cynics who followed Mr. Against-Power were marked by an ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure. Perhaps better said, against the seductive power of a life of ease and pleasure. Life from the outside-in. Instead, he advocated living an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue, meaning physical strength, valorous conduct, and moral rectitude. Life from the inside-out.
Gracious, that sounds high-falutin’, doesn’t it? Perhaps Dr. Jamil Zaki’s definition is clearer: Cynicism is a lack of faith in people. Add that to the actual etymology and you get lack of faith in the power of people. I’d add, to effect change.
What Antisthenes really advocated was not giving away one’s power to others. I’d advocate the same. Actually, and more importantly, it might be better to say learning to hold one’s own power within one’s self. No one teaches us that.
I don’t think people are generally selfish, greedy, or dishonest. What I think is that we’re all, without exception, motivated by self-interest, and that until we’re willing to tell the truth about that — a truth which includes ourselves — rather than merely projecting it all over everyone else, we’ll feel cynical. Even at our own expense.
What’s wrong with self-interest? Really? Nothing. What’s wrong, and what I think causes cynicism, is lying about it.
Very few of us are taught anything about power in life, barring the implicit social messages that certain types of people are inherently powerful, and certain types are not. I don’t think that’s even close to accurate.
All of us are powerful, and all of us are meant to be so, but that power is meant to source from within, and not be dependent upon the esteem or opinions or actions of others. In fact, I think it’s this lack of a feeling of personal power — to make a difference — that has caused such trust issues in our relationships.
If we can’t learn to trust ourselves, how ever will we be able to trust others? One way is the way that’s recommended in the article: Seek out moral beauty. Another is spread positive gossip. I say, combine them both. Seek out moral beauty, find it, and then spread positive gossip about it.
When you’re busy figuring out what’s right in the world, what’s wrong has this magical tendency to disappear, and what a blessing that is.
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I Used to Be Resilient. What Happened?
I’ve noticed I am becoming less resilient as I age. It’s a flaw — one I want to help my young son avoid. Before I raise a resilient kid, [though,] I should probably raise a resilient me. I called a few experts to find out how I can become tougher. What I discovered was that my view of resilience was all wrong.
Wait, what is resilience again?
Defining resilience is tricky. Some frame it as the ability to stand up to adversity; others describe it as an ability to bounce back; still others liken it to adaptability.
Michael Ungar, a professor of social work at Dalhousie University in Canada and expert in resilience said, it’s multiple “processes that will make it possible for you to thrive under stress.” So, rather than a single muscle you can exercise, resilience is the product of many parts of your life, experience, and personality. All of the experts I spoke with agreed that resilience can be improved.
Identify what brings you meaning.
“The biggest piece of a good life is having some kind of sense of purpose and something that you’re invested in and committed to,” said Sherry Hamby, a professor at the University of the South in Tennessee who studies resilience. The most powerful predictor of resilience to traumatic events is your connection to something larger than your self, whether it’s God, family, country, or just the local P.T.A. The more types of meaning you find, the more stable you are.
So how do you rediscover meaning in your life? Find a way to tell your story, and your values will become clear. [SC: What you value is what gives your life meaning.]
Understand that no one is an island.
“We as humans are very social creatures,” said Kathryn Howell, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So when bad things happen to us, we want to be together and connected to others.”
Community is crucial to resilience. One way to build a social circle, the experts agreed, is by volunteering. The point isn’t to be constantly social, but to build a community.
Find what keeps you balanced.
It turns out the kinds of tools I thought were crucial for resilience — breathing techniques, exercise, time in nature — are further down the list. Self-regulation methods can calm you down or help you through the day, experts say, but they can’t always carry you through a crisis.
Take a hard look at yourself.
So how can I improve my middling resilience? I do have meaning in my life as a father and a journalist. And I have the mountains and forests around where I live to give me balance. But I don’t have a strong social circle, especially with other men. So my path to resilience isn’t about braving the elements or collecting tools to give me grit. It’s about having humility and making time to reach out and ask someone to, I don’t know, get a beer sometime.
Excerpted from a Well Column by Erik Vance in The New York Times
I Used to Be Resilient. What Happened?
August 30, 2024
So, are you resilient? Are you finding, like Erik Vance, that you’re less resilient as you grow older? Certainly, as we get older, it’s easier to get rigid. Is it rigidity that foils resilience?
The source of the word is obsolete French: re- = back + salire = jump, in the sense of recoil. The original basis of the word seems appropriate for when you meet that Bengal Tiger on the sidewalk. It’s physical — to jump back. Wouldn’t anyone?
Of course, from there, it’s only a tiny hop to emotional resilience. That must be why most of us think of resilience as the ability to bounce back, in the sense of recover. Something upsetting happens — big or little. How well do we recover … our equilibrium?
I like Dr. Ungar’s definition — the ability to thrive under stress.
Other disciplines might name this ability centeredness, meaning the ability to maintain our balance in the face of extremis. Or, inner peace. But even here, I think we hold resilience as the ability NOT to get flapped about anything.
But that’s not what balance is … unless one achieves a balance and freezes there. Balance is constantly shifting in and out of equilibrium. Always. Forever. We know about balance because we experience imbalance.
The suggestions of the experts are actually suggestions for much more than resilience. They’re recommendations for a life well-lived.
Identify what gives you meaning — your purpose, and a commitment to it.
This gives you a contextualizing measurement.
No one is an island — your relationships matter.
This gives you an outside perspective, if you need it.
Find what keeps you balanced — you can restore yourself.
This gives you a prepared action plan for when you get out of whack.
There’s a whole other essay in the notion that the core of resilience really is the awareness of, the ability to, and the desire to change your mind. A changed mind is automatically a less rigid mind. A less rigid mind is one that is open.
You’ve heard this before, I’m sure: Minds are like parachutes, they work best when they’re open. Just sayin’.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
Mike Dooley
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And in publishing news …
Jacqueline Retrograde is FINISHED!!! And the ebook is live on Amazon. Here is the cover, and the new blurb.
A debut. An auction block. A glimpse at a whole new life.
Jacqueline Bailey is the eldest of the four Bailey sisters, yes, those Baileys. A gifted equestrienne since her papa placed her in the front of his saddle at age two, Jacqueline has been dragooned — oh, not kicking, not screaming, instead unwittingly, almost before she noticed it — into becoming a New York High Society Gilded Age debutante.
The truth is, she can hardly believe it. Viewed through the perspective of a highly private individual, this inside look at the idiosyncratic mixture of the nobs, those of the Knickerbocracy, and the swells, those of the Nouveau Riche, as they take on their allegedly proper social roles, brings into high relief the eccentricities and hypocrisies of all performance-based social behaviors.
Jacqueline is well past disenchanted when we meet her on the natal day which qualifies her as a legal adult. A fun outing, wherein her circus antecedents make their presence both known and useful, leads to a burgeoning friendship, to be sure, or could it be … more, when she’s cast in another unplanned role, this time as hero.
Heroics, to no one’s surprise, are not all they’re cracked up to be, so when a desperate, and jealous, debutante uses the incident to further her nefarious matrimonial aspirations, Jacqueline’s mettle comes to the fore. Everyone already knows there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Entering into this backstage look at the world of the pre-Victorian debutante, Jacqueline is brought face-to-face with her true self, Jaq. No one could predict that being a deb is the trigger to her wildest dreams come true. Perhaps not immediately, but slowly, surely, and inexorably as Jaq steps out upon her true path.
Will Jacqueline implode over the demand to be a fragile feminine flower of flummoxed femininity? Will the girl whirl hoops be the end of Jacqueline? Or are they the dawn of a newly-minted gender freedom that Jaq has unknowingly been seeking all along …
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I am thrilled to show you my new banner for fiction.
Well, just as I’ve shown this to you, I’m going to have to revise it. Excellent.
Jacqueline Retrograde is at the head of the queue for publishing! It should go live as an ebook this week, and as soon as I get the paperback cover back, that will go live, too.
CORRECTION: Jacqueline Retrograde went live on Amazon on Saturday, my birthday, as planned! I got the paperback cover, and that will go up early this week.
Now, may I draw your attention to the little book on the bottom row of the image that seems to be hanging out all by itself? That’s the next publishing project. It’s called The Mex In-Betweens. My bookhusband (and legal spouse) Tony Amato, having edited every single one of my books, started reading the first Mex Mystery, Oklahoma! Hex again. As he did, he made a list of back stories he thought would make intriguing singles — short in-betweens. There’s a round baker’s dozen of ’em in this volume.
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My review request this issue is … if you love queer romance, would you please read Attending Physician — the permafree book that starts my Boots & Boas Romances? If you love it, would you leave a stellar review? I need two more to do one of my special promotions … please.
Reviews really are the engine that powers the career of an indie author.
Here’s a magical 5-star review for The Boots & Boas Romances …
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!!!
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2019
Verified Purchase
I loved this book. The closeness of the butches and how Verity wanted to do the same with the femmes. Gives you a sense of family. Hope Ms. Hartt plans to carry on the story by taking us through how Mel, Jamie, Mickey do with their new “Lady Loves” and we find Ladies for Cord and Terry (hint hint). If you like strong butches and soft femmes, this is a book for you.
P. S. It hadn’t even dawned on me when I published this first book, and now there are four in the series, and books planned for each butch-femme pairing. I bless this reviewer every day.
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Prismatica, Book One, is moving right along, so right along that I had to do a full stop, and read the whole thing to figure out (once again) if I’d lost control of the calendar. I had not. Phew. And to imagine where it might go. I think I know now, and I’m pretty sure I’m approaching the end of Book One which is called.
I will, of course, keep you posted.
Who knows what I’ll write next … will it be … Jaq Direct, the final book of The Subversive Lovelies? Or Impending Decision, the fifth book of The Boots & Boas Romances? Or Shrew This!, book eleven of The Mex Mysteries? Or the second Prismatica? Or a new chakra aid to clearing energy blocks? So many books, so little time …
I keep thinking the day is coming when I’ll be writing two books at one time. I sure hope so, because Spirit tells me I have one whole hell of a lot more to say.
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We did finish reading Jacqueline Retrograde aloud on my birthday — what a gift. So exciting. And after it goes live, first as an ebook, and then as a paperback, I’ve also decided that it’s time to publish all the Mex In-Betweens, the brain children of, you guessed it, Tony Amato.
And what are in-betweens, you want to know? They’re the scenes that, for whatever reason, don’t fit in a finished book. I’ve finished a baker’s dozen
from Oklahoma! Hex, and it’s time they were out in the world. Now, how many editors do you know who make magic like this?
Do you have need of someone to partner with to help you with your book ideas? In all seriousness, I know a guy. He’s edited my books for twenty years, and counting. Tony Amato is a singularly outstanding (and much sought after) book coach and editor.
May I encourage you to reach out if you need book-husbanding? He’s worked on fiction, micro-fiction, memoir, science fiction, metaphysical fiction, young adult fiction, erotica, singles, series, audio scripts, and nonfiction in realms from business to the spiritual, and everything in between. Oooh, also in-betweens! Really, you name it, he’s done it. Like I said, if you need anything in your writing life, Tony Amato is the person. Find him here.
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“Purity is in the mind of the beholder, but beware the man who vows to protect yours.” — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
Tony maintains when I am doing the writing I am meant to be doing, I am given the resources that I need to fulfill my purpose. Enter the final book of The Subversive Lovelies — Jaq Direct.
I knew there was a final act to the Anthony [middle name deleted — spoiler alert] Comstock story in Jaq’s book, but I had no idea how to incorporate it. So what happened? This book by Amy Sohn, The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age rang the doorbell.
Excerpted from the Amazon blurb … “Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of 19th-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long prison sentences and steep fines. Comstockery came to connote repression and prudery.
“Between 1873 and Comstock’s death in 1915, eight remarkable “sex radical” women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. They supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. They took on the fearsome censor. In their willingness to oppose a monomaniac who viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family, and risking imprisonment and death, they redefined birth control access as a civil liberty.
“This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.”
As I read the description, I had the fleeting thought that some poor male publishing kid in their publicity department wrote these words. I couldn’t help but edit that last sentence: “This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control our bodies.”
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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?
Saturday was my 67th birthday,
and of course, as always happens,
I was asked severally what I wanted for my birthday.
I didn’t have an answer
until I started to write The Gazette.
If you’re so inclined …
go out and do something nice for someone —
yourself, a friend, a neighbor, a stranger.
it has to be something
that makes you feel good
about yourself.
Because we could use a whole lot more of that
on Planet Earth these days.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand.