Liberal Arts Blog — Moral Algebra, Character, Equity, Income Statements and Balance Sheets, Myelin and Axons, Phenology
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s Topic: Moral Algebra, Character, Equity, Income Statements and Balance Sheets, Myelin and Axons, Phenology
It’s all about doing the moral algebra (Benjamin Franklin’s term). This means doing your homework before making an important decision. That is, making as comprehensive as possible a list of positive and negative consequences of choice A or B or C over short, medium, and long term time horizons. Tallying the total for each choice. Netting them.Then comparing them. Then sharing the analysis with others with different perspectives to make sure you are not missing something important. You might think here of Supreme Court Justices sharing draft opinions before the final decision is made.
Today, I link this idea of moral algebra to two metaphors. The first connects building equity on a balance sheet to building character over a life time. It connects the income statement and the balance sheet of daily life. The second likens the building of character to the myelinating of axons in the brain.
Did you build a little equity yesterday? Or did your balance sheet take a hit? Did you myelinate or demyelinate the axons of gratitude, courage, and prudence?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate,
EQUITY, CHARACTER: MYELINATING THE AXONS OF COURAGE, GRATITUDE, AND PRUDENCE
1. What was the ratio of your Grinch face to your Santa face?
2. What was the ratio of your kind words to disparaging words?
3. At home? at work? in stores? in the street?
AND HOW ABOUT THE AXONS OF DILIGENCE AND EXCELLENCE?
1. So did you have a plan yesterday for bulking up on gratitude?
2. How many people did you thank? family? friends? strangers?
3. Did you figure out new ways to keep yourself on the straight and narrow?
NB: Did you record your progress in a Franklin-like journal?
THE AXONS OF CURIOSITY AND JOY — did you notice that yesterday the world turned green? have you hugged your inner phenologist (student of biological cycles) lately? (below a gray hairstreak butterfly on a leavenworth eryngo)
1. Every year, on one morning in April or May, I get out of bed, pull open the shades and marvel at the stunning news that the world has turned green.
2. Saturday, gray with green highlights. Sunday, green with gray spots. In Concord, Massachusetts, that is. How about where you live?
3. If your currency is dopamine and oxytoccin, the sharper your attention to the wonders of spring, the richer you will be. The greater your psychic equity.
NB: Have you learned the name of a new plant or creature lately? captured it on film? If so, please share.
Eryngium leavenworthii — Wikipedia
https://dyckarboretum.org/get-rich-phenology/
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Last four years of posts organized thematically:
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
