Articles
I read several interesting articles this past week including “A Brief Process for More Enlightened Brainstorming” from Quartz by Sarah Kaplan and Mark Leung. This companion article by Sarah Kaplan was also helpful, “Combining the Two Routes to Creativity. You can find this in the Rotman Magazine (University of Toronto – Rotman School of Management).
The Hedgehog Review recently had a special issue devoted to “The Human and the Digital.” I read a very thoughtful article entitled “Expose Thyself! On the Digitally Revealed Life” by Christine Rosen.
The following paragraph is just a sampling of Rosen’s very fine article.
By contrast, the lives we live on Facebook, Instagram, Yik Yak, and Twitter are virtual, not visceral, and they favor immediacy, as well as encourage less productive feelings, such as envy. One study in Germany found a “rampant nature of envy” and other “invidious emotions” among people who were heavy users of Facebook, particularly those who tended to follow other people’s newsfeeds and check others’ profiles. They experienced Facebook as a “stressful environment” that affected their daily lives. “The spread of ubiquitous presence of envy on social networking sites is shown to undermine users’ life satisfaction,” the researchers found, creating a “self-promotion-envy spiral,” in which users were “reacting with even more self-promotional content to the self-promotional content of others.”16 We hear many stories about the positive effects of social networking (of which there are many); but new research also suggests that the effects are more complicated when it comes to our emotional responses to social media.
Books
Recently, I listened to a recording of a class given by Sara Jackson and Emily Lemley in which they made reference to a discussion by James Bryan Smith on worry. (See The Good and Beautiful Life, pp. 171-182). In particular, I appreciated them pointing out these wonderful two sentences.
Worry keeps me focused on my own limited resources. Trust keeps my attention on God’s abundant resources. (p. 178)
(Is there anyone else besides me who needs to remember these two sentences?)